At some point in adulthood, it dawns on you that “make good choices” was never really guidance; it was wishful thinking.
Consider the Framingham police lieutenant I heard at a security conference recently. As he was presenting on frauds and scams, he dropped an all-time one-liner: “If you find yourself at a gas station on Route 30 late at night buying Bitcoin at an ATM to urgently pay a bill, you may want to rethink your life choices.”
It’s not really possible, or necessary, to sugar-coat such wisdom. If you are feeding cash into a machine next to a rack of motor oil at 10:30 p.m. because someone on the internet told you to, this is not a close call. You didn’t “end up” there; you made your way there.
To extend some grace, I do think that no one plans to end up at a Bitcoin ATM…they get there gradually. One small, defensible step at a time. One “this is probably fine” layered on top of another until suddenly they’re about to say goodbye to a few thousand next to some peppered jerky.
Beyond the individual bad choices that we should all try to avoid, there’s also a different problem: groups of generally successful, intelligent adults willfully ignoring the obvious. Which brings us to a recent Sunday in Maine.
And I take full partial responsibility for this one. Despite the forecast of 4” of snow north of Portland on Sunday morning, my daughter’s game was not postponed, so a caravan of Massachusetts cars trudged up I-95 under darkening skies, taking the field in freezing temperatures.
And what do you know? By the 75th minute, the game was called because the field was covered with snow and no one could see the lines; there’s a special form of self-awareness that comes from realizing that this whole thing could have been avoided. In retrospect, the universe gave all of us several very clear warnings, and we ignored them all.
For a non-league game for 13-year-olds.
Come on, us…do better.
Upon further reflection, in both cases, reasonable adults chose to ignore all of the red flags and decided with full kavanah (intention) that the obvious didn’t count.
Which brings us, inevitably, to the part where this stops being funny.
If you find yourself explaining why a particular antisemitic or anti-Zionist joke, trope, or conspiracy theory is actually fine (because of Bibi, or Trump, or No Kings, or whatever the current reason is), you are not confused. You are not being nuanced. You are doing a thing.
There is no version of events where you wake up, stretch, and think, “Today I’m going to rehabilitate a blood libel.” And yet here we are, in a moment where ancient hatreds are getting rebranded as political commentary, and people who would never use a slur are enthusiastically sharing content that would have embarrassed them five years ago. This includes, by the way, the proud purveyors of the “As a Jew, I am appalled by Israel” genre; you are not the designated hitter you think you are.
You got here the same way as the Bitcoin ATM and the same way as the snow game: one small, defensible step at a time. One “this isn’t really about Jews” layered on top of another, until it very much was about Jews.
So, here’s your Route 30 moment: If the argument you’re making requires you to explain why this particular version of a very old hatred is the exception, step away from the machine.
And make better choices.
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