First-World Problems

Standing in the driveway in nothing but my underwear and a tee-shirt at midnight, holding a flashlight under my armpit so I could line the can’s spout up with the tank’s hole in the otherwise suffocating darkness, a light rain just starting to fall, I poured the last bit of $120 worth of fuel into our exhausted generator on day four of our latest power outage hoping it would hold for the next twelve hours so the hundreds of dollars of food in our refrigerators and freezers would not spoil, I reminded myself not to give in to frustration and despair. After all, I told myself, these are first-world problems.

I yanked on the starter rope and the generator roared back to life on the first pull. The food was safe for another shift, another $20 gas load, and I could walk back into the dark house, find my way back into the bedroom behind the flashlight’s small circle of light, close the window against the rain, and finally try to sleep again.

These are first-world problems belongs to a small family of things I say to myself to keep on an even keel, shortcuts back to clear and positive thinking, invitations from myself, to myself, to stay out of the morass of frustrated impulses and negative feelings. These are first-world problems. Things happen for a reason. And my personal favorite emotional crutch: it’s all good, even when it most certainly is not. 

But here’s the thing: the kinds of power outages we’re experiencing in this stretch of weeks at our home in rural, Southwest Michigan do not belong to the problems of the first world. They belong to an old world: electrical grid infrastructure that was patchworked together since the 1930’s and 1940’s, but mostly established in the 1950’s. The electrical system was built to service the electrical needs of homes that mostly were just starting to buy televisions in the 1950’s and some homes still cooled food in iceboxes, not the homes and businesses with the modern, voracious energy needs of the mid-21^st century. 

And they certainly don’t belong to the next world: the one being prepared for by future-oriented countries like Denmark and Germany who built infrastructure more protected from the extreme weather of our changing climate, moving towards green, clean renewable energy, putting public resources into the people rather than into the pockets of a small number of investors in coal mines and oil refineries. The electrical grid in Denmark is up and running 99.997% of the time while getting roughly 90% of its energy from renewable sources.

Spain is also way ahead of the United States when it comes to first-world solutions to energy challenges. Spain, a country more than twice as old as the United States - a country that funded the voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1492 that eventually landed in a new world of abundant (and exploitable) natural resources - a country famous for a story of an old madman attacking the windmills it now runs on - belongs to a first world of solutions that simply doesn’t include the United States. 

A couple of years ago, during the first of several power outages that happened while our family hosted a high-school exchange student from Spain, the student asked us why the power was out with the same incredulity one would ask if they had spotted a unicorn in the front yard.

“Why is there no power,” Pepe asked.

“It goes out from time to time,” I answered.

“What do you mean it goes out,” he asked. “How does it go out?”

“Doesn’t this happen in Spain?”

“No.”

“You mean you’ve never lost power.” 

Pepe thought for a moment or two and shook his head. “No, never. Maybe it did for my parents or grandparents during the Franco era. It just works all the time.” 

General Francisco Franco died in 1975. 

My electrical service is from the Franco era. 

As I write these words in mid-July, 2026, the current number of people in the State of Michigan experiencing the fever, aches, and explosive diarrhea of a cyclospora parasite outbreak is at 1500 and rising. Cyclospora is a parasite that gets into human bodies from fruits and vegetables that have not been monitored and appropriately washed of fecal matter before being eaten. The average number of cases in Michigan each year is usually around 50. 

Cyclospora, and food covered in shit (sorry, fecal matter), are not first-world problems, either. They are, however, first-world choices. 

In July, 2025 the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) stopped monitoring the food supply for the infection when the Trump administration began firing scientists & researchers and defunding federal health and science agencies like the CDC and its food safety program, FoodNet, the organization that would monitor and track cyclospora, under the guise of “government efficiency.” FoodNet actively monitored eight food-borne pathogens at the time it was gutted. Now, it only monitors two food-borne pathogens. Listeria, anyone?

So, if you’ve never had the chance to shit yourself into dehydration with forty trips to the bathroom per day for weeks due to an entirely preventable food-borne illness, you may get your chance, thanks to a federal administration that is taking us back in time under the guise of making us great. It is no surprise to me that for the first time in the 250-year history of the United States, our lifespans are four years shorter than the lifespans of people in comparably wealthy countries – countries who are actually global leaders when it comes to quality of life. We spend far more per capita than any other country in the world on health care, but we lack basic, universal coverage. Nothing first-world about dying younger than we could or should. Trump’s health secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. stands on his MAHA platform – Make America Healthy Again - but it turns out under his leadership and the decisions of this administration, we’re being served a whole bunch of shit.

The generator was still running when I got up in the morning and still had plenty of gas when we drove away on some errands. When we returned several hours later, the generator had broken under four days of constant wear and tear. It had stopped working, a key piece of it broken away from 96 straight hours of shaking, so our freezers and refrigerators had warmed and the food inside thawed. We threw it out. We prefer our food to be pathogen free. Hundreds of dollars of food wasted. $120 of gas in four days to no avail. 

And what was next? Only a bunch of platitudes about a once great country and first-world problems, and another night of frustration and despair bearing down on Loriann and me, without our ability to go inside and turn on a light against the gathering darkness.

Meanwhile, the Frog

 I know you’ve heard this bit of folklore, but I’m going to tell you again. It bears repeating:

If you drop a frog into boiling water, it'll react instinctively and jump out right away. But if you put that frog in comfortable water and heat it up slowly, degree by degree, the frog will adjust to it, degree by degree. And he’ll just sit there not noticing the deadly danger it’s in until it's too late to jump out and save itself.

We’re so used to suffering of others that it’s commonplace, and our commonplace response to suffering is to adjust by degrees. We look away. At least until something happens that brings the suffering home. Until it’s too late.

As Nazi propaganda scholar Dr. Randy Bytwerk said every summer in his presentation to teachers at our Michigan Holocaust education seminar, “If you picked up the newspaper one Sunday morning and read that there was an earthquake in China the day before that killed a million people, and then took your dog outside and it ran into the road and was hit by a car, only one tragedy would make you sad, and it isn’t the million people who died in the earthquake.” 

In all the years he made that point, not one person disagreed with him. It’s understood, the heart just works that way: it cares first about what it holds closest.

But the other thing we don’t want to admit about the suffering of others is that it is useful to us in the way we’ve structured our lives in this country. Even necessary. Even comforting. In a system built upon competition, winners and losers, even social Darwinism, we need to see and know that others are worse off than we are. If we can see misery somewhere, and it’s not our misery, then our suffering is mitigated. Our country, our way of life, our national psyche, needs people who are losing - the homeless, the hungry, the desperate - so others know that though they may not be winning the game, neither are they coming in last. We just need to be able to look down on someone. 

In recent years it has become even worse, and whole business plans are built around division, hate, and anger. Look it up, it's called the Rage Economy, and it's a huge part of our national economy; algorithms of social media platforms need people miserable and divided and at each other's throats. Your fury is their profit. As a result you don't have neighbors any more in this economy, only two tribes: us and them. And the people who are "them" must be miserable, dominated, even destroyed. 

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What was written above was written this morning as the beginning of what was to be a political piece asking for anybody who read it to think about what’s going on in this country right now, to join me in the work of waking up to the violence unfolding in our country, degree by degree, while we all boil to death. Dr. Bytwerk instructed us about Nazi propaganda that its brilliance was making hatred and violence acceptable by degrees. I am learning now his instruction wasn’t purely academic. It was a warning. That was to be my essay. 

And then I got the news that my son was shot to death in Minneapolis today by federal immigration agents in the second murder of an American citizen in as many weeks; federal agencies such as ICE and Customs & Border Patrol have been acting as unrestrained, untrained, paramilitary forces without regard for the rights and responsibilities enshrined in law and the Constitution of the United States. They are the unrestrained paramilitary force of a lawless president and his advisors and administration. They act with violence and impunity. 

The victim in the shooting is not my actual son. But when I saw an image from the shooting I was hit in the gut. He looks like my son: tall, bearded, handsome, bright-eyed, exercising his rights, and well-intended. If my son were there, it could have been him. And my son has been there, not in Minneapolis, but in Kalamazoo and Chicago, marching in support of his rights and the rights of others, providing water at Black Lives Matter rallies, and looking out for his friends in Chicago over the past year who are brown or black or who speak Spanish. 

I also realize as I write this the benefit of distance I've had as a white man raising white sons in this country. And as the son of a good police officer; I was raised by my father to respect the police, and for good reason. I saw in my father and others in my family and the circle of police officers around them the dedication and professionalism of police officers dedicated to the credo of "serve and protect." But the exceptions to this have been deadly for far too many people, killed needlessly. Executed. And this has been especially true for black and brown men.  

The danger of violence at the hands of unrestrained law enforcement is something my black friends have had to live with as they've raised their children. To be cautious around law enforcement, even when you're not doing anything wrong. To be deferential to a deadly power that can act with impunity. I spoke to two friends about this over the years who have raised their black sons as I've raised my white ones. Our conversations about power and the police were very different. 

And now, here we are. We're not even talking about police officers with these federal agents. We're talking about a paramilitary force that's badly trained and hostile, politically motivated and politically loyal to one agenda and the person behind it, not the Constitution and not the rule of law. In fact, federal agents at the scene did not allow the rightful, lawful police in Minneapolis to access the crime scene; the police force in Minneapolis stands with the citizens they do protect and serve against the lawless, reckless actions of federal agents. This is the second murder in a row by federal agents of a Minneapolis citizen where the true police force is not allowed to investigate the murder. Here we are.

The victim in the shooting is not my actual son. But he could be. And he could be yours. It could be another Renee Good, one of our daughters. Welcome to America where the law doesn’t matter, only power does, and the power can and will do whatever it wants to those who stand opposed. Even murder. 

And it will continue to do so as long as we accept it.

It will be my son next. It will be me. It will be your son. It will be you. The water is deadly now. Federal agents are now openly killing American citizens.  

There are lessons we should learn from the frogs.