Order in the time of chaos

As is my wont, I spent some time today reading the latest missive from fellow baseball and politics nerd Craig Calcaterra. On many things, as you know if you've been here before, Craig and I, we reach. (Not on everything. I could not care less about European football and I have never been into indie bands like so many of my generational peers are/have been.)

Anyway, Craig devoted some of his newsletter today to his emotional state of mind regarding, well, the world, and in the wake of my Saturday rant I've been feeling much the same way. As Craig put it, "I do not believe it is hyperbole to say that America's 249-year old legal, political, and philosophical order has been effectively destroyed in a little over five months and whatever is left of it is severely wounded." I do quibble about the "five months" part, as the five months in question are in actuality a resumption of the destruction that started at a much slower pace in 2017 and was suspended in 2021, but the point is spot-on.

I don't think Craig is unique in this, I think a great many of us are freaking out to one degree or another as the POTUS47 regime and its compliant agents on the Supreme Court take a blowtorch to the Constitution without a peep of resistance from the majority party in Congress. I mean, there were big marches and stuff just a couple weeks ago. But the fact that despite the protests in the streets, despite the outrage and the lawsuits, despite the blatant betrayal of oaths, nothing seems to matter—at least, on a short- or medium-term scale.

In my latest spiral, my mind went where it most likes to go, to the universe of Star Trek; in this case, though, it wasn't uplifting at all. The Trek canon has been prescient in a lot of ways despite missing the mark on the eugenics wars of the 1990s (which has been suitably retconned to a few decades later). But ever since 1967 the shows were telling their audience that to get where we needed to go, we were going to hit the skids in a big way in the 21st century. Now that we're actually in the 21st century, the accuracy of some of the future history details is less impressive and more frightful. 

Craig is less of a nerd than I am in that regard, but he got to a similar place without the Trek references, living with anger and depression over the utter chaos being wrought. Order and the predictability of cause-and-effect, of action-and-consequence, are out the window because, again quoting Craig (who is a better writer than I), "we're living in an era of legal Calvinball." It used to mean something profound to be American, but now "even the most basic and explicit Constitutional rights mean nothing to this Court or this regime and that there is little if anything that can be done about it, at least any time soon."

Baseball is where Craig's and my nerddom intersect most completely, so when he discussed how attending a couple of games over the weekend provided a kind of therapy I completely understood. "Those games helped me feel like I was living in an orderly world," he wrote, continuing:

[I]t was worthy effort, because baseball is rooted in order. There are rules. They are enforced. There is a mathematical logic to how the proceedings in a baseball game unfold and following those proceedings required that I assume a logical and ordered mindset. There's nothing I know better or that I have known longer than how baseball works and retreating into a headspace where nothing was happening other than the baseball game in front of me had the same effect as reciting a mantra. It quieted my mind. It banished the chaos, at least for a while. It made me feel connected to something in ways I've not felt connected to anything for what feels like ages.

...  I felt more calm and centered than I've felt in several months. I know that feeling won't last because we live in an age of fresh daily horrors. I know that my disorientation at the lack of order and predictability of these times and my attendant depression will return the moment I begin reading the news once again. But any reprieve is a welcome one and the two ballgames I took in while in Detroit were just what the doctor ordered. They served as a reminder that, if I try hard enough, I can probably find my way through this shit.

 We can't take our eye off the ball, if you'll excuse the metaphor, but these reprieves are essential. We need to keep sane so we can eventually recover from the wreckage of the regime. If for you it's not baseball but something else, have at it. But take the break, clear your mind of existential dread, and come back fighting.

Because in the words of Captain Pike, "the future is what we make it."