politics – Renaissance Guy

Walking Down Main Street, USA

I was at Disney World recently. I’ve been to Disney world many, many times over the last decade and a half. Not that long in the scheme of things, I grant you, but long enough to have an impression and an opinion on how things ought to be. Enough to recognize the difference between when Disney lives up to their advertising, and when it falls short. This last trip, it seemed to fall short.

Unlike other times where some catastrophe has wrecked part of my trip, there wasn’t a singular issue. Rather, it was the collective effect of many little issues. Things like “Bell Services was slow” or “the app was buggy” or “there weren’t enough servers working the kiosks.” Little annoyances that, individually excusable, collectively undermine the experience. For another vacation, I might not even mention them. After all, these things happen. But Disney advertises itself as being a cut above the rest precisely because it supposedly smooths these issues over through its trademark pixie dust and monopolistic panopticon of an area the size of Manhattan.

The blame, according to people who follow Disney religiously, lies with the new executives. In trying to squeeze more profit from the parks, they have stripped things down to the bare bones. Cast members are overworked, overstretched, and underpaid, and the result is burnout and absenteeism. Thus, the usual layer of pixie dust becomes a bit spottier. It’s a compelling story, which is part of why I doubt it. It’s a little too quaint, a little too storybook, with a simple villain making bad choices, to explain systemic breakdowns.

Of course, that doesn’t make the story untrue. Disney has been cutting costs. Like any large institution, there is a measure of redundancy within the organization, at which the new executives seem to be taking aim. The new thinking seems to be that theme parks can still sell merchandise without needing a gift shop at every ride, so a lot of shops are being closed and the workers reassigned. But what happens when you keep cutting? The rides still function, but the lines are longer. The cast members, who are covering more people, are just a little less bubbly. Luggage takes a little longer to arrive. Food is just a little less fresh. The shelves aren’t restocked as quickly.

But if the answer is Disney’s CEOs, why is the same true everywhere across the country? If the reason for so many shops at Disney’s Hollywood Studios being closed is Disney corporate strategy, why are shops closing in my hometown? Why are the ingredients at my local grocery store less fresh, and the mail running late, and the store shelves restocking so slowly? You could say something like “supply chain issues” or “worker shortages” but really this only pushes the problem back a step. Why is the supply chain struggling now? Where have all the workers gone?

What seems more remarkable is that no one wants to mention the obvious answer. We’re in the midst of a pandemic that killed more than a million Americans before many states just stopped counting. Millions more have been sickened, and are unable to work to the same capacity. Others are restricted from working in order to support people in the former group. And this is only the disruption to the United States, not even touching the dislocation caused by disruption to global supply chains and migration.

The idea that society- any society -can shrug off upwards of a million excess deaths and millions more disabled, without any kind of social or economic disruption, is a fantasy far beyond anything at Disney World. The idea that workers will be just as eager to compete for the same wages, despite the increased danger of infectious disease, coupled with the pressure of having to cover for sickened or dead colleagues, likewise ignores the basic tenets of supply and demand. When this happened during the bubonic plague, it was the beginning of the end of feudalism, as high-demand workers gained more leverage and began to upend traditional hierarchies. The decades after the 1918 Influenza Pandemic were a high point of labor unrest and economic turmoil in the United States, which only began to dissipate after the New Deal fundamentally restructured the American economy.

Disney continues, as it long has, to be a microcosm of American society at large. Price hikes, staff shortages, shorter business hours, longer lines, are all making themselves known. And likewise, some of the early attempts to grapple with the issue are on display. In response to a more competitive labor market, in addition to tightening time off policies, Disney has been forced to look to new demographics, expanding and accelerating its college recruitment program. At the same time, since it cannot afford to lose the talent it has, the company has been compelled to become more inclusive in its rhetoric.

Which, if you consider the ongoing spat between the right wing Florida state government and Disney, is hilarious. It is the head-in-the-sand public health policies, coupled with xenophobic protectionist immigration controls that have pushed Disney to embrace a more liberal political stance to attract talent. If this pattern ripples out to the wider American economy, and without aggressive government intervention in the labor market and public health, it almost certainly will, it will be a reversal of fortunes worthy of the Disney storytelling tradition.

The Q Corp

I want to take a moment to address a conspiracy theory I’ve seen emerging out of several right wing echo chambers. Specifically, following the Biden inauguration, there has been a, let’s say, crisis of faith in online communities surrounding the grand unifying conspiracy theory of Q-anon. One in particular which caught my attention claims that Trump will remain President because the United States was actually replaced by a corporation shadow-government founded in the City of London in the 1800s. The “actual” inauguration is in March and the fact that Biden was inaugurated in January means he’s illegitimate and Trump can depose him by reestablishing the real United States as it existed before the corporate version.

Or something. Admittedly I’m skimming because every time I’ve seen this theory it’s been light on details and citations. I think it basically goes without saying that this theory is without basis in reality. But I think examining it offers a chance to shed light on a larger trend of right wing conspiracies, so let’s work through this thought experiment.

Let’s suppose this theory is true. Let’s suppose that the United States as we know it today is not in fact a sovereign state but a non-governmental organization, that is, a corporation, that has assumed all the functions of one. Let’s assume that every accomplishment since was the work of this corporate entity- every law passed, every social program designed and implemented, every road built, every prisoner punished, every tax dollar collected, every war waged, every soldier drafted and bomb dropped, was all the work, not of a constitutional government, but an overgrown company.

Okay, fine. What does that change? I mean, assuming this is true, then it’s the corporation, not the constitutional government, that has all the cards. They pay, and organize, and command the military. They regulate the economy, and reap the revenues from it. They built all the infrastructure that makes the US work. They are in every meaningful sense of the phrase, in charge, whether or not a piece of paper says so. And pretty much everyone is fine going along because that’s how society functions now. Every aspect of American society that would engender loyalty belongs to the corporation, so why would anyone defect now?

What then is supposed to happen in March? Is Donald Trump going to stand on the steps of the capitol alone and pantomime an inauguration? I mean, it’s not like the corporation’s employees- the Chief Justice, Congress, the capitol police, any of those people -are going to help him out. Actually, given what happened at the capitol recently, there’s a good chance he’ll be banned from returning. So I guess he’ll be reciting the oath from Mar a Lago. Maybe he’ll be on television, but if the mainstream media is really as organized against him as is commonly claimed, then it seems unlikely. And he’s banned from most social media. So he’ll say some magic words in an empty room, and then what?

The answer, of course, is nothing. It changes nothing. The world would keep turning and Biden would still be in charge. It’s the old “if a tree falls in a forest” question. But suppose, for the sake of argument, that the event is televised. Suppose that Trump or someone close to him manages to hack into the emergency alert system. Suppose that while on camera, Trump makes the first coherent speech of his life, in which he delivers incontrovertible historical proof of constitutional discontinuity; that the modern federal government was founded on a lie, and that by default he is President.

What then? Is the entire federal government going to just roll over? Will the standing military, which didn’t exist during peacetime in the 1800s, disappear in a puff of logic? Is everyone who relies on federal programs going to just stop being hungry and impoverished? Most Americans have never even read the constitution, and even fewer care what it says except when it touches their lives. Of course some people, maybe even powerful people, might decide to follow Trump, probably people who were looking for an excuse to follow him anyways, but that’s not the question I’m driving at. I’m not asking whether people would follow Trump into a civil war. I’m asking why would the historical evidence make a difference.

One of the hard truths about politics is that laws and constitutions are just words on a page unless people believe in and abide by them. The Soviet constitution under Stalin contained guarantees of all the same freedoms as the first amendment of the US constitution, but only one of those societies actually has any history of a political norm of free speech, assembly, press, religion, and petition. If tomorrow some scholar at the library of Congress found a missing page of the constitution in which the founders made electricity unconstitutional, no branch of government would start clamoring to shut down the power grids. Either there would be an immediate amendment, or more likely, the country would all just collectively ignore that part of the constitution and carry on. That is what by all accounts should happen if Trump decides to invoke this particular theory.

Despite all the tradition and ceremony involved in codifying social and political norms into laws, there is nothing intrinsically special about the law that is separate and above how we enforce norms. Or, put another way, laws are not magic spells, and invoking the law does not lessen the blow of the police truncheon. If your worldview is predicated on a chosen one invoking magic words to assume divine right to rule, that’s not a political theory, it is a cult. Of course in a free country you are welcome to privately believe these things, but those views are not compatible with democracy. Furthermore, if that worldview involves the violent purging or overthrow of opponents, then it is a terrorist cult, and those who act on it lose the protections afforded to peaceful political discourse.

On Social Distancing Vis a Vis Communism

I wish to try and address some of the concerns raised by protests against measures taken to protect public health in the wake of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Cards on the table: I think people who are going out to protest these measures are, at best, foolhardy and shortsighted. It’s hard for me to muster sympathy for their cause. Still, calling someone names doesn’t often win hearts and minds. So I’m going to try and do that thing that people tell me I’m good at; I’m going to write about the situation from where I stand, and try to understand where these people are coming from, in the hopes that I can, if not change behaviors, at least help people understand who may be equally mystified and apoplectic at my position as I am at theirs.

I’m not going to address any conspiracy theories, including the conspiracy theory that these measures are part of some ill-defined plan of a shadowy elite to seize control. Mostly because, from where I stand, it’s a moot point. Even taking all of the claims about evil motivations at face value, even if we assume that everyone in government secretly wants to live in a totalitarian dictatorship and they see this as their chance, that doesn’t really affect the reality. The contents of my governor’s soul is between him and God [1]. He says he wants to save lives, and he’s put in place policies to mitigate the spread of disease. People are dying from COVID-19; maybe slightly more or fewer people than the numbers being reported, but definitely people [2], including people I know.

For context, since the beginning of this episode, I have had friends and acquaintances die, and other friends and acquaintances friends go from being student athletes, to being so sick that they can’t sit up to type on a laptop. My university campus- the places where I learn, interact with others, and often write these posts -is split between being field hospitals, quarantine lodgings for hospital workers, and morgues. Because there aren’t enough staff, undergraduate students, even freshmen like me, who have any experience in nursing or medicine, are called on to volunteer as emergency workers, and facing the same conditions, often without proper equipment, that have claimed so many lives. Every night, from my own bedroom, I hear the sirens of ambulances rushing back and forth from the retirement village to the hospital. We’re not even the epicenter, and things are that bad here.

So the virus is very real. The toll is very real. The danger is real. We can quibble over who bears responsibility for what later. There will be plenty of time for anger, grief, and blame; plenty of time to soberly assess who overreacted, who under-reacted, who did a good job, and who ought to be voted out. I’m counting on it. In the now, we know that the virus spreads by close and indoor contact [2][3]. We know that there are only so many hospital beds, and we have no way to protect people or cure them [4][5]. It stands to reason that if we want to save lives, we need to be keeping people apart. And if we believe that a function of government is looking out for and protecting lives, which even most libertarians I know agree on, then it stands to reason that it’s the government’s job to take action to save as many lives as possible. Yes, this will require new and different exercise of powers which might in another context be called government overreach. But we live in new and different times.

Not everyone is able to comfortably come to terms with change. I get it. And if I’m really honest, I’m not happy with it either. A lot of people who argue for shutdowns try to spin it as a positive thing, like a children’s television episode trying to convince kids that, hey, cleaning up your room is actually fun, and vegetables are delicious. Look at the clear skies, and the dolphins in the Hudson River. Staying at home makes you a hero; don’t you want to feel like a hero? And yeah, there are silver linings, and reasons why you can look on the bright side. For some people looking for that bright side is a coping mechanism. But truth be told, mostly it sucks. Not being able to hug your friends, or eat out at a restaurant, or just hang out in public, sucks. You’re not going to get around that. And a lot of people are angry. People feel deprived and cheated.
And you know what? That’s fine. You’re allowed to feel angry, and cheated. Being upset doesn’t make you a bad person. Your experiences and feelings are valid, and you’re allowed to pout and stomp and scream and shout.

That’s fine. Let it out, if you think it’ll make you feel better. You’re right, it’s not fair. Life isn’t fair, good people are suffering, and that’s infuriating. Unfortunately (and I do mean this sincerely), it won’t change anything. The virus has made it abundantly clear that it doesn’t care about our feelings, only our behavior. However we feel, if we want to save people, we need to stay apart. If we support the idea that governments should look out for people, we should insist that they lend their power to these measures. We can still hate being cooped up. But we need to understand that this is the lesser of the evils. Whether it takes a week, a month, or even a year, the alternative of massive death needs to be ruled out.

Some people have raised the argument that, even though we care about human lives, Americans need to work. The implication that Americans need to work, as opposed to, say, just kinda wanting to work, implies a kind of right. Maybe not as absolute as free speech, or as technical as the right to a trial by a jury of peers, but maybe something akin to a right to privacy; a vague but agreed upon notion that we have a general right to strive for something. Of course, no right is truly absolute. Even free speech, the one that we put first in our bill of rights, and generally treat as being the most inviolable, has its limits. As a society we recognize that times of war, rebellion, or public danger, our rights are not absolute. The police don’t have to mirandize you to ask where the bomb is, or stop chasing an armed suspect because they ran into a private home [6].

Hopefully, even if we may, as a matter of politics, quibble on where the exact lines are, we can all concede that rights are not absolute, and having exceptions for a larger purpose is not advocating tyranny. This same line of reasoning would apply to any previously undefined right to work as well. And I think it’s pretty clear the basis for why the current pandemic constitutes such an exception. We can have respectful disagreements about what measures are useful in what areas, but when the overarching point is that we need to minimize human contact for public safety, it seems like that covers most things in dispute. Again, you don’t have to like it. You’re welcome to write a response. But do so from your own home. If you’re feel compelled to protest something specific, then protest safely, but don’t sabotage the efforts of people trying to make this go away.

Maybe you’re thinking: Okay, that sounds nice, but I actually need to work. As in, the bills don’t stop coming, and this stimulus check isn’t going to cut it for longer. Life doesn’t stop for illness. Even in localities that have frozen certain bills and have good food banks, there are still expenses. In many places, not enough has been done to allow people who want to do the right thing to be able to do so. Not everyone can work from home, and in a tragic irony, people who live paycheck to paycheck are less likely to be able to work from home, if their jobs even exist in a telecommuting economy. For what it’s worth, I’m with the people who say this is an unfair burden. Unfortunately, as we know, life isn’t fair, and there’s not a way to reconcile saving lives and letting everyone work freely. As an aside, though I don’t think anyone genuinely believes in sacrificing lives for GDP, I’ll point out that more people getting sick and dying actually costs jobs in the long run [7][8]. Economists agree that the best way to get everyone back to work is to devote as much of our resources as possible to fighting this virus.

People say we can’t let the cure be worse than the disease, and although I disagree with the agenda for which this is a talking point, I actually agree with the idiom. Making this a choice between working class families starving, and dying of disease is a no-win scenario, and we do need to weigh the effects of cutting people off. That doesn’t make the virus the lesser of the evils, by any stretch of the imagination. Remember, we haven’t actually ruled out the “Millions of American Deaths” scenario if we go back to regular contact patterns, we’ve just put it off for now. That’s what flattening the curve means; it’s an ongoing process, not a one and done effort [9]. Saving lives is a present tense endeavor, and will be for some time. Still, a cost-benefit analysis requires that we understand the costs. People are losing jobs, and suffering for it, and government policy should take that into account.

Here’s where I diverge from others: keeping things shut down does not necessarily have to mean that people go hungry. Rather than ease lockdown restrictions, this is where I would say governments, both state and federal, need to be doing more while they’re telling people to stay home. It’s not fair to mandate people stay at home while their livelihoods depend on getting out and working; agreed, but there’s more than one way to neutralize that statement. The government could scale up the stimulus checks, giving every American an emergency basic income. Congress could suspend the debt limit and authorize special bonds akin to war bonds to give unemployment and the Payroll Protection Program as much funding as they need, removing the bottleneck for businesses. Or, you could attack the problem from the opposite end; mandate a halt on payments for things like rent, mortgages, utilities, and so on, and activate emergency nutrition programs drawn up by the pentagon to keep Americans fed during a nuclear winter. Common carriers such as utilities, telecoms, delivery companies, and other essential services could be placed under temporary government control through existing emergency powers if necessary.

Such a mass mobilization wouldn’t be unprecedented in American history. The world wars the the New Deal show that it can be done while maintaining democratic governance. The measures wouldn’t need to be permanent, just for the duration of the crisis created by the pandemic. There’s a good historical case that a strong response would benefit our economic recovery once this passes [8]. You wouldn’t necessarily need to do all of the things I mentioned; you could tailor it to fit demands in specific areas. The point is, people don’t need to starve. The trade off only exists in the system we’ve constructed for ourselves. That system is malleable, even if we don’t often view it as such, because we so rarely get to a point like this. The lockdown is easier to see as malleable, because it’s recent, and we can remember a time before it, but there’s a much stronger scientific basis for why we need to keep it in place, at least for now.

I’ll address one more point, and that is the argument that, material need or no, people have a deeper need, and by implication a right, to get out and try to make a living in the world. This is subtly different than the idea that people have a default legal right to do as they will, as covered earlier. By contrast this strikes at a deeper, philosophical argument that people have a need to contribute positively. The idea that people simply go stir crazy, and television and video games lack that certain element of, as Aristotle put it, Eudaimonia, the joy achieved by striving for a life well lived [10]. I think this is what people are getting at, at least, the people who have really sat down and thought about it, when they decry increasing government dependence while life is under quarantine. They probably understand that people need to eat, and don’t want anyone to die, but deeper than any legal right, are concerned that if this state of affairs drags out, that people will stop striving, and lose that spark that drives the human spirit. People need to be able to make their own lives, to give them meaning.

Expressed in philosophical terms, I’m more sympathetic to this argument than my politics might suggest. I agree that people need meaning in their lives. I even agree that handouts don’t provide that meaning the same way that a successful career does. It is human nature is to yearn to contribute, not just survive, and for a lot of people, how they earn money outside the home is what they see as their contribution; the value they add and the proof of their worth. Losing that is more than just tragic, it’s existentially terrifying. I remember the upheaval I went through when it became clear I wasn’t going to be able to graduate on time with my disability, and probably wouldn’t get into the college on which I had pinned my hopes and dreams as a result. I had put a lot of my value on my being a perfect student, and having that taken away from me was traumatic in its way. I questioned what my value was if society didn’t acknowledge me for being smart; how could I be a worthwhile person if society rejected the things I put my work into. Through that prism, I can almost understand how some people might be more terrified of the consequences of a shutdown than of the virus.

The idea that work gives human life meaning isn’t new. Since the industrial revolution created the modern concept of the career, people have been talking about how it relates to our philosophical worth. But let’s tug on that threat a little longer. Before any conservative pundits were using the human value of work to attack government handouts, there was a German philosopher writing about the consequences of a society which ignored the dislocation and alienation which occurred when the ruling class prevented people from meaningful work. He used a German term, Entfremdung der Gattungswesen, to describe the deprivation of the human soul which occurs when artificial systems interfere in human drives. He argued that such measures were oppressive, and based on his understanding of history would eventually end in revolution.

That philosopher was Karl Marx. He suggested that industrial capitalism, by separating the worker from the means of producing their livelihood, the product of their labor, the profits thereof, and the agency to work on their own terms, the bourgeoisie deny the proletariat something essential to human existence [11]. So I guess that protester with the sign that “social distancing = communism” might be less off the wall that we all thought. Not that social distancing is really communist in the philosophical sense, rather the contrary; social distancing underlines Marxist critiques of capitalism. True to Marxist theory, the protester has achieved consciousness of the class iniquities perpetuated by the binding of exploitative wage labor to the necessities of life, and is rallying against the dislocation artificially created by capitalism. I suspect they probably wouldn’t describe themselves as communist, but their actions fit the profile.

Here’s the point where I diverge from orthodox Marxism. Because, again, I think there’s more than one way to neutralize this issue. I think that work for meaning doesn’t necessarily need to be work for wages. Suppose you decoupled the drive of material needs from the drives for self improvement and worth, either by something like a universal basic income, or the nationalization and dramatic expansion of food banks, rent controls, and utility discount programs, such that a person was able to survive without working. Not comfortably, mind you, but such that starving is off the table. According to Marx this is most assuredly not communism; it doesn’t involve the worker ownership of the means of production. People still go to work and sell their labor, and market mechanisms dictate prices and reward arbitrage.

What this does, instead, is address the critique of our current system raised by both Marx, and our protester. In addition to ensuring that no one goes hungry, it also gives the opportunity, indeed, an incentive, for individuals to find socially useful and philosophically meaningful work beyond the market. Feeling useless sitting at home? Go get on video chat and tutor some kids in something you’re good at. Go mow lawns for emergency workers in your area. Take an online class, now that lots of them are free. Make some art; join the trend of celebrities posting videos of themselves singing online. If you have any doubts that there is plenty of unpaid but necessary and useful work around the house, ask a housewife. Rather than protest the lack of a particular task, we should take this opportunity to discover what useful and meaningful work we can accomplish from home.

The dichotomy between opening and starving is a false fabrication, as is the dichotomy between deference to scientific and philosophical principles. Those who protest one or the other appear either to represent a fringe extreme, or misunderstand the subtleties of the problem and the multitude of measures which we may take to address it. Our individual freedoms reflect a collective responsibility and commitment to self moderation and governance, which we must now demonstrate, by showing the imagination, foresight, and willingness to sacrifice for a greater cause which has defined our human struggle. In this moment, the responsibilities to our fellow human beings outweigh some of the rights we have come to take for granted. This exigency demands a departure from our norms. We must be prepared to suspend our assumptions, and focus on what really matters. Now is the time to find meaning in things that matter to us. To demand better from our government than platitudes and guidelines. To help ourselves and our fellow human being without prejudice.

Works Consulted

[1] Matthew 7:1, KJV

[2] “Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19).” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020, www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html.

[3] “Coronavirus.” World Health Organization, World Health Organization, www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019.

[4] “ Over the past several weeks, a mind-boggling array of possible therapies have been considered. None have yet been proven to be effective in rigorously controlled trials”“Pursuing Safe and Effective Anti-Viral Drugs for COVID-19.” National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 17 Apr. 2020, directorsblog.nih.gov/2020/04/17/pursuing-safe-effective-anti-viral-drugs-for-covid-19/.

[5] “ There are no drugs or other therapeutics approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to prevent or treat COVID-19. Current clinical management includes infection prevention and control measures and supportive care”“Therapeutic Options for COVID-19 Patients.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 21 Mar. 2020, www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/therapeutic-options.html.

[6] Burney, Nathan. “The Illustrated Guide to Law.” The Illustrated Guide to Law, 17 Apr. 2020, lawcomic.net/.

[7] Pueyo, Tomas. “Coronavirus: Out of Many, One.” Medium, Medium, 20 Apr. 2020, medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-out-of-many-one-36b886af37e9.

[8] Carlsson-Szlezak, Philipp, et al. “What Coronavirus Could Mean for the Global Economy.” Harvard Business Review, 16 Apr. 2020, hbr.org/2020/03/what-coronavirus-could-mean-for-the-global-economy.

[9] Ferguson, Neil M, et al. “ Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand.” Imperial College of London, 16 Mar. 2020, https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/mrc-gida/2020-03-16-COVID19-Report-9.pdf

[10] Aristotle. “Nicomachean Ethics.” The Internet Classics Archive, classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.1.i.html.

[11] Marx, Karl. “The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.” Marxists Internet Archive, www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/preface.htm.

Foreshadowing

After a brief unplanned hiatus, I have returned from the land of midterms and existential angst. Quite simply, I stopped writing for a period because between several different papers and written exams, I exhausted my tolerance for dealing with words in a constructive capacity.

But recently, my Poli-Sci professor said something that shocked me enough to dust off an abandoned draft. After handing out a New York Times article on the impeachment inquiry, he said that, though he had covered the constitutional and political basis of impeachment before the midterm, he wanted to go over it again, because usually when he covered it, it was just for the quiz, and it looks like this is going to be a thing. He said that even as a political science professor, he didn’t know what was going to happen any better than we do, but that it was his job to prepare us as best he could.

And then he said: I hope you’re all paying attention to the news, because that may turn out to be more important than your grade in this class.

Sometimes, I wish I was disciplined enough to keep a proper journal. Given my intermittent memory issues, I can imagine that this would be immensely useful. I have been recommended to keep a journal on a few occasions by my doctors, and have attempted to cultivate the habit several times, but I never quite manage to keep it. I do not have the concentration nor the time, and I am simply not disciplined enough to compel myself to make time, or force myself to concentrate. I’m barely disciplined enough to post regularly here, and I sure do t have the fotitude to do the same thing without an audience.

I regret these circumstances, partly because it keeps me from being able to look up matters such as what I had to eat before my stomach became upset, or where I was at three o clock on January second two thousand and fifteen. But mostly, I regret not being able to keep a journal because I believe it might be of some historical interest in the far future. I may or may not remember where I was when the event that goes down in history takes place when future generations ask, but I certainly won’t remember where I was and what it was like the day before. And I won’t be able to look it up, either. All the sights, sounds, smells, and little details of human experience that I now enjoy will be washed away long before my story is even over.

We live in interesting times. That much is indisputable, I think. Some day there will be textbooks summarizing the headlines we are not watching daily. More than just textbooks, there will be historical dramas, novels, games, even musicals set in our era looking backwards. And they will get so much wrong, partly as a consequence of trying to imagine something they never lived, but mostly because they will be imagining what it must have been like to live now with the limited perspective of retrospect.

They might be sympathetic to our stories, but privately they will wonder why the future consensus wasn’t obvious to us at the time. It will seem inevitable to them.
This is the danger of history. Nowadays it’s easy to see why the Soviet Union had to fall, why the allies had to win World War 2, why the American Revolution had to triumph and establish a global superpower, why the Roman Empire was unsustainable, and so on and so forth. Those things happened, and insofar as we are satisfied in knowing why they happened, they seem to a certain degree inevitable. Or if not inevitable, it is difficult to see how people at the time could have been blind to what would come to pass.

I’m guilty of this too. In my case, it’s the fall of the Berlin Wall and subsequent breakup of the soviet bloc that fascinates me. I simply cannot imagine a world in which there is an east and west Germany, right next to each other, diametrically opposed, and seeing this as completely natural. I laugh every time I find a map from the time period. It just seems so silly, like a cheap gimmick. Of course they had to reunify, how could it be otherwise? Sure, I might be able to, for the sake of argument, dream up a scenario in which East Berlin is the site of something on par with Tiananmen Square, and the Warsaw Pact continues existing, placing itself somewhere between modern China and modern Cuba.

But I can’t begin to reconcile that fantasy with the real world. And I have trouble constructing a worldview where it would seem equally or even more reasonable to bet on that reality coming true instead of ours.
That is why I would want to try and keep a journal, to capture the uncertainty of this moment. It’s not that we don’t know we’re living through history, we just don’t know how it will end. If you’re reading this in the future, it may be difficult to understand, so let me give you a rundown.

We don’t know what the economy will do. Some say it will soon go into a recession, others say that’s just alarmist speculation. Both options seem plausible.
I can’t say what Europe will look like. The United Kingdom is in disarray and seems to be having an identity crisis over the prospect of leaving the European Union, which is uncertain. Allusions have been made to a more united Europe, which has caused massive backlash.
I don’t know what will become of my own country, the United States. Impeachment hearings have been announced against the president, after years of activists calling for them. The scandal, which regards phone calls with Ukraine and other world leaders, has snowballed remarkably quickly.
The President has threatened violence, and possibly even civil war, if he is removed, though most people have taken this as a joke.

This may sound like foreshadowing. Perhaps it is, but certainly not intentionally.

Unchosen Battles

Sometimes, you get to pick your battles. On items that don’t directly affect me, I can choose whether or not to have an opinion, and whether or not to do the research to be informed. Sure, being a good, well-informed person with a consistent ethical framework dictates that I try to have empathy even for issues that don’t impact me, and that I ought apply my principles in a consistent way, such that I tend to have opinions anyway. But I get to decide, for instance, to what degree I care about same sex marriage, or what’s happening in Yemen, or the regulations governing labor unions. None of these things has a noticeable effect on my day to day life, and as such I have the privilege of being able to ignore them without consequence.

Of course, this isn’t always the case. There are lots of policies that do directly affect me. The price of tuition, for instance, is of great concern, since I am presently engaged in acquiring a degree which I hope will allow me to get a job that will let me pay my bills, ideally without having to take out a small fortune in loans to cover it. Transport policy affects because I am an adult with places to be who cannot drive, and current American transport policy borders on actively hostile to people in my position.

And then there’s healthcare. I’m not a single issue voter, far from it, but healthcare is a make or break issue for me, since it dictates whether I, and many people I care about dearly, live or die. The policies of the US government in this area determine access to the tools of my life support, whether my insurance company is allowed to discriminate against me, and what price I have to pay to stay alive. These policies are life and death, but that turn of phrase is overused, so let me put it another way:

With the policy as it is now, I can scrape by. Others can’t, which is tragic, but I’m lucky enough to have money to burn. If the policy changes to make my medication affordable the same way it is in Mexico, I will in one stroke save enough money each year to cover my tuition forever. If policy changes to remove existing protections, then nothing else in the world will matter, because I will go bankrupt and die in short order. It won’t even be a question of choosing between medication and food or rent; without my medication I don’t live long enough to starve to death, and the money I’d save by starving is trivial anyway. I don’t have the privilege of choosing whether to care, or even which side I fall on. I would love to have other priorities; to say that Climate Change is the greatest threat, or immigration is a moral imperative, or whatever other hill I might elect to die on. But for the time being, as long as I want to continue breathing, I have my political opinions chosen for me.

That’s the way it’s been for as long as I have had political opinions of which to speak. But recently, there’s been a shift. Suddenly, after years of having to beg minor officials to listen, with the presidential election gearing up, people have begun to take notice. Talking points which I and the people I work with have been honing and repeating for seemingly eons are being repeated by primary front runners. With no apparent proximal trigger, our efforts have gained attention, and though we remain far from a solution that will stand the test of repeated partisan attempts to dismantle it, a potential endgame is in sight.

But this itself brings new challenges. Where before we could be looked upon as a charity case worthy of pity, now we have become partisan. Our core aims- to make survival affordable in this country -have not changed, but now that one side has aligned themselves publicly with us, the other feels obliged to attack us. Items which I previously had to explain only to friends, I now find myself having to defend to a hostile audience. Where once the most I had to overcome was idle misinformation, now there is partisan hatred.

This is going to be a long campaign. I do not expect I shall enjoy it, regardless of how it turns out. But my work to etch out a means of survival continues.

Who Needs Facts?

Let us suppose for the sake of discussion that the sky is blue. I know we can’t all agree on much these days, but I haven’t yet heard anyone earnestly disputing the blue-ness of the sky, and in any case I need an example for this post. So let’s collectively assume for the purposes of this post, regardless of what it looks like outside your window at this exact moment, that we live in a world where “the sky is blue” is an easily observable, universally acknowledged fact. You don’t need to really believe it, just pretend. We need to start somewhere, so just assume it, okay? Good.

So, in this world, no one believes the sky isn’t blue, and no one, outside of maybe navel-gazing philosophers, would waste time arguing this point. That is, until one day, some idiot with a blog posts a screed about how the sky is really red, and you sheeple are too asleep to wake up and see it. This person isn’t crazy per se; they don’t belong in a mental institution, though they probably require a good reality check and some counseling. Their arguments, though laughably false, coming from a certain conspiratorial mindset are as coherent as anything else posted on the web. It’s competently and cogently written, albeit entirely false. The rant becomes the butt of a few jokes. It doesn’t become instantly popular, since it’s way too “tinfoil hat” for most folks, but it gets a handful of readers, and it sets up the first domino in a chain of dominoes.

Some time later, the arguments laid out in the post get picked up by internet trolls. They don’t particularly believe the sky is red, but they also don’t care what the truth is. To these semi-professional jerks, facts and truth are, at best, an afterthought. To them, the goal of the Wild West web is to get as many cheap laughs by messing with people and generally sowing chaos in online communities, and in this, a belief that the sky is red is a powerful weapon. After all, how do you fight with someone who refuses to acknowledge that the sky is blue? How do you deal with that in an online debate? For online moderators whose job is to keep things civil, but not to police opinions, how do you react to a belief like this? If you suppress it, to some degree you validate the claims of conspiracy, and besides which it’s outside your job to tell users what to think. If you let it be, you’re giving the trolls a free pass to push obvious bunk, and setting the stage for other users to run afoul of site rules on civility when they try to argue in favor of reality.

Of course, most people ignore such obviously feigned obtuseness. A few people take the challenge in good sport and try to disassemble the original poster’s copied arguments; after all they’re not exactly airtight. But enough trolls post the same arguments that they start to evolve. Counter arguments to the obvious retorts develop, and as trolls attempt to push the red-sky-truther act as far as possible, these counter arguments spread quickly among the growing online communities of those who enjoy pretending to believe them. Many people caught in the crossfire get upset, in some cases lashing back, which not only gives the trolls exactly the reaction they seek, but forces moderators on these websites to take action against the people arguing that the sky is, in fact, [expletive deleted] blue, and why can’t you see that you ignorant [expletive deleted].

The red sky argument becomes a regular favorite of trolls and petty harassers, becoming a staple of contemporary online life. On a slow news day, the original author of the blog post is invited to appear on television, bringing it even greater attention, and spurring renewed public navel gazing. It becomes a somewhat popular act of counterculture to believe, or at least, to profess to believe, that the sky isn’t blue. The polarization isn’t strictly partisan, but its almost exclusive use by a certain online demographic causes it to become of the modern partisan stereotype nevertheless.

Soon enough, a local candidate makes reference to the controversy hoping to score some attention and coverage. He loses, but the next candidate, who outright says she believes it should be up to individual Americans what color they want the sky to be, is more successful. More than just securing office, she becomes a minor celebrity, appearing regularly on daytime news, and being parodied regularly on comedy series. Very quickly, more and more politicians adopt official positions, mostly based on where they fall on the partisan map. Many jump on the red-sky bandwagon, while many others denounce the degradation of truth and civic discourse perpetuated by the other side. It plays out exactly how you imagine it would. The lyrics are new, but the song and dance isn’t. Modern politics being what it is, as soon as the sides become apparent, it becomes a race to see who can entrench their positions first and best, while writers and political scientists get to work dreaming up new permutations of argument to hurl at the enemy.

It’s worth noting that through all of this, the facts themselves haven’t changed. The sky in this world is still blue. No one, except the genuinely delusional, sees anything else, although many will now insist to their last breath to wholeheartedly believe otherwise, or else that it is uncivil to promote one side so brazenly. One suspects that those who are invested in the red-sky worldview know on some level that they are lying, have been brainwashed, or are practicing self-deception, but this is impossible to prove in an objective way; certainly it is impossible to compel a red sky believer to admit as much. Any amount of evidence can be dismissed as insufficient, inconclusive, or downright fabricated. Red-sky believers may represent anywhere from a small but noisy minority, to a slight majority of the population, depending on which polling sources are believed, which is either taken as proof of an underlying conspiracy, or proof of their fundamental righteousness, respectively.

There are several questions here, but here’s my main one: Is this opinion entitled to respect? If someone looks you in the eye and tells you the sky is not blue, but red, are you obliged to just smile and nod politely, rather than break open a can of reality? If a prominent red-sky-truther announces a public demonstration in your area, are you obliged to simply ignore them and let them wave their flags and pass out their pamphlets, no matter how wrong they are? Finally, if a candidate running on a platform of sticking it to the elitist blue sky loyalists proposes to change all the textbooks to say that the color of the sky is unknown, are you supposed to just let them? If an opinion, sincerely believed, is at odds with reality, is one still obligated to respect it? Moreover, is a person who supports such an opinion publicly to be protected from being challenged?

Mind you, this isn’t just a thought experiment; plenty of real people believe things that are patently false. It’s also not a new issue; the question of how to reconcile beliefs and reality goes back to the philosophical discussions of antiquity. But the question of how to deal with blatantly false beliefs seems to have come back with a vengeance, and as the presidential election gets up to speed, I expect this will become a recurring theme, albeit one probably stated far more angrily.

So we need to grapple with this issue again: Are people entitled to live in a fantasy world of their choosing? Does the respect we afford people as human being extend to the beliefs they hold about reality? Is the empirical process just another school of thought among several? I suppose I have to say don’t know, I just have very strong opinions.

Fool Me Once

I’m going to start with a confession of something I’ve come to regret immensely. And please, stick with me as I go through this, because I’m using this to illustrate a point. Some time in early 2016, January or February if memory serves, I created a poster supporting Donald Trump for president. The assignment had been to create a poster for a candidate, any candidate. The assignment was very explicit that we didn’t have to agree with what we were writing, and I didn’t, we just had to make a poster.

At this time in high school, I was used to completing meaningless busywork designed to justify inflated class hours. It was frustrating, soul-dredging work, and since I had been told that I wouldn’t be graduating with my class, there was no end to my troubles in sight. I relished the chance to work on an assignment that didn’t take itself so seriously and would allow me to have some fun by playing around.

The poster was part joke, part intellectual exercise. Most everyone in my class picked either Clinton or Sanders; a few picked more moderate republicans or third party candidates, not so much because our class was politically diverse, but either out of a sense that there ought to be some representation in the posters, or because they believed it would make them stand out to the teacher. I went a step further, picking the candidate that everyone, myself included, viewed as a joke. I had already earned myself a reputation as devil’s advocate, and so this was a natural extension of my place in the class, as well as a pleasant change of pace from being called a communist.

It helped that there was basically no research to do. Donald Trump was running on brand and bluster. There were no policies to research, no reasoned arguments to put in my own words. I just put his name in a big font, copy and pasted a few of his chants, added gratuitous red white and blue decorations, and it was as good as anything his campaign had come up with. If I had been a bit braver, a bit more on the ball, or had a bit more time, I could have done proper satire. I was dealing with a relatively short turnaround time on that assignment, but I tried to leave room for others to read between the lines. But the result was half baked, without the teeth of serious criticism or parody, only funny if you were already laughing, which to be fair, most of us were.

The posters were hung up in the classroom for the rest of the year, and I suspect I dodged a bullet with the school year ending before my work really came back to haunt me. I’m not so self-indulgent as to believe that my work actually swayed the election, though I do believe it may have been a factor in the mock election held among our students, where my poster was the only one supporting the winner. I also think that my poster succinctly represented my place in the general zeitgeist which led to Trump’s election. I learned several lessons from that affair. Chief among them, I learned that there is a critical difference between drawing attention to something and calling it out, since the former can be exploited by a clever opportunist.

Relatedly, I learned that just because something is a joke does not make it harmless. Things said in jest, or as devil’s advocate, still carry weight. This is especially true when not everyone may be on the same page. I never would’ve expected anyone to take anything other than maybe a chuckle from my poster, and I still think that everyone in my class would have seen it that way coming from me. But did everyone else who was in that classroom at that time see it that way? Did the students in other classes, who saw that poster and went on to vote in our mock election take my poster to heart?

Of course, that incident is behind me now. I’ve eaten my words with an extra helping of humble pie on the side. I won’t say that I can’t make that mistake again, because it’s a very on-brand mistake for me to make. But it’s worth at least trying to lear from this misstep. So here goes: my attempt to learn from my own history.

Williamson is using dangerous rhetoric to distinguish herself in the Democratic race, and we should not indulge her, no matter how well she manages to break the mould and skewer her opponents. Her half baked talking points rely on pseudoscience and misinformation, and policy designed on such would be disastrous for large swaths of people. They should not be legitimized or allowed to escape criticism.

Why do I say these things? What’s so bad about saying that we have a sickness care system rather than a healthcare system, or even that Trump is a “dark psychic force” that needs to be beaten with love?

Let’s start with the first statement. On the surface of it, it’s a not-unreasonable, logically defensible position. The structural organization of American society in general, and the commodification of healthcare in particular, have indeed created a socio-professional environment in the healthcare field which tends to prioritize the suppression of acute symptoms over long-term whole-person treatments, with the direct effect of underserving certain chronic conditions, especially among already underserved demographics, and the practical effect that Americans do not seek medical attention until they experience a crisis event, leading to worse outcomes overall. This is a valid structural criticism of the means by which our healthcare system is organized, and something I am even inclined to agree with. So why am I against her saying it?

Because it’s a dog whistle. It refers directly to arguments made by talking heads who believe, among other things, that modern illnesses are a conspiracy by Big Pharma to keep patients sick and overmedicate, that the government is suppressing evidence of miracle cures like crystals, homeopathy, voodoo, and the like, that vaccines are secretly poisonous, and the bane of my own existence, that the pain and suffering of millions of Americans with chronic illness is, if not imagined outright, is easily cured by yoga, supplements, or snake oil. I particularly hate this last one, because it leads directly to blaming the victim for not recognizing and using the latest panacea, rather than critically evaluate the efficacy of supposed treatments.

Does Williamson actually believe these things? Is Williamson trying to rile up uneducated, disaffected voters by implying in a deniable way that there’s a shadowy conspiracy of cartoon villains ripping them off that needs to be purged, rather than a complex system at work, which requires delicate calibration to reform? Hard to say, but the people she’s quoting certainly believe those things, and several of the people I’ve seen listening to her seem to get that impression. Williamson’s online presence is full of similar dog whistles, in addition to outright fake news and pseudoscience. Much of it is easy to dismiss, circumstantial at best. But this is starting to sound familiar to me.

What about the second quote, about psychic forces? Surely it’s a joke, or a figure of speech. No one expects a presidential candidate to earnestly believe in mind powers. And who is that meant to dog whistle to anyways? Surely there aren’t that many people who believe in psychic powers?

Well, remember that a lot of pseudoscience, even popular brands like homeopathy, holds directed intention, which is to say, psychic force, as having a real, tangible effect. And what about people who believe that good and evil are real, tangible things, perhaps expressed as angels and demons in a religious testament? Sure, it may not be the exact target demographic Williamson was aiming for. But recent history has proven that a candidate doesn’t have to be particularly pious to use religious rhetoric to sway voters. And that’s the thing about a dog whistle. It lets different people read into it what they want to read.

Despite comparisons, I don’t think she is a leftist Trump. My instinct is that she will fizzle out, as niche candidates with a, shall we say, politically tangential set of talking points, tend to do. I suspect that she may not even want the job of President, so much as she wants to push her ideas and image. Alongside comparisons to Trump, I’ve also heard comparisons to perennial election-loser Ron Paul, which I think will turn out to be more true. I just can’t imagine a large mass of people taking her seriously. But then again… fool me once, and all that.

Which Side Are You On?

So a friend of mine grew up in Thousand Oaks, and has been rather devastated by the shooting there. She’s already pretty upset about how US politics are going, and I think this hit her especially hard. So I decided to write a song, not so much to cheer her up, because me trying to cheer someone else up about politics would be a case of inmates volunteering to run the asylum, but rather, in solidarity.

Among many strong contenders, I think gun control might be the most divisive issue in US politics. Explaining why would itself constitute starting an argument, for which I’m not really in the mood. But the divisiveness of the issue, particularly of late, put me in mind of some of the words of Arlo Guthrie.

I had the opportunity to see and hear Arlo Guthrie live on two occasions. And the thing about Arlo Guthrie is that he’s as much a storyteller as a singer. Just as interesting as the actual songs was the context he gave for them, about how he came up with them, why he sang them, and the like. He talked about how he saw his songs as a living medium. Someday, he said in his lead up to Alice’s Restaurant, someone would write songs that would solve major social issues and bridge the divides that separate us.

He made no claim that his songs were those, but he did say that he thought they might be a stepping stone. And he said that he expected that the next generation of songwriters would use his songs as templates and starting points, just as he had used the previous generation’s melodies and rhymes to give them new life. He said he expected this and welcomed this, in the grand folk and protest song tradition.

So, in the grand tradition, I borrowed a melody from an old labor song, Which Side Are You On (famously covered by Pete Seeger, Billy Bragg, and the Dropkick Murphys, among others) to express the new dilemma facing our generation.

Chorus:
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Tell me, which side are you on?
Which side are you on?

They say in Parkland County
Kids don’t feel safe in school.
They say they won’t be coming back
Until we change the rules.

[Chorus]

I grew up next to Newtown,
My friends lost friends that day,
Our school goes into lockdown
But it’s not the guns they say.

[Chorus]

Oh parents can you stand it?
Tell me how you can?
When your children are murdered
For lack of a weapons ban?

[Chorus]

Arise all you good students,
Stand up for your own lives
For you know what senators don’t
You can’t be shot with knives

[Chorus]

Attn Millenials

The website analytics suggest that the majority of my audience are young Americans, so I’d like to take a moment to address this group specifically. Everyone else can take the week off.

Alright, guys, gals, and non-binary pals, listen up: I think we may have made a mistake. I’m concerned that recent events indicate that the oldsters don’t actually know what they’re doing any more than we do, which is what we assumed when we, collectively as a demographic, decided we could get away with not voting. According to the census bureau, less than half of us who were eligible voted in the last election, compared to more than 70% of oldsters.

Now, I’m not going to try and pin the blame everything bad that’s happened in politics on the elderly, but I am starting to think that we might need to step in. The geezers have had their chance, now it’s our turn.

The bad news is that this is going to require a commitment, from all of us. How much of a commitment will depend largely on where you live. Voting is easier to do in some states and localities than others. Some towns you can waltz into a polling place without any wait, and even register day of if you’ve forgotten. Other places require you to have your papers in order months ahead of time, wait in lines that rival Disney world, and endure cross examination from misanthropic poll workers.

This discrepancy is not accidental. These are the jurisdictions that fear us and the power we hold as voters, as well they should. These measures are designed to frustrate you into apathy. Don’t let them.

The good news is, no matter where you live in the United States, your right to vote is sacrosanct. To this end, there are resources you can call upon to help ensure your voice is heard. There are multiple nonprofit organizations dedicated to ensuring you have all the information necessary to jump through whatever hoops exist for voting in your jurisdiction. Your state government will have sample ballots with voting instructions. Local organizations provide transportation to the polls on voting day, and if necessary you can enlist help to cast your ballot if you have a disability.

Ideally, you will want to be an informed voter. This is where having access to a sample ballot is especially helpful. You can research candidates and issues beforehand and take notes. Don’t worry about studying; you’re entitled to take notes with you into the voting booth. But above all, don’t lose the forest for the trees. Voting at all is far more important than researching until you find a perfect candidate.

Our time is nigh. We, the young voters of America must stand up and take charge. The old guard have demonstrated that they do not know any better, and are no more qualified to vote or make decisions about our the fate of our country and our world than any of us. It is in our best interests, as well as our obligation, to step up and take responsibility, before outside events thrust that responsibility upon us.

Keeping Our Country Great

The United States is a truly marvelous country. It isn’t that other countries don’t have similar freedom, domestic tranquility, or prosperity. What makes the United States truly stand out isn’t any of these in particular, or even in combination. It isn’t anything that can be measured or exported. Rather, it is the notion that all of these things listed; life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; are not only inviolable, but sacred. Freedom of speech, security of property, and opportunity without discrimination are not merely tools to help society progress and prevent other injustices, but are fundamentally good in themselves. This, not our army, or economy, or laws, or geography, is what makes America unique. These are what make America great

But while these things make us strong, they also makes us vulnerable. That we hold such things to be sacred means that we often take them for granted. After all, if something is God-given and ordained, how can we mere mortals mess it up? This kind of attitude leads to a dangerous complacency, making us believe that freedom is free, or that only one kind of sacrifice from a small handful of brave souls is required to defend it.

The truth is that freedom, even American freedom, is fragile, and easy to lose. Like any sacred thing, freedom is only maintained through conscious dedication. The moment Americans stop treating freedom as a tangible practice that needs to be defended, and instead refer to it as an abstract thing that will always exist, the United States is just another country with laws and rhetoric that reference strong principles, rather than the bastion of democratic values. On that day, Americans will still have all the same rights, but it will become a simple task of modifying the laws to take them away, because there will be no more taboo.

So, how do we do it? How do we keep our principles alive and strong in such times? How do we make sure that the freedom, prosperity, and security we enjoy will survive to be passed onto our grandchildren? The answer is surprisingly simple. We must, all of us, make a commitment to partake in the rites of this country, not just in obligatory way that we pay taxes, but with the zeal of citizens who believe in the vision of their country’s future.

We must engage with our political system, force our representatives to earn their pay by engaging with us, and above all, vote. We must become and remain engaged citizens. We must earn our values through our actions.