I haven't been writing nearly as many political posts as I used to. It isn't because my interest or passion has waned. It's partly because I now have an infant son who takes up a significant chunk of my time, but that isn't the whole story either.
The truth is that I've been struggling. Mightily. On one hand, I am progressive-minded on almost every issue, and I routinely want to take torches and pitchforks to those who are intent on keeping the monsters in their castle. My first instinct, every time I read a misinformed, misguided, or straight-up vile opinion expressed online, is to rail vehemently against the poster - to make use of my special gift of scathingly acerbic dickishness to put them in their place. Or to at least make myself feel better by getting things off my chest.
On the other hand, I've spent much of the last couple of years reading and learning a lot about human psychology. I've been combating the urge to view anyone with opposing viewpoints as "evil" (even if I still see them as impediments to our success as a species). I've learned how dramatically a host of exterior influences can mold a mind into believing some pretty galling stuff. Of course, we all understand on some level that a person, raised in a backward town by racist and homophobic parents who only expose their offspring to Fox News, The Blaze, and crazy Uncle Vernon, might grow up leaning conservative. But it took me a while to admit that I must accept the reverse could be true; that maybe I wasn't as enlightened or free-thinking as I thought I was. That it could just be my liberal parents, and liberal education, and liberal community, that forged the person I am - that convinced me that my worldview was the accurate one. The moral one. In my gut, I feel that I'm on the right side of things. But as a believer in science, and as someone who understands (at least on some level) the depths of human self-delusion, and the power of biases and logical fallacies to obscure our perceptions of the world, I had to confess that perhaps everything wasn't so black and white.
All that said...fuck it.
We no longer have the luxury of patience. I could try to reach out to those on the fringe of partisanship, and strive toward finding common ground, and maybe even change a mind or two. It's what I hoped to accomplish with "Start the Evolution," my short-lived Facebook project, with which I hoped to break down walls so that we could connect, and catch a glimpse of each other's humanity.
Yeah - I'm no longer interested in doing that.
If you've got a whiff of humanity inside you somewhere, but it isn't immediately apparent, I'm done wasting effort to draw it out of you. That's your own battle to wage. And I hope you come out the other side with a revitalized sense of decency. But there is a large, looming, ticking clock above us now. We are at war, plain and simple. And for me, the stakes are not just my life, but that of my wife, my infant son, and all of my other loved ones. Your continued obstinacy, which flies in the face of either established science or basic, should-be-obvious codes of morality, is an affront and an attack against everything that's dear to me. We don't have to agree on everything, of course - there is still plenty of gray in this world - but if you insist on holding to views that blatantly support cruelty, corruption, hypocrisy, and ignorance, consider yourself my enemy.
I keep coming back to the Elie Wiesel quote: "We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented." Until now, I've been reluctant to "take sides." I don't want to fall prey to the grimmer aspects of tribalism, and I don't want to drive away people who think I'm being unreasonable or unforgiving. But again - the stakes are too high. I fully expect to piss off many people I genuinely care about, and probably to lose some of them. Before that happens, however, I'm pleading with you to consider what side of history you'd like to be on (assuming there is anyone in the future to even look back at our present as "history"). Now is the time for you to reexamine your ideologies. Become enlightened, and do it quickly. The world will not wait.
If you call yourself a Republican, think about what that means. Because it doesn't mean what it did 10 or 15 years ago. Political parties are always evolving - to say today that you align with the Republican party is to say that you endorse what the current leaders of that party do routinely and without compunction. You are for widespread voter suppression. You are for off-the-charts gerrymandering. You are for foreign interference in our election process, provided the interfering nations are performing their chicanery in your favor. In short, you are for whatever kinds of underhanded deceit and trickery are required to destroy the democratic process in order to keep the right in power. Subverting the will of the people: this is how a representative democracy falls. This is how an empire crumbles.
If you say you are a Republican, you are for the absurd idea that humankind is not largely responsible for climate change, despite the constant protestations on the part of all those who have made it their life's work to study this shit. Yes, there may be plenty of conservatives who do believe we are negatively affecting the environment, but if you support current Republican leaders and continue to vote them into office, you are absolutely complicit in our collective demise.
If you say you are a Republican, you are for the oppression and inhumane treatment of women, of ethnic minorities, of LGBTQ. You may have gay or black friends - you may even be a woman yourself - but if you support the party of intolerance and backward legislation on social issues, you are responsible for the degradation of our humanity.
If you say you are a Republican, you are against even common sense gun legislation, which only the nuttiest of nutjobs are still against. You are against funding education and healthcare in the interest of funneling more money into a military that is already more than equipped to keep us as safe from foreign threats as we can ever hope to be. You are against the basic human decency involved in showing compassion for those who are fleeing unimaginable terrors in their homelands, and denying them sanctuary in a land that can easily accommodate them, simply because you fear your own quality of life may be lessened by even a fraction of a percent.
You may not hold all of these views. But if you register and vote as a Republican, in a time when these are your Republican leaders, and this is your Republican party platform - you are destroying us. That is not hyperbole.
Am I asking you to switch allegiances and register as a Democrat instead? No. I am frequently furious with the Democratic party. I am fiercely against hypocrisy and corruption, no matter who is responsible, and politicians - whether blue or red - are perpetual perpetrators of both. I call myself "liberal" or "progressive," because I am both of those things. And I will always vote down the Democratic ticket as long as the alternative is so clearly inferior and dangerous. But I'm not asking that of you. There is no reason to align with either party, if you are so disappointed by them. It is certainly understandable. But when casting your votes - at least now, in our present climate, with what these parties currently represent - do not vote for those who label themselves Republican. It is the party of regression. It is the party of cruelty, and the party of blindness. The right has been digging our grave. I am begging you not to hand them a shovel.
For the love of whatever God you do or do not believe in, stop watching Fox News. That doesn't mean you need to watch CNN or MSNBC instead - seek out sources of nonpartisan news reporting, step out from behind the veil of pure propaganda and hate-mongering, and choose to learn about the world as it actually exists. Retire insults like "libtard" and "snowflake" and realize that, while the left may put many steps wrong in its efforts, it is at least well-intentioned. It stands for peace, love, and happiness - hippie ideals that you can scorn if you like, but which are the elements that make life worth living. In a world run by the left (and no, that does not entail a communistic or socialistic society), there would be little to no brutality or denial of fact. The words "conservative" and "progressive" tell the whole story. We should never try to conserve or preserve the way things are, when things are deeply flawed. We should always be trying to improve ourselves, so that we can make progress and create a better world. The changes required to make that progress can be scary and unfamiliar, and it may compel us to admit that we haven't always been perfect, but they are the only way forward, if we are to experience a future that isn't mired in terror and misery.
(Unfortunately for all of us) I can't stay quiet any longer. Because the one thing this world needs is yet another blog from me, I am going to be collecting my thoughts here (https://makehumanitytolerableagain.blogspot.com/), and will post each new entry on Facebook and Twitter. I used to dream of using my writing ability to entertain and amuse my audience with stories of fiction, but the worse things get, the harder time I have expending time and energy on something that might not have a more direct and immediate effect on people's minds, or that has a better chance of enacting change somehow. Not that I expect my words to have any kind of profound effect on the state of the country or the planet, but it's where my efforts need to be focused if I want to have any hope of sleeping at night.
We have a pretty important vote coming up. If you typically vote Republican, I encourage you to buck your instinct to be angered and offended by this post. If you're opposed to the self-reflection required to come to the right conclusion, unfriend or unfollow me if you have to. But I'd much prefer you do some solid introspection in the days ahead, and vote out of office those individuals who are far more concerned with their own financial well-being than they are making sure human beings are still populating the Earth by the turn of the next century.
It's not too late for you to abandon the party that has abandoned all of us. As long as humanity is still alive and kicking, there is hope. Let's keep that hope alive.
The truth is that I've been struggling. Mightily. On one hand, I am progressive-minded on almost every issue, and I routinely want to take torches and pitchforks to those who are intent on keeping the monsters in their castle. My first instinct, every time I read a misinformed, misguided, or straight-up vile opinion expressed online, is to rail vehemently against the poster - to make use of my special gift of scathingly acerbic dickishness to put them in their place. Or to at least make myself feel better by getting things off my chest.
On the other hand, I've spent much of the last couple of years reading and learning a lot about human psychology. I've been combating the urge to view anyone with opposing viewpoints as "evil" (even if I still see them as impediments to our success as a species). I've learned how dramatically a host of exterior influences can mold a mind into believing some pretty galling stuff. Of course, we all understand on some level that a person, raised in a backward town by racist and homophobic parents who only expose their offspring to Fox News, The Blaze, and crazy Uncle Vernon, might grow up leaning conservative. But it took me a while to admit that I must accept the reverse could be true; that maybe I wasn't as enlightened or free-thinking as I thought I was. That it could just be my liberal parents, and liberal education, and liberal community, that forged the person I am - that convinced me that my worldview was the accurate one. The moral one. In my gut, I feel that I'm on the right side of things. But as a believer in science, and as someone who understands (at least on some level) the depths of human self-delusion, and the power of biases and logical fallacies to obscure our perceptions of the world, I had to confess that perhaps everything wasn't so black and white.
All that said...fuck it.
We no longer have the luxury of patience. I could try to reach out to those on the fringe of partisanship, and strive toward finding common ground, and maybe even change a mind or two. It's what I hoped to accomplish with "Start the Evolution," my short-lived Facebook project, with which I hoped to break down walls so that we could connect, and catch a glimpse of each other's humanity.
Yeah - I'm no longer interested in doing that.
If you've got a whiff of humanity inside you somewhere, but it isn't immediately apparent, I'm done wasting effort to draw it out of you. That's your own battle to wage. And I hope you come out the other side with a revitalized sense of decency. But there is a large, looming, ticking clock above us now. We are at war, plain and simple. And for me, the stakes are not just my life, but that of my wife, my infant son, and all of my other loved ones. Your continued obstinacy, which flies in the face of either established science or basic, should-be-obvious codes of morality, is an affront and an attack against everything that's dear to me. We don't have to agree on everything, of course - there is still plenty of gray in this world - but if you insist on holding to views that blatantly support cruelty, corruption, hypocrisy, and ignorance, consider yourself my enemy.
I keep coming back to the Elie Wiesel quote: "We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented." Until now, I've been reluctant to "take sides." I don't want to fall prey to the grimmer aspects of tribalism, and I don't want to drive away people who think I'm being unreasonable or unforgiving. But again - the stakes are too high. I fully expect to piss off many people I genuinely care about, and probably to lose some of them. Before that happens, however, I'm pleading with you to consider what side of history you'd like to be on (assuming there is anyone in the future to even look back at our present as "history"). Now is the time for you to reexamine your ideologies. Become enlightened, and do it quickly. The world will not wait.
If you call yourself a Republican, think about what that means. Because it doesn't mean what it did 10 or 15 years ago. Political parties are always evolving - to say today that you align with the Republican party is to say that you endorse what the current leaders of that party do routinely and without compunction. You are for widespread voter suppression. You are for off-the-charts gerrymandering. You are for foreign interference in our election process, provided the interfering nations are performing their chicanery in your favor. In short, you are for whatever kinds of underhanded deceit and trickery are required to destroy the democratic process in order to keep the right in power. Subverting the will of the people: this is how a representative democracy falls. This is how an empire crumbles.
If you say you are a Republican, you are for the absurd idea that humankind is not largely responsible for climate change, despite the constant protestations on the part of all those who have made it their life's work to study this shit. Yes, there may be plenty of conservatives who do believe we are negatively affecting the environment, but if you support current Republican leaders and continue to vote them into office, you are absolutely complicit in our collective demise.
If you say you are a Republican, you are for the oppression and inhumane treatment of women, of ethnic minorities, of LGBTQ. You may have gay or black friends - you may even be a woman yourself - but if you support the party of intolerance and backward legislation on social issues, you are responsible for the degradation of our humanity.
If you say you are a Republican, you are against even common sense gun legislation, which only the nuttiest of nutjobs are still against. You are against funding education and healthcare in the interest of funneling more money into a military that is already more than equipped to keep us as safe from foreign threats as we can ever hope to be. You are against the basic human decency involved in showing compassion for those who are fleeing unimaginable terrors in their homelands, and denying them sanctuary in a land that can easily accommodate them, simply because you fear your own quality of life may be lessened by even a fraction of a percent.
You may not hold all of these views. But if you register and vote as a Republican, in a time when these are your Republican leaders, and this is your Republican party platform - you are destroying us. That is not hyperbole.
Am I asking you to switch allegiances and register as a Democrat instead? No. I am frequently furious with the Democratic party. I am fiercely against hypocrisy and corruption, no matter who is responsible, and politicians - whether blue or red - are perpetual perpetrators of both. I call myself "liberal" or "progressive," because I am both of those things. And I will always vote down the Democratic ticket as long as the alternative is so clearly inferior and dangerous. But I'm not asking that of you. There is no reason to align with either party, if you are so disappointed by them. It is certainly understandable. But when casting your votes - at least now, in our present climate, with what these parties currently represent - do not vote for those who label themselves Republican. It is the party of regression. It is the party of cruelty, and the party of blindness. The right has been digging our grave. I am begging you not to hand them a shovel.
For the love of whatever God you do or do not believe in, stop watching Fox News. That doesn't mean you need to watch CNN or MSNBC instead - seek out sources of nonpartisan news reporting, step out from behind the veil of pure propaganda and hate-mongering, and choose to learn about the world as it actually exists. Retire insults like "libtard" and "snowflake" and realize that, while the left may put many steps wrong in its efforts, it is at least well-intentioned. It stands for peace, love, and happiness - hippie ideals that you can scorn if you like, but which are the elements that make life worth living. In a world run by the left (and no, that does not entail a communistic or socialistic society), there would be little to no brutality or denial of fact. The words "conservative" and "progressive" tell the whole story. We should never try to conserve or preserve the way things are, when things are deeply flawed. We should always be trying to improve ourselves, so that we can make progress and create a better world. The changes required to make that progress can be scary and unfamiliar, and it may compel us to admit that we haven't always been perfect, but they are the only way forward, if we are to experience a future that isn't mired in terror and misery.
(Unfortunately for all of us) I can't stay quiet any longer. Because the one thing this world needs is yet another blog from me, I am going to be collecting my thoughts here (https://makehumanitytolerableagain.blogspot.com/), and will post each new entry on Facebook and Twitter. I used to dream of using my writing ability to entertain and amuse my audience with stories of fiction, but the worse things get, the harder time I have expending time and energy on something that might not have a more direct and immediate effect on people's minds, or that has a better chance of enacting change somehow. Not that I expect my words to have any kind of profound effect on the state of the country or the planet, but it's where my efforts need to be focused if I want to have any hope of sleeping at night.
We have a pretty important vote coming up. If you typically vote Republican, I encourage you to buck your instinct to be angered and offended by this post. If you're opposed to the self-reflection required to come to the right conclusion, unfriend or unfollow me if you have to. But I'd much prefer you do some solid introspection in the days ahead, and vote out of office those individuals who are far more concerned with their own financial well-being than they are making sure human beings are still populating the Earth by the turn of the next century.
It's not too late for you to abandon the party that has abandoned all of us. As long as humanity is still alive and kicking, there is hope. Let's keep that hope alive.
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