Field Note: Asterisk Dodgeball

AKA: THOUGHT CONTROL WHACKAMOLE

I’m noticing almost everything comes with an asterisk.

At first, it was caution, then it was about liability. Now, something else has happened.

People are not believing what they read in print.

And asterisks are now killing thinking and agency.

People are giving away choices to convenience and less friction.

Somewhere along the way, asterisks stopped to improve ideas and started being used to kill them.

Welcome to Asterisk Dodgeball.

Here's how it works.

"Use reusable bags."

Asterisk: Cotton uses water.

“Use paper.”

Asterisk: Deforestations, energy usage, pollution, heavier to transport.

“Bring Your Own Bag.”

Asterisk: Your imposing on my freedom if you force me to remember.

"Drive an EV."

Asterisk: Lithium mining.

"Paper straws."

Asterisk: They're mushy.

"Metal straws."

Asterisk: You'll pierce your brain in a car accident.

"Recycle."

Asterisk: Most plastic isn't recycled anyway.

"Adopt a shelter pet."

Asterisk: Mixed breeds are unpredictable.

“Adopt a shelter pet.”

Asterisk: Their poop has to be picked up in plastic bags and thrown away. I thought plastic bags were a problem?

"Walk or bike."

Asterisk: Not everyone can. What do they do when it rains.

"Support background checks."

Asterisk: Who's going to enforce that? You're delaying my rights. Hey, I’m not that John Doe born on the same date! You ran the wrong last names.

Every suggestion.

Every proposal.

Every attempt to improve something.

Asterisk.

Now, before anyone throws one at this ...

No, I'm not saying these concerns are always illegitimate.

I'm saying we've become incredibly skilled at using them as conversational dodgeballs.

Or overlooking them completely and suffering the consequences.

The discussion isn't about making the idea better anymore.

Progress.

It's about making sure the idea never leaves the ground because it’s not perfect.

I've watched this pattern repeat for years.

I grew up before seatbelt laws. I witnessed a car accident at an intersection. My five year old butt was required to sit with a seatbelt and not on the center hump next to my mom anymore. We were wild in the 70s, I know. Smoking. No seat belts. Riding facing the rear. Bell bottoms. Mushrooms.

But in all seriousness, we fought or someone fought, against seat belt laws, even for children:

Key Milestones and Pushback:

• 1966: The federal government made seat belt installation mandatory in all new vehicles. At the time, only a small fraction of Americans actually wore them. [1,2,3]

• 1973 "Interlock" Backlash: TheNational Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) required "interlock mechanisms" that prevented a car from starting until the driver was buckled. Congress received a record volume of angry letters—more than the complaints generated by the Watergate "Saturday Night Massacre". Congress quickly killed the mandate. [1]

• 1984: New York became the first state to pass a mandatory seat belt use law. [1]

• State Law Compromises: To overcome fierce anti-regulation sentiment, states made major compromises. Many states passed laws as "secondary offenses," meaning police could only ticket a driverfor an unbuckled seat belt if they were already pulled over for another infraction. In three states (Mississippi, Rhode Island, and Wyoming), the laws were passed without any penalty attached. [1, 2]

• 1995: Maine and South Dakota were the last two states to implement mandatory laws. Every U.S. state, save for New Hampshire, eventually adopted mandatory adult seat belt laws. [1, 2]

AND IT GETS BETTER…

• Anti-Seat Belt T-Shirts: Entrepreneurs manufactured white t-shirts with a black diagonal stripe printed across the front. Wearing it tricked police into thinking the driver was buckled. [1]

• Junkyard Sabotage: Many drivers went to junkyards, cut the metal tongues off old car seat belts, and clicked them into their own receivers. This permanently silenced the annoying dashboard warning chimes while letting them drive unbuckled. [1]

• Physical Removal: Some people went as far as using scissors or knives to physically cut the seat belts entirely out of their new vehicles. [1, 2]

2. Extreme Rhetoric & Political Backlash

Politicians who sponsored seat belt bills faced massive public vitriol: [1, 2]

• Hate Mail: When Michigan State Representative David Hollister introduced a seat belt fine in the early 1980s, he received deluge of hate mail comparing him to Adolf Hitler. [1]

• Media-LedUprisings: In Massachusetts, a popular radio host named Jerry Williams turned his show into an anti-seat belt headquarters. He organized a massive grassroots campaign that successfully forced a referendum, leading voters to completely repeal the state's mandatoryseat belt law in 1986. [1, 2, 3]

• Accusations of Totalitarianism: Letters to editors routinely compared the laws to "Big Brother" and "encroaching totalitarianism", with citizens asserting, "I'm in charge, you don't tell mewhat to do." [1, 2, 3]

3. Pervasive Myths and Pseudo-Science

Opponents justified their resistance by spreading persistent, unscientific safety myths: [1, 2, 3, 4]

• "Thrown Clear" Myth: A widespread belief heldthat it was safer to be thrown violently from a crashing vehicle than to be trapped inside it. [1, 2]

• Fear of Drowning or Fire: Drivers expressed deep paranoia that a seat belt would malfunction and trap them inside a burning car or a vehicle submerged in water. [1, 2]

• Internal Injury Fears: Many argued that the force of a seat belt during a crash would crush their internal organs or cause fatal injuries. [1, 2, 3]

4. Constitutional Lawsuits

Citizen groups took the fight to the legal system. Motorists filed lawsuitsagainst state governments, arguing that being forced to wear a seat belt violated their Fourteenth Amendment rights, right to privacy, and general personal liberties. However, courts overwhelmingly rejected these claims, ruling that stateshad a right to regulate highway safety.[1]

THANKFULLY I WAS TOO YOUNG TO BE AWARE OF THIS NONSENSE.

But then, I got to live through the Toyota Prius, Gun Conroll, and Plastics trolled via Facebook. Thanks Zucks.

With the Prius, instead of debating fuel economy, emissions, infrastructure, engineering, or consumer choice, we got a steady stream of jokes, insults, and mythology. Suddenly the car wasn't transportation anymore—it was a punchline. The conversation shifted from "Does this solve part of a problem?" to "Let's mock the people driving it."

Half-truths became folklore.

Folklore became identity.

Identity replaced discussion.

That's the game.

An asterisk doesn't have to defeat an idea on its merits.

It only has to make people roll their eyes long enough tostop listening.

Eventually, every proposal starts sounding impossible.

Every improvement sounds naïve.

Every attempt becomes something to mock.

That's how defeatism spreads.

Not because problems are unsolvable.

Because we've been trained to believe every imperfection is a reason to quit.

(I’m not saying intentionally in a conspiratorial way, but… I’ll leave you to speculate…)

Here's the uncomfortable truth.

Every meaningful solution inconveniences someone.

Every meaningful change has tradeoffs.

Every meaningful improvement has an asterisk.

The question isn't whether anasterisk exists.

The question is whether we're using it to improve the conversation...

...or to escape having one.

Because that's what worries me.

We've become a culture that expects every solution to be convenient, quiet, frictionless, and commercially packaged.

If it asks us to change a habit...

If it requires effort...

If it creates discomfort...

Someone reaches for an asterisk.

Maybe that's why progress feels undermined.

Not because we lack ideas.

Because we've become experts at explaining why every imperfect idea deserves to be mocked and die before it has the chance to develop.

*********************************

nd honestly, after learning how fiercely people fought seat belts, after witnessing an accident before my own mother started buckling me in, after our neighbor's daughter died when she hit a tree just down the road while driving home from picking up her paycheck...

I'm left wondering whether common sense is ever enough.

History suggests that people rarely change until the consequences become immediate, personal, or expensive.

That doesn't leave me hopeless.

It leaves me wondering what it actually takes to move a society.

We've come to expect improvements to be quiet, commercial, and convenient.

If an idea asks us to change a habit...

if it creates friction...

if it inconveniences us...

the asterisks begin.

And then there's another obstacle.

Entire industries profit from the way things already are.

Systems don't usually change because someone had a better idea.

They change because enough people decide the old costs are finally too high.

When it comes to the environment and our health, I wonder where that cost will finally be.

And for some reason, I’m thinking of the classic The Time Machine.

Maybe we’ll evolve into two separate species in the end.

The consumer worker and the consumed.