Clearly, the topic of the Last Ditch bar in Greenfield loosening its mask requirement and pissing off the very community that birthed it struck a chord in the national conversation. Some of it was the timing (the coronavirus pandemic happened six years ago), some of it was the incredible cast of characters, and some of it, naturally, was people basking in the drama of it all.
I’ve watched several friends navigate run-ins with people like the Last Ditch critics. They have mastered an ability to leverage identity politics into cudgels to smash people with, be it gender identity, physical disability, or economic background. In these groups, social status is not tied to the usual conventions of wealth or beauty but, rather, one’s ability to claim the experience of suffering or oppression.
While any movement contains bullies, progressive groups with a genuine appreciation for inclusion have a unique inability to fight back. What’s tragic is that the values that inspired Last Ditch are, at their core, reasonable: a third space for like-minded people to build community in a way that they choose.
But as the Sept. 22 article so aptly demonstrated, after the venue went mask-optional on Saturdays, no amount of humility, groveling, or mediated dialogue could get the project back on track (“I don’t think I’m doing a very good job,” the sole remaining owner, now $50,000 in business debt, said during a community meeting.) The apologies did nothing to soften the vitriol from patrons. And, let’s remember, the crime was making masks optional for one night a week.
The larger question for the left looms: How big of a political liability is this type of obnoxiousness?
Pretty big. But let’s remember that leftists have been annoying for a long time. In “The Road to Wigan Pier,” a book documenting the harsh conditions working-class people faced in Northern England during the Great Depression, George Orwell vents about how annoying leftists are: “If only the sandals and the pistachio-colored shirts could be put in a pile and burnt, and every vegetarian teetotaler and creeping Jesus sent home … to do his yoga exercises quietly!”
This is from a book published in 1937, but it may as well be describing the dance floor at Last Ditch (minus the stripper pole). There’s a simple fix: Leftists must stop letting the most vocal adherents take precedence over people with genuinely good intentions. It risks letting extremely important values — the ones that brought us marriage equality, paid family medical leave, environmental protection standards — become warped by an unrepresentative few.
In a wonderful piece for The Argument titled “Sometimes you have to hurt people,” Jeremiah Johnson documents the fallout from singer Phoebe Bridgers’s recent choice to ban phones from her concerts. Just like Last Ditch’s owner, Bridgers was accused of being classist and ableist, among other things, but she didn’t budge. This is because, as Johnson writes, “there are times when it’s fine to exclude or harm people. And we need to be better at saying that out loud.”
Fundamentally, every decision — including inaction — harms someone. Charging money for drinks at a bar, for example, harms people who are broke. And maybe that’s OK. What Johnson calls the “tyranny of the edge case” cannot be what governs our social behavior, laws, or our overall thinking.
But this sort of thinking has blown containment and now impacts real policy. Instead of managing rules for the people standing right in front of them, leaders are now expected to anticipate the needs of the most marginalized people they can imagine — regardless of whether those people exist, care, or even agree. And, as the Last Ditch article demonstrates, folding to these outliers doesn’t make them any less angry. All of this results in people who would otherwise support progressive causes turning away, just because they don’t feel like getting yelled at.
The only person with any sense in the article is Mixxy, the bartender, who aptly remarked that that constantly scolding people “is not how hospitality works.” We would all be better off listening to her.
Rebecca Spiess can be reached at rebecca.spiess@globe.com. Follow her @rebeccaspiessl.