MLB: "Profoundly Irresponsible" And "Entirely Predictable"; The "Unmitigated Bullshit" of Hillbilly Elegy's "Bootstraps Porn"

Craig Calcaterra (Cup of Coffee) writes about MLB's recent online survey:

which seem aimed at figuring out how to make fans comfortable about actually going to ballparks next year. . . .

It goes on to ask how fans think their favorite team . . . has handled the pandemic and what level of activities in ballparks stress you out the most. There are also questions about attitudes toward masks, temperature checks, and what things ballpark operations can do to make people feel the most comfortable, such as spaced seating, contactless payments, hand sanitizing stations, and the like, and what might inspire you to go to the ballpark. Finally, it asks you how likely you are to go to a ballpark, followed by a bunch of demographic questions.

Knowledge is always useful, but I feel like something else is going on here. I think Major League Baseball is looking to find as many sources of anti-pandemic safety eyewash that it can find in order to convince people to go to the ballpark next year regardless of the situation on the ground. . . .

As I wrote about at length at the Pandemic Diary, our public officials and institutions have largely given up even trying to fight the pandemic. We're simply reverting to normal because we, as a society, do not have the will to do what is necessary to fight it. . . .

So, you're Major League Baseball. It's next April. You don't have any significant legal restrictions in most markets, but you still have fairly widespread public anxiety and a broad hesitance of people to actually attend sporting events. What do you do? Why, you provide the appearance of safety in a way that, while not adhering to best scientific practices or the recommendations of public health experts — that's what has been rejected in America, remember — at least adheres to public opinions about safety, which is the point of this survey. You let a bunch of sports fans with no scientific expertise decide what they think will keep them safe. . . .

Major League Baseball WILL have games with fans. It just wants fans to feel better about it, regardless of whether or not it’s actually, you know, a good idea. . . .

We will get things which provide the illusion of safety. We will get those things because, in the absence of actual leadership and sacrifice in the face of a deadly enemy, the illusion of safety is all that is really needed and all that can actually be done.

Personally, I think allowing public opinion to decide how we fight this pandemic, while ignoring expert advice, is the primary reason that things have gotten so bad in the first place. And I think that Major League Baseball relying on public opinion, as opposed to expert advice, to shape the ballpark experience in 2021 and beyond is profoundly irresponsible even if it's entirely predictable. . . .

Providing the illusion of safety is what the United States now does best. Quadrennial treks to the voting booth maintain the illusion of democracy (though that veneer has worn quite thin in the past couple of decades), while removing your shoes and having your mini tube of toothpaste confiscated at the airport are essential acts in the national show of "security theater". In the land of illusion, companies make a show of thanking essential workers publicly for risking their lives during a pandemic, but still refuse to pay them a living wage.

There also exists a general impatience with doing things that will benefit other people (an odd quality, one might say, in a country that regards itself as Christian). For many Americans, the inability to perceive any tangible benefit of a public good is an acceptable reason to violently protest against it. Thus, wearing a protective mask and avoiding large crowds - the act of actually saving lives - becomes a crushing burden that can only be compared to slavery (according to the head of the US Department of Justice).

All of which segues into Calcaterra's "almost monomaniacal disdain" for J.D. Vance and his book Hillbilly Elegy, which he describes as "absolute unmitigated bullshit" (in his review and an expanded follow-up) fueled by Vance's "willful and calculated" ignorance.

His central argument is that the crisis of poverty, addiction, and countless other challenges facing rural Americans is attributable to a lack of character and work ethic by those suffering from it. It is Vance's view that the underclass from which he rose is struggling so mightily because it is not taking responsibility for its own decay. That it's the moral failures of the poor, as opposed to external social and economic challenges posed by people, companies and systems which seek to extract money and resources from the lower and middle classes and funnel them to the rich, which are to blame.

These arguments . . . are utter hogwash. Hogwash, it should be noted, that adheres pretty closely to the views of the Yale Professor/author who mentored him and helped get "Hillbilly Elegy" published and the Silicon Valley venture capital class among which Vance worked for many years and continues to work. It also, not coincidentally, is on all fours with GOP political leaders who will, eventually, aid Vance's manifest political ambitions. In our system the poor are blamed for being poor and to the extent we even have a functioning social safety net, it is largely premised on the idea that people deserve to be punished for being poor and should be forced to beg and jump through hoops if the need help. Vance's book is like an instruction manual for maintaining that system. It's written permission for someone to sneer at a mother using SNAP to buy food for their children, an act of absolution for those who would demonize the poor as deadbeats or freeloaders.

It's Vance's political ambitions, by the way, which compel me to continue to stay on his case more than four years after his book came out. . . . [H]e aims, many believe, to be the junior Senator from the State of Ohio one day, and I'll be damned if I let him ride his sugar-coated poor-bashing pablum to Washington unopposed. . . .

If you'd like to actually understand what people in Appalachia and small town America deal with and who and what, actually, are responsible for the problems they face, do yourself a favor: pick up Elizabeth Catte's "What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia" and Brian Alexander's "Glass House: The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town".