Category: Politics

A Few Thoughts on the 2020 Presidential Race: August 27, 2019

The recent Monmouth University poll showing Bernie Sanders (20%), Elizabeth Warren (20%) and Joe Biden (19%) in a statistical dead heat would seem to be an outlier. The other polls that have come out recently show Biden as the frontrunner, Bernie Sanders in second place, and Elizabeth Warren running about 2-5% behind Bernie. I wonder what difference in methodology produced this poll’s results, which I believe to be more accurate than most current polling.

As of now, it appears to me as if this is a three-way race. All of the others with hats still in the ring are markedly behind, and barring some surprise, will stay that way. Of the three, my preference is definitely Bernie, but I could see myself holding my nose and accepting EW as a compromise. There is no way in hell I will be voting for Joe Biden. If Biden becomes the nominee, I’ll be voting Green.

Just so we’re clear.

Biden is unacceptable to me for the following reasons: first and foremost, I believe Anita Hill. Biden was the chair of the judiciary committee for the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, and his performance in that instance was abysmal. Second, Biden has told us already that if he becomes President, nothing will change. He’s clearly beholden to the corporate interests who are funding his campaign, who have funded virtually all of his campaigns, and that is who he will answer to as president. I also perceive him to be a white liberal-style racist, regardless of the fact that he was Obama’s veep.

Elizabeth Warren does not thrill me. There are things I like about her, but I see her playing footsie with the Oligarchs. I think that’s her lane. She is pretty far on the left end of the spectrum (which is actually pretty moderate in comparison the rest of the world’s politics), but she has very carefully positioned herself just to the right of Bernie Sanders. That, in combination with her efforts to show herself to be willing to work with the Old Boys, is smart strategy. I definitely see her path to the nomination, and it’s crafty of her to find it and hew it out for herself. The real question with Warren is, how beholden will she be to those corporate interests? How much of her carefully-thought-out agenda will she be able to accomplish?

Bernie, on the other hand, is a well-known quantity. He’s had the same belief system since the 60s. He’s not inflexible, but you always know where Bernie’s coming from. He’s a classic New Dealer. He also has an uncanny gift for being right on the issues. Remember that internet meme, “For every mistake this country has made, there’s a video of Bernie Sanders trying to stop it”? That’s who he is. It shouldn’t be a rare thing, to live your life with conviction the way Bernie has, but in this world, at this time, it is. His positions come from that deep moral conviction, and he has backbone.

He’s 77 years old, a year and two months older than Joe Biden. But where Biden appears to be suffering some cognitive decline (face it, he is!) Bernie is as lucid and quick as a president should be. I think he’ll be that way if he lives to be 100. There is no evidence of old brain that I can see, and he’s also healthy and physically active. I honestly believe he could do two terms.

The question is, can he convince the country that he could withstand the vicissitudes of office? That’s a heavier lift. Possibly too heavy. The other hard sell in this country is to get people to understand that his policies will work. This is one way that Warren is beating Bernie right now. She is making the case for her competency to do the things she has laid out.

Bernie has that competency, but can he get the public to see that? He has to, if he’s to win.

bernie meme

Posting On My Blog About Posting On My Blog About Me

I perceive that my writing energy, what of it there is, is being spent on correspondence. I wish this was not so, or that I was devoting more time to writing than I am. This is most apparent on Facebook, and to a lesser degree, on Twitter.

I think my twitter is super boring. I hate that I’ve let it become about leftist politics and the Democratic Primary horse race, which is already such a sh*t show that I can’t believe it. I really don’t like centrist Democrats. They’re so full of it.

The thing that’s annoying me the most is the seemingly successful smear job they’re doing on Tulsi Gabbard. Let’s get this straight: The candidate who is basing her campaign on the need to stop doing foreign regime change wars is, somehow, an imperialist. Also, someone with a 100% score from the HRC is a secret homophobe.

Got it.

And so it gets harder and harder to look at social media, because most of my friends are het up about politics, because politics is such a sh*t show right now, and because I’m also het up about politics, and sometimes I just don’t have the heart for it. I don’t even have the will to finish an argument when I start one. This stuff is BORING.

I’m sick of idiots, and I’m sick of the led-around-by-the-nose centrists who are bound to go fight for Biden Man (as I call him) when Biden Man is the latest example of the sort of Democratic pol who is, at heart, more responsible for Trompe (as I call him) than any other faction in the country, including his own base.

But I digress, egregiously.

I’m depressed, and therefore more distractible than usual, and the human race is draining me of hope right now. There are a couple of factors here. One is that I am feeling a bit rudderless about my writing, and less than productive. It’s hard to remember that I’ve done a couple of things since graduating, and that I can, if I choose to, keep the momentum going. I’m making that choice.

The other is that I am lonely and feeling spiritually dark. I’ve been embracing my inner goth. Winter is really hard for me, and it takes until around this time of year to get over it. So I think I have a one or two month window in which to be as productive as possible, then I have to start splitting time with the film fest I program for.

I have to start being very strategic with my time. I am picking projects I really want to do, and putting as much love into them as I can. That’s the way I know of to keep myself going. I need to be excited about what I’m working on. That’s why the write-every-day experiment that I tried earlier this spring failed so badly — I had to force myself to the computer every day, and that sort of thing just will not work with me. It’s a problem, but it’s the truth.

Some Thoughts In the Wake of This Week’s Election

Results of Tuesday’s election were not conclusive enough for anyone to feel particularly triumphant, nor entirely defeated. We must move past “us” and “them” if we are to move forward as a country. How do we do that?

While it may not have been a resounding victory for either of the country’s two major political “tribes,” I consider the 2018 election to be about as positive a result as we could have hoped for. We remain a deeply divided country. The election results reflect that. Any result that went farther in one direction or the other would have been seen by the other side as unjust.

Even so, the current status quo satisfies no one. Both of our major ideological camps suffer from groupthink and blind spots, and both sides view the other as not dealing with reality. I see that both sides use critical thinking, but selectively: only to question the opposition’s narrative, never the one they subscribe to.

President Trump manufactures a constant string of lies (6420 untruths documented in his first 649 days as President.) He uses anti-press rhetoric as a smoke screen. It’s a strategy that’s proven effective with those that already agree with him. Trump does have a point about the press, yet completely obliterates it with his deliberate lying. Still, the mainstream press is not innocent, and is subject to the wishes and demands of its corporate ownership.

The charge “fake news!” resonates because there’s some validity to it. The media exhibits pro-corporate bias, constantly offers up false equivalencies, oversimplifies complex issues, and ignores important stories that contradict the accepted narrative the media is at pains to keep intact. Over the years, the press has done enough damage to its own credibility that the president’s protests fall on some sympathetic ears, even though he sources much of his information from a television news outlet that falsifies information more than almost any other.

Not that the competing opposite-partisan cable news outlet fares all that much better when fact-checked.

No wonder trust in the news media is so low. Yet those who consume news invariably choose sources that confirm their biases rather than posting the complicated and sometimes even contradictory truth. The cost of this is as we see: a democracy that functions less and less well, and a population that increasingly fails to realize that we are all in the same leaky boat.

We shut each other out when we should be listening most intently to the voices we disagree with. We decide that those who can’t even accept what we know are facts are just not worth talking to. Without the ability to reason with each other, we subject those we disagree with to dehumanizing ad hominem assumptions. The only response we see as valid in these circumstances is force. We have to win our victories at the polls, and when we don’t win there, we don’t accept defeat, we just become more bitterly entrenched, because they won’t see what we maintain is simple common sense. How can anything but tragedy result?

My suggestion is that we try something new… well, actually old, as old as the age of reason, as old as Socrates, as old as the Buddha. Let’s try dialogue. Let’s listen to each other. Let’s look for the ways we agree rather than the ways our position is superior to those we disagree with.

Dialogue begins with humility and compassion: two things sorely lacking in our current environment, and which we desperately need to cultivate. It’s important to understand that dialogue isn’t surrender, it isn’t weakness. Dialogue actually requires great personal strength and integrity, along with a willingness to be vulnerable. Dialogue has a lot in common with love. You could say that it’s a way of loving humanity, because it seeks uplift in a dynamic way, as opposed to debate, which seeks to declare a winner and a loser.

I think we’ve had enough of picking winners at others’ expense.

Election Jitters 2018

A meditation

As a transgender person and a Green, I’m viewing the trends in US culture and politics with increasing concern. In the days leading up to next week’s election, I monitor polling at FiveThirtyEight and elsewhere, looking for signs of what’s to come.

That FiveThirtyEight was less than accurate in the 2016 election cycle means that  I can’t trust what I see in those maps and charts. I honestly have no idea what this country will wake up to this coming Wednesday morning. Like many of my friends, I can neither look away nor stop fretting about it. It’s difficult not to feel that the future of this country — that my own future — hangs in the balance.

My hunch is that things are going to go a little better than expected for the left. I’ve seen signs that point in other directions: I also recognize that living in Massachusetts puts me in a liberal bubble; things in Texas or Indiana may fail to conform to my expectations. The polling aggregators show the conventional wisdom, that the Democratic party will retake the House of Representatives, but that the Senate is most likely to continue in Republican hands. That’s not the best of all possible worlds, but it would at least slow down the rapid slide towards fascism the country may currently be in.

Many of the more vulnerable folks in this country won’t fare well, even under the stasis of a partial Democratic victory, but the status quo is better in the short run than the regression towards darkness that I fear. The problem is that the status quo is not nearly good enough. Protecting and uplifting our most vulnerable citizens will still not be done as it should given the best possible results of Tuesday’s vote.

I have a sneaking hope that the Democrats will take back control of the Senate as well as the House, because the effects of recent events may not be showing up yet in current polling. There is some Republican backlash against the Trump contingent, though I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the establishment media overemphasizes this.

Should the Republican Party maintain control of all branches of government as a result of Tuesday’s election, I fear that some Americans may not be safe. There have been threats made, and recent events have underlined those threats: for instance the MAGAbomber attacks on prominent Trump critics and two racially-motivated mass shootings, all in the last week. Trump himself has said that there will be violence if the Democrats should fare well instead, though he falsely claims that leftists will instigate it.

I’m trying to keep my optimism, and hoping we all find our way past the delusional tendencies of these times. May the country move towards justice come Tuesday.

I Need You to Vote Yes on 3

An appeal to voters to respect the human rights of transgender people in Massachusetts by voting yes on Question 3 in the upcoming state election on Tues. Nov. 6, 2018.

In just under three weeks, voters in Massachusetts are going to undertake an enormous responsibility. You who share this state with me will be deciding whether I, as a transgender person, and those like me, are going to be subjected to legal banishment from public spaces or whether we are going to be allowed to remain equal citizens before the law.

I feel fairly confident that the people in my state will make the right decision. Freedom For All Massachusetts has out-raised its opponents by about an 8 to 1 margin. Recent polling suggests that roughly 3/4ths of voters in this state are planning to vote yes on Question #3, but are confused about what their yes vote might mean.

The Secretary of State’s internet page with summaries of the ballot questions as they will appear on the ballot provides the simplest explanation of the measure’e effects:

“A YES VOTE would keep in place the current law, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity in places of public accommodation.

“A NO VOTE would repeal this provision of the public accommodation law.”

So, yes: this is Massachusetts’ “bathroom bill”, and it’s what I’ve come to expect from the good people of this state — a resounding “hell yes!” and a bracing hug to those of us who need this kind protection under the law, because even here, unfortunately, there are those who consider me a threat. Fortunately, I know that for the most part the people of this state have my back.

Even so, we can’t take a victory for granted. Throwing money at a campaign does not guarantee a victory at the polls. Strongly positive poll numbers can dissipate, or may be inaccurate. So I’m making this plea.

Please vote YES on Question #3. Help this state continue to be one of the safest places in the world for people like me. Understand that a loss on this referendum will create a backlash domino effect that will have repercussions against trans folk in places far distant from this state.

Massachusetts has, and has always had, an orientation towards justice and the power of moral leadership. Remember that same-sex marriage, which began here in 2004 with Goodridge v. Department of Public Health culminated in the Supreme Court of the United States echoing Goodridge with their decision in Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, declaring that same sex marriage is guaranteed by the 14th amendment to the US Constitution. Question #3 is no different. If the electorate of this state ratifies it, the justice it represents will resound throughout the nation for trans people everywhere.

For all of us who have so much at stake, make your way to the polls this November 6th and, along with all of the other ways in which we must repudiate the encroaching of fear, suspicion, and bigotry that is so starkly and startlingly on the rise in this country, add your vote to the rolls of those who stand with us, to defend our humanity and our right to be safe in public spaces.

Thank you.