Steven Harper Piziks

Lately, the internet is abuzz with hotdish. This is because Tim Walz mentioned it in a rally speech as a Midwestern thing, and now everyone is talking about this quiet little food that's traditionally showed up at potlucks all over the place. It's been a huge mainstay of dinners everywhere.

I've never heard of them.

A hotdish, if you don't know them either, is usually some kind of ground or chopped meat in a white sauce covered with tater tots and baked. Often cheese, bacon, and/or mushrooms are involved as flavoring. They can be really easy (canned cream of mushroom soup with ground beef topped with tots) or really complicated (make a bechamel sauce while the shredded turkey is mingling with the tofu...). They're hot and filling and a cheap way to feed a large group. 

I grew up in the middle of Michigan's lower peninsula in a rural area. Potlucks were a thing at any community gathering. I never saw a hotdish. There were lots of hot dishes, usually casseroles that ranged from fantastic to horrifying. (You learned really quick to avoid Mrs. Gunderson's noodle dish.) Lots of them had a protein in a white sauce. But I never saw anything that involved tater tots, as a hotdish must.

Weirdly, the hotdish engenders strong feelings either for against. They're either delicious, heavenly, and a touchstone of childhood, or they're instruments of world destruction in the hands of Satan. 

But I've still never heard of them until now.

I've never made one, either, but out of idle interest, I looked up a bunch of hotdish recipes, and they strike me as solid but bland, like a lot of Midwestern cooking. (The Midwest's spice palette consists of salt. Pepper is too spicy, paprika too daring, curry too weird.) They're basically pot pie topped with tots instead of a crust or biscuits. Nothing worth getting upset--or excited--about. But people do. Screen after screen of comments on the recipes sound like a political divide. It's weird.

Have you heard of them? Made one? Are they a staple or a mystery?

 More about the Ypsilanti City Manager.

I have questions about this situation:

https://news.yahoo.com/a-north-carolina-city-hired-a-black-town-manager-then-its-entire-police-force-resigned-224423896.html

TL/DR: The entire police force, two city clerks, and the police chief--all White--resigned en masse a month after the council hired a Black woman to be town manager. The cops and clerks say she created a hostile work environment. Now the town has no police force. The White cops and clerks say race had nothing to do with it. Residents of the town disagree.

But I want to know a few things.

1. Why does a town of 2,000 people have a police force of six (five officers and a chief) full time officers and three part-time officers?? By comparison, the town of Stockbridge, Michigan has about 1,500 people. They have a total of TWO cops--one officer and one chief. Did the new manager notice a bloated list of employees and talk about letting some of the officers go?

2. Every person who resigned has refused to say exactly what the manager did to create a hostile work environment. Every. Single. One. It wasn't in their letters of resignation, and they haven't gone on record with any news media I could find. Could it be that they have no documented evidence of a hostile work environment?

3. Does anyone actually believe this wasn't motivated by racism and misogyny?

I didn't think so.

I see a lot of discussion about whether it's a good idea to use--or just be =ready= to use--violence against Nazis and other white supremacists.  Anti-violence people want to take the way of Gandhi: no violence ever.

Those who know me may be surprised to hear that I think it's foolish to avoid violence.  Violence works.

Violence is sometimes the best way to end a conflict, and the threat of violence can stop a conflict from beginning.  I know as a teacher I'm required to say that school children should avoid hitting bullies, but you know what?  Sometimes the fastest way to stop a bully is to punch one in the face. 

When we first moved to Wherever with Aran, no one in school knew him.  He was a six-foot tall seventh grader who had odd mannerisms and speech patterns.  A kid on Aran's bus took it on himself to bully Aran about it.  (Why the hell anyone would bully someone who's more than a foot taller than they are, I don't know.)  The kid bugged Aran and bugged him and bugged him.  Nothing Aran said would stop him.  Finally, Aran hit his break point and smashed him in the face in full view of a bunch of other kids.  The kids stared.  The bully scrambled away.  No one ever bullied Aran again for the rest of his school career in Wherever.

This is the way bullies operate.  They go after people they think are smaller, weaker, or otherwise less powerful than they are.  They go after such people because they figure such people won't hurt them.  I can hit you all I want, and you won't do a damn thing.

Nazis and white supremacists are extreme bullies.  They go after minority groups they perceive as weak or ineffective.

You'll notice that under the Obama administration, Nazis and supremacists didn't say much.  They didn't march much.  But under bully Trump, they've become bolder.  They figure no one will hurt them.  They've started their shouting and demonstrating and the GOP in charge isn't saying anything against them, which makes them bolder.  This is how the Nazi party got going in Germany.

Words don't stop these people.  Words do nothing at all.  They see people who use words as weak, wimpy, and soft, people they can bulldoze right over.  And they have.  Trump has helped them.  Words won't get these people to change their minds, either.  By the time they're so hyped up that they're out on the street demonstrating, they're past the point of persuasion.

There's only one way to stop them.

The police use it.  When a demonstration gets out of hand, the police have no compunctions about breaking out the hoses, night sticks, and pepper spray.  Violence.  Though this didn't help poor Heather Meyer.

The kid who bullied Aran stopped because he knew if he continued, he'd get physical pain.  It was the only language he understood.  It's sad, but true.  Nazis and supremacists are exactly the same.  They understand violence.  They understand pain.  They want to dish it out, but when it comes to taking it, they'll flee.  Why?  Because, just like Aran's bully, Nazis and supremacists only pick on people they perceive as weak.  And for them, "weak" means "non-violent."  If they know a group will hit them, punch them, smash them, they'll slink away--or not even show up in the first place.  This is why the anti-Nazis and anti-supremacists should be perfectly willing to use their own methods against them.  It's a powerful method that works.

The anti-violencers have said that using violence only gives the alt-right protesters a grievance.  The alt-right will claim they've been unjustly hurt by those awful left-wingers and antifa people. 

This is a ridiculous argument.  The Nazis and supremacists ALREADY believe they're victims of the left.  They ALREADY think the left has been hitting them.  Just listen to Fox "News" for ten minutes.  The victim mentality of the right becomes apparent within seconds.  America has become anti-Christian, anti-white, anti-man, they moan.  We're going to disappear!  They're hurting us!  They're crushing us!  There's nothing the left, including the antifa, can do that will change this mentality.  Look at the scenarios this way:

1. NO VIOLENCE FROM THE LEFT: The right continue to bitch and moan about how they've been victimized by the left, and Nazis demonstrate in the street, unmolested.

2.  VIOLENCE FROM THE LEFT: The right continue to bitch and moan about how they've been victimized by the left, and Nazis think twice before demonstrating.

Which one is better?  The right will bitch no matter what.  At least with #2, we shut up the Nazis.

The anti-violencers like to say that violence drives the Nazis and supremacists underground.  We need to keep them out in the open, where we can see them and know who they are.

No.

Nazis who are out in the open, demonstrating in the streets, are automatically granted a certain legitimacy.  They're recognized as a movement.  People who are on the fence or who might keep quiet about their Nazi views are encouraged to open up about them, perhaps demonstrate themselves, swell the ranks.  The Nazis become BOLD.  They ACT instead of just demonstrate, as Heather Meyer tragically discovered.  An open movement receives support.  It expands and grows more easily.  How would Hitler and his new Nazis have taken over Germany if they had remained a small underground movement?  Answer: they would not have done it.  They would have faded away and died.

An underground movement is harder to find.  People who have vague feelings of sympathy for it don't know where to get to it or find like-minded people.  They have hunt for it, take risks to find it, rather than just walk down the street or turn on the news.  An underground group remains smaller, less powerful.  If you don't believe it, ask yourself how much you knew about American Nazis until two months ago.  The fact that you're reading this blog says quite a lot.

The gay community has benefited from coming out of the underground.  LGBT people demonstrated in the streets, held parades, gave interviews on the news as neighbors, family, and co-workers, and started showing up as characters in movies, television, and in books.  It happened more and more and more, and LGBT people have become more accepted as a result.  LGBT people who were in the closet felt more comfortable about coming out and swelling the public ranks.  Straight people discovered they had friends, family, and co-workers who were LGBT, and more of them supported the LGBT movement.  We have a long ways to go, but we've made enormous strides forward in the last 20 years.  And it all happened because of VISIBILITY.

This is a positive.  However, Nazis and white supremacists are now trying to use the same strategy.  Become more visible, swell the ranks, become more accepted.

How different would world history be if anti-Nazi supporters had used a little violence against Hitler and his ilk back when they were small and just getting started?  How different would the world be if a town had smacked up Mussolini back when he only had 100 supporters?  Gandhi may have gotten the British out of India--eventually--but his methods wouldn't have been able to stop World War II.

If Nazis and supremacists know they run the risk of having their signs shoved up their asses the moment they starting heiling Trump, they'll back off.  They'll stay underground. 

If the bullies know their target isn't weak, they'll slink away.  Aran's bully knew this.  And so do we.

Saturday, Darwin and I drove down to Ypsilanti for a late evening.  We were scheduled to join an after-dark cemetery tour, and we had decided to have supper down there beforehand.

We ate at Bona Sera, a relatively new restaurant in downtown Ypsi that's in kind of a cursed spot.  Since I first moved to Ypsilanti 20 years ago, there have been four or five different restaurants in that location, and all of them have died. 

The name made me think this was an Italian restaurant, but it wasn't.  It was an upscale fusion restaurant, with a variety of dishes.  I ordered an appetizer plate of sweet chevre with fruit and nuts, with baguette to spread it on.  Darwin, to my despair, refused to try even a bite.  But I liked it very much.

The salads were spring greens with an olive oil and vinegar based dressing.  Darwin liked it, but I found the greens bitter and the dressing too heavy.

For the entre, I ordered the shepherd's pie (chicken), and Darwin decided to try their version of four-cheese macaroni and cheese.  Both were wonderful.  And filling!  We could only eat half.  We took the rest home.

I pointed out to Darwin the variety of the people in the restaurant around us.  The server had blue hair and pierced cheeks.  The other waiter, rake thin, wore all black with huge glasses and had the sides of his head shaved.  The couple a few tables away was mixed race, with the woman's hair done up outrageously white and fluffy, her clothes high-end, while her companion wore a baseball cap and workman's clothes.  The young man and woman at the bar--he from the Middle East, she from India--wore casual business attire.  The foursome behind us--one straight couple, one gay couple--wore a variety of outfits.  One of the men stepped out of a J. Crew catalog.  His husband was a Brooks Brothers man.  The woman wore purple from head to foot, while her husband dressed in cargo shorts and a polo shirt.  Outside, a woman walked past carrying the World's Biggest Shopping Bag (tm) and looking unhappy about it while a white college student with sculpted everything jogged by.

"If we were up in Oakland County," I said, "everyone would look much the same.  Down here, it's a variety."

Darwin agreed.

The foursome, incidentally, loudly discussed politics at their table.  They castigated Donald Trump, his administration, and his trip abroad.  They mused how long it would take him to be impeached and whether the country would be better or worse off under Pence.  Darwin and I eavesdropped with amusement.

"It's like coming home," Darwin said.

On our way out, I stopped at their table and leaned in.  "Your political discussion sound just like ours," I said.

They burst out laughing and applauded a little.  We made ten-second friends. :)

More . . .

Amazon is opening a new store:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/technology/amazon-moves-to-cut-checkout-line-promoting-a-grab-and-go-experience.html

They call it "grab and go."  You walk in, grab what you want off a shelf, and walk out.  Ta da!  No lines, no waiting.

No human beings.  No jobs.

It's not that simple, of course.  A chip in each item sends out a wifi signal that notices when an item is moved, which theoreticallhy prevents shoplifting.  The shopper stops at a subway-style exit area, scans a smartphone app which alerts the store to his or her credit card information, and a computer totals up the items the shopper is carrying.  The shopper's card is debited and a receipt comes by email.

So far it's one store, but you can see Wal-Mart hopping on this bandwagon, can't you just?  No cashiers or baggers to hire.  Just people stock shelves and be as unavailable as possible to customers who want to ask where the bananas are.

This spells the end of retail workers.  You can see this coming to store after store after store.  Retail jobs will be as dead as coal mining, and millions of jobs will vanish.

The conservatives I reluctantly follow are snarking that all the minimum wage workers who have been advocating for a $15 hourly wage are responsible for this.  Rather than pay a higher wage, you see, the stores have decided to develop technology that lets them avoid paying wages altogether.  So it's the fault of those bleeding-heart liberals.

No.  Not at all.

It's the fault of rapacious, unchecked capitalism and the lawmakers who allow it to continue.

Amazon (and McDonald's, which has put order kiosks in some restaurants) was working on this technology long before the $15 movement came to light.  And this would have happened with or without the $15 movement.  Ask a corporation this question: "Would you rather pay your workers A) $15 per hour, B) $7 per hour, or C) nothing?"  Which answer are you going to get every time?

Yeah.

This has nothing to do with raising the minimum wage and everything to do with CEOs wanting to increase their own salaries.

If you're in retail, get out now.  Unless you're the owner.  Then you're sitting fine.

I applied for and received an absentee ballot.  It came in the mail a few days ago.  One advantage of the absentee ballot is that you can fill it out with your computer next to you--very easy to look up those judges and other minor candidates to see who they are and what they're up to.

Darwin got his, too.  We have filled ours out and they've gone back to the clerk.  The voting process has begun!