When government acts, it looks at the big picture. Usually, government looks at sophisticated studies that consider harm and benefit and things like that. Sometimes, it looks at polls and what people want as a whole. No matter what, the government always tries to consider the big picture. It's their way of looking noble, saying, "We're objective. We've considered it all."
Thing is, it is never objective and it never considers it all. In particular, it never considers the little things. When the government walks, it walks like a giant in those cartoon books we read as youngsters: obliviously. Squishing houses like they're anthills, crushing cows like they're worms, snapping trees like blades of grass. It doesn't see the damage, it doesn't know about the damage, it doesn't care about the damage. It just moves on.
All we can do is point out the damage and see if anyone cares. A writer at the Washington Post published such a piece last weekend. It's possibly the best effort I've ever seen at this genre (which I wish would pick up steam). The piece addresses a small piece of legislation with relatively small consequences: prohibiting smoking in bars and the effect it will have on flirting. But it asks a larger question: What is lost when government acts? It asks the question well because it doesn't ask the question at all. It just focuses on that one small issue of smoking in bars. Excerpts:
Sure, we'll all live longer, but how will this affect the future of flirting?
No smoking in bars, if the city pushes such legislation through, means no excuse to approach a stranger, unless you count "You look familiar," which doesn't count. . . .
Cigarette etiquette is ancient stuff, stowed in the cultural marrow back when men wore real hats and glam movie stars with impossible cheekbones gave come-hither looks through unfiltered haze. What relics of chivalry still surround this tiny lethal object, the cigarette! What other than a cigarette could a person request of a total stranger? What but splendid pretense prompts a fellow to flick a lighter for a girl who already has a match? . . .
Pinup Betty Grable in a turban, circa 1935, her eyebrows thin as starving commas: She rests a cigarette on her lips, cradled between two dark fingernails. The man beside her stares at the lit match he's holding out, while she looks intently into his eyes. That look was part of the ritual, you figure; even if she didn't mean it, that was the polite thing to do. He made her feel like a lady and she made him feel like a man. It seems a whole lot of silliness now, but everyone knew their parts. . . .
[Social smokers] smoke when they're nervous or bored -- something to do with my hands -- and because it's more graceful than shredding a napkin. They smoke because beer and cigarettes are as perfect as coffee and doughnuts, or, for that matter, coffee and cigarettes. They smoke because it's powerful, like wearing sunglasses, because it's tough, like showing off bruises. They smoke because each new cigarette is a reinvention.
Some have long ago ceased to be social smokers, but they still call themselves that because it sounds temporary and like a choice, not like addiction, where smoking stops being sexy.
Not sexy: those people outside office buildings. One hand clutches an unbuttoned coat collar. The other holds a cigarette. There's no draped wrist on a bar, no whiskey and low lighting. Delivery trucks rumble past and there's gray gum by the ash-and-trash and it's cooold , and you wonder what kind of demon could drag them out here. When they return to their cubicles, they drag a stale, grubby smell behind them.
