You Get What You Don’t Vote For

It struck me the other day that it should be impossible for someone like Governor Pence to sign a loathsome piece of legislation like the “Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”  After all, Mr Pence is not a particularly dumb person nor is he privy to polls that the rest of us cannot see.  Surely, he would see the groundswell of support that the LGBT community has had over the years and recognized that passing such a law would be political suicide, something that matters greatly to a man who aspires to higher office.  Yet he didn’t follow that political calculus, why?  Well, it’s quite simple really, there’s a huge difference between the opinion of the American people and the opinion of the American electorate.

It’s no secret that turnout to elections in America is routinely pretty low, and downright abysmal on off-year elections.  The most recent election saw a record breaking turnout of 36.4% of voters, making it the lowest turnout in 70 years.  You may very well ask yourself, “what happened 70 years ago to get turnout even lower than that?”  Just a little diversion called WWII.  This truly appalling turnout is the reason why the GOP took back the Senate.  As a measure of popularity, the Republicans are far less popular than the Democrats, and almost always have fewer registered members than Democrats.  But it doesn’t matter if you have poll numbers under 40%, so long as that 40% is the one that actually shows up on election day.

And believe me, I understand the reasons why people don’t vote.  “All the politicians are corrupt, so what’s the difference.  I don’t know enough about the candidates to make an informed decision.  I refuse to choose the lesser of two evils.  The game is set up to exclude voices and politicians I might actually agree with, and falsely prop up two parties that don’t represent my beliefs.”  This is further compounded with the reality that voting has been made as difficult as possible in America.  Elections are on a Tuesday, when most people are working.  Polling stations are not easily accessible for many Americans.  Restrictions on when you can register and when you can vote make it incredibly difficult for people who move across country, for a job say, to be eligible to vote.  The new and growing requirements for voter ID, intentionally make it more difficult for poor and elderly citizens to be able to vote.  All these and many more go some way to explaining why most Americans don’t regularly vote, but these are just excuses.

There is an odd phenomenon of intelligence acting as a barrier to voting.  Many people I know, who don’t vote, are quite bright and pretty well informed.  In spite of this, their intelligence forces a type of humility that assures them that they shouldn’t vote, because they haven’t put in the necessary work to learn about the candidates.  This always discourages me, because I know that some of the most qualified voters, the people who definitely should have their voices heard, are selectively choosing to remain voiceless.  More fundamentally, every person eligible to vote in a democracy bears the responsibility and right to do so.  No one has all the information in the world, but lacking all the information of the world is hardly a disqualification from voting.  We all have to act on the information we have in life, and work the best we can with what we’ve got.  More to the point, If you want to learn about the candidates, it has never been easier to do so.  With the smallest amount of common sense, you can quite easily find reliable information about the candidates and make your decision accordingly.  If, for instance, you are a Hoosier that is unhappy with your governor’s decision, it only takes about three seconds to find out the name of the person running against him when November rolls around again.

As to the problems of how difficult voting has been made, Colin Powell has a pretty good bit of advice on how to fix it.  “Whatever those states do, you meet the standards and then you make sure you register… you make sure you vote.”  The laws that get passed to shorten polling hours, to restrict which IDs are accepted, to reduce voting options, etc are only passed because the electorate isn’t there to stop it.  The conservative agenda that forces these policies on the people are only allowed to endure because those lawmakers know that they’ll never be held accountable in elections.  Every time that the process is made harder should be a reminder of how important it is to vote.  Perhaps more importantly, it serves as a reminder of how easy it is to solve, because all you have to do to make voting easier, is to elect politicians who want to make voting easier.

As to the point of the corruption of our political system, I have to admit that there is more than a little truth to this.  A handful of very influential people do get to call a lot of the shots on what gets passed in Congress and who wins elections, but again only because the people involved know they will never be held accountable.  The reason why the Koch Brothers are so comfortable openly spending hundreds of millions of dollars on any given election cycle is because they know that there isn’t the political will in the government to hold them accountable.  The reason why there’s no will, is because they effectively bought enough seats to make it impossible, but in a democracy no matter how much money makes it easier to win an election, it still remains the truth that elections are won one ballot at a time.

There are good politicians and there are bad politicians and there are worse politicians.  Unfortunately the number of good politicians is scant, again because good people get dissuaded from even paying attention, so in many cases we are left to choose between the lesser of two evils.  It’s not fair, but we need to suck it up because not voting is the easiest way to allow the worst of all evils into power.  In the words of Edmond Burke, “All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”  This is what we see in our country today, the people good enough and smart enough to recognize that there is something altogether unwholesome about our politics do the one thing that allows it to get worse, nothing.

Choosing the lesser of two evils may not be the most satisfying thing in the world, but you have to remember two things.  First of all, you are helping to stop the greater of two evils.  So, when it comes to a corrupt politician who doesn’t want to treat minorities like dirt and a corrupt politician who does, I know where I’m going to stand.  Second of all, no one is saying that all you can ever do is choose the lesser of two evils on election day.  We need to get more civic minded again and participate in this government of the people, by the people, and for the people.  This really shouldn’t be such a difficult concept to grasp, but given the stunning levels of indifference it bears repeating.

We live in a republican democracy, meaning a government centered upon the rule of law as determined by a representational government of the people.  Government of the people is clear enough there, government by the people is in that representation, and government for the people is the rule of law that is supposed to be there for us all.  If we just let go of the responsibilities intrinsic to this system of government we lose anything worth having as our government becomes a plutocratic, kleptocratic nightmare.

On every level the importance of the vote should cry out.  On the level of civic or national duty, it is imperative that all Americans vote to ensure that we actually have a government that represents the will of the people and not just the people who showed up that day.  On the personal and selfish level, you give up any say on how your tax dollars work and what laws you will have to endure if you detach from civic participation.  On the most visceral moral levels, the only reason why politicians are allowed to legislate hate and indifference to need is because they have no incentive to legislate like decent human beings.  We give that incentive at the polling stations all across this country.  It takes very little time out of your life in the grand scheme of things, but it is among the most necessary investments to make or else you’re left with what you didn’t vote for.

The Freedom to do What?

I find it stunning that wherever you go in this country, there is still a high likelihood of encountering a Confederate Battle Flag emblazoned somewhere, usually on trucks.  Even in Massachusetts, the state which above all others embodies the diametric opposite of the CSA it is entirely possible to come across the Stars and Bars.  This has always perplexed me, why anyone would choose to put such a symbol on their person or property and do so with pride.  I got an explanation from the now ex-girlfriend of one of my friends, who had that same flag wrapped around the spare tire on the back of her Jeep.  She was not from the South, and was in fact a second generation immigrant who grew up and lived in Illinois, so there wasn’t even some claim to heritage, regardless of what that might or might not be worth.  When I asked for an explanation, she seemed insulted that I could possibly find that symbol shocking and even offensive.  She went on to explain that she sees it as a symbol of independence and devotion to the principle of states’ rights, not as a symbol of division and slavery.  This is not an uncommon explanation, in fact I’ve even heard school teachers explain that the Civil War wasn’t about slavery, it was about states’ rights.  But all this has ever done is beg the question, “the right to do what?”

We live in a republican democracy, organized under the principles of federalism.  This means that there are indeed roles best left to the state or local governments, just as there are others best left to the federal government.  Powers are divided in a way to allow both for the assertion of American justice throughout the country, as well as to allow for the kind of experimentation that comes from fifty different states choosing their own paths to find what works and what doesn’t.  Perhaps this is a rather idealistic vision of how things should work, but the principle is nonetheless there.  All states hold onto a certain level of autonomy to collect taxes as they see fit, to put in place whatever laws seem appropriate, to generally tend to the needs of the constituents of each state individually, etc.  There is a vocal group in this country that thinks we need to further empower the states, as there has been since the Revolution.

The history of how we came to federalism can best be summed up in the failure of the Articles of Confederation, but even after that unmitigated failure, there were still many who maintained that the individual states needed to hold supremacy over any federal government.  Fortunately we didn’t go with their plan, but it is always important to have the dissenting voices there to ensure that things don’t go too far, and that the federal government does have a check to its power.  As time went on the country and the states changed, though some more than others.  The institution of slavery became an ever greater sticking point in the maintenance of the union, alongside other interstate issues like federal tariffs.  The differences came to a head when the Southern states finally decided that they would rather secede than cede any further state’s rights, including but not limited to their right to own other human beings.  This is the states’ right, above all others, that has come to define the Confederacy, yet there are many who choose not to see that.

I bring this up because there is a larger theme of euphemism at play in that history as well as certain political debates happening in the country today.  It’s one thing to defend a principle like checks against federal power, the importance of state autonomy, or the defense of individual rights; but it’s another thing entirely when the examples you choose to define those rights carry some significant baggage.  I defend the states’ rights to set their own tax rates, to provide necessary services to the people in whatever way they feel works best, to fund and maintain their own education system, etc.  But I defend these rights to an extent.  No state has the right to abolish its own taxes if that means driving up their deficits to the point of requiring a bailout by the rest of the states, we don’t want one of our states to be Greece after all.  No state has the right to get rid of its DMVs (or in the case of Massachusetts RMVs) and thus leave drivers without a way of providing law enforcement with the means of ensuring cars are in the hands of their owners, drivers can be held accountable for their infractions, etc.  No state has the right to simply stop public education.  There are limits to states’ rights, just as there are limits to individual rights and limits to federal power.

This is important, not just because there are voices calling for the end of the Department of Education, though there are; but because there is a growing movement out there that claims to be defending religious liberties.  I am in favor of the freedom of religion.  Every person is entitled to the right of free thought, to search for their own personal answers to life’s persistent questions.  Our country was founded, in part, as a response to the kinds of religious tyrannies that pitted people against each other and limited the ability for Quakers and Congregationalists and Catholics and Jews and Non-believers to live together.  Religious liberty is indeed part of the bedrock of this country, but there is a movement out there that is using that noble principle to force something much less wholesome down the throats of Americans.  So now when people claim that they are fighting for the freedom of religion I am forced to ask, “the freedom to do what?”

It’s a fairly well known fact that in many parts of this country, it is still kosher to fire a person based solely on their sexual orientation.  We do not accept a person’s right to use religion or race or ethnicity or sex as the determining factor for whether they hire or fire an employee, but in states like Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, etc an employer can still feel comfortable when they fire their gay employee.  Just yesterday, however, the governor of Indiana signed into law a “religious freedom” bill.  Now business owners in Indiana can feel quite comfortable when they deny service to gay customers.  And on the one hand, I can see the argument that a business should not be forced to work for customers they don’t want to.  It might be rather distasteful for you to be told you have to serve a neo-nazi, for example.  But here’s the thing, everyone is entitled to be treated with a certain modicum of respect, regardless of who they are or what they believe.

The argument that store owners have the right to deny service to any customer they wish has been routinely challenged.  Although, most battles were settled after the Civil Rights Movement, which is why you no longer see “Whites Only” signs.  But now we’ve reached a point where certain people feel entitled to discriminate freely, so long as it is done for “religious” reasons.  I do wonder if these hardline shop owners will no longer allow Jewish clients or divorced clients, which are groups that have been targeted by religious belief in the past.  No, of course that wouldn’t stand, but so long as it’s just the faggots being targeted then everything is hunky dory.  I never use that word in my daily life, but in discussions like these I feel it’s integral to expose the dog whistles and point out that there is no substance to these claims of “religious freedom.”  All we are seeing is government supported fag-bashing, and it needs to be called out as such.

These archaic defenses of “religious liberty” only exist to maintain the privilege of conservative evangelical Christians at the expense of all other groups, religious or otherwise.  The rights of the Episcopal Church to officiate weddings of gay couples is not being defended, for example.  The rights of women to access birth control through their employer healthcare is not being defended.  And of course, the rights of gay and lesbians in many parts of America to live as equal members of society is not being defended by these backward laws, whether they are practicing Christians or not.  In fifty years these laws will be held up like the Stars and Bars as symbols for an unenlightened few, but for now they are symbols of oppression in our time, wrapped in packaging that makes them seem almost tolerable.  We need to start asking what people actually mean when they throw around words like freedom and liberty, because they’re being made meaningless.  Or rather, in true Orwellian fashion, they’re being made to mean the exact opposite of what they actually mean.  Tyranny is freedom, ignorance is strength, and freedom is slavery.

How to Win Wars

America loves wars. This is perhaps a little blunt, but t’s hard to avoid the fact that war is an intrinsic part of the American identity.  Like many other countries, we were born in blood and we fought a particularly bloody civil war to maintain our union.  We have sent our nation’s fighting forces “from the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli” and far beyond to fight for ourselves and for others.  Our domestic policy is often given military terminology to spark the imagination, even for the most peaceful of purposes, e.g. War on Poverty.  The military-industrial complex in this country works hard to ensure that many livelihoods depend on the continuation of warfare.  And despite greater exposure to the realities of war on the news, and more grim depictions in a few movies, the glory of war still shines in the hearts of many Americans… most especially those who dodged service at every turn.  But when it comes to winning wars, we never seem to learn the lessons of what has historically been effective, and so we are left perpetually fighting and refighting the same battles for decades, at home and abroad.

Martin Luther King once said, “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.”  These words did not come from the naive dreams of a hippie utopia, they came from the painful lessons of a very hard fought struggle for civil rights.  He, and everyone committed enough to the justice inherent in that movement to go out into the streets, learned from experience that strength is indeed needed to move mountains, but strength is not the same as aggression.  Strength is being able to endure tear gas, vicious dogs, billy clubs, and even bullets.  Strength is being able to endure insults and violence and to pay it back with dignity and respect.  On the other hand, violent black right’s movements found themselves constantly shut out and shut down.  In spite of the passion and righteous indignation of that side of the fight, their use of violence led only to death and few if any tangible achievements beyond that further suffering.

In many ways, this was a repeat performance of the tactics that won India’s independence from Britain.  Let’s not forget that while we broke of from the British Empire at a time when their empire was really only getting started, but the Indians won their independence from a longstanding British empire, equipped with WWII era weapons, and they won without becoming embroiled in another war.  Obviously there are too many differences between these two countries and their paths to independence for this to be an apples to apples comparison, but it’s a thought to keep in mind.  A leader like Mohandas Gandhi could easily have riled up the masses of India into a war, if he had thought it was the necessary way to do things.  The incredible population of India alone would give the Brits pause, even with their arsenal, if things had gone on to full out war.  But what would a violent movement have done for India?

The British, even if they couldn’t win in the long run, would certainly have been able to kill countless Indians, they did it before after all.  Like the French in Algeria, they would likely have scuttled the Indian infrastructure and left the country ablaze.  And after all that, there would still be the power vacuum to attract whatever warlords who could end up on top, as happened in China at the end of the Qing Dynasty.  For all the noble intentions of having an India free from tyranny, the country would likely look a lot more like Iraq today than America in the 18th century.  But active non-violence forces the opposition to face their own brutality, makes it impossible to justify escalation, and limits the opportunity of the devolution into anarchy and infighting.  So while it may have been possible for India to win independence through warfare, the only way for a cohesive Indian nation to emerge in tact from conflict was through the harder path, the path of love.

We have a bad habit of choosing juntas and warlords and arming them to the teeth.  We have sponsored any number of coups, rebellions, civil wars, etc always assured that our motive for doing so was just.  We wanted to see the end of tyrannical communist regimes and oppressive theocracies, so that the people could choose their own leaders and path, so we chose the band of warriors who we thought could make it happen.  In essentially every case this has only served to backlash against us and the people we wish to help.  Would Iran have an Ayatollah if not for our propping up of the Shah?  Would we have to endure war with Al Qaeda and the Taliban if we hadn’t previously sponsored their predecessors during the Soviet War in Afghanistan?  It can’t be said conclusively one way or the other, but certainly our choices in doing these things has not led to the desired ends.  Yet we are still in the game of arming rebels in Syria and there seems to be no chance of learning the lessons of the past any time soon.

People who look into what movements are successful in their goals, like Erica Chenoweth, have noticed something surprising.  When it comes to actually winning, you have a much better chance going with non-violent movements than with military uprisings.  This only becomes more true with time, because established regimes have access to better weapons than the average person and the gap between those arsenals only gets bigger as technology has improved.  But so too has media technology improved, and that benefits the non-violence movements.  It’s tough for a generalissimo to continually go home to his wife and explain the massacres she sees on the news, especially if the people being beaten and murdered are posing no threat.  This is the greatest threat dictators, warlords, and extremists of all stripes face, the power of love to conquer their own brutality.

Every time ISIS releases a video depicting their barbarism, maybe one or two insane people are inspired to join the cause, but thousands are given the resolve to resist this inhumanity.  This is true for the people within Syria, the neighboring countries like Jordan, and throughout the world.  Truth favors love, and love always wins out over hate in the end, though the road is very long.  This is not simply true of bloody wars abroad, it is also true of the culture wars at home.

In the 1980s, at the height of the AIDS crisis, many people felt vindicated in adding insult to the injured.  The gay community was not only mocked, but violently targeted.  In response to disgusting accusations, real threats, and very visible acts of violence against innocent people across the country, the LGBT community stood strong and, save for a tiny handful of exceptions, utterly nonviolent.  This made the enemies of equality shine out as the bigots they were, and by encouraging more people to come out of the closet, won over allies, even from the ranks of those enemies.  This is why, in a recent Kiss-in to protest the Westboro Baptist Church, among the ranks of those calling for equality and dignity were former members of that hate filled organization.  This is also why bigots are not so flagrant with their use of homophobic slurs and why marriage equality is sweeping across this nation, even in the most reactionary areas.

The greatest weapons in the hands of the oppressed are active nonviolence and a steely resolve for the long march toward victory.  Again, Dr King had words much better suited to explaining these phenomena than I will ever have. “Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”  This is how you win wars.  We must always make love the foundation as we move forward, particularly when it seems that there are minions of hate everywhere.  Love is not the easy choice, it can be all too easy to give into hatred of the people who hate you and who hurt you and who kill you, but to be on the side of love is the only way to assure that you will win out. America loves, and that’s how we can win wars.

Bring ‘em On

Senator Ted Cruz let it slide that he will be announcing his candidacy for president tomorrow.  For those of you not familiar with this particular politician, let’s start by saying he’s something of a polarizing figure.  He is part of the hard line Tea Party movement and as such has said and done some particularly stupid things in the relatively short time he’s been in the public eye.  In many ways he is a perfect example of everything wrong with the current GOP, and as such I would heartily support his bid for the Republican nomination.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that I hope he wins the GOP primary.

Mr Cruz is the embodiment of every hypocrisy on the Far Right.  The birther movement that doggedly attacked President Obama, will have some ‘splainin’ to do with this candidate.  Like many Americans, he is the son of an immigrant, his father being from Cuba.  But in a slight departure from many other candidates for the presidency, he was not born in America.  His parents moved to Canada before he was born, but he claims to be a natural born citizen through his mother.  Frankly, this is fine with me.  I don’t think that this is the issue that should stick to the forefront of people’s minds when considering who they think would be the most effective leader of this country.  Having said that, the extremists on the Right were absolutely frothing at the mouth about Obama’s birth certificate. Even when he presented it, they simply wouldn’t let go of the idea that he’s not like the rest of Americans and is thus unqualified to be president.  Well, if all you need is for your mother to be an American, then Mr Cruz’s excuse would work for Mr Obama even if he hadn’t been born in Hawaii.  Yet, there is no furor on the Right about Mr Cruz’s eligibility.  Funny how that works when it’s the guy you agree with under scrutiny.

So this, pretty definitively, puts to rest all of the bull surrounding the birther movement.  Clearly, these loud and angry few actually didn’t care what the truth was, they only cared about how much they hated Barack Obama.  I’ll leave it for others to divine specifically what soured their mood so against Mr Obama, though I have suspicions of my own.  But Mr Cruz’s candidacy offers a great opportunity for some on the fringes to take stock of what they actually value in a candidate, and then perhaps recognize how ignorant and vicious they’ve been throughout the time that Mr Obama has been in the public eye.  It’s a long shot, but a guy can dream.

Compounding the hypocrisy of the Right, Mr Cruz is a product of the same ivory tower institutions that the Right hates so much.  He got his undergraduate degree from Princeton University, quite prestigious, and received his Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School, arguably the preeminent legal school in the world.  He benefitted from the best education Massachusetts has to offer, yet he portrays himself as a man of the people.  Again, I don’t believe the inane distinctions portrayed by the Right where you can either be in the elites “bubble” or you can be a country “bubba;” but if your whole political image is based on this, it seems a little odd that your history is a little more grey than that black and white rhetoric would allow.  What’s more I’m willing to let this slide, because it seems that in the decades since his graduation from the Ivy Leagues, he seems to have lost any intellect that he may have, at one point, enjoyed.

Mr Cruz is the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Science and Space at the moment, a position that makes him a part of the funding and operations of NASA.  NASA spends a decent amount of time and resources using its satellites to monitor climate change.  In the words of NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, this is in part because “We can’t go anywhere if the Kennedy Space Center goes underwater.”  I bring these points up because Mr Cruz has repeatedly put himself in the climate denier camp, suggesting that snowfall in New Hampshire is proof against global warming.  This is the stunning intellect created by our Ivy League institutions? Harvard, I’m disappointed in you.

As if the climate wasn’t a pressing enough issue to be utterly wrong about, Mr Cruz has repeatedly and proudly found himself fighting quixotic battles against raises in the minimum wage, against expanded healthcare, against marriage equality, and against a woman’s right to choose even in the event of rape or incest.  He came to national attention as he read Dr Seuss into the Congressional Record during his bizarre attempt to filibuster the ACA, even though this was one of the few times even his own party wouldn’t get behind the effort.  On one of the few times where he was able to get his way, hundreds of thousands of hard working Americans were furloughed as the Republicans did shut down the government in 2013.  This was the exception, because usually when he tries to do something, it ends up blowing up in his face. This was the case at the close of the last Congress, wherein his protest allowed for extra days in session for Democratic nominees, who had been held up by GOP obstruction, to be approved for their appointment.

All this, thus far, has been illustrative of how the nomination of Senator Cruz would be the easiest election for Democrats in the history of American presidential politics.  Mr Cruz is not charismatic, his positions are not backed up with any facts, and essentially everything about him stands in stark opposition to reality.  Honestly, if the Democrats had actually formed a political straw man on their own, they couldn’t come up with a better example than Mr Cruz.  Yet, my goal in life is not the continual victory of the Democratic Party, as such, I care about what’s best for my country.  Mr Cruz losing in a huge way on November 8, 2016 would be the single best thing for this country, because it would force Republicans to realize that their backward stance does not win elections and so might finally reform themselves.  Many on the Right believe that the reason why they couldn’t win with candidates like John McCain or Mitt Romney is because they were conservative enough.  This would be the definitive proof that their 18th century positions truly are the thing keeping decent Republican politicians from succeeding and not the other way around.

I believe that Barack Obama is the greatest living president, and it’s a darn shame he can’t run for a third term, but we need to have a national conversation about what we want for our country and not simply whether or not the people like President Obama.  We need to decide whether we stand up for the genuinely oppressed or whether we want to funnel more money out of the working and middle classes into the hands of a tiny number of unimaginably wealthy people, regardless of what it does to the economy.  We need to decide whether we use the findings of scientists to help us navigate the future or whether we choose to blind ourselves to the truth and get beaten over the head with the goings on of the world.  We need to decide if we are going to go with approaches to foreign and domestic policy that actually work or whether we want to let the guys from Duck Dynasty decide what is prudent fiscal and social policy.

In short, Ted Cruz is a perfect shorthand for a much larger problem, like the Koch brothers for money in politics.  He represents the vocal minority of Americans who despise foreigners, except for those that act the way they approve of; those who hate to help the poor and needy, unless they are the ones in need; those who hate religious extremism, unless their pastor is the one calling for the deaths of others; those who hate science, unless it supports what they wanted to believe in the first place; those who hate foreigners running our country, unless they happen to be named Ted Cruz.  Ted Cruz might just be the cure for what ails America, but certainly not in the way he thinks.  His candidacy is the perfect opportunity for Americans of all stripes to say, “no thanks, we’re not buying it anymore.”  So in the immortal words of our 43rd president and professional wrestlers everywhere, “bring ‘em on.”

Getting Schooled

Ultimately, education is the only issue that matters in politics.  Everything else stems from this central issue.  We cannot have an effective government if the electorate is ill informed.  While a better source of news would be a great tool to this end, if the electorate is not educated enough to process what is accurate or important information, then even the best tool will never be enough.  We cannot compete economically if the resources that build up our work force aren’t there, even more so if the person with the next great idea isn’t given the information necessary to flesh out those ideas and communicate them to the world.  Above all, we can never address the dreadful inequalities that remain in our country so long as we allow some groups to have a subpar education.  Even though I care deeply about other issues, particularly healthcare, our survival as a country is dependent on ensuring that every person in this country is empowered with a quality education.

Before we can get to the meat of the problem we have to address some of the trimmings that often take center stage.  No, not everyone needs to get a liberal arts education, but that doesn’t mean we determine by zip code which kids get to look forward to a trade school or manual labor and which kids get to look forward to a four year university and a white collar job.  Far too often in this country, where you live and what you look like dictates what your society expects of you, and this is a crime.  Successful kids in poorer areas of the country, both urban and rural, are often pushed by administrators to set their sights on a trade and not university.  While it is true that we profit greatly from having highly trained electricians, plumbers, and factory workers, we cannot accept that there are sectors of society where that is the best they can hope for, while richer areas expect nothing less than a high paying corporate job.  So, while it may be true that not all kids should spend their resources on a university degree, that matter needs to be up to the individual and not up to where they happen to grow up.

For our second sideshow, here’s an unfortunately necessary sentence, common core is not the work of the devil.  Common core standards were set up to try and alleviate the worst inequalities of education in this country by not allowing certain areas of this country to simply lower standards to keep graduation rates higher.  A quality education is expensive, let’s be frank, but it’s among the best returns on investment we can make.  So if you’re in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Nevada, or our nation’s capitol, you are going to want to start upping your investments now, because places like these are failing our entire country by failing their own children.  Accepting the common core standards and the extra funds that come with them are a decent carrot and stick to jumpstart these failing equation systems. And speaking of jumpstart.

Early education is critical, and we need to make pre-k accessible to every family in the country, but every review of these programs has shown that we’re simply throwing our money away if there isn’t quality education to continue the work started by programs like Jumpstart.  Early education is important, not only because it gets the minds of children working productively at earlier ages and prepares them for later education, but because it lifts some of the burden of childcare off of the parents.  Parenting is incredibly hard work, it is beyond a full time job if you’re doing it correctly, but parents are expected to also hold down careers outside of parenting to keep bread on the table.  Especially at these early ages, it is critical that parents are given the resources that free them to do the whole of their jobs both at their workplace and at home.  Yet so far, all of the things that I’ve mentioned, however important, are the side matters of the larger issue of education.

Providing an adequate education to our nation’s children is not simply a matter of providing a facility for kids to attend during the day.  Schools need to be equipped with the resources and staff that allow children to continue learning outside of the classroom, because the incredibly short amount of time kids spend in classrooms is nowhere near enough.  Books and libraries are critical for students, even as the internet takes away many of the roles of printed materials in other spheres.  This is because books are frills free ways of honing the mind.  A computer by contrast, is endowed with countless distractions that can keep growing minds from doing their necessary tasks.  Reading and searching for information in books are incredibly important tools for using online resources effectively, especially since online resources do not have to go through the same kind of editing that books do, to weed out misinformation.  It’s important to be able to learn what is and isn’t trustworthy information, and to learn that you can’t always trust what you read, but you need a strong starting block and the physical resources of books are more important than people give them credit.

Beyond the physical resources, education is dependent on the human resource, teachers.  We have failed in attracting people to seek education as a primary profession because in many parts of the country we remain unwilling or unable to afford to pay teachers what they deserve.  The reason why we’ve been flooded with law degrees and then business degrees is because people saw that’s where the money was and followed suit.  And yes, it’s good to have a large stock of lawyers, but the more we can encourage high quality teachers, the more some of those legal jobs will become redundant.  I am always a little stunned when I hear people complain about teacher compensation, saying it’s too high.  It may be true that there are a couple bad teachers who’ve been held on too long and paid too much, for the vast majority things like tenure are overdue compensation for having performed such a difficult and necessary task for so long at so low a wage.  If it were such a lucrative way of earning a living, it’s a wonder why Wall Street doesn’t all jump ship to their local public schools.

Beyond simply paying teachers a decent wage to attract enough people, we need to use modern technology to bring the individual experiences of teachers to bear on every student.  I have heard conspiratorial complaints of some about attempts to bring different forms of metrics into the classroom, in an effort to find out which methods work best, but I don’t see the harm.  Where a foil headed luddite sees an attempt to monitor kids, I see the promise of technology finally being realized.  It is now possible for us to not only have as many experiments on education as there are classrooms, but now we’re able to get the successful experiences of a teacher in Hoboken, NJ expressed to the new teacher in Salt Lake City, UT.  Both within and between states, teachers are more able than ever to offer what they’ve learned in the real world to contribute to the theory of teaching that affects future pedagogy.

But now, having addressed the necessary matters that surround the student, we have to talk about what’s going on in their lives.  Education cannot be restricted to school hours on school grounds.  Education has to be a community project that includes the parents as much as possible, to ensure that kids are always in environments that allow for growth.  The reality is that we create environments for kids to lose what they’ve learned.  We do this through prolonged summer breaks, by making overly large classrooms and limiting individual student time with teachers, and by excluding the home when we think about the child’s educational needs.  If kids are in unsafe neighborhoods, then maybe they aren’t as concerned with learning their ABCs as they are with not getting shot.  If kids are focused on their growling stomaches, they aren’t likely to be focused on their piling homework.  The teacher is an important mediator in a child’s life, but they aren’t all knowing gods.  We need to stop piling up all of society’s ills on teachers and then act surprised when they can’t handle classes of fifty children who have bigger problems once the final bell rings.

All of this means actually putting up the money necessary to get the job done, and that is a greater expense than some have been willing to make in the past.  I find it more than troubling when I hear the schools are on the chopping block when its time to make cuts.  They start with cutting the “unnecessary” programs like the arts and go on from there.  In the end we are left with what we have today, certain affluent areas with astounding schools and many subpar ones for everyone else.  This is the grossest inequality, because it self perpetuates.  The areas that suffer most from underfunded schools remain ill-informed of reality and ill prepared to make decisions of what’s important, and thus they cut further on education.  I’m not ready to abandon America’s children, I’m not willing to abandon America’s future, and I’m not ready to let the problems we face further compound.  Fund our schools, invest in our kids, prepare America to face the problems we face today, and equip America to determine the world we face tomorrow.

March Madness

In Paris this January, there was a tragic attack on the freedom of expression. Out of that tragedy, millions from all over the world marched in solidarity, vowing to never let those essential rights die.  Notably absent from that march was the “leader of the free world,” President Barack Obama.  I will admit that I think it was a bad call on his part, but my disappointment can’t compare to the vitriol unleashed from the Right.  If we’re honest with ourselves, even if he did go they’d have been just as angry that he used American tax dollars to fly on Air Force One to pal around with French frogs.  If we’re more honest, we’ll recognize the palpable hypocrisy of the Right’s reaction to a march that happened far closer to home.  In Selma, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of a pivotal march in the history of the Civil Rights Movement, there was exactly one member of the GOP’s Congressional Caucus.  When it was their time to show up, where was the Right to march for our essential rights?

Something truly terrible has happened to the Republican Party since the passage of the Voting Rights Act, which came out of the marches from Selma to Montgomery in 1965.  The Republican Party, the party of Lincoln, the party of Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington is not only unwilling to help people of color, it is now devoted to eviscerating any accomplishments toward mending race relations.  And it is not only on matters of race that the GOP is devolving.  On essentially every issue the Republican Party seems to be trying to move America back from 1865, when they used to be building forward.  In the case of Women’s Rights, it is obvious that the GOP has no pity for the working woman, no understanding of human health, and no simply concern for any human being that may not have a Y-Chromasome.  On gay rights, the GOP is doubling and tripling down on intolerance even as the rest of the country has gotten over it.  Immigration reform has stalled, because the GOP is no longer willing to even have the argument, and is backing down on agreements they had made like the DREAM Act.  It is ironic that they are considered the political Right, because when it comes to policy they are as wrong as you can get.

As participants in a diverse political arena, the GOP has proven that petulance is their prime virtue, incapable even of dealing with members of their own party, let alone negotiating across the aisle.  Any policy that is put forward is shut down without a moment’s thought, as thought is the greatest enemy of the GOP.  When the president makes groundbreaking strides to get China to sign a climate agreement and to get Iran to halt its nuclear program, the GOP is not simply ignorant of the issues but actively working to destroy the longterm hopes of America and the world.  When the country finally takes the first baby steps towards getting healthcare for every man, woman, and child, the GOP sees it as a challenge to make as many people suffer in pain and debt as possible.  After more than 50 attempts to repeal or defund Obamacare and a government shutdown no less, you’d think they’d get the message, but even in the new budget, released today, it is clear that they are not willing to stop fighting a war that should never have started.  And incapable of seeing how disastrous the shutdown was for them and the country alike, they still seem to think that putting people out of work and halting any work from being done is a potential strategy for fighting the president on immigration.

With the growth of Fox News and conservative media online, the Right seems prepared to stick their heads in the sand for the long haul.  Those who consume Right Wing media are consistently the least informed demographics, even as compared with people who consume no formal news media.  And instead of trying to address these clear problems the GOP has been all too willing to reward ignorance and misinformation, because it’s the only way to keep people pulling on the R-lever in the poll booths.  Any sane voices that may occasionally emanate from the Right are quickly silenced and punished, as Koch funded opponents attack anyone who doesn’t meet the appropriate litmus test.  This is why there is really only one party left in American politics, the Democrats, who are forced to compete with a zoo that is incapable of winning elections unless turnout overall is below 40%.

It is not a matter of hyperbole, as the Republican Party has all but eliminated any qualified candidates they had left in their arsenal.  Someone like John Huntsman is clearly unwelcome in the GOP now, because he is actually willing to listen to scientists and to work alongside people he may not agree with 100% of the time.  Someone like Colin Powell, who was once considered seriously as a presidential candidate, has been shoved out of his own party because he has a functioning brain and can recognize when he’s no longer welcome.  At this point even their deified saint, Ronald Reagan, would be utterly vilified as a communist, immigrant lover.  This not to mention legitimately good presidents they once had, like President Eisenhower.  All that is left in the GOP is a mob of lunatics, each vying to out crazy their rivals.

The meandering sounds that could almost pass for speeches are the hallmark of idols like Sarah Palin, yet somehow they still manage to make the base cheer.  Science deniers like Ted Cruz and James Inhofe are not scolded for their ignorance, they are rewarded with positions of importance on committees that oversee our science agencies.  John Shimkus, who read the story of Noah into the Congressional Record as a disproof of climate change, is Chairman of the Subcommittee on Environment and Economy.  And all of this not to mention the extreme corruption of the Right.  So far this year, two members of the house have resigned after scandals concerning tax fraud and misuse of public funds were brought to light, Michael Grimm and Aaron Schock respectively.  If you hadn’t guessed, they’re both Republicans.

In every possible way the GOP has failed as a political party.  They’ve failed to create a coherent and workable vision for America.  They’ve failed to identify both reality and the problems we actually face.  They’ve failed to hold onto talented, intelligent, and competent members of their party and have actively worked to push these people out in the first place.  They’ve failed to come to the defense of the people who need help, choosing instead to persecute the persecuted and aid the advantaged.  They’ve failed to have a heart or a brain, leaving the Democrats to be the Cowardly Lion without courage.  There were once good Republican politicians, but the party has marched itself off the edge of a cliff, and frankly I don’t see a path for them to come back into the real world.

The Republican Party, that once defended the Union against the divisive force of the Confederacy, has welcome Neo-Confederates and secessionists into its ranks and plotted a course to break the country.  Their politics are so far to the right that even John Birch would be uncomfortable. Their incompetence is so overwhelming that even Homer Simpson would seem a model employee.  Their disdain for intelligence and truth has become so legendary that no one even wonders when they hear a profoundly stupid utterance what side of the aisle it came from.  What more can be said of a party that has fallen from such lofty heights of abolitionism and suffragism to now, where even the most obscene accusations seem borne out by further investigation?

Even in the most liberal states, like Massachusetts, the GOP platform is staunchly conservative.  So much so, that the recently elected Republican Governor of Massachusetts had to actively campaign against his own party during the primary, let alone the general election.  There is simply no room in the Republican Party for actual republicans; there can only be theocrats now, even as they tirelessly fight against shadows and whispers of Sharia.  So, if you were once a Republican who defended secular limits of government relations with religion, who fought for the little guy, who fought for equality among sexes and races and everything else, you might want to find a new party because the GOP has marched off without you.  And I don’t see them coming back any time soon.

A Tale of Two Conservatives

I tend to take the piss out of conservatives quite a bit on this blog, but in many ways I do it out of an odd form of love.  I have friends who are quite conservative on many issues, ditto family but more on the extended side of things, and more often than not the experiences I’ve had interacting with conservatives have been quite positive.  Heck, even if I hadn’t had that much interaction with conservatives, the statistics paint a pretty nice portrait of your average conservative.  As a subset of the population, conservatives are among the most generous groups out there, as they tend to give more to charities than their liberal counterparts.  The churches that many religious conservatives attend also are among the first responders to natural disasters around the world, rebuilding homes and communities out of a sense of moral duty.  If you’ve ever been through the South, you may very well have enjoyed the famous hospitality of people who do tend to vote quite conservatively.  But there’s something altogether unwholesome about how people can be simultaneously that kind and yet frothing at the mouth when it comes to politics.

I had the opportunity to attend a conservative rally, somewhat recently.  While there, I sat in an aisle seat, so I had the unfortunate task of being walked over every time someone needed to get in or out of their seat.  For one couple, this was a fairly constant struggle.  I don’t know if they just couldn’t sit in one place for a long period of time, or if their bladders were a little too active, but I would do my best to get out of their way and make it a little easier to get by.  Not for nothing, but they were a little more advanced in age, and I know I would appreciate it if the youth would cut me a little slack when my bones and joints get a little less reliable.  They noticed, were appreciative, and thanked me every time they went by.  After a while, my stomach started to growl, and the wife was quick to pull out an extra protein bar she had in her purse.  I was likewise very appreciative that she would so readily give her food to a random stranger, truly a mark of generosity.  As the event went on, I noticed them clapping along and even cheering occasionally for the speakers, which is to be expected at a rally, but the things they actively cheered absolutely appalled me.

The various speakers lambasted court decisions that defended the rights of gay people, not only to be wed, but simply to exist.  One priest, who was a speaker there, called for a return of the anti-sodomy laws that were made illegal by the Lawrence v Texas decision.  Other speakers called for an end to public education, the minimum wage, environmental protections, workers’ rights, and any number of parts of the social safety net.  All throughout these speeches, the headliners would call for the most violent solutions to problems at home and abroad, and all the while this kind and decent couple nodded along in agreement.  It was one of the most disconcerting moments of my life, because it is all to easy to simply see people as good or evil, but in moments like that you are just confronted with the fact that evil can come from the kindest people as well.

I don’t know how else to convey the point except perhaps through a simple gif.  One of the images that has been hanging around the internet for a while is a small gif of the dictator, Idi Amin, laughing. http://replygif.net/476 He just looks so happy, so human, but in the back of your mind you recognize that this is the same man who killed untold thousands of people, and tortured many more.  In the back of our minds we have to recognize that even the most wicked people on earth are still human.  They have friends and family, they can crack a joke and sing lullabies to their children.  To the people they love, they are the nicest people in the world, and yet to the others they are incomprehensibly ruthless and pitiless.  Now, my goal here is not to portray a mass murderer as on par with this nice, little couple that I encountered once, but it’s that same unsettling thought that hangs around and doesn’t give you any peace.

The only answer I can come to that makes any sense of this is that for many people, empathy and generosity only extend to those who they understand as real.  As white, Christian, conservative Americans, it’s incredibly easy to demonize gay people, Muslims, immigrants, racial minorities etc if you don’t have any interactions with them.  The conservatives I’ve met that are fiercely anti-black, for example, have sometimes done mission work in Africa or Haiti or some other place with majority black populations.  Their disdain never extends to these groups.  Somehow they are able to compartmentalize black people over there as different from black people in America.  And because they have actually broken bread and talked with those black people, they are somehow just the exceptions and not emblematic of blacks as a whole; in stark contrast to the one story they heard about “urban youth” on Fox News, which is somehow emblematic of blacks as a whole.

Their interactions with gay people must be similarly sparse, because it seems clear from their comments that they’ve never actually had a conversation with a gay person.  The stereotyping, the accusations, the assumptions seem entirely based off of homophobic jokes and propaganda films from the 1950s.  If this is the environment they create, then it can be no surprise that their relatives and friends would be hesitant to come out.  And as much as I would hope that in the event that someone they know did come out that they would be received as warmly as they treat the rest of their family, it’s hard to ignore the repeated incidences of gay children being disowned, punished, sent to bible camps, and simply left unloved.

But these are the two conservatives that live in the same body of many on the far right.  The same person is utterly indifferent to the needs of marginalized groups and yet ready to pass the hat and give to charity or even go to the middle of nowhere to rebuild lost homes.  The same person is perfectly ready to welcome a stranger into their festivities, while calling for the deaths of any number of groups of other strangers.  I mean forget cognitive dissonance, this is near schizophrenia with the way they are able to live their lives, it just perplexes me.

People do truly insane things when they are scared, and it is clear that these people were scared out of their wits.  They were terrified that Obama was imposing a tyranny, despite having used vetoes and executive orders less than his predecessors.  They were terrified that ISIS was knocking on our doors and creeping across our porous borders, despite the fact that they are on the retreat and have never been able to make it to the US, let alone attack our homeland.  They were terrified of the government stampeding over their religious liberties, despite having no open atheists in the Congress, Supreme Court, or the White House as the influence of extremist religious groups remains dangerously high.  They were terrified of liberals coming to take their rights, despite the fact that it’s almost always conservatives who attack civil rights, human rights, etc.  They were terrified, so it didn’t matter how good they could be, all that could be expressed was how wicked they acted politically.

I want so much for the generosity, compassion, devotion, and hard work of conservatives to be their defining characteristics.  I would like so much for our political conversations to be level headed and concerned with how best we can accomplish the goals we have in common.  I simply want to be able to have our politics reflect the way we treat each other face to face, but this can’t happen so long as there is this two-faced personality disorder allowing otherwise good and loving people to embrace hateful positions.

Big City Lawyer

Americans have a long tradition of trusting the innate goodness and virtue of the common man.  It’s not for nothing that Thomas Paine’s famous pamphlet from the Revolutionary War is entitled “Common Sense.”  It speaks to an almost uniquely American sentiment that all truth can be felt from one’s own gut.  It is therefore because of the common goodness and innate wisdom of all people that we chose a democratic government, which hopes to hone the vast experiences of all the people into a government for all the people.  However, there are some things that seem wrong, but turn out to be true; and there are times when you need to learn more, because your gut is fallible.  Yet there is a surprisingly large sector of society that lives according to the stolid belief that any attempt to learn more is dangerous and any claim to expertise should be suspect.  This, to say the least, is a problem.

People who watched SNL back when Phil Hartman was on it, might recall a recurring skit he did called “Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer.”  Hartman played a character, Keyrock, who was a caveman living 100,000 years ago, who became frozen in ice only to be thawed out, attend law school, and become the Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer.  I bring this up because the butt of the joke was that he would almost invariably be able to convince people of his point by spinning down home truths from his past as a caveman. https://screen.yahoo.com/unfrozen-cave-man-lawyer-1-223412426.html He feigns ignorance to speak to the “common sense” that the jury should instinctively know.  Obviously this is a farce, as he has no qualms fitting into society, driving an expensive car, using a state of the art brick phone, getting through law school, etc.  He is not just some common man, but it works to his advantage to play the fool and appeal to that common virtue of all Americans.

This is not the only example, as comedies are routinely filled with stock lawyers and politicians who use the phrase “I’m no big city lawyer,” not as a means of putting their comments in an appropriately humble context, but to paradoxically lift them above their opponent.  Heck, Stephen Colbert’s character in the Colbert Report is essentially that character to a T.  The character he is playing, in other words, is Bill O’Reilly and the Fox News team.  See, Mr O’Reilly went to Harvard, which you might recognize as a fairly prestigious school, but he never seems to bring that up.  Similarly, Gretchen Carlson went to Stanford, but that seems more unknown to her audience than her Miss America win.  They too are playing a part, which is to say Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity.

Those last two really didn’t get a college degree, though in the case of Mr Hannity it wasn’t for lack of trying.  They really are like the approximately 60% of Americans who do not have a college degree, and because they are just like the average guy and that makes them better than the experts.  There is a portion of America that is skeptical of the doctors, journalists, and scientists who try to tell them things that don’t seem quite right to them.  They don’t like to hear that they have a common ancestor with chimps, they don’t like to hear that the government can do things that the individual can’t, and they don’t like to hear that there might be consequences to their gas guzzler.  But there is something altogether unwholesome to the way that people who clearly do know better, play a part to tug at these heartstrings and assure people that those pesky facts that make them feel weird aren’t actually true.

From the more academic side of things, e.g. Thomas Sowell, to the the people who make you wonder how they ever learned how to tie their own shoelaces, e.g. Alex Jones, there is an overwhelming skepticism to the proposition that experts can do anything right.  Yet these same people are able to display profound cognitive dissonance as they can use and profit from modern technology, created by those same experts, while being as stupid in their political lives as they are.  People like Ted Cruz, Don McLeroy, or Ben Carson are capable of saying the most insanely stupid things, utterly without any grasp of reality, yet they were able to become a lawyer, a dentist, and a neurosurgeon respectively.  It simply boggles the mind how people can be, at the same time, both that smart and that stupid.  Then you recognize, for some of them, this might not actually be the case.

I am perfectly willing to concede that some people really are that stupid, and because of charisma or some personal characteristic they are able to succeed in life, but I find it hard to believe this is the case for all of them.  Certainly with the Fox News pundits, it should be quite easy to point out that many are simply playing a part to win ratings and thus heaps of money.  If P. T. Barnum taught us nothing else, it’s that there is good money in giving stupid people what they want.  But I think it should be clear with any of the politicians that aspire for the highest elected offices, at least on the Right, there are some incredible acting chops being wasted on politics.  Someone like Rick Santorum might really be that stupid, but for the people with an actual chance at the White House the game is much more subtle, to be sure.

On the road to the White House, a conservative candidate might be expected to cast doubts on climate change, evolution, or the scientific method altogether.  This challenge to be as simple as possible goes on throughout the primaries, but they are always conscious that they can never go too far, or else they will be steam rolled when they have to appeal to the general public.  This is why the best of them simply obfuscate, they claim to have doubts about basic facts of science, history, reality, etc regardless of whether they believe any of it.  All the while they are hammering home incredibly simple soundbites that people can memorize and repeat.  This much is applicable to both sides, because all the successful politicians are expected to boil down entire policies into three word chants that the masses can understand, but we do this at our own peril.

Here’s why it matters, we need people to be better.  We used to expect more from ourselves because we demanded more from ourselves.  It used to be a privilege to go to school and learn and better yourself, but now there is a growing movement that thinks when kids learn new things it’s actually indoctrination and so it’s to be avoided at all costs.  Kids themselves don’t look favorably on going to school for the most part, because what more is there to learn?  And frankly with the way that many states actively dumb down curriculum, they may have a point.  Incidentally this is exactly why we need Common Core standards in the first place, but that’s really a tangential issue to this point.  The point is that everything in the zeitgeist, everything has to be dumbed down to include as many people as possible, when it used to be that standards were set higher and people were expected to rise to the occasion.

The famous example of newspapers showed that readership increased as the difficulty of the reading material decreased.  Papers tend to stick around the 7th or 8th grade reading level, because it just so happens that the average American reads at the 7th or 8th grade reading level.  Movies too, just seem dumber these days.  Plots and characters are as simple as possible, and absolutely everything is explained to the audience to ensure that no one gets confused.  What’s more these same bland movies are essentially copied and pasted into sequels, prequels, reboots, reinterpretations, adaptations, etc.  That’s why you have Fast & Furious 7, The Hobbit part three, six Paranormal Activity movies, not to mention however many iterations of Spiderman movies in the last decade.  This is not to say that there aren’t engaging, provocative, novel, and intelligent movies out there, but those that come out tend not to do well, even if they become critically acclaimed.

When I started up this blog, there were plenty of “helpful” sites that claimed to have all the answers about how to increase readership, and thus profitability.  Without exception they suggest limiting paragraphs to two sentences whenever possible, with three being an absolute max.  Use pictures and other visuals as often as possible to break up posts.  Limit sentence length and use a tone that people will recognize.  Numbered lists are very effective at catching attention and keeping posts brief.  In other words, keep it simple stupid.  This makes perfect sense to me, but you may have noticed that I don’t follow many, if any, of these rules.

If you listen to speeches by FDR, you’ll quickly notice that he speaks in a fairly antiquated, if not pompous, way.  He has flowery but effective speeches, and this isn’t just because he was from a different era.  The average American did not speak like FDR, and that’s because he came from an affluent family in the best parts of New York society.  But the people respected FDR, and part of the reason why they respected him is because he treated them like adults, as equals and not like children.  He didn’t dumb things down, he didn’t talk down at them, he treated the public as if they were mentally competent people entrusted with the responsibilities associated with a democracy, and they rose to the occasion.  He told the people he was going to talk frankly about the war and where the fighting was going on, and sales of world maps sky rocketed, because people wanted to be sure they knew about what he was talking about.  But now that we have all the information in the world literally at our fingertips with smartphones and 4G internet, politicians still feel the need to treat everyone like infants and tone down their rhetoric accordingly.

As it stands now, there is an unfortunately large population that is content being uninformed, unchallenged, unengaged, and simply unbothered by anything resembling reality. I, for one, don’t mind if someone I respect uses a word that I don’t recognize or makes a reference I don’t get.  There is nothing keeping me from looking up words for both meaning or spelling, and it has never been easier to find out what a person is referencing just by punching in a few words into google.  In fact, you feel all the better once you go out and learn something you didn’t know before, because you put in the work to do it.  You appreciate it because it wasn’t already there, and because you did something to earn that new information.  But, it seems so much easier to just read two sentences that confirm your previous beliefs and keep on believing that you know it all.  It’s just so comforting to be secure in the absolute knowledge that you know more about evolution than the biologist who spent decades in research, isn’t it?

Well, here’s where I make my stand, at the end of a decently long post.  I’m no big city lawyer, myself.  I have had advantages that seem utterly impossible to the vast majority of the world’s seven plus billion population, and with those I have gotten a bachelor’s degree, but I am by no means an expert in political sciences, philosophy, literature, etc.  I am an American, as much as the hardworking farmer or factory worker.  I am one man who has seen the level of discourse in politics lowered so far that it would be laughable if it weren’t terrifying, and I’ve had enough.  I may just be some guy with a blog, but there’s one thing I do know, a democracy is only ever as good as its people.  If we’re seeing structural problems with our government, it’s only because we’ve let it happen.  It’s long past the time when we should have acted, but there’s little sense on dwelling on the past.  We need to get to work now, and we need to show a little self respect by demanding more of ourselves.  Only once we’ve done that can we be justified in expecting more of our leaders.

Bad Government

If you listen to a lot of Right Wing radio, and I would hope for your sanity’s sake that you don’t, then you might get the distinct impression that under no circumstances can government ever work.  This is a bold assertion, one that stands utterly blind to all the good governments do for us on a day to day basis.  Now, it is one of the easiest things in the world to point out the many occasions when governments, including the government of the United States, have gone too far and done pretty reprehensible things, but if we’re honest, the same could be said of the people who created these governments.  Not for nothing, but it wasn’t the government shipping Africans in tightly packed boats to be sold into slavery.  Can government work? Yes, but like with most everything else, moderation is key.  Most conservatives would agree with the point that government isn’t necessarily evil, yet many in that movement seem dedicated to making government into the monster they fear it is.

People who are utterly convinced that government can’t work, in my mind, have utterly disqualified themselves from holding elected office.  I doubt I will ever understand the kind of person who willingly votes for a representative who states openly that they believe that government is incapable of doing any good.  If you honestly believed that, then why would you want to participate in that government in the first place.  If it’s only to keep the government from directing any more attention on you as an individual, then why not simply pack your bags for a government-less society, I hear Somalia is beautiful this time of year.  More to the point, however, a person who bases their personal philosophy on the inadequacy of the government has not incentive to make it work, and actually has incentives to keep it from working.  I mean, you wouldn’t make an arsonist the chief of your fire department, but there are some people out there who are perfectly happy to elect representatives who assert as fact that government can only be destructive, obtrusive, etc.

Again, don’t mistake my skepticism of the government haters with naivety about the many potential downsides of government.  I do believe that in a perfect world, a government would be, at best, redundant; however, if you’ve noticed we don’t live in a perfect world.  Some, including our founders, thought of government as a necessary evil.  I’m perfectly willing to go along with that, so long as we remember that even a necessary evil can do quite a bit of good. And government does do good, or did you drive on privately funded roads, benefit from only private schools, use private security forces to keep you safe from threats foreign and domestic, appeal to private courts for justice, etc?  But even when conservatives finally concede that government can do good, they seem dead set on keeping that good to a minimum once in office.

It is not the role of the government to take the lives of its people in cold blood.  Obviously the government creates certain organizations that, incidentally, kill people.  We all accept that our nation’s defense is hinged on the inevitability that our troops are occasionally required to take lives.  And even as we suffer through the seemingly unending slew of deaths at the hands of police officers, I doubt there is a person out there who thinks we would be better off if the people who maintain security at home and who face danger daily were unable to defend themselves.  We need to work harder to make sure that using deadly force is the last resort and not the first instinct, but at the end of the day, the soundness of my sleep is thanks, in part, to the preparedness of our men and women in uniform.  But these public servants are only ever expected to use deadly force in exceptional circumstances, what about when there is no imminent threat?

Utah is preparing to again use the firing squad as a method of capital punishment.  The last time this method was used in the United States was in 1976, the year before the last guillotine blade fell in France.  I simply bring this up because, clearly this is an issue that has hung with many civilizations up until the present day.  Whereas France then ended all capital punishment in 1981, many states in America still hold onto this as the ultimate punishment that can be inflicted by the government.  And I would just like to point out that it is mainly those on the Right who both claim that government is a vehicle of evil and claim that government should inflict this evil on some of its citizens.

I could point out that capital punishment, like gun ownership, is not a deterrent to violent crime.  The most violent crimes per capita occur in 1. South Carolina, 2. Tennessee, 3. Nevada, 4. Florida, 5. Louisiana. These are all states with the death penalty still on the books, and yet that doesn’t seem to have done much to solve the problem.  I could also point out that capital punishment ends up costing more than a simple life sentence, in part because people are still entitled to appeal their cases if they receive that decision and use those appeals as much as possible to prolong their lives.  I could focus on any number of reasons why capital punishment is simply bad policy, but more than anything it is the height of the actual bad government that we should be stopping.

See, I agree with libertarians government should be as unobtrusive as possible.  The government should not be secretly spying on its citizens, the government should respect the personal boundaries clearly set in the Constitution, the government should not get in between two consenting adults, and the government should not kill its citizens in cold blood.  Where I differ with libertarians is that I do believe that there are times when the government should be obtrusive.  For one thing, I quite enjoy the commons like the air and water, so I am quite happy that the government enforces the Clean Air and Water Acts at the expense of polluters.  For another, I quite like knowing that when I eat food or take medication that the things I am consuming actually are the things the labels claim they are, so I am quite happy that I have the FDA to enforce good practices and that I have recourse in the event of bad practices.

There is a time and a place for government intervention, just as there is plenty of time for personal space.  The goal cannot and should not be to eliminate the government as a matter of principle.  What’s more the goal shouldn’t simply be to shrink the government altogether, least of all to the point of drowning it in a bathtub.  The sequester was an example of simply shrinking government; it was stupid and destructive.  If you’re trying to lose weight, you don’t start by chopping off your limbs, it’s the excess fat you want to remove not the skin, blood, or bones.  In the same way we need to target our attacks on bad government to the parts of government that are, in fact, bad.  We need to cut excess spending, eliminate redundant regulations, simplify rules, and clarify bureaucratic processes.  We do not need to cut worthwhile spending, eliminate necessary regulations, oversimplify rules overseeing complex problems, and cleanse the whole system of the bureaucracies that keep things moving.

There’s always going to be a battle over which programs are actually giving us the best bang for our buck, and which ones have ceased to perform their tasks effectively, let’s have those battles.  We can’t get around to that necessary stuff if we are always and forever bickering about whether government should exist at all, or defending policies that are, to the plainest observers, examples of the bad government critics claim to hate.

Means Tested

I may well be suffering from a delusion, but having talked with people who hold vastly different political views, I believe that people generally want the same kinds of things.  True, people express what they want in different ways, but there are usually common threads and common desired ends if you take the time to get past the petty stuff.  Most people think that a more prosperous society is better than a less prosperous one, most people think that having fewer pregnant teens is better than having more pregnant teenagers, most people agree that a healthier populace is better than an unhealthier populace, etc.  It takes a very special person to argue the contrary to these points, so what we are left with are arguments about how best we can come to these ends.  With all the various policy experiments that have gone on in the world and even within the United States, we have more than a little data to help us learn which policies work better than others.

I find it odd that in economic discussions, the Left is painted as the side arguing that we can only ever divvy out pieces of a pie, where as the Right is convinced we can grow the pie.  In my experience this is far from the truth, though I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the inverse would be completely true either.  The Left is portrayed as if we were all Marxist socialists, attempting to steal from the rich and give to the poor.  This would certainly imply that the Left hates the rich and wants to punish them for their success; however, while this may be good rhetoric for the Right, it rather misses the point.  I do not hate the rich, I do not see it as a moral failing to succeed, and I don’t think that it makes much sense to disincentivize new creation of wealth.  I do believe that the whole of society, the rich included, do better in a world where more people are able to participate in and contribute to the economy, so it makes good fiscal sense to empower as many people as possible to that end.

The Right is convinced that the only way you can grow the economic pie is to give the already rich an ever greater slice of that pie, but the evidence shows that this simply is not true.  The goal is to make it as easy as possible for people who work hard and have good ideas to become part of the richest circles of society.  By concentrating ever greater wealth in the hands of a select few people you limit the amount of people with the necessary capital to get their ideas off the ground, and crush meritocracy; you stymie the ability of the average person to buy the products of others, including the wealthy; you make it that much harder for the next great person or movement to grow the pie, all for the sake of placating a select few in the short run.  You see, I don’t advocate policies that seek to address inequality because I want to punish the rich, just the opposite.  I want the rich to get even more money, along with everyone else, and the best way to do it is to provide a playing field that encourages growth from all sectors and people.

The latest examples that people have been using to demonstrate this point are the various experiences of midwestern states.  In Minnesota, there is a billionaire in the governor’s office and he has worked hard to create a successful economy in his state, something that will undoubtedly profit him greatly.  He’s a Democrat.  Well technically since this is Minnesota, he is a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.  The policies he has pushed have raised the top marginal tax rates and has started the process of raising the minimum wage in Minnesota to $9.50 and hour by 2018.  This, in turn, has added over 165,000 jobs since 2011.  What’s more, over 6000 Minnesotans have now joined the ranks that will be paying those higher rates at the top, because people are getting wealthier.  Now, you compare that to a neighboring Midwestern state like Wisconsin, where presidential wannabe, Scott Walker, has failed to even bring his state in to the top half of business friendly states, as quantified by Forbes.  Or else we need look no further than Kansas, where the failed policies of Governor Brownback have increased the deficit, cut necessary services like education, dropped the state’s credit ratings, and created a scant ten thousand jobs.  But the rich in that state do indeed have a larger slice of a sinking ship.

Now for something completely different, sex.  And while I’ve got your attention, the unfortunate side effect of some of that sex, unplanned pregnancy in teenagers.  If you look at the states with the highest rates of teen pregnancy you notice a trend: 1. New Mexico, 2. Mississippi, 3. Texas, 4. Arkansas, 5. Louisiana.  These are fairly red states, and they tend to either have no sex education or else they teach abstinence only sex ed.  Don’t get me wrong, abstinence is great advice for kids, but if we’re trying to keep our kids safe and out of the maternity ward, then we might want to go with what actually works and not what we wish worked.  It is slightly amusing that the states teaching abstinence only tend to believe in a religion that proves the inadequacy of that tactic, it would be more amusing if it weren’t affecting the lives of real young women.  What’s more, by asserting that contraception isn’t an option, you leave everyone at a greater risk of infection from STIs.  This is particularly important in light of cases of antibiotic resistant gonorrhea.

If you look at the other side of the list, which states have the lowest rates of teen pregnancy, you’ll notice a slightly different trend: 1. New Hampshire, 2. Vermont, 3. Minnesota, 4. Massachusetts, 5. Utah. While Utah is indeed conservative, even they don’t teach abstinence only, though there are many who claim they don’t go into as much detail as they should.  Regardless, there is a clear trend here, and it’s one that should really speak to those who oppose abortion, because often these unplanned pregnancies result in unplanned abortions.  Simply getting rid of abortion clinics doesn’t help either, because all you’re doing is forcing women to seek unsafe and unmonitored abortions.  So it is really quite clear how the conservative approach vis-à-vis the liberal approach to these more sensitive issues affects the health of the people.

But it’s not simply the matter of sex ed or abortion access that shows the inadequacy of a conservative means of achieving what we all see as a better end in healthcare.  The conservative approach to healthcare insurance has long been, “let the private sector sort it out.”  We’ve seen the result of that, American premiums are the most expensive in the world by far.  If you look at per capita spending, we are more than double the OECD average, and as a percentage of GDP we pay far and away more than any other country on healthcare.  For this exorbitant level of spending we receive no better quality or longevity of life and often worse than other developed countries.  What’s more, even after the passage of the ACA, we still don’t even have universal coverage.  These are not merely coincidental facts either.  The fact that individuals are forced to buy health insurance gives them nearly no power in negotiating prices, meaning rates stay high.  The fact that rates stay high results in fewer people seeking care, especially preventative care, which drives down quality of life.  What’s more, businesses are now expected to provide healthcare for their employees in a way that limits their ability to pay higher wages and forces workers to stay in jobs, which often pay less than they deserve, because they can’t risk losing their insurance.  No one wins, this really does make society less healthy, poorer, and simply less able to innovate.

So, it’s quite clear what the effects of policies from the Left and Right really are.  I do not doubt that the people who advocate conservative principles really do want the economy to improve, all people to become wealthier, teens to wait until they’re ready to get pregnant, everyone to have access to healthcare that lengthens and improves lives, etc.  I do not doubt that we all want what’s best for our country, but the various means have been tested and the results are in.  If you want life to remain nasty, brutish and short, then go on advocating this conservative agenda, but I doubt anyone really wants that.  If you want everyone to become richer, if you want life to be more pleasant, if you want your health to be preserved then this really is the only game in town.