MAGA's Small Victory in Pennsylvania?

I noticed the first obscenity around Independence Day.

Then they popped up like poison mushrooms after the now infamous Butler rally — the one where the gunman missed his shot.

I’m speaking here of Trump flags and signs. There are about a half dozen now in my neighborhood — a neighborhood which I carefully chose for having a more liberal demographic. (I checked the voting data when we were house hunting.) But it’s still Western Pennsylvania, albeit a borough of Pittsburgh. Here it is politically a dark violet, still enough red in the mix to muddy the blue.

Last year I would occasionally see houses decked out in “Let’s Go Brandon” and other assorted bullshit. I would see pickup trucks plastered with stickers decrying “Joe and the Ho.” (I’m serious.) MAGA people would sometimes hold a shouty gathering on highway overpasses with their garbage signs and flags. So I knew it was around here. Just not in my immediate surroundings.

When it was just one house with the MAGA flag along my daily route, I would routinely flip the bird at it when I drove by. *

But often I would just drive down another street. It hits me the same way a swastika would; I’d rather not get riled up about it while I’m dropping off books at the library or wherever. Then the Butler rally and the RNC and the approach of Election Day made it so that there are now no unsullied streets I can drive down.

Now let’s put that in perspective: I’m talking about one MAGA sign or flag on a half dozen houses, out of a couple hundred houses.

But there are also no houses with Harris/Walz signs on my flight path**. And my house doesn’t have a sign or a flag either, even though my vote has never been in question.

This is because I am also very aware that the MAGAs have a lot of guns. (Republicans are twice as likely to own guns or live in a household that does, compared with Democrats.)

The national media made a lot made of the gun culture here after the Trump rally shooting. Some of it lacked context — the articles about the shooter talked about his local shooting club, but never mentioned the equally local Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods.

But the fact remains that 40 percent of Pennsylvania resident have guns, a rate twice as high as my native New York. It’s one of the things I like least about living here: Gun safes at Costco. Billboards advertising gun shows — not things I saw regularly in Greenwich Village.

To be sure, there were definitely Republicans in the Manhattan building I lived in for a decade. It was a relic of affordability and thus a naturally occurring retirement community — the most common destination for those who move out is a cemetery.

So there were lots of seniors, and thus a vocal few Fox aficionados. I heard plenty of lobby discourse concerning “the electrical college”and Hillary hatred. (There were no lobby gatherings for the 2020 election for obvious reasons.) These people were loud and dumb and annoying —but manifestly not scary. They were red pinpricks In a safely deep blue area.

This is also not my first time living in a purple state: I lived in New Hampshire during the 2002 midterms and the run up to the 2004 election, a time when the state was way less swingy than it is now. Democrats were (and remain) completely outnumbered by Republicans and Independents combined. We had lawn signs for various Democratic candidates that would sometimes be yanked out overnight. That was creepy and infuriating, but I was never frightened.

And that is the difference. Post January 6th. Post Kyle Rittenhouse. Post the president being immune from criminal prosecution. Post uncountable mass shootings, so many of which have been perpetrated by right wing crazies.

Putting out liberal political signs feels a lot like putting out a target.

I see appealing Kamala t-shirts and bumper stickers — I especially loved the “Trump is a Scab” t shirt. I consider them —but then I also think about how it will expose myself and my family to not just the vitriol, but the not guaranteed but not hypothetical risk of violence. As the flag on one neighbor’s home warns “the rules have changed.” Another flag says something about retribution. It’s not really subtext.

So I make my small donations as I can. And I do not buy the merch. I do not ask for lawn signs.

I am aware that in this way I am handing MAGA a small victory. They’ve effectively chilled some of my political speech, which would unequivocally condemn them, which would clearly show others that the Democratic perspective isn’t fringe or peculiar. I am intimidated.

In this way, I am no longer a full American. My civil liberty of political speech hasn’t been legally curtailed -yet - but my perception that it is unsafe means it might as well be.

*I have actually pulled a muscle in the middle finger of my right hand, make of that what you will!

**Coincidentally, right after I hit publish, our next door neighbors put out a Harris Walz sign. They are good neighbors and it does make me feel much better.

***And then, after house on the other side of my neighbors parried with a big 🤮🤮 sign, I decided to put up on my own Harris Walz sign, because I didn’t want my neighbor to stand alone. About a week in and no one has shot out my windows yet.

New Yorker to New Yinzer

Pittsburgh seems to be a place that people come from, rather than move to. The famous children of the ‘Burgh grew up and went elsewhere, often to New York. Andy Warhol, Billy Porter, Mary Cassat, and far less luminary but still names you know …I just read Bari Weiss and Mark Cuban are from here.

I did that in reverse. After absorbing so many Yinzers, The City sends one of her own the other way across the PA turnpike.

Since we moved here I cannot count how many times I’ve been asked by locals “why Pittsburgh?” It’s not that like the question comes from any particular animus towards this city, there isn’t much of “this fucking place” sentiment, not that I have been able to sense, in any event.

Nor is it about any particular sentiment about New York.

I picked up on way more…discontent… or let’s call it “second city” feelings in all their complexity when I lived in Boston, and my partner confirms it was the same when he lived in Philly. Living in the long shadow of “The City” is different. This is hundreds of miles away from New York and it just feels irrelevant.

What I have sensed is a great deal of pride, and a feeling that Pittsburgh is a place apart — special, yes, but also hard to categorize.

Is this the Northeast, the Midwest, Appalachia? Yes.

There are parts of Pittsburgh that could easily be in Brooklyn, or Philly, or Chicago, or San Francisco. There are even aspects to life here that remind me of LA — in that it’s a network of many neighborhoods that can have almost nothing to do with one another, neighborhoods could appear to be close geographically, but are logistically and psychologically difficult to get to. There are many, many parts of Pittsburgh that are just suburb and could be anywhere.

One thing it’s not, though, is a place that has “destination” stamped on it in the national imagination.

When I was getting ready to move here, a good friend told me that she thought the city’s slogan should be: Pittsburgh: You’d Be Surprised. I think that’s the overwhelming emotion. When I talk to people from back home or elsewhere who have been here, they usually tell me how nice they think it is — they’re still obviously processing their surprise.

Maybe I am too.

Me Myself and Oy (AI)*

I just finished a wholesale scanning/editing operation of the work I’ve done this year, which has been mostly paintings.

Despite a year full of illness and elder care, I made twelve paintings that felt good enough to put out there, and mostly I think that’s pretty good — she wrote defiantly! (Of course I also spend the requisite amount of time feeling like shit about my productivity, but not today Satan.)

There is some digital work that I still need to upload, and that’s up next. Then there is also the sketchbooks and the art journals due for the scanner, which have some collage in there, and some textile work that I likely won’t share.

But the freestanding work which is meant for the world was my first priority and those are now all up on the “work”/home page of this website, and are the first pieces you’ll see in each category. No one is planning a tickertape parade to fete me for this accomplishment, so I thought I’d share a few random thoughts here as a victory lap.

Here is a painting that will be thematically on point for the rest of what I want to say:

Anyone reading this is most likely aware of the way that AI has rocked the illustration and art world. I’m obviously not pro machines making art. I came up in journalism, mostly magazine journalism and I’d really rather not see another industry I’m in go the way of the dinos.

One thing that surprised me when I got more into visual art was how essential Photoshop and its ilk are to the endeavor. Even if you never create work digitally, you are going to share it digitally. There is no scanner or camera yet invented that can perfectly capture work without requiring at least a little tweaking, often much more than that. Not knowing how to edit an image is tying at least one hand behind your back.

Back when I was renting a bench in a jewelry studio, the lovely owner hosted some art school students, and she was asked what skill she’s leaned on the most. She said Photoshop. This really took me aback at the time — after all, when you’re making jewelry you’re literally dealing with precious metals and fire — but she was right. Subsequently I invested quite a bit of time learning Photoshop (which translates to similar programs as well) and I’ve yet to regret that.

Anywho, I hadn’t done a big serious scan and edit of trad work in over a year — and while Photoshop has had plenty of AI under the hood for a while, damned if the new stuff didn’t make the job much faster and easier!

Ten of the twelve pieces were too large to scan in one go, so I was dealing with multiple files for an image, before I even got to color correction and so forth. In typical Photoshop fashion, the functions I found the most useful were buried in weird menus, so I didn’t find them immediately. I can state with certainty that without AI, I’d be at least a workweek away from typing this very sentence.

I guess something like this has been a standard part of technology’s apologia for a while — that the machines will handle the tedious parts of work, leaving the good stuff to the humans. I think we’ve seen that even when it’s true, it’s not necessarily a social good. I don’t have a well developed grand point to make here, just that like with everything, the issue of AI and art is more complex than any simple slogan can express.

*Original title was “Me Myself and AI” but I figured I wasn’t the first one to think of that. Since there’s a podcast by that name I tweaked my title, lest there be confusion in the marketplace.