Daylight Saving Time

Answer to the question: “Is this the last year we will Fall Back for Daylight Saving Time?”

I have a search set up so that once a day, I get an email with all the stories that mention “Daylight Saving Time” and the last couple of weeks have seen a flood of them, all with a similar headline:

Is this the last time we will Fall Back and stop changing the clocks for Daylight Saving Time?

It makes sense that newsrooms would cover this, as people are asking. I was kind of shocked when I saw these results when I started typing the question into Google News:

And I know that in casual conversations, it is not a random question. 

The short answer to the question of if we have to change back is this: Probably.

I wish I could say for sure that this is the last time, but I would put the odds at 50-50 at best.

Why?

It is true that the U.S. Senate passed a law that would have made this the last Fall Back. We would then Spring Forward next spring, and stay there.

But for anyone who has seen Schoolhouse Rock, the Senate is, essentially, only one of the three steps needed to turn this into law. The second step is the House of Representatives. Here in the days before the election, there is zero chance that it will get a vote.

Could it get a vote in the lame duck session after the election and before the new Congress is seated? Possible, but I think the chance is remote. If it couldn’t even get a hearing over the last summer, insiders tell me that the chances it will get a vote are slim.

This story, from the incomparable Scott Schneider (most Scotts are pretty good guys, I’ve found) places the blame in part on Rep. Jan Schakowski from Chicago. It is true that she is the head of the subcommittee that would take up the bill, and it is true that if she did hold a hearing it would help push things forward, but she is not going to push forward a bill that the leadership of the party doesn’t want pushed forward. 

Maybe it is because the most recognizable face of fixing the clocks is a Republican locked in a close race in Florida? That is certainly at least one of the factors.

And once the new Congress is seated, any bills that didn’t pass in the current Congress expire, and we will have to start all over again. And it will be harder next time for a couple of reasons.

1. It passed the Senate by a method called Unanimous Consent, which essentially means it was on a list with a bunch of non-controversial stuff, and no senators objected. After it was done, one or two senators said they would have objected if they had known about it. Now, it was just a couple of them, so the bill would probably pass 98-2 or whatever, but that process is just harder than the Unanimous Consent method.
2. It looks as though the House will be very closely divided in 2023. Neither side will want to give the other side a victory, and so we will be stuck because of stupid politics.

It’s like my son told me years ago… The opposite of pro is con and the opposite of progress is Congress.

But I will keep pushing forward. I still have hope, especially given the amazing progress that we have made on this issue in the last five years. 

And while I do think we won’t see as much activity in the states as we have in recent years as state legislators take a wait-and-see approach because of the federal legislation, there could be some activity.

For instance, I recently testified to an informal study committee in New Mexico. Unfortunately I had to do it remotely, and I couldn’t see the reactions of the people on the committee because this was my view. 😛

(Very weird watching yourself with a bit of lag being shown on a big screen like that, lemme tell you. Next time I’m dropping everything else and driving to New Mexico, a state I love, just to avoid that and also to hang out again with Cliff Pirtle, who is a #LockTheClock pioneer and also a fascinating guy.)

Sen. Pirtle was one of the first legislators I ever wrote about in 2015 and who was one of the first to invite me to testify in person in 2017. He’s got some creative ideas about how New Mexico could once again become a leader in clock sanity, but we’ll save that for another post.

For now, just hang on, and when people ask you if this is the last year we change the clocks for Daylight Saving Time, just tell them that their question is a common one, and it is based on an understandable assumption that the government might actually do something that people in general agree on, but that—unfortunately—this is likely not the last time we will have to Fall Back.

What To Do Now To Fix Daylight Saving Time Forever

I am now a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, which is a thing I just never imagined saying before and I am still getting used to it.

The campaign had a HUGE deadline on March 15th, something that I personally had to work harder on than just about anything I’ve ever worked on in my whole life. We got it done, and then I was at lunch trying to relax for just a minute when my phone absolutely exploded with messages.

Now you know the news: The U.S. Senate approved the Sunshine Protection Act. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse seemed absolutely giddy by the standards of the floor of the Senate.

This is great news!!! (If I was not running for Congress on a promised to fix Daylight Saving Time, this would be unequivocally great news. It still is great, but it does complicate my message just a bit. It’s OK, I’ll get that part figured out.)

That it came without a roll call vote, and happened with Unanimous Consent was a bit anticlimactic, and so Sen. Whitehouse had to explain it:

Whitehouse: We have just passed the bill to end the return from Daylight Savings Time.. pic.twitter.com/lDdwRzyemN

— Acyn (@Acyn) March 15, 2022

Now, while this is progress for sure, it is not the end of the road. Even if the House passes this and the President signs it, I am worried something could goof it up before the implementation, which is a year and a half away. That’s why I think we need to keep pressing to make sure this gets done done done.

What could delay it? Or stop progress completely? Confusion about what time zone we are going to #LockTheClock into.

There is a small but vocal set of sleep scientists who have been saying that we should only lock into Standard Time, not Daylight Time, as the current bill is set up. Their arguments have never made much of a dent in the state legislatures, and now that we have the federal bill that has actually passed unanimously, it is crystal clear that permanent DST is what nearly all of the people and the politicians want.

But it is a legitimate question, and one that needs to be considered, especially in some states that lie on the western edge of their time zones.

That’s why I was so pleased to see that the Sunshine Act that was approved had a change that I recommended strongly to the office of the sponsor, Sen. Marco Rubio. The original bill had immediate implementation. I advocated that they include a one-year phase-in, and that is what happened.

Now we will have one more winter in Standard Time, and during that winter I hope a couple of key things happen:

1. Legislators in states like Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky, and Tennessee, as well as North and South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas all pay close attention all year to what the sunrises and sunsets could and should be. Permanent Standard time will still give them plenty of late sun in the summer, but will make mornings a bit less dark, and allow them to unify in a single time zone over those whole states, which are all split in two right now.
2. That school boards everywhere will realize that change is coming, and this is the point they should really examine their bell schedules. School start times are outrageously early now, especially for high schools with what we know about the sleep needs of adolescents. With the sun coming up later, some high school start times should be pushed TWO HOURS later. That might seem like a huge change, and it is, but if we learned anything during Covid, it was that change can happen quickly if needed, and this is needed.

I think these things will happen, in part because I just took a look at my blog traffic. Usually my most popular pages are the ones with the memes, and the one that tracks legislation around the country. Since the Senate vote, by far my most popular page is the guide of which is the best time zone to lock into. 

If you are in one of those states that is split, I hope you will take a look at where you are, and really consider what will be best for you and those around you.

But if you are in any of the other states, and you are mad about the fact that you still have to change your clocks two more times, just remember that other times that we have fiddled with the clock rashly and hastily, there was a backlash, and part of that backlash is what has kept us in the current mess for all these years.

We have had some form of clock changing since World War I. As the world currently tries to avoid World War III, let’s all just remain patient, and make sure that this particular part of modern life is surely, completely and finally fixed forever.

One other thing that could stop progress:

The other thing that could halt progress is just partisanship. This is a totally bipartisan bill, but the face most associated with it is Sen. Marco Rubio, who could be a candidate for president. Or there could be some other partisan spat that keeps progress from being made. That’s the kind of thing that drives me nutso, and it’s a big part of why I’m running for Congress. If you are interested in learning more, please be in touch on that site. Thanks.

New Idea For 2022 to Fix Daylight Saving Time

The narrative surrounding the issue of fixing Daylight Saving Time has evolved from being a niche topic, to being a legitimate concern for state and national legislators. That’s great.

As it has evolved, we are now starting to grapple with a question that hadn’t been real before, and now is: If we do stop changing the clocks, where should we stop?

So far all of the research—including really good in-depth studies commissioned by the legislatures in Massachusetts and Washington—and all of the bills that have passed in 20 states and all of the polling have leaned in the direction of permanent DST, the time we have in the summer.

There were two bills that I saw in 2021 that advocated for a state moving into Standard Time, the winter time, permanently. Out of 116 bills filed, that’s not many, and both of them were killed quickly. Nobody seems to like that solution, except in Arizona and Hawaii, which have done that and are happy with it.

But it is a legitimate question, and one that’s hard for legislators to answer in any meaningful way.

They could look to the science, but as I’ve written about at length, the science is mixed at best. There is a vocal group of circadian sleep scientists who insist Standard Time is the way to go, but they ignore the science from other disciplines. Overall health appears to be better under Summertime. Mental health is better. Pedestrian safety is way better. (That’s important because one of the most emotional arguments that anti-reform forces use is that darkness in the morning is less safe for school children than more darkness in the afternoon. That’s just the opposite of the truth.)

So, my reading of the science is that on balance, permanent summertime is better, but I can see that some people could see it differently if they value circadian sleep science as more important than, say, cardiac or mental health.

Sunrise on Rehoboth Beach 

For legislators, then, they are forced to make a decision. Most of them have heard from constituents that permanent summertime would be the best, so they lean that way. But it’s the kind of thing that forces them to make a decision that is going to make some people unhappy. Normally they are fine doing that if the people they are making unhappy are in the other party, but with this issue there is no partisan breakdown, so that gives them pause.

What they need is more information, and some political cover.

That’s why a proposed solution from Texas is so great. A state representative there, Lyle Larson, has proposed asking voters to weigh in.

Do you want to lock into summertime, or into wintertime?

It’s a simple question, and the answer will be unambiguous. 

And while I proposed that we ask such a question in my home state of Colorado, we have not been able to get that done. And Colorado may not be the best to be a leader in this one anyway.

Texas, however, is interesting. First, it is huge. It’s the second most populous state, so that means something.

Texas politics are generally conservative, and leans heavily on evangelical Christians. I take it from people like Wes Cantrell, a youth pastor in an evangelical church in Georgia and a leader in clock sanity, that there’s no religious issue with locking the clock in summertime. (That’s important for me. I have heard a few cantankerous types call Standard Time “God’s Time” and that always cracks me up. I know He made the earth in seven days, but the good book is not at all clear what time zone He did that in. I certainly don’t want to offend anyone’s religion, but so far it seems that religious arguments are being made—ironically—in bad faith.)

So if the vote comes and Texans announce clearly that they have a preference for Summertime, that will mean that the message is similar in conservative Texas and liberal Massachusetts. While there may be a few states where permanent wintertime would be best, in general most states will want to lock into permanent Summertime.

Bottom line: The idea of a vote from the citizens of Texas is a move toward clock sanity, and anyone who is against the idea of a vote is revealing themselves as being anti-reform. If you really believe you have the facts and the science on your side, you can make that case to the voters. If they vote the other way, it doesn’t mean that they are anti-science or anti-religion or anti-anything. They are in favor of clock sanity.

Famed scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson wrote that he favors permanent summertime, and I had to laugh when some of the anti-reform efforts tried to mansplain to him that his view was not inline with the science. Can you imagine the disconnect from reality it would take to tell one of the best-known scientists on the planet that he is anti-science?

There is only one problem with this brilliant plan for clock sanity in 2022: The Texas legislature is not scheduled to meet. It’s one of those states where they meet only every other year, and this is an off year. They could go into special session, but it looks unlikely that this bill would pass in a special session.

Many other states do meet this year, and so this is my call to any and all state legislators: Instead of working on a bill to just signal your intent to go into permanent Daylight Saving Time, why not ask the voters of your state what time they want to lock into if they could. That will actually help move the issue forward more than just about anything else at the state level.

If you would like help with the language, please be in touch and I’ll do all I can to help.

The Truth About the Politico Story

One of the all-time great journalism movies is Absence of Malice. The movie is about a reporter played by Sally Field, and a guy who gets falsely accused of being in the mob, played by Paul Newman.

Newman gets revenge in a clever way, which leads to Field’s character getting put in the place that no reporter wants to be in: the subject of a story. Another reporter on her paper rolls her chair over to the desk where Field’s character is sitting, and asks her about the nature of her relationship with Newman’s character. She says, “Just… say we were involved.” The reporter then asks, “That’s true, isn’t it?” and Field’s character pauses for a moment, and then says:

“No. But it’s accurate.”

I was thinking of that scene yesterday when I was talking to a young reporter from Politico, Hailey Fuchs. I spent an hour talking to her about Daylight Saving Time the day before. We mostly talked about how great the movement is, and how much progress we have made.

She also asked some about the one annoying part of the otherwise joyous fun I have trying to fix Daylight Saving Time.

To her credit, the next day Fuchs let me know that the story was going to focus on the conflict. I told her the bummer of that is that the conflict isn’t the news. The news is that this is a meaningful issue that does NOT have an acrimonious debate. The news is that real progress is being made on something that was once thought unsolvable.

She replied that her story was accurate, so she would be going with it. When she said the word “accurate” it brought to mind that scene from Absence of Malice. She’s right, the Politico story with her byline is accurate.

It’s also not true.

What is the truth?

The truth is found in a poll that, ironically, Politico ran in the spring. It showed an overwhelming majority of people favor the Sunshine Act.

I thought about not even writing this response. I mean, why give any energy to the one annoyance in this otherwise fun hobby that I’ve had for eight years now? But I decided in the end that if anyone is interested in the truth, and not the cheap, easy story of a conflict where there isn’t one, they should be able to find that.

It’s sad for me that the editors of Politico would try to force such an acrimonious angle on what is an otherwise positive story. They did at least keep in one bit of truth:

That highlighted section is exactly right, and essentially undermines the whole thesis of the story. There are no members of Congress proposing that the country go into permanent Standard Time, and there is nobody in Congress who is in favor of the status quo of switching back and forth. That’s also true in the state legislatures, which have seen dozens of proposals to Lock The Clock into Permanent DST. There was one bill to lock a state into Standard Time, but that died quickly.

And there are no people other that the author David Prerau who think it’s a good idea to keep changing the clocks twice a year. I really hope that Prerau decides to write another book on the topic, because if he does he’ll see all the research that has come out since his book was published that shows how deadly that switch is. Given the research, his comments come off as almost callous in their disregard for the death and injuries inflicted.

As to the end of that sentence, that no action is imminent…

Really?

When I started zero states had passed anything, and there were no federal bills. Now we have 20 states that have passed something, and two federal bills. The Sunshine Act has an amazing set of cosponsors on both the House and Senate versions.

I suppose if by “imminent” Politico means “tomorrow” then that’s accurate. But given that we’ve been stuck with clock changing on and off for more than 100 years, I think action is indeed imminent.

That’s accurate, AND true, and there’s nothing that the cynical editors of Politico can do to take away from that truth.

Postscript

I have edited this post to take out the negative references to other individuals. I realized that in my own way, I was contributing to the acrimony, and I don’t want to do that. I also deleted/edited the posts I wrote that originally contributed to the problem. I genuinely feel bad about inserting any negativity into what is a totally positive and fun issue. I will endeavor to do better.

Behind the Scenes with Jon Lovett and our Shared Quest to Fix Daylight Saving Time

I was a reporter for years before I became a startup founder, and so I always try to be as accommodating as I can when reporters contact me, especially if they are from local papers or radio stations. They work so hard for so little pay.

And then sometimes I get an email, and well, I sit up a bit straighter. That happened when the Daily Show reached out, and that whole experience was amazing.

It happened again recently when a producer from the Lovett or Leave It podcast reached out.

I’ve been on a few podcasts, and they are always great, but there is nobody more sophisticated in his thinking about Daylight Saving Time than Lovett. I’ve written about his positions a couple of times here on this blog. And I always note that whenever he even says “Daylight Saving Time” in front of an audience, the crowd cheers. It’s Lovett’s Thunder Road. It is what his fans want, and he gives it to them.

The episode is here or embedded below, and my bit starts at about 57:30 if you want to skip a lot of funny stuff:

So, what was the experience like?

It was fantastic.

Because I knew I was by far the least famous person on the podcast, I wanted to be sure that I would be as cool as I could be. My way of not being nervous is to over-prepare, so I went over a zillion funny lines in my head. I also listened to a bunch of the old podcasts so that I would know that I was fitting in with the general feel of the environment. I also wore a white shirt. I dunno why, I knew I’d be the only one wearing a white businessy kind of shirt at the event, but somehow I thought it would be OK.

Luckily, they had a pro photographer there, who could make anyone look good, because this photo is really nice, so thanks.

Credit: Kit Karzen | @kitkarzen on Instagram | @KitKarzen on Twitter

I got there and they had a green room, which wasn’t green, and wasn’t even really a room. The podcast is recorded at the Cinelounge, which is a cool outdoor concept and just a half-block off Hollywood Blvd. The green room was just some plywood walls sort of screwed together, but it did have green astroturf on the ground, so that made it green, I suppose.

They had a few munchies, and some booze. I did not have the booze, but just about everyone else did. Jon took his on stage with him.

Because I was there so early I got to chat with some of the producers and writers for the show, who are all so smart and talented that you would think they would treat me like dirt given that I am clearly not an A-list celebrity. Or B-list. (After the Daily Show, I may have moved from Z-list to Y-list.) They did not. They were all as gracious and welcoming as possible.

The first other person to arrive who was going to be on the show was Sam Sanders, host of It’s Been a Minute from NPR. If you haven’t heard that show, or heard any of the other times he has been on other shows, you are missing out. He is a thoughtful and interesting as they come. His work is so genuine and he seems so personally gracious on the air that I figured he would be a good guy in person, too. He was. Just fun and funny, and is clearly a great reporter as he started asking me questions about DST that I never get.

I didn’t get to chat as much with Adam Conover or Michaela Watkins, but I did a little and they were both great also.

Lovett was the last to arrive. Everyone seems to call him that—not Jon. Just his last name.

If you’ve heard his show, you know that he talks about fast food a lot. I didn’t think that it was just a gag before, I figured that it was part of his life. But he is a big shot, I figure he typically eats at nice places, or has people prepare him food at home. Maybe he does, but he rolled in with a MacDonald’s drink in his hand, and immediately starts chatting with basically all of us in the green room about some great deal they have right now. He also said he doesn’t eat fries while driving. I don’t know if he talks in all parts of his life in the way that he does on his podcast, but to the four or so of us in the green room, he sounded exactly the same.

The podcast itself is great, but I only know that now. The problem with the green room is that it doesn’t have a speaker, and the plywood kind of makes it hard to hear. So most of the time those of us on the show stood off to the side of the stage, watching what was going on, but it was still hard to hear.

I do hope that you will listen, and let me know by email what you thought.

The funniest reaction I thought from Lovett to something I said was when I complimented him on how sophisticated his take was, as DST is a more complex topic than it might seem at first. A lot of well known people just say they are “against DST” but don’t really take it past that. Lovett has views that understand the complexities. So I mentioned that I wrote about that in a post about celebrities and DST, and he mock-demured about being on a list of celebrities. The audio is funny, but his body language of pretending to be coquettish was hilarious.

We then did a quiz that was based on DST, which was fun based on real research, and then it was over.

After my bit, they did a standard thing that they love on this show where they have the guests defend a basically un-defendable position for 60 seconds. The funniest moment there for me was when Sam Sanders refused to even pretend to extoll on how Teri Gross is not that great of an interviewer.

I had suggested that they do that bit, but instead of standard views from the news, make the guests defend a position that has been sent to me by very earnest people through the years. It was probably wise not to do this, but just for fun, here is that list:

1. Move the clocks a half hour and lock it there. (I get this one a LOT.)
2. Everyone use Greenwich time. (Computer programmers love this one because it makes their job easier. Also, they see the world differently. The idea is that we would all use GMT, and so in L.A. you would go to work around 5 p.m., have lunch around 9 or 10 p.m., dinner around 4 a.m. etc. Each time zone would just get used to their new hours.)
3. Make days longer and shorter depending on the time of year, and our computers and phones will just keep track of it. So, a 30-minute meeting in the summer will be longer than a 30-minute meeting in the winter.
4. Make the day 10 hours long instead of 24. (This was actually from a guy named Yates who wrote in to the guy fixing the time for the railroads back in 1883.)
5. Abandon “time” completely, and just go to work, eat, etc., whenever you want.

After the show, I asked Lovett what I could do to be helpful to him. He asked what was going on, and I told him about an effort in Texas that could have some real promise. He said he was totally focused on the federal bills, so we said we would keep in touch about that. (I have posts coming soon about both Texas and the federal efforts.)

I had a hunch that I would be pretty worked up after the show, and not ready for bed, so I walked over a block or so from the Cinelounge, and saw the new Eternals movie at the historic El Capitan theater. I don’t know if I had ever seen a movie with a live organist before a film, so that was cool. The movie was great, I thought, and then after the film it was quite late and fog had rolled in, making a nearly deserted Hollywood Boulevard other-worldly.

Sorry this post has gone on so long. Lovett has joked about how after Zack Snyder’s Justice League we can use the shorthand: Go ahead and give me the Zack Snyder version as a way of saying Go ahead and give me all the characters and all the storyline. This is clearly a Zack Snyder’s Daylight Saving Time League post.

So, thanks to Lovett, the producers and writers, to Sam and the other guests, and the audience that cheered me on the same way they did the other guests. I really appreciated it.

Summertime is done, DST is next. When will clock-changing end?

Greetings to my surprisingly large number of readers from Europe!

In whatever language you use, you generally refer to the period where the clocks are an hour later as summertime instead of the completely American Daylight Saving Time, which we of course turn into an acronym of DST. (That comes in part because we can never remember if it is saving or savings time.)

I hope you enjoyed your extra hour of sleep. Sleep is so wonderful, and almost all of us need more of it.

Of course, we also need exercise, and with the sun going down now before we get off work, that gets harder and harder. Also, take care out there… crime goes up when it gets darker earlier.

Photo by Mark Dalton on Unsplash

You may be on this site because you thought that some law was created that would end all of this clock changing madness. There was, kind of. It didn’t really take hold for thoroughly European reasons. (I wrote about that here.)

So, for now, you are kind of stuck with it. Sorry.

We in the U.S. change the clocks next weekend, so for just this one week you are an hour closer to us. I can tell you from experience that will make trans-Atlantic calls both easier and more confusing. But, let’s celebrate the closeness in time while it lasts, and try not to complain about the rest.

I really try not to complain, and just be fascinated by all of this. I was even in Europe during the Spring Forward time change a couple of years ago, and found the perfect place to talk about it:

Europe took a big swing at fixing all this, but missed. (Does that expression work for fans of cricket?)

I applaud Europe for taking that big swing, and I actually thought that was the best solution for the world, and said so for a couple of years. But now that it seems dead, I’m now looking to my home country to lead the way on this.

Will we be able to do it? Stay tuned! Be sure to follow me on Twitter to get the very latest, or sign up for my extremely infrequent newsletter in the box on the right.

And when it is dark and miserable when you are trying to go home from work this week, remember that it does not need to be that way.

But until we fix it, stay strong and be healthy. And keep in touch with each other, and with me. 

Your friend in wanting clock sanity,
I remain,
Yours,

-Scott

Daylight Saving Time As Distraction, the Global Edition

I’ve written before about how I think that politicians have used Daylight Saving Time as a distraction from some other topic. Probably the clearest example was when Nixon ordered a change the clocks while in the midst of Watergate — in January! (Changing the clocks is always bad, but doing it in January was just cruel.) It didn’t work, and Nixon still left office.

Now we have news from Brazil, which is considering starting DST again after stopping it a couple of years ago. The purported reason? Drought.

But this quote from an excellent AP story is telling:

“The only reason why we’re not seeing greater problems is because of the economic crises of the last few years, and lower consumption than expected.”

That is, the drought is making it so that it’s hard to generate electricity, but people are using less electricity because of massive economic problems.

Also, the COVID situation in Brazil is rotten, in no small part because the president is telling lies about the vaccines. Some god with a sense of humor gave the Brazilian health minister a case of COVID-19 so that he could not attend the U.N. General Assembly this week.

With all that going on… sure… let’s talk about how changing clocks for Daylight Saving Time will fix everything.

In the midst of all the other pain and suffering, they may actually make people start changing clocks again, which will only add to the pain and suffering.

Of course, a part of the problem there may be where they decided to lock the clock. Brazil decided to stop changing, which is the whole goal of this site and the #LockTheClock movement. And I have always said, and I honestly believe, that if you lock the clock in standard or daylight time, it just doesn’t matter all that much, as long as you stop the changing.

But my goal is to make sure that when stop changing, we stop changing for good. I’d hate to see a place stop changing clocks, and then start again because they picked the wrong time. Is that the case in Brazil? It’s hard to say from the polls as reported in that story. 

I have to wonder… would this be coming up again if they had decided to stay in Daylight time permanently? Maybe if they had done that, people would be happier (as is indicated by a couple of studies you can find on my research page) and so there wouldn’t be any talk about giving people longer days in the summer, which is now on its way in that Southern Hemisphere country.

Brazil clearly has lots of problems. I hope they don’t compound them by going back to the barbarism of changing the clocks twice a year.

DST: The one issue that can fix them all

 The classic movie Bridge Over the River Kwai is now more than 60 years old, so if you haven’t seen it, well, too bad, I’m going to ruin the ending for you.

The movie is about a British soldier who gets captured during WWII and is held in a POW camp deep in a hellish jungle. The soldier, played by Alec Guinness, plays it all by the book, and gets tortured for it. After his torture, he is directed to build a bridge.

Here’s where he goes a bit nutty, probably in part because he had just spent weeks in isolation in a hot box.

He takes over commanding his men who are building the bridge, and finds that they are doing a rotten job. They tell him that of course they are doing a rotten job, they don’t want to build a great bridge for the enemy.

Guinness’ character says that what the men need for their morale and their stiff upper lips, etc., is to do a great job on the bridge… Build something they can really be proud of. He’s a charismatic guy, so the men do just that and build a great bridge. For the enemy.

Meanwhile an American soldier is trying to, you know, win the war, so he leads a group to blow up the bridge.

Right at the end of the movie, Guinness’ character discovers the wire leading to the bomb. He tries to stop the bomb, but then he sees the American soldier. That American gets shot and killed trying to make sure the bridge gets blown up.

And then, in one of the great moments of cinema history, something clicked for the British commander. You can see it in his face, and he says, simply, “What have I done?” It dawns on him that he has lost sight of the bigger objective, and became enraptured by the fever of the moment. He gets then gets hit with shrapnel, but somehow rises up, dusts off his hat (very British, to his final moments) and stumbles over and falls on the plunger, blowing up the bridge just as the train goes over it, plunging it into the river.

With that, democracy survives.

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I’m sure there are more sophisticated ways of looking at this, but in general I think the Republican Party has three basic groups.

1. Chamber of Commerce types, who just want a good business environment, the rule of law, free markets, etc.
2. Libertarian types who want low taxes and less government. They’ve always been uneasy with the GOP’s stances on gay marriage, abortion and the like, but they figure the courts will sort all that out, and usually they do.
3. Cultural warriors. Some of these are sincere anti-abortion believers, but most are just racists, gun fetishists, fabulists and/or people with serious unresolved daddy issues. 

The whole Trump phenomenon was clearly driven by the third group, and was tolerated and cynically taken advantage of by the other two groups.

(This post is not for the third group, but I’m not really worried about them reading this anyway because they don’t really go for reading.)

It’s not hard to rile up that third group and motivate them to action. Give them a little fear — fear of dark skinned people, fear of globalists, fear of “socialism” and especially fear of the Democratic party — and they will buy your red hats, donate money, show up at rallies and wave flags. So many flags.

For it to work, you must also convince them not to believe what they see with their own eyes.

The thing that we’ve seen happen over the last five years or so is that elected Republicans, party leaders, and big money donors have been completely taken over by the circus barkers. We see little snippets of news every so often that they don’t really believe any of the democracy-destroying rhetoric, but they fear that if they say so out loud, the third group will turn on them. That is what happens, too, so it’s a rational idea. Some have said that’s fine and just left. I’m not sure how the ones who stay sleep at night.

What I keep hoping for, perhaps naïvely, is that at some point they will come face-to-face with what they’ve done. They will realize that they are the British Commander who has built a huge, solid, totally functional bridge, and the bridge they’ve built is for the enemies of democracy.

What have I done?

What will be the issue that could prompt this response?

I’m hoping it’s Daylight Saving Time.

After all, DST is an actual governmental issue. The government decides what the clocks say. Right now the clocks are actually killing people.

What I’m hoping is that somehow this issue will be the one that will make them snap out of their Trumpian coma. That they’ll look up and see that they don’t need to oppose Every Single Thing proposed by Democrats. They will see that Democrats are actually Americans who care about their country and want things here to be better. 

They will see that Democrats are not actually the enemy.

The true enemies are common enemies. Changing the clock twice a year… that’s an enemy that we can defeat, working together.

Once they have said: What have I done? and fixed DST, then they can go on to face other common enemies. 

COVID does not have to be a political issue. The disease, instead of Democrats, could be the enemy that must be defeated. Wearing a mask during the flu epidemic of 1919 was seen as patriotic, and getting the polio vaccine was something everyone did to unify the country.

Climate change? Republican Teddy Roosevelt started the National Parks and Republican Richard Nixon started the EPA. Conserving the environment is a conservative idea.

But we can’t use one of those big topics to be the catalyst. We need to start with something small. Tiny, in fact.

That’s just what Daylight Saving Time could be: The tiny issue that we drop into the test tube that changes everything.

 

Voting Guide: Daylight Saving Time in Alberta

Alberta is not the most famous of the Canadian provinces. It’s probably best known as the home of Calgary, and the 1988 Winter Olympics, which became even more famous because that’s when the Jamaican Bobsled team made its international debut, as featured in the Disney film Cool Runnings.

But Alberta may soon be known for something else: Fixing Daylight Saving Time.

Photo of the Bow River east of Downtown Calgary by Igor Kyryliuk

You see, while there have been dozens of state and provincial legislatures that have debated or passed bills that would #LockTheClock, there has never been a binding vote of the people. That will all change on October 18, 2021.

(Yes, there was a vote in California, but it wasn’t binding. It was a complex, procedural bill, and even though it was worded into a pretzel on the ballot, voters thought that it might help to end the clock-changing madness, so they approved it by a wide margin.)

That means that Alberta voters are now the first people in the world who will get to have a direct say in ending the clock madness since the passage of the Uniform Time Act of 1966 in the U.S. While that law wasn’t binding on Canada, the provinces have hewn closely to the U.S. since then.

So, if you are a registered Alberta voter, how should you vote? I’ll break it down for you here:

What is the DST language I’ll be voting on?

Do you want Alberta to adopt year-round Daylight Saving Time, which is summer hours, eliminating the need to change our clocks twice a year?

By the way, this language is great, I think. It’s even shorter and more clear than the language that I recommended when I first wrote about this. I thought they might want to ask two questions: 1. Should we stop changing the clocks? and 2. What time zone should we lock in to?

The officials decided to make it much more clear and direct. It’s true, there will be some in the strident and vocal minority who will complain about the lack of an option to stay in Standard Time year-round, but it would appear that there are even fewer of them in Canada than there are in the U.S.

And there aren’t many here.

The people coming up with that language were probably informed by a survey done early in 2020 showing that 91 percent of those surveyed by the government wanted to stick to the summer time year-round. Why go to the hassle of two questions when you know that one of the options doesn’t even have the support of 10 percent of the electorate?

Voting Guide

So, we know that nearly everyone in Alberta likes the idea of year-round Daylight Saving Time, but when it comes time to vote, individual voters may have some concerns, and want to know all of what’s involved. I’ll break it down here as clearly as possible.

Reasons to Vote Yes for permanent Daylight Saving Time

Survey after survey has confirmed that people hate changing the clocks, and that’s been true forever.

The thing that’s changed in recent years is a raft of research showing that it’s not just unpopular, it’s deadly. I’ve written about this a lot, and if you want to do your own research, you can do that here.

So, if it is actually deadly, and if the legislatures in the provinces and the states know that, why hasn’t it changed? The answer is that while legislatures are made up of “leaders” there is often a hesitancy to get too far out in front on any issue. A lot of stuff gets debated, and sometimes even passed, but so far all the votes have been to change only if some number of other nearby states/provinces also move.

All that to say, one of the pros of voting yes is that you will send a message to the politicians that you really do want them to fix this, and fix it right away. That is a message that will be heard in Alberta, and if I have anything to do with it (and I do) I’ll make sure that lawmakers all over the U.S. hear about it, too.

The concern from some lawmakers has been that they don’t want their province/state to be out of synch with their neighbors. That’s legitimate, but one only needs to look at Arizona to realize that’s not really a big issue. That state does not change clocks, and the people there love it. One time a legislator proposed that Arizona should start changing clocks just to help with business, and he go so overwhelmed with constituent pushback that he actually held a press conference to announce that he was killing his own bill. Oh, and if business is suffering in Arizona, it’s hard to see how as that is one of the fastest growing and most prosperous states in the U.S.

In short, the pro side of voting yes is that you will get what you want — permanent Daylight Saving Time — and you may just help the rest of Canada and the U.S. get it, too.

Reasons to vote no

I’m clearly advocating that you vote yes, but there is one legitimate reason to vote no: Perhaps you like changing the clocks twice per year? If so, I guess you could vote no, in spite of the fact that you’ll be putting your neighbors at risk by doing so.

Let’s say you are a person who just doesn’t really care that much… You adjust easily to the time change. You think you might want to vote no just to make it less confusing for the neighbors of Alberta. Sorry, but that’s just not that good of a reason. Again, see Arizona. It’s slightly confusing for others dealing with that state, but it doesn’t actually cost any business.

Another reason to vote no would be that you prefer staying on Standard Time, the time we use in the winter, all year long. That’s a legitimate point of view, it just happens to be a very small minority. As we saw in that poll from the provincial government, you are among less than 10 percent of the population.

So, you could vote no just because that’s your preference, but two things about that: 

1. You’ll lose. This thing is going to pass by a wide margin. And…
2. You’ll be hurting the cause that people like you who prefer the winter time and people who prefer the summer time agree on, which is that it’s crazy to change the clocks twice a year.

If this measure in Alberta passes two-to-one or better, it will send a really strong message to all of Canada and the U.S.

And once you’ve done away with the clock changing, if it turns out that the winter mornings really are too dark for too long, you can go to the government and ask for one last change — a change to permanent Standard Time. If enough of your fellow citizens agree, that will be a much easier change to make.

Is there anything else I should know before voting in Alberta?

Not really. There’s lots and lots of research, and you can certainly read all of that.

But at the most basic level, this is something proper for you and the voters of Alberta to vote on. After all, the whole idea of time is that it is an agreement. In a modern society, we all need to agree on what it means that a flight leaves at 10:15 a.m., or that a radio program starts at 2 p.m., or that we are going to meet some friends for a beverage at 6:30 p.m. That’s what time really is.

Given that time is an agreement among people, it makes perfect sense that the people of Alberta get to declare: We don’t want to change our agreed-on time twice a year any more. Just set the clock, and leave it. We don’t need to be sleep-deprived in the spring. We don’t need it to be pitch-black at 5 p.m. on November 7th. Just set the clocks for summer time, and leave them there all year, OK?

If you do vote to end the clock changing by a wide, wide margin, that will be the alarm clock that will be heard around the world.