Category: Politics (Page 1 of 2)

Election Eve Thoughts

November 3, 2020 / Ryan / 0 Comments

It has been a hell of a year. It is not the end of the calendar year, but tonight is the night before Election Day and it feels like the nation is balanced on the edge of a precipice. It feels like all the horrors of the last four years, and particularly of this last year, have been building to this point and now we are collectively holding our breaths. There are another couple of months in the year, but this feels like the right point to pause and reflect. It feels important to capture how I’m feeling right now, as we sit here at the brink and wonder what happens next.

I have been very quiet here on the blog. My last post was a video game review in July, and before that a post in April about the pandemic and how it hadn’t been too bad so far for me and my family. Since then, a lot has happened, and I’ve had a lot of thoughts about it that I would normally share here, but at a certain point it got to be too much. What could I say in the face of all that was happening? What good would it do to add my voice to the noise? I would just be echoing what everyone in my carefully curated social media bubble was also feeling and saying. How could I find the words to do justice to the pain and suffering that others are feeling, from which I am sheltered by layer upon layer of privilege?

I still have all of those doubts, but as I sit here freaking out about the election, I need to do something. Writing helps me process, so I’m going to write. I am going to resist the urge to rehash everything terrible that has happened in the last 6 months, or for that matter the last 4 years. You have all lived through it. You know.

I’m just so tired. The constant anxiety and outrage and despair and depression as I watch my country and the world succumb to the worst that humanity has to offer has culminated in sheer exhaustion. That is the other reason that I have not written much here, or anywhere else, this year. I’m just emotionally and mentally exhausted, so by the end of the day when I have time to write, I don’t have the energy to do it.

I’ve been trying to be kinder to myself about that. In this of all years, I have been trying to stop the negative self-talk that says I must spend every moment being productive. The last few years, and especially 2020, have taught me the value of “mindless” entertainment. It is ok that I just want to curl up and eat comfort food and play video games or watch dumb shows. Seeking out comforting non-productive activities is fine. There is nobody but myself who sets the expectation that after working all day and parenting into the evening, I should then do something “productive” instead of something fun and relaxing. Maybe someday I will have the energy for that, but right now I don’t and that’s ok.

I don’t know what will happen tomorrow. Odds are that Biden will win and Trump will lose, but the odds favored Clinton in 2016 too. That collective trauma, and the subsequent damage that Trump has done to to country and to each of us over the last 4 years, will be with us for a long time. I deeply hope that tomorrow is an absolute incontrovertible Biden blowout. Even if that happens, I worry about the violence that Trump’s cult will inflict, and the damage a lame-duck Trump and Republican senate will do. If the election is close, it’s going to be a huge mess. Trump has already said he will declare victory prematurely and fight against counting all of the votes cast, turning to the Republican-stuffed courts to overrule the will of the voters. If Trump wins, I don’t know what I will do. It will affirm the lesson that we all learned in 2016, that a huge portion of this country is so much more selfish and hateful than we want to believe. I don’t know how I can live in a country that looks at what Republicans have done in the last 4 years and says “yes, more of that please.” But I also don’t know how I could leave.

Another thing that this year in particular has taught me is the value of focusing only on those things I can control. There’s a reason the famous “serenity prayer” is so famous. Along the same lines, in Buddhism they talk about how much of the suffering we experience comes from “clinging” to the way we want things to be, rather than facing the way things are. It is a lot easier said than done, but there have been moments this year when things got to be too much that I have taken some solace in narrowing my focus on what I can control.

I cannot control what happens tomorrow. I have done what I could by donating, writing letters, and phone banking (though I am disappointed in myself that I didn’t do more calls), but in the end the results of the election are out of my hands.

I think what makes this so hard is that with the memory of 2016 fresh in my mind, and the events of this year so relentlessly bad, I’m afraid to hope. But, in the end I do hope. I hope that the country steps back from the brink, that new leadership finally gets the pandemic under control and stops the needless loss of life, that this election is remembered as the point where the country had a stark choice and chose wisely, and began the long work of fixing what is broken. I hope that soon we can all rest a little easier, and turn our efforts toward that work with a little more optimism. I hope.

Why I support Elizabeth Warren

February 28, 2020 / Ryan / 0 Comments

On Saturday I spent three hours in near-freezing drizzle, dodging puddles and knocking on doors with cold hands because I think Elizabeth Warren is the best candidate in the Democratic primary. In my opinion, she would be the best for the party, best for the country, and has the best chance of beating Donald Trump.

It might sound miserable to spend precious hours of my weekend in the freezing drizzle, but it was actually the most rewarding canvassing experience I have had. People genuinely want to talk about the primary because we’re all struggling with the same question: How do we beat Donald Trump? Some think that we need to stay moderate and not alienate voters in the middle of the political spectrum. Others say that the key to victory is energizing the left and inspiring people who otherwise wouldn’t vote at all. Some people have already made up their minds, others are truly undecided (and likely agonizing over it). Flagstaff is a liberal city, and I was in a liberal neighborhood, so one of the most common things I heard was that people were undecided between the two most liberal candidates: Sanders and Warren.

Now, I completely understand people who are worried that both Sanders and Warren are too far left and prefer more moderate candidates. I think that’s a reasonable opinion. Personally, I’m liberal enough that I’m tired of seeing Democrats compromise on their values before they even begin negotiations. I mean, of course compromise is necessary in politics, but you should start out with a clear vision of what you actually want. Let the other side move the discussion toward the middle, don’t start in the middle and then let them move it even closer to their position. I think voters too often look at the Democrats and see a weak, waffling party that doesn’t really stand for anything, and I think voters are hungry to see that change.

What I do not understand is how anyone could look at the two progressive candidates, Warren and Sanders, and think that Sanders is the better choice. Warren does everything that Sanders does, but as the saying goes, “backwards, in heels”.

Their policies are similar, but Warren provides far more detail for a lot of policies than Sanders does. She has not just done her homework; in many cases she taught the class. Take for example Sanders’ signature issue: Medicare for All. I’m glad Sanders changed the conversation about health care so that it is being taken seriously, but Sanders’ page has just a few paragraphs and bulleted lists, and doesn’t have any explanation of the key question: how do we get there from here? (Hint: Just yelling about a “political revolution” is not going to cut it.) Warren’s page on the topic, on the other hand, is impressively detailed. It describes how she will both use the power of the executive branch to begin the transition, and pursue more permanent legislation. The difference in the depth and sophistication of their plans is almost comic. Of course, both candidates vary in the amount of detail they provide on different issues, but on the whole, it’s clear that Warren is much stronger on policy details.

But as much as I’d like the election to be decided on wonkish policy details, we all know that’s not the most important thing for two reasons.

First, the president doesn’t actually get to make laws, and the lovely progressive wish list on both candidates’ sites is never going to actually happen. So, more important than policy proposals is the candidate’s temperament. I want a president who can fight for policies that help people but can actually get something done in the face of opposition, even from other Democrats. That requires coalition building, give and take, and working relationships with others in the party and even Republicans. That is something Warren does well, but that Sanders is singularly bad at. He seems to prefer to take a position, refuse to budge, and yell about it.

Second, most Democrats I’ve talked to care about one thing above all others: beating Donald Trump. The whole point of the primary is to choose a candidate who can win in the general election, and winning in the general will require the party to unify around the nominee. Sanders is not a unifying figure. He is abrasive, angry, and stubborn, and anyone who has interacted with his most “enthusiastic” supporters online knows that they are hostile and alienating, even to people with whom they agree on almost everything.

By contrast, Warren is a coalition builder who can knit the party back together after a long and divisive primary. She has ambitious policy proposals to inspire the left, and a knack for communicating her policies in a way that, if given the chance, could speak to people of all backgrounds. She understandably doesn’t flaunt it in the primary, but Warren was originally a Republican and switched parties when she saw firsthand how Republican policies were hurting people. That perspective will allow her to connect with people in a way that Sanders’ stubbornness, no matter how principled, won’t.

Warren is also the ideal foil for Trump, and Sanders is among the worst. Warren’s whole career is about protecting working people from corrupt billionaires. Sanders has tried to do the same thing by promoting progressive policies, but with less actual success and a lot more yelling about socialism. Warren is a woman, which is a liability because misogyny is widespread even on the left, but is also a great asset because women are energized like never before to prevent a second term of Trump. Warren even was the one whose determined resistance to Republicans in power coined the slogan “nevertheless she persisted.” I know multiple women who were so inspired by that slogan that they got it as a tattoo. In contrast, Sanders is an angry old white man, as is Trump.

And of course, we recently found out that Russia is working to support Sanders in the primary even as it tries to get Trump re-elected in the general. Not only should that give any potential Sanders voter pause – why would Russia want Sanders as the nominee unless they think he has the worst chance of winning against Trump? – but also because it neutralizes one of the most powerful arguments against Trump. Sanders cannot credibly attack Trump for benefiting from foreign interference when he benefited from it too. Add to that the fact that Sanders is a socialist, it’s obvious that Trump and the Republican propaganda machine will bend over backwards to paint Sanders as the next Stalin.

All of which is to say that I’m pretty frustrated with the apparent direction the primary is going. Warren is better in every way than Sanders, but she is struggling to gain traction. For reasons that I cannot comprehend, the young, liberal wing of the party is enamored with a disheveled, angry, old man who just had a heart attack, with a poor track record of actually getting things done, and a lot of electoral liabilities, rather than the woman with better versions of the same policies, an impressive list of accomplishments, a personable temperament that lets her connect with voters and would unify rather than divide the party, and a career dedicated to taking down corrupt billionaires. It’s almost as if there’s some key intangible difference between him and her that makes people “just not like her.”

As I told most of the people I talked with while canvassing: despite appearances, I’m not a Warren fanatic. I will be out there canvassing and working hard to make sure the nominee, whoever it is, beats Trump. (And you should be too. This is not the year to sit on the sidelines!) All of our candidates have real strengths and all can beat Trump who has major weaknesses. If Sanders is the nominee I will enthusiastically vote for him over Trump. It deeply, viscerally upsets me to see people repeating the mistakes of 2016, saying that they’ll only vote for their preferred candidate. But it also upsets me to see the best candidate in the field struggling to gain traction while others seemingly get a free pass.

Democrats on the Issues: Democracy and Political Reform

August 23, 2019 / Ryan / 6 Comments

With the Democratic primary in full gear, I thought it would be worthwhile to take a look at the positions of the leading candidates on the issues I care most about so that I can make up my mind based on more than just what I hear in the liberal echo chamber that is my social media. It’s hard to choose just a limited number of issues, but I wanted to keep this somewhat manageable so I’m going to start with Democracy and political reform in this post. I have done the research for Health care and Education as well, but I’ll post those separately. If people seem to find these posts useful, I’ll do a couple more on Guns and the Environment.

As you may have noticed, there are about a million people running in the Democratic primary right now, so it’s not feasible for me to research all of them. So again, to keep this effort somewhat manageable I’m going to focus on the top six candidates in the RealClearPolitics national polling average as of 8/21/2019. Those candidates are: Biden, Sanders, Warren, Harris, Buttigieg, O’Rourke. As with issues, there are other candidates that I would like to include, but I’ve gotta cut this off somewhere. If things change significantly maybe I’ll update this later.

I should also talk a little bit about my methods up front. I am basing these posts on what candidates have on their websites. It’s possible they have talked about these issues in other contexts but I can’t scour the whole internet to find every last detail. To me, if the issue is something really important to them, they should have it on their website. For Warren I am making a slight exception to this rule. Her website is kind of confusing but after poking around on it for a while I discovered that a lot of her detailed plans are not actually on her campaign website, but are posted on Medium. Since she is using Medium as an extension of her website, I decided to include her Medium posts here.

I should also make it clear that candidate webpages are often crammed with little details and one-off mentions of issues, so it’s entirely possible that I have missed some things, or have decided not to include them here even though they are briefly mentioned.

And finally, I am going to try to faithfully summarize what is on each candidate’s page, but I am also going to throw in my own opinions where I feel the need, so this isn’t going to be completely neutral. Okay? Okay. So, let’s get on with it!

Democracy (Political Reform, Voting Rights, and Corruption)

This is basically the “how are you going to fix our deeply broken politics?” category. We’ve got a Republican party that has gone completely off the rails and no longer even pretends to act in good faith. It is openly courting white nationalists, flagrantly abuses the norms of our government to get its way, and gladly accepts the assistance of foreign powers to skew our elections and maintain power. It also is actively eroding voting rights in an effort to prevent people who are more likely to vote for Democrats from voting at all. More than any other issue, this dysfunction needs to be fixed, because until it is, we will not be able to make meaningful headway on any other issue. This is also the hardest issue to fix, so I’m interested in seeing what the candidates have to say.

Biden

Not a lot of details on this topic, but his site does specifically talk about strengthening voting rights and election security. He also addresses the problem of money in politics, mentioning public financing of campaigns and a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. All good stuff but I would have liked more detail.

As an aside: I have been concerned by Biden’s apparent belief in finding common ground with Republicans. That may have worked once upon a time, when they were a party acting in good faith, but they have not been that party for a long time. If we keep pretending that they are and keep trying to meet them in the middle, Democrats are going to continue to lose ground and we will continue down a very dark path. When the Republican president is overseeing the creation of concentration camps and talking about racial and religious minorities with words like “vermin” and “disloyal” and “infestation”, and white supremacist terrorists are specifically citing his language to justify their atrocities, that’s not a difference of opinion. That’s not something that we just agree to disagree on. Here are a couple of relevant quotes:

“We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.”
Robert Jones Jr.

“Meet me in the middle,” says the unjust man.
You take a step toward him. He takes a step back.
“Meet me in the middle,” says the unjust man.
A.R. Moxon

Anyway, let’s move on.

Sanders

Sanders also doesn’t have much detail on this topic, though he does have a laundry list of good ideas including things like automatic voter registration, restoring the Voting Rights Act, election day as a holiday, and ending gerrymandering. No word of how these things will be accomplished, but that’s (alas) pretty typical of candidate sites in general.

Warren

At first it looked like Warren was also going to be pretty high level. Her main webpage just lists a handful of good ideas, such as how to curb the influence of lobbyists and impose ethics standards for judges. She also mentions an amendment protecting voting rights, fighting voter suppression and gerrymandering, overturning Citizens United, and fighting the influence of foreign powers and the use of hatred and bigotry to divide the electorate. All good stuff but not very detailed.

But then I realized that a whole bunch of her policy proposals are actually spelled out as posts on Medium, and are listed on her actual website under “Latest Announcements”. So that’s kind of a strange choice, but as I mentioned above, since she’s using Medium as an extension of her website, I’ll include those posts here.

Based on those posts, Warren also plans to implement automatic voter registration, election day as a holiday, early voting and vote by mail. She also has the interesting idea of implementing federal standards for elections, and then having the federal government pay for state election costs for states who meet those standards. She also proposes a new Secure Democracy Administration to replace the existing Election Assistance Commission, with power to step in and oversee elections if states are violating federal standards.

She also has another post about the Mueller report that I guess falls under this category. It basically boils down to: she will make it clear in as many ways possible that the Department of Justice can in fact indict the president.

In yet another Medium post, this one pretty brief and to the point, she proposes eliminating the electoral college and replacing it with a national popular vote.

Harris

Harris’s site is a bit more wordy about the issues, but it’s not clear that she actually gets more specific. She lists restoring the Voting Rights Act, making election day a holiday, overturning Citizens United, and improving election security and infrastructure. Despite a higher word count, I’d put her on par with Sanders for level of detail.

Buttigieg

Now this is more like it. Buttigieg has a good amount of detail on this subject. Lots of ideas that are also shared by other candidates, but a little more detail on many of them, and a good number of ideas that I haven’t seen on the other candidate sites. Some noteworthy examples: voting by mail and protecting voting rights on tribal lands; overturning Buckley vs. Valeo (related to campaign finance contribution limits) as well as Citizens United; Puerto Rico in the electoral college and potential statehood; national popular vote to replace the electoral college; bipartisan commission to reform the Supreme Court with suggestion of more justices, term limits, and different methods of choosing justices. There seem to be some genuinely good and unique ideas here. I’m impressed.

O’Rourke

O’Rourke’s site seems to be more verbose than some others, but it’s not fluff: he also has a good amount of detail on this topic. I can’t repeat everything that he lists, but he has a lot of good stuff on voting rights and turnout, term limits on Congress and the Supreme Court, good and specific ideas about limiting money in politics, election security and transparency in online advertising. And most of the good ideas listed by other candidates appear in some form on O’Rourke’s page too.

Ok, so how do all the candidates stack up? I decided that the best way to compare was to put together a table. Now, to be clear: this is just based on what I was able to find on their websites. The lack of a mark on a given topic doesn’t mean that candidate is against that thing, it just means I couldn’t find a clear statement about it on their site. Also, number of marks in the table does not by itself determine how good a candidate is on these issues. The table is just a useful way to summarize and see what issues and ideas are unique vs which ones are mentioned by everyone.

	Biden	Sanders	Warren	Harris	Buttigieg	O’Rourke
Improve voting rights in general	X	X	X	X	X	X
Restore Voting Rights Act		X	X	X		X
Overturn Citizens United/ voting rights amendment	X	X	X	X	X
Automatic voter registration/early voting		X	X	X	X	X
Election day holiday		X	X	X	X	X
Fix gerrymandering		X	X		X	X
Public funding for elections	X	X	X		X	X
Strengthen FEC					X
Abolish/limit super PACs		X	X			X
Improved election security	X		X	X	X	X
More transparency on political donors	X			X		X
Voting rights for the formerly incarcerated		X			X
Supreme court reforms			X		X
Candidate tax returns public			X
Crack down on lobbying			X			X
Accurate and depoliticized census					X	X
Reps./statehood/EC for Puerto Rico and DC					X
National popular vote			X		X
Term limits on Congress and Supreme Court						X
Federal standards for elections			X

So that’s where the leading candidates stand on the (rather broad) topic of Democracy and Political reform. I would say that Buttigieg is in the lead on this topic, with O’Rourke and Warren not far behind. Sanders had some good stuff but almost no details to go with it. Biden mentioned a few good ideas, but not as many as the other candidates and lacked detail so he comes in at the bottom on this issue for me.

Stay tuned for similar posts on Health Care and Education!

Intrinsic Value

May 20, 2019 / Ryan / 1 Comment

Immigrants and asylum seekers provide a net economic benefit to our country.
Universal health care would be less expensive than our current system.
It costs less to provide affordable housing than it does to leave people homeless.
No one who works full time should have to raise a family in poverty.
Every dollar spent on NASA returns about ten dollars to the economy.

We have a problem with how we think about the value of things. As a society, and as individuals in that society, we are almost incapable of talking about why something is worthwhile or the right thing to do without talking about its monetary value. Or, if not monetary value, then at least pointing to its usefulness.

This makes sense. Our civilization is made possible by the fundamental notion that we understand the world around us by studying it and measuring it. If you can’t quantify something, whether it is the mass of an electron or the return on an investment, how do you know that it’s real? There are countless examples of the folly that comes from ignoring rigorous science and instead operating by gut feeling alone. That sort of thinking is what gives us astrology and homeopathy and antivaxxers and climate change deniers. In many ways our reliance on quantifiable facts is a very, very good thing.

But there is an important distinction between an observable quantity grounded in the real, physical world, and the observation of non-physical quantities that we ourselves assign to things. There’s no law of nature that shows that something should have a value of $10. Monetary value is a convenient abstraction that allows us to more efficiently exchange goods and services. Some might argue that there are mathematical laws that show that a certain item should be given a certain monetary value. After all, we have the field of economics, don’t we?

But we must always remember that Economics is a field of study dedicated to a complex topic that we ourselves invented. It behaves in many ways like a physical science studying fundamental truths, but it applies that mathematical approach to studying the nuances of an artificial concept. Don’t get me wrong, those nuances are very important. Economics has meaningful things to say and implications for our lives. But economics is not physics.

It is easy to fall into the trap of assigning a numerical value to a qualitative concept and then relying on that value so exclusively that we forget that there is any other way to conceive of value. We create an imperfect model of reality and then forget that reality is not the model. IQ is not the same thing as intelligence. Standardized test scores do not measure everything a student has learned. A high Body Mass Index does not guarantee that you are fat. A low credit score doesn’t necessarily mean you aren’t trustworthy.

Our insistence on talking about everything in terms of monetary value or economic benefit is an extreme case of mistaking the comfortingly simple artificial metric for inconveniently messy objective reality. We are so deeply steeped in a capitalist society that prioritizes monetary value over everything else that it is difficult to even conceive of other types of value. We are like those cultures who do not have a word for the color blue and therefore are challenged to even recognize it. We lack the framework to fully conceive of or acknowledge other types of value without consciously exerting effort to do so.

A distressingly large portion of our society has taken this a step further, and not only prioritizes monetary value above all else, but actually uses it as a proxy for moral virtue. Morality is so uncomfortably hard to define around the edges, but net worth is nice and straightforward. If someone is poor then obviously they made bad choices or didn’t work hard enough. If someone is rich, it must mean that they are reaping the rewards of hard work rather than fortunate circumstances.

I was watching “Won’t You Be My Neighbor,” the documentary about Mr. Rogers the other day, and it had a disgusting moment showing talking heads on Fox News blaming Mr. Rogers for a supposed “entitlement culture” among kids these days. How dare he tell a generation of children that they are special just for being themselves? Why should these kids think they are special if they haven’t earned it? What a bunch of fragile little entitled “snowflakes.” The documentary then used the exact words I have had in mind since I started writing this essay: “intrinsic value”. The idea that everyone is special and worth caring about, not because they have earned it, but because they are human beings with intrinsic value. That everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect and celebrated just for being uniquely themselves. The documentary points out the deep Christian roots of this message: Mr. Rogers was a minister after all, and the show was his way of preaching the fundamentals of his faith, without ever mentioning religion.

There is not much that I find more depressing that witnessing half of our country give up on this idea of intrinsic value and human dignity while claiming to be Christians. They insist on preserving the sanctity of life in the womb (sometimes at the expense of the life of the living woman carrying that child), but once that child is born it’s a freeloading, entitled snowflake that needs to prove its worth.

These false Christians question whether people deserve health care, a home, food on the table, education, if they haven’t “earned” them. A little while back there was a Republican congressman who tweeted:

Yes! It absolutely should be. It is a fundamental sickness in our society that would even question whether some people deserve to eat.

Imagine if we lived in a society where people actually acknowledged the intrinsic value of other humans. Where everyone was guaranteed food, shelter, a basic income, healthcare, and a good education. Imagine the explosion of creativity, innovation, happiness and well-being that would result. Imagine allowing everyone to spend their one precious life doing what they love, even if it doesn’t pay well, or at all.

Imagine actually valuing human life.

Yes, it would cost money. Billionaires would have to pay some taxes. But it is not at all clear to me that the economic cost would be greater than the economic benefit, and it is absolutely clear that the intangible benefit, the lives saved, the lives raised out of poverty and misery, the freedom from suffering, would be worth it.

It’s hard to get there from here. We live in the real world, where the monetary cost of things is an important consideration. I understand that. I understand that even if we do acknowledge intrinsic value, we often need to be able to fall back on economic value for the sake of argument, to convince those that may not share our values. That’s ok. Often the right thing also makes good economic sense too. But we must not fall into the trap of making the economic argument so much that we forget the real underlying reasons for our positions.

Immigrants and asylum seekers provide a net economic benefit to our country. If they did not, would that change whether they deserve a safe place to live and raise their families?
Universal health care would be less expensive than our current system. If it was more expensive, would that change whether or not everyone deserves to be healthy?
It costs less to provide affordable housing than it does to leave people homeless. If it cost more, would that change whether people deserve a roof over their heads?
No one who works full time should have to raise a family in poverty.* Does someone who does not or cannot work full time deserve to raise a family in poverty?
Every dollar spent on NASA returns about ten dollars to the economy. If there were no economic benefits or spinoffs, would it be worthwhile to explore the universe?

*This line is taken directly from the Democratic party platform

How did I end up an angry liberal activist?

October 31, 2018 / Ryan / 2 Comments

Frodo: I wish none of this had happened.

Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides the will of evil.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a furious blog post about anger. I was livid about the impending confirmation of Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. I was so stressed I was not sleeping well, during a week when I was already sick, and I needed to write to get some of the emotion out of my head and onto the page.

The post had some good writing in it, if I may say so. I talked about how the anger of the Right is a petty and insular anger, a defensive curling-inward, seated in fear of losing a privileged place in society. I contrasted that with the anger of the Left, and particularly of those who have not traditionally held power. I had fun with the image of liberal anger as a volcanic eruption, long dormant but growing beneath the surface, unstoppable once unleashed and leaving the world changed but fertile, ready for new growth to replace what was burned away.

It was cathartic to write, but I took it down after posting it for less than a day. If I’m being honest, it was a bit over the top. I decided that, in the midst of all the negativity, my righteous anger was not was the world needed at that time.

After taking down the post I asked myself a question: Why am I so angry? What is it about Trump and the Republicans that bothers me at such a visceral level that not only do I rage about it ad nauseum on social media, but it has driven me to become a genuine political activist, attending rallies and canvassing for the Democratic party?

Believe me, I have a lot of other things I would rather do with my limited free time. None of this is fun for me. I’m an introvert. I avoid conflict. I hate inconveniencing others. So activities like canvassing are very draining for me. I would much rather write and talk to people about things like my adorable toddler, or good books and movies, or cool science. I have a dozen other hobbies or interests that I’d love to spend my time on. But instead I am pouring my energy and time into politics.

Why? Why am I so angry and stressed out that I can’t sleep at night? Why not ignore politics and enjoy my life again?

These questions have been rattling around in my head since I took down that furious blog post, and I think I’ve finally figured out the crux of the matter. It’s because the modern Republican party is diametrically opposed to two of my most deeply-held core values: Truth and Empathy.

Truth

“The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what’s true.”

― Carl Sagan

As a scientist, I’ve dedicated my life to truth. My worldview is built on the idea that we can understand the world around us, even when it behaves in unexpected or counterintuitive ways, by observing, testing hypotheses, and making corrections when we find out that we were wrong. Science has also given me a healthy appreciation for how unbelievably much there is to know in the world. Nobody can be an expert in everything (alas), so we have to trust in the expertise of others while still thinking critically and, as Sagan famously said, demanding extraordinary evidence to back up extraordinary claims.

The corollary of placing a high value on truth is placing a high value on honesty. During the 2016 election I went so far as to make this figure comparing the prominent politicians from the two major parties. There are two notable things here. The first is that yes, both parties misrepresent the truth or outright lie more than I would like. But the difference in the extent to which they lie is striking. Trump barely seems capable of telling the truth, but Pence and Romney are not far behind despite their more “traditional” political personas. The contrast between Trump and Clinton, especially in the blatant lies, is frankly breathtaking. If you were to set ideology aside and vote strictly based on the honesty of the candidates, it is clear which party you should vote for.

Let me put it this way: There are things that are true and things that are false.

It is true that the planet is warming and that greenhouse gas emissions are a dominant factor. The best scientific models predict we are rapidly headed for a world of droughts and famine, refugees fleeing coastal cities, mass extinctions, more destructive storms, and more.
It is true that voter fraud is vanishingly rare and that voter suppression is widespread.
It is true that trickle-down economics doesn’t work, that cutting taxes on rich people just means they get richer while deficits skyrocket and poor people remain poor.
It is true that police officers and indeed the entire criminal justice system exhibits bias against people of color, and that in many cases that has deadly results.
It is true that having more guns leads to more gun deaths.
It is true that sexual assault is common and false accusations of sexual assault are rare.
It is true that health care cannot be treated as a free market and that doing so costs people’s lives.
It is true that seeking asylum at our borders is not illegal, and that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born citizens, and that they provide a net benefit to the economy.
It is true that the greatest threat of terrorism in this country comes from right-wing white men.
It is true that the modern Republican party is following very closely along the path that led to the rise of fascism in pre-WWII Europe.

Do these statements sound partisan? They’re not. They’re just true. There should be nothing partisan about truth, yet the Republican party has worked so tirelessly at distorting the truth for so long that actual truth sounds like a liberal attack.

To solve the many and complex problems facing the world today, we must start with truth as a foundation. Lying to win elections harms everyone. Lying so regularly, so consistently, so deliberately that nearly half the country lives in an alternate reality where the facts are exactly reversed is literally threatening the stability of this country. In just the past week it has led to a mass assassination attempt, a racially motivated double-murder, and a massacre at a Jewish synagogue, and those are just the crimes that have made national headlines.

All of the true statements in the list above highlight real problems that need to be addressed, but we as a nation cannot address them if one party consistently, relentlessly, lies about all of them. It is enough to make a person think that Republicans are more interested in obtaining and holding power than they are in helping people.

Empathy

And that leads me to the second core value: empathy. I am not a religious person. I don’t think there is a being on high who determines what is right and wrong. Without an external definition of morality, I try to keep things simple: something is “Good” if it helps people, something is “Bad” if it harms people. The more people helped or harmed, the more good or bad. Empathy is the guide for this morality. If you want to do “good” and good is defined as what helps people, then by necessity you have to put yourself in their shoes and do unto them as you would have them do unto you. There is a reason the Golden Rule appears in every major religion.

I don’t think that there is an afterlife where we are rewarded or punished based on our actions in life. I think this is it. We get one life, and when it is over we are gone. The only things that remain are our genes, the people who remember us, and the changes we made in the world. That means I place a high value on making positive changes in the world. It means that I push myself to recognize how profoundly lucky I am, and that I take responsibility for my privileged life and try to pay some of my good fortune forward. Part of paying it forward is supporting policies that will help as many people as possible, even if that means I have to sacrifice a little bit.

When you look at the policies and behavior of the modern Republican party through the lens of empathy, it becomes clear that the party is completely morally bankrupt. Its policies are all about prioritizing the individual over the well-being of the broader society. An “every man for himself” mentality that promotes distrust and fear, rather than a “we’re in this together” mentality that promotes cooperation. Republicans reject the idea that there is a social contract and prefer to believe in the myth of the self-made man, ignoring the fact that the social contract is literally why humans are so successful as a species. (No, you might say, we are so successful because of our intelligence! But the leading theories of human evolution suggest that we evolved our intelligence primarily so that we could keep track of our social interactions among larger and larger groups. We are smart because we are social.)

Republican policies are just profoundly selfish. The obsession with taxes is the best example. Republicans prioritize a rich person’s right to obscene wealth over the well-being of society. Heaven forbid rich people pay a fraction of that wealth that will have no meaningful impact on their own lives for government services that could literally save other people’s lives. There appears to be this disturbing conflation among Republicans between wealth and morality. Rich people are rich because they somehow deserve to be. Poor people are poor because of some moral failing that makes them that way (typically laziness). The moment you suggest that success might not be entirely based on hard work, that some people work hard all their lives and remain in poverty while others are extremely successful and have sailed through life with minimal hardship, Republicans get upset.

There is also this strain of victimhood among Republicans that is fascinating and betrays a complete inability to put oneself in another person’s shoes. Republicans point to things like the #MeToo movement and Black Lives Matter as part of a broader societal shift that persecutes white men. They wring their hands over the possibility that false accusations of rape might ruin a man’s life ignoring the fact that (a) sexual assault or the threat thereof literally does ruin many women’s lives, and (b) credible accusations or even blatant admissions of sexual assault often carry little or no consequences (see, for example Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh).

“When you are accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.” – Author Unknown

“Conservative” Christians likewise have a bizarre persecution complex that Republicans are only too happy to tap into. They claim there is a “War on Christmas” when Christmas dominates literally every aspect of American life for the last two months of the year. They claim persecution when people protest putting the Ten Commandments on government buildings or putting creationism in textbooks. Meanwhile actual religious minorities are victims of hate crimes like the recent massacre at a synagogue.

Possibly the worst of all to me is the attitude toward immigrants and refugees. It frankly terrifies me that someone could be so heartless and consumed by hate and fear that they see parents and children fleeing thousands of miles to build a better life and rather than welcoming them with open arms, Republicans think the logical response is to lock them up in prison camps. When confronted about why they are imprisoning children, they say “well, their parents shouldn’t have broken the law” as if that is a reasonable response. What a dark and terrifying fictional world Republicans live in.

Why I’m So Angry

The Republican party has become a party that whips up white nationalist fervor in its base to protect the staggering wealth of its donors and the power of its politicians. It is the party that cuts taxes on the rich and pays for them by cutting benefits for the poor. It locks children in cages. It cuts funding from schools. As I type, it is using American troops as props in a desperate stunt to whip up racist fear of a convoy of refugees desperate for a better life so that it can win an election. Across all issues, at all levels, if there is something that will benefit normal people, the Republican party is against it. If it will benefit the rich and powerful, they are for it.

They say that in any situation where you have two groups who disagree, that you should be careful not to fall into the trap of characterizing the other side as “Evil”. That when that happens, both groups will just become more and more entrenched and the differences between them will never be resolved and often will become worse.

But what happens when one side is genuinely evil? I looked it up and the definition of “evil” is “profoundly immoral” or “morally reprehensible” or “causing harm.” Explain to me how the Republican party does not fit that definition.

The Republican party is literally undermining the pillars of our democracy. They are preventing people from voting. They stole one Supreme Court seat and filled another with a horrible man because they knew he would rule in their favor. Experts in the ways in which democracies fail are sounding the alarm. The Republicans are following the playbook of the Nazi rise to power in Europe with terrifying precision. The president’s rhetoric has inspired his supporters to commit or attempt heinous acts of violence, and instead of walking the rhetoric back he and the rest of the party just double down. The Republican party is in favor of policies that will kill people and ruin lives, whereas the Democratic party is in favor of policies that might raise taxes or cut into corporate profits or allow brown people to live here in peace. You can’t look at that and shrug and say that it’s not clear which party is morally right.

The Republican party lies constantly to advance a profoundly selfish and immoral agenda. What they stand for goes against my two most deeply held values: Truth and Empathy.

That’s why I’m so angry. That’s why I can’t just ignore what is happening. That’s why I resist even when it would be easier not to.

A 2-year-old Honduran asylum seeker cries as her mother is searched and detained near the U.S.-Mexico border on June 12 in McAllen, Tex. (John Moore/Getty Images/Washington Post)

A Father’s Thoughts on Separating Families at the Border

June 17, 2018 / Ryan / 0 Comments

I don’t know what words I can write here that haven’t already been said. I just know I need to write about this because if I don’t, it will consume me. If you’re sick of hearing about this, I understand. You don’t need to read this, but I need to write it.

It is now the policy of The United States of America to forcibly separate children and babies from their parents when they cross the border without documentation. It is not a law. It is a deliberate decision made by the Trump administration in order to shift the Overton Window for the immigration debate and extract concessions to get funding for an idiotic wall on our southern border, to solve a nonexistent problem. This outrageous shift in policy is abetted by Republicans in Congress who have been conspicuously quiet, because they know their base are a bunch of racists who quail at the sight of someone with dark skin, or who speaks a language other than English.

What is even more infuriating is that the Administration, after very publicly announcing that they were making the choice to adopt this “zero tolerance” policy, is now claiming that this is somehow the fault of Democrats, and that the Administration is just “enforcing the law”. And to top it all off, they’re trying to hide behind the bible as they do it.

First of all, if you think that Jesus would be in favor of shattering desperate families with literally nothing but the clothes on their backs, then you have been seriously misinterpreting the bible. Helping those who have the least is kind of a major theme.

Second of all, could we perhaps NOT base our policy decisions on a collection of barely coherent stories written by a bunch of hallucinating fanatics living in the desert a couple thousand years ago? Instead of pulling quotes from those often-contradictory stories to support whatever policy idea we prefer could we instead perhaps base our treatment of other human beings on the simple concept of empathy? Look, the golden rule appears in every major religion for a reason. Just treat others as you would want to be treated. Would you want your breastfeeding child to be taken away from you, never to be seen again? No? Then maybe rethink the fucking policy.

And while we’re at it, let’s talk a little bit about that excuse that destroying families is “enforcing the law”. It isn’t. But even if it were the law? Just because something is legal does not make it moral. Just because something is illegal does not make it immoral.

Let me repeat that for those in the back.

LEGAL ≠ MORAL

ILLEGAL ≠ IMMORAL

Undocumented immigrants are not amoral because they broke the law. Border patrol agents who are shipping children off to concentration camps are not acting morally because they believe they are following the law. (I should also note that many of these families are seeking asylum and voluntarily turn themselves in. This is NOT illegal.)

To add to the swirling soup of outrage and despair that this whole situation stirs up inside me, I know that this outrage I’m feeling? This impotent blog post I’m writing? It’s exactly the response the evil men responsible for this policy want me to have. These sociopaths know that this kind of cruelty will drive their opponents mad, so they can turn around and offer an immigration plan that halts the family separation policy as if that’s some sort of concession, and demand that in return we pay for a wall or some other idiotic policy that is worse than where we started. And it’s worth pointing out that “where we started” was already awful. We were already turning away people fleeing from war zones. People with terminal diseases seeking treatment. People who fled their homes because they were going to be murdered. We can’t lose sight of the fact that none of this is acceptable. We should welcome immigrants. Not only does it pay off in the long run, it’s also the right thing to do.

So I know I’m following the script perfectly by writing this post, by being performatively outraged on the internet so that my liberal friends can echo the sentiment and we can all whip ourselves into a froth about this. But what’s the alternative? Not be outraged by our country putting toddlers into prison camps? No. Sorry. If I’m not outraged by this, then I’m dead inside.

It is easy to look at the left these days and say “geez, you’re outraged about everything. Give it a rest.” Do you want to know why we’re outraged about everything? Because everything is outrageous right now. Do you want to know why people keep comparing the Republican party’s behavior to that of Nazis? It’s because they’re behaving like Nazis.

Father’s day is tomorrow. I had a nice introspective blog post about parenting that I was putting together. But right now, all I can think about are those fathers and mothers who have lost their children.

Imagine life in your home town, your home country, being so dangerous that the best choice available to you is to leave with nothing but the clothes on your back and your precious family, to travel vast distances at great risk to a country you know doesn’t particularly want you, based on the glimmer of hope that you might be able to get across the border and start a new life. There is a myth that, despite all evidence to the contrary, refuses to die about that country: that it is a land of opportunity where if you work hard you can make a good life for yourself and your family. You know the odds are slim, but you have nowhere else to turn.

But then you get to the border, and you’re intercepted by men with guns. They tell you that you’ve broken the law and you are going to jail. They tell you that your children cannot go with you. Or maybe they don’t even tell you. Maybe they just find some pretext to separate you, and then your children never return. You don’t even get to say goodbye. Your family is literally the only thing you have left in a world that has already been so cruel to you, and now your family has been destroyed too.

My son is 18 months old. He is innocent and full of joy. He toddles around making woofing sounds like a dog or pointing enthusiastically to birds out the window or bringing books over to me so he can climb up on my lap and read with me. All the clichés you hear about the love you feel as a parent are true. The love grows inside you until you think you might burst, that you can’t possibly contain it, and yet it keeps growing. It is so powerful it can be scary.

And so when I look at my son and feel that love, and then I think of someone taking my son away because I wanted him to have a chance at a safe life, I can hardly bear it. Just imagining what those parents are feeling, just conjuring the faintest shadow of what they must be going through, guts me. And then I think of what it must be like for the children. The confusion. The fear. I imagine my innocent son, living in a tent city, not seeing anyone he knows for months and months and months. It hurts me, but I cannot stop thinking about it.

I don’t have any hopeful message to end this on. I’ll just say this: Tomorrow is father’s day. Use it to cherish your family. Your safe and comfortable life. And then think about what you are going to do to fight the human rights abuse that is taking place on our border, and the people who make it possible. We need to get past the despair, harness the rage, and put it to work.

Star Wars Political Advice

May 6, 2018 / Ryan / 0 Comments

As the Trump presidency grinds on and Washington is consumed with so many simultaneous scandals that it is impossible to even maintain the mental bandwidth to register them all, I’ve found that there are a few things that I want to remind my fellow liberals. But then when I sat down to actually write them out, I had the wonderful realization that (a) yesterday was “Star Wars Day” (May the 4th be with you!), and (b) The things I want to say actually tie nicely with a few choice quotes from Star Wars. So, without further ado, some Star Wars themed political advice:

Don’t Get Cocky

Image result for star wars don't get cocky gif

There is a lot of talk about a rising “Blue Wave” in November, and polling and special election results have generally been very good for Democrats. Teacher strikes across the country have state legislators, who are used to being able to do terrible things while nobody is paying attention, pretty nervous. People talk as if Democrats taking control of the House is inevitable and the Senate is likely, and as if all the crazy Republicans in state and local government will be swept out of office.

Are these things possible? I hope so. But please. PLEASE, don’t get complacent. There are still great swaths of the country who think Trump and the Republicans are doing a great job. I firmly believe that Democrats can win, but only if we work hard for it. Want good candidates to win in November? Then you need to be signing petitions NOW to get them on the ballot (here’s the link for Arizona). Are you an Arizona voter who supported the #RedForEd teacher walkout? Then make sure you sign the #InvestInEd petition so that we can vote for permanent education funding in November. And if you’re a liberal anywhere, then make sure you and all your friends are registered to vote, and that you vote in the primaries.

Stay On Target

Image result for star wars stay on target gif

Look, I know. The news is just ridiculous. This administration has more (and worse) scandals in a week than Obama had in 8 years. It’s easy to end up getting outrage fatigue, exhausting yourself chasing each one and ending up getting nowhere. Likewise, it’s easy to look at the Mueller probe and hope that, like some sort of Deus Ex Machina, it will magically fix all of our problems.

The truth is, the problem isn’t just Trump, and the only thing that is going to make things better is voting Republicans out of office. Repeatedly. Election after election after election. And the way that happens is getting Democrats to the polls in overwhelming numbers, election after election after election.

Don’t let all the chaos of the news cycle distract you from that priority. Stay on target. Donate to groups that fight voter suppression, harass your friends and family to make sure they are registered (and signed up for early voting if it’s available), volunteer with groups that get people registered to vote, volunteer for the democratic party. Do whatever you can to make the “blue wave” happen.

Only a Sith Deals in Absolutes

The #RedForEd movement just wrapped up a historic teacher walk-out in Arizona. The result was a better budget for education than AZ has seen in quite a while, but it still fell short in many ways. Now that the walk-out is over, I’ve seen some people gravitating toward extreme responses: Either they try to make it seem like the movement was overwhelmingly successful, or like nothing was accomplished and that the strike should go on. Attitudes like this, gravitating toward either absolute, aren’t very productive. The truth is, the movement had some impressive successes given some of the truly horrible Republicans in the state legislature, but there is still a lot of work left to do.

Likewise, when it comes to candidates, there is a certain subset of liberal voters who require their candidates to be liberal in all things, or else they won’t vote for them. In the 2016 general election it was Bernie or Bust. Now I’m seeing a similar dynamic in the Arizona senate candidates. Deedra Abboud and Kyrsten Synema are the leading democratic candidates. Abboud is more liberal on most issues (and is my preference), while Synema is very moderate.

By all means, at this stage support the candidate you agree with most. Vote for them in the primary. But if the more moderate Democrat wins the primary (as seems likely in the AZ senate race), then we need to rally around them. I don’t like it any more than you do, but until ranked choice voting becomes widespread, the fact remains that we’re stuck with two dominant parties, and if you abstain from voting for the Democrats because their candidate isn’t liberal enough for your tastes, you give an advantage to the Republican.

The Purpose of a Gun

March 4, 2018 / Ryan / 0 Comments

What is the purpose of a gun?

It’s a question I’ve been thinking about a lot since the Las Vegas massacre, and has come to the fore again with the massacre in Parkland and the national discussion about gun violence that has followed. It’s a simple question, but it’s one that I think doesn’t get enough attention, because the answers get to the heart of the gun debate in the United States.

The simple answer to this question is that a gun is a device for propelling projectiles at high enough velocities to kill animals at a distance. More specifically, many guns are for killing human beings. That’s what guns are designed to do. But when I ask about the purpose of a gun, I don’t mean “what do they literally do?” I mean, “why do people buy them? Why do people think they need guns?”

Many gun owners will say that they own guns for defense. They want to protect their property, themselves, and their families from harm. Others will say that they own guns for hunting: killing animals for sport and/or food, and all of the culture and traditions that go with that. Polls show that those are far and away the two main reasons people own guns. Of course, guns serve another purpose as well: they are used in war for killing people. Our species has put a lot of effort into finding better ways to kill each other, and modern firearms are one result.

So, guns are for self defense, hunting, and war. But guns are more than just simple tools. Guns have a deep cultural significance that other tools don’t. People get emotional about guns. Why is that?

It helps to look at those three purposes more closely. Self defense, hunting, and war are intimately linked with our culture’s ideas of masculinity. The “man of the house” is traditionally responsible for keeping his wife and kids safe. Hunting is a manly thing to do: it is a rite of passage for boys to go out hunting with their fathers, and bringing home meat to feed the family again plays into the idea of the man’s role as provider for the household. And soldiers are seen as the epitome of masculinity, taking the man’s role of defender of the family and expanding to to defender of the country. Historically, killing has been a man’s job.

The purpose of a gun in modern American culture is not just as a tool, but as a talisman of masculinity. A fetish, worshiped for its power to confer masculinity on its wielder.

Couple the gun’s near-mystical status with a culture that is deeply misogynistic, where men seek to distance themselves from anything that seems even remotely feminine. The easiest way to insult a man in our culture is to question his masculinity, to imply that he is in some way woman-like. Men are taught that they must constantly prove their masculinity to themselves and each other, so what better way than to acquire guns? Surely nobody can question my masculinity if I own an arsenal of military-grade weapons.

At the same time, expressing any emotion other than anger is seen as feminine and therefore forbidden to any self-respecting red-blooded man. Boys don’t cry. Boys are supposed to like gym class and play sports so they can prove their physical prowess against other boys. Boys are not supposed to like poetry or drama, because those activities involve openly sharing emotions other than anger.

That said, our culture is changing fast. Women are breaking down barriers everywhere you look. Same sex couples can get married. Nerds are cool. The #MeToo movement is exposing rampant sexual harassment and men who have long gotten away with it are finally facing consequences. We had 8 years with an African American president. Cherished bastions of popular culture like Star Wars and superhero movies are having success after success by featuring women and people of color.

There’s a saying that goes: “When you are accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.” Right now a lot of white men, raised in a hyper-masculine culture, are seeing these shifts and feel like they are under attack. Plenty of men are able to adapt to the changing culture and celebrate it, but there is a segment of the population who instead double down on toxic masculinity. They perceive a threat to their way of life, and in response they acquire arsenals and continue to repress emotions to prove their masculinity at any cost.

There is another facet to guns that also comes into play here. Not only are they powerful symbols of masculinity, but guns offer the illusion of control. It is terrifying to think of an armed intruder breaking into your house and threatening your family, so many people want a gun so that if such a situation arises, they will not feel helpless. They can take control of the situation rather than wait for the cops to arrive. Studies show that having a gun in your house actually puts your family at greater risk, but it feels like it does the exact opposite. Likewise, the idea of a mass shooting is terrifying, and makes people feel helpless. You hear gun advocates say that they want to carry weapons to prevent such attacks, that if we just had more “good guys with guns” then we’d be safer. What they are really saying is that they cannot deal with feeling helpless if such a situation were to arise. By carrying a gun, they feel like if they found themselves in an attack, they could do something about it. This is of course not backed up by reality, where having numerous armed civilians in a shooting is likely to just add to the chaos, cause additional unwanted injuries, and make it much harder for law enforcement to do their jobs effectively. But the idea of having a gun is comforting because it gives an illusion of control.

So what we end up with are heavily armed, emotionally stunted, white men who feel like their way of life is under attack, and turn to guns as a way to reassert control. It’s the perfect recipe for gun massacres.

It is obvious that this country needs better laws to make it harder for dangerous people to get their hands on weapons that make killing easy. But I think it is equally obvious that gun violence in this country is also a byproduct of a deeply toxic culture of masculinity, and that if we want to curb the violence we need to work hard to change that culture.

I’m volunteering for the Democratic party, and you should be too.

August 14, 2017 / Ryan / 4 Comments

I don’t know the original source for this image. If you do, please let me know.

The Republican party has gone off the rails.

In just the last week, the Republican president threatened nuclear war with North Korea, military action against Venezuela for no apparent reason, thanked Russia for expelling American diplomats, and failed to immediately denounce Nazis and white supremacists even after they murdered a woman and assaulted many others. Before that, Republicans came within a hair’s breadth of passing a law, drafted in secret at the last minute, that would dismantle the Affordable Care Act (which is based on conservative ideas) and strip health insurance from millions of people. Our attorney general is a man who was deemed, in 1986, in Alabama, to be too racist to serve on the district court. Our Secretary of Education is a billionaire who has openly said that it is her goal to use education reform to “advance the kingdom of God” in direct opposition to the separation of church and state. The Republican party is systematically making it harder for minorities and the poor to vote, and has gerrymandered legislative districts in many states so that even if the GOP gets fewer votes, it gets more representatives. They reject the fact that humans are causing climate change, even as its effects become more obvious every year. They stole a seat on the supreme court.

It’s easy to point the finger at the Republican voters who got us here, and they absolutely deserve that blame. Many of them will claim that they just want smaller government and lower taxes and that they don’t support Nazis or racism or taking healthcare from poor children. But it was obvious what they were getting when they voted for Trump and Ryan and McConnell and other Republicans. If you are willing to ignore racism and misogyny and contempt for reality itself in order to get lower taxes for the rich, then guess what? The blood is on your hands when Nazis, encouraged by the people you elected, openly murder people on the streets.

That said, Republican voters are not the only ones to blame for the rise of Trump and the Republican party’s insanity. You and I are responsible for it too. We are complicit because we took for granted that facts and human decency should win out over lies and hatred. We sat by and watched while Republicans organized and voted and methodically took over every level of government. We saw Obama elected and thought that the country had turned a corner and that our work was done, when in reality the work was just beginning. We bickered among ourselves instead of working together to defeat one of the greatest threats that our democracy has ever faced. So now we have white nationalists in the streets and in the White House, a know-nothing president condoning their behavior and casually threatening nuclear war, and people having to call to beg their senators not to let them or their loved ones die for lack of health care.

This last election was a wake-up call for many of us, and I know that many of you have been participating in the resistance: marching and making calls, writing your representatives, going to town halls, donating to worthy causes, and all the rest. I know you’re tired, and I know you’re stretched thin, but there’s something else that I encourage you to do: Get involved with your local Democratic party as a Precinct Committee person (PC).

PCs are volunteers for the party who work at the most local level, usually within their own neighborhood. They help to get people registered to vote, to find out what issues matter most to their neighbors, and help get out the vote when election season comes around. PCs also play an important role in getting their county’s voice heard at the state level. For every three Elected PCs from a county, the country gets one additional representative at the state level.

The time commitment is not very large: occasional meetings and events that you attend as you are able. It is incredibly gratifying to get involved with a group of like-minded people from your county who are getting out there and doing something to turn the tide in 2018 and beyond. It’s also a great way to learn about local and state candidates so that you can make an informed decision for the primary election and help make sure the party puts forward candidates whose views reflect your own. As a PC, I’ve already gotten to meet multiple candidates for state and national office, as well as our representative in the U.S. House.

Becoming an active part of the party also lets you influence the party directly, outside of the primary election. If there is an issue that you think the Democrats aren’t emphasizing enough, or that you disagree with, then the best way to fix that is to get involved. Meet the people in your local party who can communicate that sentiment to those higher up in the party, or tell your representatives and candidates directly when you meet with them as a PC. I’ve been a PC for a few months now, and at least for my county, I have noticed that most PCs are older retired people. There is a lack of people from my generation and younger, meaning that the younger perspective is missing from the grassroots foundation of the party.

And lest you think that the Democrats are just taking the place of Republicans as the “Party of No” without any policy to back up our resistance, I encourage you to take a look at the Democratic party platform. I think you’ll like what you see there. We are fighting against racism and white nationalism. We are fighting to ensure that every person has access to affordable health care. We are fighting to ensure that every citizen can vote, and that every vote counts. We believe that everyone deserves a good education, not just those who can afford to pay for private schools and expensive colleges. We believe in science, and that something must be done to slow climate change.

It really boils down to this: the only way to stop the Republican party’s madness is for Democrats to start winning elections at all levels. Republicans have taken over our government because they are organized and they vote. If you want to resist them, then the best thing you can do is help the Democrats do the same. Get involved. Help make the Democratic party what you want it to be. Only then will we be able set our country back on the right track.

Patriotism, Genre Fiction, and Criticizing What You Love

July 3, 2017 / Ryan / 0 Comments

In both genre fiction and politics, our culture is struggling with the idea that you can criticize something that you love.

When someone points out that many video games are disturbingly sexist, or that Lord of the Rings is kind of racist, or that the Avatar movie perpetuates the “white savior” trope, are they no longer a fan of genre fiction?

When someone points out that the United States is the only country out of the 25 wealthiest nations that lacks universal health care, or that black people are disproportionately incarcerated and killed by police, or that our wars in the Middle East are responsible for the rise of ISIS, are they no longer a patriot?

In both cases, I say that thoughtful criticism is a deeper, more meaningful expression of love than blind enthusiastic support.

Let’s take Game of Thrones as an example. I love Game of Thrones. The books are among my favorite books of all time. They’re vast and deep, with well-developed characters with unique narrative voices; exciting, twisty, satisfyingly complex plots; epic, vivid worldbuilding; and they signal a profound shift in the fantasy genre, subverting the tropes of the genre established by Lord of the Rings and beginning the modern era of more “grimdark” fantasy. Likewise, the show is excellent: visually stunning, well-acted, and it brings the books that I love to life in a way that allows many more people to experience them. Not only that, but the show has been a revolution in terms of getting excellent genre fiction onto television, demonstrating to TV channels that compelling, adult-oriented stories can be told through genre fiction, and that audiences will eat it up.

But I will readily admit that both the books and the show have major problems too. The show is famous for its gratuitous nudity, and there have been several notorious examples of changes to the original book where main female characters are raped or threatened with rape. There is also a problematic “white savior” vibe to much of Danaerys’ story line. I would argue that the books are somewhat better, but there’s still a whole lot of rape and threats of rape, which is often defended with the old “historical accuracy” argument, because apparently dragons are plausible but a medieval society that isn’t quite so horrifically misogynistic is not.

There are those who see comments like those in the last paragraph and reflexively condemn them. How dare some “social justice warrior” criticize the genre they love? Why can’t people just enjoy things without picking them apart and over-analyzing everything? Why do these SJWs have to ruin everything by insisting on political correctness? They’re clearly not real fans. They clearly hate the genre.

For those who have been paying attention, this conflict came to a head in the video game community with the “gamergate” fiasco a few years ago. Women who dared to point out that video games are full of a disgusting amount of misogyny were harassed by an army of angry, mostly white, mostly male gamers who felt that their favorite hobby and its fundamental culture were being unfairly bashed. The conflict rapidly escalated to doxing (the release of private personal information), lost jobs, lost homes, and death threats.

Later, in the speculative fiction community, a similar conflict arose when the “Sad Puppies“, a group of angry, mostly white, mostly male, readers stuffed the ballot for the Hugo Award. They were supposedly fighting back against their perception that science fiction and fantasy were being ruined by SJWs trying to force everything to be politically correct and shoehorning women, people of color, and LGBT people into fiction, rather than trying to tell good old fashioned apolitical stories. (It apparently did not occur to them that it is possible to tell great speculative fiction about people who are not white straight men, or that all fiction carries with it political baggage.)

And then, of course, there is the 2016 election, where a group of angry, mostly white, mostly male, voters were apparently so appalled that we had a black president, and that a woman dared to run as his successor on a platform of inclusiveness and tolerance, that they instead voted for an unqualified narcissistic idiot. Trump’s campaign and its “Make America Great Again” slogan catered directly to the perception that criticizing our country is unpatriotic, and that somehow making things better for people who aren’t straight white men undermines what makes our country great.

But here’s the thing that the gamer-gators, sad puppies, and Trump voters don’t understand: unlike them, we don’t criticize from a place of hatred, but of love.

Sci-fi and Fantasy are supposed to push the limits of imagination, so why is it so hard to imagine that young women and people of color could be the heroes in great adventures? Video games allow the player to escape the real world and experience being powerful and “the chosen one”, so shouldn’t players be allowed to leave behind racism and misogyny when they enter the game world? And the United States is supposed to be a country where all people have unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, so shouldn’t we strive to uphold that ideal? Shouldn’t we point out where our great country does not live up to its promise for all of its citizens and then work together to form a “more perfect union”?

When you’re raising a child, you don’t praise them when they are behaving badly. You set high expectations and then help them to live up to those expectations. Why is it so hard to apply the same logic to the other things we love?

Whether it’s genre fiction, video games, or the United States of America itself, what we want is for the things that we love to live up to their true potential. To me, this is a much deeper, more meaningful way to show your devotion to something than blindly singing its praises and ignoring its flaws.