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Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

It’s Time—Check Your Registration

Posted in Culture, Politics, tagged , , , , , , on 24 Aug 2024| Leave a Comment »

Summer is winding down, and it’s a year divisible by four, so you know what that means. It’s Voting Season!

I know, I know; it seems like Voting Season began in 2022, and if you’re like me, then the last month seemed like a year all on its own, but for most people—no judgement here, seriously—for most people Voting Season 2024 hasn’t even begun yet.

A large chunk of the electorate doesn’t pay attention to the general election until after Labor Day. Totally understandable. Life takes time. Life takes energy and focus. Work, kids, errands, chores, keeping the household humming along, paying the bills, all that; who has time to spend on conventions and rallies and punditry?

But we’re here now. Labor Day is—[checks calendar]—next weekend, and in some states, early voting begins around the 20th of September (yes, really, 46 days prior! I checked it twice.).

Here’s the thing, though. Some states have been cleaning up their voter rolls, purging the registrations of those who may not have voted in a while. That means you may not be currently registered to vote. Re-registering may take some time, depending on your state, so lead-time can be important.

I ask, then, that you take a few minutes and go to Vote.gov, a government voter registration portal that can direct you to your state’s voter registration website. Just select the state in which you vote, and look for the “How to check your voter registration” heading. That’ll take you to your state’s website where you can make sure your voter registration is current (or, if it isn’t, they’ll tell you how you can register to vote). You don’t have to sign in or anything; my state’s website (Washington) just needed my name and birth-date to confirm that my registration is current.

There is a lot of other information at these sites, too, like if you need to update your name or address, or if you need to know about registration deadlines or voting methods/locations in your state.

So please, make sure you are registered to vote, and then make a voting plan (about how you’re going to vote, when you’re going to vote, how you’re going to get to the polling place, what ID you might need to bring, etc.).

Regardless of who you want to be your president, senator, representative, and state and local officials, many of the races are going to be close. The outcome may come down to a few dozen votes in each precinct, so your vote counts! Make sure you’re registered so you can cast it.

Thanks, all.

k

 

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For Your Consideration

Posted in Culture, Politics, tagged , , , , , , , , , on 28 Jun 2024| Leave a Comment »

Well, that was a bloody disaster.

I’m talking, of course, about last night’s “debate” between Biden and Trump. While Trump played the usual bloviating, grievance-fueled prevaricator who couldn’t manage to actually address 90% of the questions put to him, Biden’s performance was—there’s no way to sugar-coat it—feeble, stumbling, and unfocused.

While I don’t see the event as having helped either candidate, I know it hurt Biden, and that pumps up my already elevated cortisol levels into the red.

Democrats are in freak-out mode, and I am not about to attempt a prediction as to how this will play out. What I do want to do is throw a lifeline to those who are understandably concerned, who like neither of the candidates, and who are genuinely worried about the GOP’s right-hand trend toward lawless autocracy and unabashed theocracy.

We must, as a good friend of mine said, change the narrative.

Here’s my suggestion of how we can do this.

Vote for the Agenda, Not the Candidate

American politics took a wrong turn back when voters began to use the “Who would you rather have a beer with?” metric for deciding on a candidate. It was arguably the first misstep that put us on the path to where we are today, where we vote solely on who the candidate is (or appears to be), and not how they will govern. This is a critical distinction, as the person who is president is much less important than the agenda that person brings into office.

So, if you’ll indulge me, let’s do a little thought experiment. Take the candidates out of the equation—no Trump, and no Biden—and compare just the agenda that each major party is working toward. This is actually an easy thing to do as both parties have manifestos and a track record.

————

For the GOP, one need look no further than Project 2025. This 900+ page roadmap is the product of The Heritage Foundation, a highly influential ultra-conservative think tank that has been fighting against reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, civil rights, and climate change for decades. Aiding and abetting this project are over a hundred other right-wing groups such as Stephen Miller’s (he of the “family separation” immigration policy) America First Legal, and the book-banning, racism-denying Moms for Liberty. While Project 2025 is not officially the platform of the GOP’s campaigns, we hear them use its talking points in their rhetoric, see the actions they’ve already taken in support of it, and read about the steps they are taking toward a fuller implementation of its goals.

It’s impossible to accurately summarize this incredibly broad-based agenda, but let’s at least point to a few examples of where they’re going:

  • Christian nationalism is a driving force in the Project’s philosophy. We see already the attempts to erode the separation of church and state, with Christian teachings being mandated in schools (see Oklahoma, Louisiana) and attempts to eliminate the long-standing ban on churches endorsing candidates.
  • Climate change mitigation efforts should be abandoned by repealing regulations that curb emissions, downsizing the EPA, and abolishing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which the Project calls “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.”
  • Reproductive health is on the block, as the Project insists that life begins at conception, and intends to explicitly reject “the notion that abortion is health care.” This, includes the withdrawal of FDA approval of (and funding for) medical abortion drugs and the “morning after” pill. One spokesperson has said that the Department of Health and Human Services should require that “every state report exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method.” General healthcare, too, is up for changes, as the Project wants to rescind Medicare’s ability to negotiate drug prices (which recently brought the monthly price of insulin down to $35) and eliminate gender-affirming care.
  • Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) projgrams, which have far-reaching positive effects for many vulnerable minorities, will be removed and federal employees who have participated in such programs can be fired.  The Project proposes the recognition of only heterosexual men and women, the removal of protection against discrimination on the basis of sexual or gender identity, and promotion of a government that will “maintain a biblically based, social-science-reinforced definition of marriage and family.”

These are highlights only, and do not paint a complete picture, as we also need to keep in mind that the GOP talks openly about more tax cuts that primarily benefit the wealthy and corporations, about eliminating the ACA that provides healthcare for millions, and about letting Putin and Russia do “whatever the hell they want” and walk all over Ukraine (and wherever they want to go next).

————

On the Democrat side, it’s pretty much the opposite: religion has no place in government, climate change is real and must be combated, reproductive rights are essential healthcare, prescription drugs should be cheaper for everyone, and America is stronger because of our diversity.

In addition, the Democrats:

  • Have been working toward immigration reform and border security (though the GOP killed a bill they’d already agreed to, because it’s a good political football)
  • Have helped eliminate or reduce student loan debt for millions (though the GOP has worked hard to thwart every attempt)
  • Were able to bring down gas prices about 40 cents/gallon through a savvy set of maneuvers using the Strategic Petroleum Reserve
  • Have passed bills on infrastructure and manufacturing that have brought thousands of jobs and billions of investment dollars back to the states
  • Want to raise the minimum wage, fight for higher tax credits to offset child-care costs, and support workers who want to unionize
  • Support the fight against autocracy, be it against Putin’s imperialistic goals in Ukraine, or Iran’s proxies in the Middle East

————

Regardless of who is at the top of the ticket, these are the agendas, and one will win in November.

My vote will go toward the Democrat’s agenda, up and down the ticket, because:

  • Even though I live in a reliably “blue state,” I want to repudiate the GOP agenda.
    • I don’t want to win by a squeak; I want to win by a lot. I don’t want anyone to stay home or vote for a third party candidate because I want this extreme GOP agenda to be resoundingly defeated. I want the Democrat agenda to be given a mandate to proceed.
  • I want to give the Democrat agenda the tools it needs to realize these goals.
    • That means a majority in the House and the Senate, as well as control of the Executive branch. The GOP has proven it cannot/will not compromise. Hell, even when they did agree to a bill that gave them almost everything they wanted (i.e., this year’s immigration/border security bill), they killed it rather than give any kind of a “win” to the Dems. So I want a government that can actually do something, instead of being stuck in gridlock.
  • I want the Democrat agenda to have a chance to re-balance the Supreme Court (or at least maintain status quo).
    • If the GOP comes into power again, they’ll be able to replace aging conservatives Thomas and Alito with younger, more rabid justices, who will give us retrograde decisions like Dobbs for decades to come. And let’s not even think of them expanding the conservative majority on the bench, should one of the liberal justices retire.

There’s a lot at stake this election. We’re reaching a fever pitch and the results will shape our nation for decades.

One of these agendas will win, come November, and we don’t have the luxury of letting others decide for us.

If you’ve read this far, I thank you for your indulgence, and I greatly appreciate your time and attention.

k

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With Tears in my Eyes

Posted in Culture, Politics, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on 02 Jun 2024| 1 Comment »

There was a lot of celebrating, when the verdict came in, and a lot of gnashing of teeth, as well. I fully expected, given the outcome, to be in the former group. I wasn’t. Nor was I in the latter group, either. Instead, I was somewhere in between.

I was genuinely upset, not because of any imagined “travesty of justice.” I’d been following the trial closely, reading reportage from dispassionate sources, and listening to analysis from those who know the law much better than I, so I understood the charges, was familiar with the testimony and arguments, and understood the basics of the jury’s instructions. While verdicts of guilty seemed likely, I was prepared for a hung jury, because, well, Trump.

But as the guilty verdicts came in, on count after count after count, each one hit me like a gut-punch. I had to sit down, hand over mouth, tears in my eyes. Surprised the hell out of me, if I’m honest.

Why? Because it felt right, it felt correct, but it also felt terribly wrong. Wrong in the sense of, we shouldn’t even be here, we shouldn’t have to do this. We should not have a major political party that is hell-bent on nominating for the presidency a person who is an adjudicated fraud, a proven sexual assaulter, and who now is convicted of using illegal means to cover up payments and avoid election finance laws and thereby hide what would have been, for some, a critical fact concerning his character.

The names Gary Hart, Bill Clinton, and John Edwards—Democrats who suffered various political and civil fallout from their own sexual impropriety—came quickly to my mind. Why them, and why not this one? “It was a different time,” I hear some say. What? Was 2008 (for Edwards) a “different time?” As late as 2016, even after the Access Hollywood debacle, Trump’s Janus-faced surrogates were hounding Clinton for his decades-old antics.

Moreover, it was the nearly unanimous Republican response that felt wrong. No, more than just wrong. Dangerous. From the spectacle of the Red Tie Brigade that came downtown in lockstep to sit behind the accused in court, to the unison mouthing of ill-wrought talking points throughout the media, the country has been assaulted by words like “rigged,” “corrupt,” and “conflicted,” all designed to attack and weaken the judiciary and, critically, to erode our trust in the rule of law.

This is what the former Party of Law and Order has become. To defend the indefensible, they attack. They attack the judge, the judge’s family, the prosecution, and even the jury. The jury. Ordinary citizens, people like you and me, all deemed acceptable by lawyers from both sides, are attacked and slandered, doxxed and made to fear for their lives, simply because the defense’s rusty bucket of an argument didn’t raise a reasonable doubt in face of concrete evidence.

Now, a few days after, the sadness has not left me. I find little cause for celebration, as it has become clear that these thirty-four felony convictions will not make a difference to a large swath of the electorate. They have proven that Trump could, literally, shoot someone dead on 5th Avenue and he would not lose their vote.

And what does that say about us? As a country, as voters, as a population? What sort of respect could such a people enjoy? What sort of leadership could such a nation provide on the world stage? If America’s influence in the world is eroding, it is we who are doing the chipping away. If nations are crab-walking their way toward autocracy, it is in part because we are not bolstering our own democracy.

America has never been perfect. America will never be perfect. But we need to strive toward that goal, toward the “more perfect Union” of which our first Republican president spoke.

We have some little time left. There is a handful of months wherein I hope we, as a population, begin to see past our individual trees and toward the forest that we constitute.

My heart’s wish is that we succeed.

k

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Talkabout

Posted in Culture, Politics, Television, tagged , , , , on 07 Dec 2023| Leave a Comment »

From the Old Man Shouts Into the Wind files, Entry #4492.

[Entry Begins]

A few years ago I received an invitation to be interviewed on a podcast. It wasn’t a big-deal podcast, just a couple of guys who nattered on about books, but I’d never done an audio interview (my previous ones had all be text-based for print publications), so I responded and we began to set it up. It didn’t take long for me to realize that this was not going to be an “interview” interview, but something entirely different.

My first clue came when I asked which of my books they wanted to discuss (I had two series and one standalone novel at the time). The answer—and I’m paraphrasing here—was, “Oh, we don’t know anything about any of your books.” In essence, it was not an interview, but a time slot in which I could hold forth and flog my books.

Some people are good at this type of thing. Some people are really good at it. And good for them! It’s a valuable skill in this “Look at Me!” age of influencers and TikTok stars, where publishers (if you are lucky enough to have one) put little (if any) money into marketing non-premium titles, and most of the promotional setup and execution has to be done by the author.

Sadly, I am not one of those people. I am so definitely not one of them, that I decided not to participate. I’m sure that podcast audience got along just fine.

I relate this anecdote as prologue, because from that day to this I have noticed a distinct trend in interviewing style, and it’s one that (in my opinion) severely diminishes the form. It’s what I call the “Talkabout” style.

At its heart, an interview is a conversation. Interviewer asks a question and Interviewee responds. This leads to another question and another response. Interviewer at some point will switch to another topic, and they begin anew. This question and response interplay can lead to deeper insights, as the interviewer builds on Answer #1 in forming Question #2, exploring the topic more fully. This technique works especially well in adversarial interviews, where it drifts from the conversational toward a more debate-like vibe, and the questioner can drill down into responder’s answers.

The “Talkabout” style, on the other hand, is not a conversation; it’s performance on demand. The host (not “interviewer”) greets the guest and says, “Talk about your latest [insert topic element here].” There is no question. There is no “If you would” or “Please.” It’s merely a time slot in which the guest can hold forth, a command behind a conversational facade. It is an “interview-shaped object.” Once the guest has finished talking about the thing, there is no follow-up question; instead, the host gives their opinion of the guest’s opinion or merely regurgitates what the guest delivered using different words. This is usually followed by another “talk about” demand. It is not an interview.

There are times when an interviewer will ask the guest to explain something to the audience (a movie’s premise, the context of an essay, a brief history of a political situation, etc.) and this is acceptable (to me) because context is important, and it’s better if it is the guest/expert who provides that perspective. After that, though, an interviewer will return to questions, whereas the “talkabout” host will not.

I know this is not likely to change, primarily because of the way most of us consume news and opinion, i.e., it tiny tiny bites. Many don’t read past the headlines, and certainly won’t read past Question/Answer #1 to get the deeper insight of Question/Answer #2. I also know that my personal sensibilities are outdated, and that while I bristle at what I perceive as a lazy, sloppy, borderline rude method to elicit information without breaking the surface tension of any given topic, it is for others perfectly acceptable.

But maybe some will read this, see something they hadn’t noticed before, and seek out sources that provide a deeper analysis or insight into a given question.

An interview is only as good as the interviewer, and just as the ability to write does not make us all good writers, so too, the ability to speak does not make us all good interviewers. For my part, I’ll seek out the person who asks a question, and then another, and then another, diving deeper each time into the why or the how of a topic. It takes more time, yes, but if I want to understand rather than merely parrot, it is incumbent upon me to spend it.

[Entry Ends]

 

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I’m All Outta Hate

Posted in Culture, Politics, tagged , , , , , , , on 15 Jun 2023| Leave a Comment »

Here, in the middle of Pride Month and with Juneteenth just a few days away, I began asking myself some questions, and in ruminating on one question, I landed on a surprising (to me) answer.

Maybe it’s because I’m old. Older. Calmer. With a longer view. More experience from which to draw and evaluate. Maybe.

Or maybe I just had an epiphany. A light-bulb moment—not in the sense of a sudden idea, but more like, Hey, I turned on the light and now I can see what was hiding in the shadows.

Or maybe it’s merely because I asked myself a question that I’d never asked before, never even thought of before.

Regardless of the why, the fact is that I did ask myself a question.

The question: What good is hate?

We all have emotions. It’s in our nature. We love, we fear, we get angry and happy and sad, and we hate*. If I were to posit factors common to them all, I would say that these emotions all
(a) cloud our rational judgement and
(b) have an upside.

Except hate. I just don’t see an upside to hate.

Love definitely clouds our judgement, blinding us to flaws, but it helps us bond and work for mutual benefit. Fear has obvious irrational downsides, but “the gift of fear” is that it can alert us to dangers of which we might not be cognizant. Anger, happiness, sadness, they’re more subtle, but the same factors apply.

Except hate.

I see no benefit to hate. There’s no “gift of hate,” no advantage it bestows that might counter its many and obvious drawbacks. Hate only clouds our judgement and makes it easier for us to do harm, wish ill, lash out, fight, hurt, kill.  Hate allows us to impute to others fictitious motivations, fueling our righteous anger. (Those immigrants aren’t coming here to steal your job. They’re just trying to make a better life, live in a safer place, or escape danger, just as you would.) Hate allows us to justify wrongs and persecute others for being different. (Someone who dresses in different clothes, loves a different type of person, or speaks a different language is not trying to make you do the same; they just want to live their life their way, not yours.)

But there’s nothing I do that requires hate. There’s no action that is instigated or accompanied by hate that I can’t also do without hate. I can dislike or avoid people, I can try to change a person’s mind or the way a system works, I can prosecute and jail someone for breaking the law, I can battle a foe with political or (if necessary) physical force, all without hatred. It could also be argued, that I might do all of those things better, more efficiently, absent any feelings of hate, as my judgement would not be clouded by passionate emotion that lead me astray.

There is so much around us today that is seeded in fear and fed by hate—of minorities, of LGBTQ+ folks, of immigrants, even of women—that it’s difficult to get to the core of any of it (much less all of it). I’m not saying we don’t have issues and problems that need to be resolved (we definitely do); I’m saying that it’d be a helluva lot easier to address those issues and problems if we didn’t hate so much. Hate is counter-productive. It only heightens confrontation, diminishes understanding, and leads to brute force methods when ratiocination would almost always provide a a better outcome. Hate is counter to peace.

People will disagree with me on this. Definitely. And if someone can point to an actual benefit for hate, please, shout it out. But saying that “it’s in our nature” isn’t a good enough reason to engage in it. To quote Rose Sayer (from The African Queen, 1951): “Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.”

k

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* In researching for this post, I asked “How many basic human emotions are there, and what are they?” The answers varied, of course, but in general they listed between four and seven basic human emotions. What I found surprising was that neither love nor hate were on the lists, even though (to me) they seem the most human of emotions.

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A Whole Lotta NOT Goin’ On

Posted in Culture, Politics, tagged , , , , on 25 May 2023| 2 Comments »

As often happens when performing mundane tasks, I was surfing through samples of bathroom tiles when it really hit me. The thought has been coming for a while—several months, if I’m honest—but even so, yesterday’s version was a mule-kick.

Strokes, heart attacks, cancers . . . relatives, friends, icons of my time: Death has been stalking my cohort, scything us down, bringing in the sheaves.

When combined with retirement broaching the horizon (I retire in a little over 300 days), it has become impossible not to look ahead toward my own end game. Facing facts, if I’m lucky, I probably have about twenty years before I hit my sell-by date. Twenty years. That may sound like a long time to some of you but let me tell ya, by the time you hit 65, it’s a blink, a flash, a mere moment. I’ve been working for fifty years. I’ve been married for forty years. I’ve been working for the same company for thirty years. I’ve lived in the same house for over twenty years. And those years, with all their challenges, their dreams, their lessons, they’ve sped by in a breathless rush, leaving only dusty memories.

So, twenty years does not feel like a long time, especially when it’s the final act of my story. It’s not like I had lofty ambitions. It’s not like I’m afraid I won’t “make my mark” or “live up to my potential” in my remaining time—I gave up on those tropes long ago—but I did expect that the path we’d all been traveling for most of my existence would plod along in the same basic direction, rather than taking the sharp U-turn that it has.

I think I can be forgiven for having had faith in our progress as a species. My earlier life saw increases in protections—for minorities, for women, for the environment, for consumers—and ever-greater acceptance of people as individuals. We survived wars and riots, assassinations and upheavals, and emerged confident, devoted to the betterment of society and cooperation between nations. Things were still far from perfect—far from acceptable, truth be told—but steps were being taken, and progress was being made, and I had faith in the trendline; I could see its upward arc and imagined my future, following it as a guide.

All that has changed. Or perhaps it only seems to have changed; more likely, I simply misjudged the breadth of human compassion and the influence of our “better angels.” While some . . . many . . . still work toward a society of inclusion and mutual respect, of peace and shared prosperity, many others live the dogma of exclusion, bent on the imposition of control over those unlike themselves.

Too many are now governed by the philosophy of NOT.
NOT this. NOT that. Thou shalt NOT.
–Thou shalt NOT teach about bad things in our past.
–Thou shalt NOT allow those unlike yourself to have the same opportunities as you.
–Thou shalt NOT even respect the facts.

The trendline of the next twenty years—likely my last—has been pretzeled into a knot, a strange loop from which we may not emerge while I live, if ever. And that’s a bitter pill.

The thing is, it’s so easy to be kind. In fact, it’s easier to be kind than it is to be hateful, angry, cruel. All that rage, it takes energy; it eats away at the psyche, corroding the soul.

I don’t have an answer, other than to be kind myself and advocate for kindness. Conflict has been with us forever—it’s part of our nature—so there will always be times when being kind is a challenge.

But it’s better to fail at being kind than never to try.

k

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Is There No Coming Back

Posted in Poetry, Politics, tagged , , , , , on 30 Mar 2023| Leave a Comment »

Is there no coming back,
no retreat from this landscape of ire,
this canyon of sorrow

Far beyond the limits of hope,
bordered by despairing walls,
unable to care

Except for our own kind,
our own mind-like echoes,
our mirror selves

Where every difference,
each flower of nuance,
challenges the power

Born of our righteous rage,
grown fat on bias and lies,
clothed in trappings of heaven

Armed with tools of denial,
building myriad barricades,
but never a bridge

To link us,
to lift us,
to exalt

In all that we are?

k

 

 

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