The OCD Diaries

August 4, 2020August 4, 2020

Observations of a Centrist

When it comes to politics, I claim neither purity nor perfection. Mine are simply a set of beliefs collected through life experiences and a vigorous read of history.

One thing I’ve always tried to do is be open, adjusting those beliefs in the face of fresh evidence. Such evidence has come my way more times than I care to admit. To me, the ability to be flexible in this arena is necessary for personal growth, evolution and my usefulness to society.

I spent part of my teens and early 20s as a libertarian before swinging the other way toward left-wing liberalism.

By the time I reached my 30s and since then, my political leanings have remained mainly in the middle. I vote for Democrats and Republicans, depending on who I think shows the best ability to lead.

I like a vigorous debate between those on the left and right. When the country faces a crisis like the current pandemic, I prefer that leaders be willing to cast aside parts of their ideology and meet the other side halfway to do what’s necessary.

Most people agree that the current situation is dangerous — a new virus we’ve failed to get accurate measurements on, resulting in people forced to stay home, keep their distance and freeze the economy.

Most people agree Congress must pass another massive emergency aid package as the economy plunges to depths unseen since The Great Depression.

Most people agree we need far more extensive testing and that without a more accurate count of who is sick and who isn’t, most other data points are useless.

But the public discourse has become overrun by people from both political extremes.

Many on the far right are shouting that continued social distancing and mask mandates are acts of tyranny, that this is local and national government grabbing power for power’s sake.

Many on the left argue that those who want social distancing to end are heartless tyrants themselves, willing to sacrifice grandma and countless other lives out of a selfish need to restart the economy.

We continue to argue and vilify each other. This scenario is now playing out against the backdrop of the 2020 presidential election. People at one extreme believe universal mail-in voting is the only way to stay safe. People at the other extreme insist mail-in voting is a recipe for massive fraud and will undermine the accuracy of the election.

President Trump, who has skillfully played the emotions of both extremes like a master conductor, claims mail-in voting will rig the election against him, even as his policies undermine the U.S. Postal Service, increasing the likelihood that things will go wrong.

As I sit here in the center, it looks to me like the far left and far right are easily played, becoming outraged at the drop of a dime. If you disagree with the far left, you’re a fascist too dumb to know what’s correct. Trump knows how easily riled they are and presses their buttons effectively. The far-right casts aside reality not because they lack intellect but because they’re convinced they’ve been lied to over and over again. Yet some of the things they’ve been willing to entertain as truth boggles the minds of centrists like me.

Against that backdrop, here’s what I believe:

Mail-in voting is no different than absentee voting, which has mostly worked for decades. If it worries you, spend less time crying foul and more time demanding that the postal service receive all necessary resources to make this work.
Americans are spoiled when it comes to election results. Except for 2000, we’ve had an outcome on election night for decades. To make mail-in voting accurate, we should be willing to wait weeks and even a month or two for careful counting and recounting. Then, it will be harder to discount the election outcome’s legitimacy, no matter who wins.
Though I think mail-in voting can work, I also believe in-person voting can as well. Most of us make regular trips to the grocery store, where we spend a good hour (I do, anyway). Voting can be a quicker process, if everything possible is done to provide enough polling places and move people along. You just follow the same rules as you do with every other outing. Mask up and don’t linger.
With a hybrid approach, we can have a fair election.
The government has grown rotten and we’ve been lied to repeatedly. If the government tells you something is necessary, it’s not the act of an uncaring person to be skeptical. In fact, it’s a healthy reaction.
But it’s not enough to sit around and bitch about it. People of all political leanings must demand more transparent government. That’s a cause as worthy of the kind of protest we’ve seen with Black Lives Matter (peaceful protest, not the looting and vandalism that rightly sparked outrage). As the late John Lewis used to say, some things are worth causing “good trouble” for.
The Founding Fathers built this nation to avoid extreme outcomes. Checks and balances demands compromise.
It’s fine, even appropriate, to look on government officials with skepticism. Both parties have done things to make the American experience a terrible one in this regard. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo — a Democrat — is often lauded as an example of good leadership in the pandemic but some of his early decisions were disastrous, particularly his order to put COVID-19 patients in nursing homes, which infected and killed people who might still be with us today. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — a Republican — refused early on to institute safety measures. Florida is now a hotbed of sickness and death.
Some claim the pandemic itself is a conspiracy and a scam. It doesn’t take a genius to see that when there are millions of sick and dead people out there it’s real. I know several people who got sick and at least one who died.

The only way America will endure is if many more people meet in the middle and cast aside tribalism for the greater good. That means doing or not doing things that would seem appropriate in normal times.

These are not normal times.

Editor’s note: Prints of “American Ragdoll” are for sale, with all proceeds being donated to the Elizabeth Stone House in support of survivors of domestic violence in the Boston area. If you’d like your own print, email sharanewild@gmail.com.

July 28, 2020July 27, 2020

A Tribute — and a Warning

Bob Scharn standing with statue of Captain Jack Sparrow

This is a tribute to a great man. It’s also about COVID-19 hitting close to home.

Bob Scharn was a giver.

He gave unlimited love to his wife and son and unlimited time as leader of my children’s Boy Scout troop.

He gave everything he had to everyone. The troop kids were his kids. Those kids have all grown into impressive young men. My older son is an Eagle Scout today thanks in no small part to Bob’s encouragement and guidance.

He was kind and patient to the core. I never once saw him raise his voice or lose his cool when the Scouts became a handful.

He also laughed at all my jokes, appreciating that obnoxiously bad ones were a right of passage for dads everywhere.

You could talk to him about anything. He could talk politics without letting his passions get the better of him. When he talked about Marvel movies and comics, his passions were clear from his endless supply of facts and figures. But whenever he shared anything, he was humble.

Come to think of it, I’m not sure I’ve ever known a more humble guy. That’s no overstatement.

Three weeks ago, Bob entered the hospital with COVID-19. His wife and son had come down with it as well but were able to recover at home. His was a more serious case. In the three weeks since, his wife and son have provided daily updates. Some days Bob held his own and it even looked like his lungs were clearing up.

Then things got worse. He needed a ventilator and dialysis.

Finally, last night, his son delivered the heartbreaking news that Bob’s body couldn’t take it any longer. He is now part of that bitter statistic — another American death in a pandemic that continues to spiral beyond control.

Bob has the eternal thanks of my family, and our hearts go out to his wife, Colleen, and son, Matthew.

Both are strong and will endure. Matthew will no doubt make his father proud many times over.

I know others who have fought COVID-19. Fortunately, they have recovered. Bob’s death is a punch to the gut.

A warning for all of you: Be careful. Limit your contact with people. Stay out of crowds. And for God’s sake, wear a mask.

If your family wants to have a gathering and someone is worried that doing so is too great a risk, don’t discount their concern.

By all accounts, the Scharns had been careful to avoid this.

To those tempted to use this post as license to spout conspiracy theories about how this isn’t really a pandemic but a government ploy to lord over the masses and change the outcome of an election, I have two words for you.

But I won’t say them here.

Bob wouldn’t have. He was better than that.

July 23, 2020July 21, 2020

Memes That Divide Us

In my recent post, “The Corrosion of Public Discourse,” I started with examples of how the American conversation has grown rotten. To recap, people:

Share memes without checking to see if they are based on truth or misinformation
Talk past each other rather than to each other
Slice, dice and distort data points to fit their viewpoint
Talk down to other people and confuse this as an act of virtue

A day after I published that, one of my Facebook connections posted a meme that exemplified those points:

Table with the title, Vote Wisely in 2020. The left column lists 20 items Democrats are supposed to be for, many of them false or exaggerated. The right column lists 20 items Republicans are supposed to be for, many of them false or exaggerated.

To me, it’s just another meme that plays fast and loose with the truth and paints huge parts of the population with the same brush. All the standard tropes are present. In this case we have a conservative saying they’re a beacon of virtue, a champion of freedom and the rule of law. Everyone else is shit.

I know just as many Republicans as I do Democrats. Some people genuinely try to solve serious problems with an exchange of ideas, but neither group neatly fits the columns assigned to them. Both groups have faults and virtues.

America has often been at its best when people on both sides compromise for the greater good. I personally prefer that to “us vs. them” memes like the one above.

And so, a suggestion:

If you’re going to make your point with a meme, fine. I do it all the time.

But before sharing, perhaps it’s not a bad idea to examine whether it truly aligns with reality, or if it’s merely painting huge groups of diverse people with the same sloppy brush.

I’ll try to do that, too.

July 21, 2020July 21, 2020

We Can Be Friends — Just Not on Facebook

Early on in my social media experience, I was often paranoid about being unfriended on Facebook. I worried endlessly about what I did to offend.

I eventually stopped caring and even took delight when someone deleted me. In my mind, it meant I had successfully gotten on the nerves of someone who deserved it.

Amid political divisiveness that has turned social media into a sewer, my thinking about online friendships — especially on Facebook — has evolved. In the process, I’ve gone on an unfriending spree of my own.

Mood Music:

I often see people announcing that they’re trimming their friends lists as if those they delete are unworthy subjects, unfit to be in their kingdom. Yet I did that very thing last week:

Facebook post from Bill Brenner: One thing I’ve always valued about social media is the ability for people to have a healthy exchange of ideas and find common ground. It’s increasingly difficult to find that on Facebook. People share memes without checking to see if they are based on truth or misinformation. They talk past each other instead of to each other. Data points are distorted to fit a viewpoint. People talk down to other people and confuse the action as one of virtue. Those I speak of exist on the left and right sides of the political spectrum. I’ve begun deleting a lot of people from my friends list. I don’t have time to roll around in the dirt. Peace to you all.

Since then, the pace of my unfriending has picked up. Mostly, I’ve removed those who push conspiracy theories and see public health measures in a pandemic as an assault on liberty, which I don’t buy. I try to be the voice of reason, the guy seeking the middle ground. But when it comes to what I see as thick-headed individuals contributing to the disastrous COVID-19 surge playing out across the south and western U.S. — threatening the rest of us with further death, lockdowns and economic pain — I can’t play along any more. You can’t achieve common ground with people who aren’t willing to meet you halfway and maybe admit when they’re wrong. Since I’ve admitted when I’m wrong many times, it’s not too much to ask.

Right or wrong, that’s how I feel. I don’t think I’m better than anyone else. But by unfriending those who contribute to it, I preserve my sanity.

There’s a lesson here. Regarding those people I thought were being self-important by announcing that they were unfriending people? I was probably being overly judgmental. On further reflection, they were probably doing what they had to do and the announcement serves as a warning (or relief?) to the rest of their followers.

Some of the people I removed are long-time friends and family. If you’re among them, I haven’t necessarily lost affection for you. I just can’t keep looking at what you’re pushing. I know others have concluded the same about me, and I respect that.

If you believe the opposite of what I believe, you’re likely finding my posts to be too much. If that’s the case, for the sake of your own sanity, you should unfriend me.

Friendships can and should endure. Just not always on Facebook, where relationships are not always the same as in the offline world.

Cartoon image of a man in a suit and tie and a women in a dress passing walking down a street. The woman says: "My desire to be well-informed is currently at odds with my desire to remain sane." Image by David Sipress — Cartoon by David Sipress

June 30, 2020June 29, 2020

On Masks and Virtue Signaling

Want the economy to re-open? Hate government-mandated lockdowns? Think wearing a mask and avoiding crowds is another example of totalitarianism?

As I watch the polarized clash of feelings on social media, my observation is that people across the political divide generally agree on the first two items. The third is how we get the first and lift the second. Yet here we are, fighting about it.

Mood Music:

Amid the shouting are right-leaning friends hurling an insult they love using when they want to land a crusher: Speak up for something you believe in — like wearing a mask — and the response goes something like this: “Nice virtue signaling.”

On the surface, that phrase doesn’t seem so bad to me. You have a virtue and you are expressing it. People on the left and right do it. What’s wrong with that? When someone doesn’t practice what they preach, that’s different, but since we never completely know what someone is doing with their lives offline, where do we get off painting someone as a hypocrite, let alone an entire group of people?

You think people wearing masks are virtue signaling and telling everyone else what to do. You think wearing a mask somehow infringes on your freedoms and is another example of the state trying to control the masses.

You opine that governors and public health officials should not make mask-requirement decrees without action from state legislatures. Yet state and federal laws give governors and the president the right to do so in a health crisis. COVID-19 qualifies.

You think the government has been wrong and/or dishonest about the pandemic, painting it as more of an emergency than it truly is? There’s no evidence of that, but the government has been lying to us about many things for a long time, so I don’t blame you for thinking that.

The last few months are a perfect illustration of that, with a never-ending stream of conflicting, inconsistent guidance as we struggle to learn more about this new disease. When you can’t keep your guidance consistent, people aren’t going to believe you.

I agree about and appreciate the physical difficulty some have wearing masks. That’s where I think limiting your exposure to other people comes in. And for the record, if I’m outside taking my morning walk, I don’t wear a mask. I’m the only one out there. It’s a different story when you’re coming into close contact with other people.

But it baffles me that you complain about the tyranny of lockdowns and reject a remedy that can control infection rates and let us carry on with our lives.

We can’t stay locked down without economic devastation, a mental health crisis, or a later surge in deaths because doctors aren’t doing cancer screening and other early-detection treatments.

We’re also not going to get rid of COVID-19 anytime soon, so we have to learn to live with it in our midst.

Wearing a mask and avoiding packed crowds won’t drop transmissions to zero, but it helps significantly. The proof is in states that have been at various stages of re-opening for weeks and still have infection rates under control. My state is one of them. More of daily life has resumed, many people wear masks and our infection/death rates continue dropping.

Looking at the current surge of COVID-19 happening in the south and west, it’s clear that a big part of the problem is that people are ignoring guidelines, going to crowded bars and not putting on a mask.

Some say they shouldn’t have to wear one because they have antibodies and “can’t catch” COVID-19. Immunity isn’t certain, nor how long any immunity lasts. And wearing a mask isn’t about you: it’s about protecting others. If immunity wears off or you don’t become immune in the first place, not wearing a mask endangers others.

If you think these thoughts make me a leftist, virtue-signaling sheep, fine. I make choices for myself and do so after considering how my actions effect those around me.

Some of you keep telling me to “reject the narrative.”

I do.

Your narrative.

June 23, 2020June 23, 2020

The Family Endures, 5 Years On

This week marks a life-altering milestone: Five years since losing my aunt and father a week apart. Both passings were expected. They were terminally ill, their health having declined steadily leading up to that point.

Mood Music:

These five years have been a strange kind of grief. I’ve experienced plenty of that in my life, losing a brother when he was 17 and a best friend to suicide. I’ve experienced more since my father and aunt passed on, especially when my father-in-law died unexpectedly in 2017.

What has made this grief strange is that at the beginning, I had no time to process my feelings. Dad left behind unfinished business — the building that housed the family business for 40 years remained unsold because of a significant environmental cleanup that was just beginning at the time, the result of leaked laundromat chemicals he sold in the 1970s and ’80s.

I was successful in my career and, thankfully, have managed to keep it that way all the while. But in the business world my father excelled at, I was a fish out of water, with no idea of what I was doing.

One thing I have in common with Dad is that I’m a survivor. I’ve aged in recent years, my beard going from mostly black to almost entirely white. I gained a lot of weight and developed myriad health problems before regaining control last year, dropping 80 pounds and developing discipline with food and exercise — just in time to tough out the pandemic. I’ve experienced at least two severe depressions and countless bouts of heavy anxiety in that time.

I’ve failed at things Dad was good at. He knew how to make deals and could be brutally tough with business associates he thought were asking for too much or outright trying to screw him. My tendency to compromise, make everyone happy and be fair have blinded me to some of the human failings my father could smell from a mile away.

I’ve paid the price for that.

I’ve learned much along the way and have taken corrective actions, but as a wise person once said: “Some people get rich. Others get experience.”

I’m finally about to sell the building and the cleanup is in its final stages. But the effort has left a complicated trail of challenges I’ll manage for the foreseeable future.

Left to right: Bill Brenner, Gerry Brenner, Wendi Brenner, and Michael Brenner — *Left to right: Me, Dad, my sister Wendi and brother Michael*

The things I’ve learned will see me through that. Some of what happens next will come down to a roll of the dice. Fortunately, one lesson from Dad that has stuck with me is that there are no quick solutions. You have to be willing to play the long game.

Tackling these challenges along with doing my real job and being a husband and father has left little time for the kind of grieving I’ve done for so many others — the reflection and tears that are part of the process. My coping mechanisms before finding my way back to fitness were self-destructive.

Maybe I’ll grieve properly by the time we reach the 10th anniversary. For now, there’s a lot I’m grateful for:

I’ve grown and done a lot of cool things in my chosen profession. My wife has branched out with her business in recent years and taken on a lot of challenges that make me proud. My kids have thrived. Both are in honors programs and have excelled in the Boy Scouts (the oldest achieved Eagle rank two years ago, the younger one is well on his way).

My siblings have made me proud by living their best lives — excelling in their own careers and not allowing their grief to crush them.

We’re a resilient family, determined to do good in the world. That will continue.

At one point, obsessed with preserving Dad’s efforts to leave a financial legacy for my sisters and me, I lost sight of something that is now clearer than ever:

That drive and resilience to be a blessing to those around us is Dad’s, and Aunt Marlene’s, true legacy.

Aunt Marlene worked herself to the bone in service to the family business for most of her adult life and lived with my grandmother, taking care of her to the end.

Aunt Marlene with her dog. — *Aunt Marlene*

She spent a lot of time caring for us kids as if we were her own children.

Yes, it’ll be a difficult week remembering these two forces in our lives. But I suspect that they are looking down, satisfied that, for all the missteps and moments of difficulty, the thing they held most dear is as sturdy as ever.

The Brenner family endures.

June 17, 2020June 17, 2020

Be Patient with Each Other

Back in March when everyone was beginning to shelter-in-place, I remember someone saying that moving to stay-home mode would be easy compared to re-opening mode.

Now that we’ve begun that stage of the journey, I’m talking to friends and family who might agree.

Mood Music:

There are the endless procedures now necessary for people to return to their shops and offices.
There’s the long list of questions for how families safely resume gatherings.
As summer drags on, discussion about how and when to open schools will create enough stress to fuel a thousand migraines.

I don’t want to argue about whether the lockdowns or all of the re-opening precautions are justified. The arrows directing movement in buildings will be there for some time, as will the mask wearing in public.

Instead, we all need to:

Try to understand each others’ concerns as we head back out into the world,
Not brush someone off as paranoid because they’re worried about exposure to their households, and
Not take every question you get about your own precautions as a sign that the person asking doesn’t trust you.

Some will stride out into this new world more enthusiastically than others.

It’ll be easy to look at someone who wants to go through all the safety procedures before a gathering and believe they’re overthinking it.

It’ll be easy to take offense if you’re asked about your own potential exposure to COVID-19 — especially when you’re taking every safety measure known to humanity.

This is one of the more insidious things about the pandemic — it’s tendency to pit people against each other. I don’t mean the “it’s a hoax and it’s tyranny” crowd, or the “you went out in public because you don’t care about saving lives” crowd.

I mean the mistrust over how exposed someone is. About friends and family eyeing each other with suspicion over who is being careful or reckless.

It’s easy for mistrust and frustration when we don’t know for certain what all the right answers are in the first place.

As we move forward with each suggestion of a small get-together, there are a few things I hope we can all keep in mind:

A lot of us miss each other terribly and want to be together again.
We also have different feelings about how to come out of sheltering and having family events again.
Everyone’s concerns should be taken seriously and not be dismissed as overthinking or not being trustworthy.
If you’re gathering as a family for the first time in three months and one family member wants to know how it’s going to work, that’s a valid thing to ask about.
It’s entirely appropriate to ask what everyone’s exposure has been.
It’s entirely appropriate to let people know what your own exposure is.

It’s good to be at a point where we can start to think of doing some things together again. But make no mistake: We’ll be in this pandemic for many months to come.

We can’t stay locked away, and that means extra precautions. It’s a hard, complicated pain in the ass, so we have to keep working together, be more trusting and more patient with each other.

"Spectre of the Past" by EddieTheYeti is a black skeleton with skeleton wings on a brown and black background. — “Spectre of the Past” by EddieTheYeti

June 16, 2020June 16, 2020

‘Wind of Change’ Is Must Listening

I’ve been enjoying a new rabbit hole of late: the growing pile of free podcasts on Spotify. Like its music collection, the array of podcast topics are vast. There’s history, news analysis, true crime — the sky’s the limit.

My favorite so far is a series called “Wind of Change.” I’m not a big believer in conspiracy theories, but I enjoy learning about them and this is a big one.

The episodes follow New York writer Patrick Radden Keefe as he explores rumors that “Wind of Change,” a huge hit for German rock band The Scorpions, was actually written by the CIA to stir pro-democracy feelings in the Soviet Union.

Mood Music:

As you go through each episode, the question of whether this happened doesn’t seem to matter much. What makes this great are the people he talks to along the way.

There are musical acts touring the Communist Block, not always realizing their gigs had been engineered behind the scenes by the CIA, hoping to spread pro-West propaganda.

There’s the CIA operative who suggests some musicians knowingly conspired with the agency and the GI Joe collector who made a display of The Scorpions for an exhibit about groups and individuals who actively promoted freedom. The guy hadn’t even heard the “Wind of Change” theory when he created it. He just assumed the band was taking up the mantle.

My favorite episodes focus on the Moscow Music Peace Festival, a 1989 event I remember watching on pay-per-view. The festival — featuring The Scorpions, Ozzy, Mötley Crüe, Skid Row and Bon Jovi — was put together by Doc McGee, manager of all the bands at the time, to promote an anti-drug message.

The story goes that Doc McGhee, a prolific drug runner on the side, put on the festival to get out of jail time on drug charges. The catch was that it would be held in Moscow, where it would spread pro-West sentiment, per the wishes of the CIA.

It was during that event, the official story goes, that Scorpions singer Klaus Meine was inspired to write “Wind of Change.”

Keefe interviews McGhee, one of his former drug-smuggling associates, other musicians that played the peace festival and finally Meine himself.

With everything happening in the world right now, it’s a welcome distraction.

Do yourself a favor and check it out.

June 11, 2020June 11, 2020

Playing Addiction Like a Piano, Part 2

When an obsessive-compulsive guy like me puts down the addiction that’s most self-destructive, a few smaller addictions rise up to fill the void.

It’s a lot like playing a piano: I may stop playing the song about smoking or binge eating or consuming alcohol, only to find my hands playing different keys. There was quitting smoking and vaping instead. There was a massive uptick in caffeine to replace the overeating.

Now, after putting away the vape pipe and feeling edgy about it, I’ve turned to something else to take the edge off — Nicorette gum.

Mood Music:

I know it’s not the healthiest thing to do. After all, there’s nicotine in it. But when I look at all the other things I could be doing to take the edge off, it seems the safest choice right now. Eventually, that habit will have to go too. Then … who knows?

Some of you might want to say, “Bill, just don’t do any of it.” That would be nice, but a brain wired with addictive impulses can’t compute that concept.

If that makes me weak, so be it. The important thing is that I try hard every day to beat back the demon, and I’ve overcome a lot: the binge eating, the smoking, the drinking.

Those demons are always whispering in my ear, but I’ve been fighting them off successfully for some time now. The exception is the vaping, which I had quit and restarted. In April I quit again. So far, so good.

You just do the best you can, one day at a time. And so I will.

Cartoonish Joker with a wall of ha-has behind him

June 9, 2020June 9, 2020

A Dad Humor Diversion

I’m a master in the art of dad jokes. The more it makes you groan and roll your eyes, the better. The other day, while my brother-in-law was working on a patio we hired him to install, I was full of them:

As he was using a leveling tool to make sure the dirt he poured was even: “So I see you leveled with that dirt.”
As he was cutting away some roots: “Glad to see you getting to the root of the problem.”

With all the difficult things society must grapple with these days (a pandemic and racially charged civil unrest to name two of the biggest), a little dad humor is something we all need. You simply may not realize it yet.

And so, I give you some recent favorites. Groan, shake your head and be free of your worries, if only for a few seconds.