With the midterms coming up, there’s plenty to complain about, mostly stupid people saying stupid things, doing stupid things, and generally being stupid about politics. But one of the problems with society is that stupid people are being stupid about a lot of things beyond mere politics, and we need to complain about those too. This isn’t just old guys shouting at clouds. This is a little deeper, a little more basic. Sure, the big things matter. But it’s the little things that impact our lives every day, and when a critical mass of annoying little things builds up, you get an explosion of awfulness. We’re living in one.

Now, some of it is the fault of foreigners, people coming here who don’t know how to behave like Americans should, and we’re solving that problem by sending a lot of them home. For the ones who stay, we can solve more of it by refusing to endorse or tolerate their nonconformity. It’s not too much to expect that if a stranger comes to our country, even legally, he behave in accordance with our cultural norms. You know, stuff like not being annoying in public and not molesting either our women or livestock.

But it’s not just foreigners. I wish it were. Sadly, our own people are doing many of the things that make this country so annoying. It’s Americans who seem to have forgotten the basic cultural norms that make for a high-trust society, a society where we’re not constantly dealing with little problems and can focus on things like putting men on the moon. Our society shouldn’t be chaotic. Our society shouldn’t be tolerant of low standards, whether in behavior, products, or anything else.

Things like people who don’t understand that headphones exist. When you’re having a phone conversation, you should probably not do it in public if you can avoid it. If you can’t avoid it, put the phone against your ear or use headphones, and do it quietly instead of blasting it on speaker so your inane conversation can dominate the public space. This is especially true in a........

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