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The Corrosion of Public Discourse

I’ve always valued people’s ability to have a healthy exchange of ideas and find common ground on social media. But that’s increasingly difficult to find these days. People increasingly:

  • Share memes without checking to see if they are based on truth or misinformation
  • Talk past each other rather than to each other
  • Slice, dice and distort data points to fit their viewpoint
  • Talk down to other people and confuse this as an act of virtue

Mood Music:

People on both the left and right sides of the political spectrum do these things, and this week I’ve begun deleting a lot of them from my friends list. I don’t have time to roll around in the dirt. They’ve grown too toxic — a corrosive agent eating away at the public discourse.

A lot of what I feel these days is captured in Andrew Doyle’s article “The mark of an educated mind” in Standpoint magazine.

The article isn’t perfect. Doyle diminishes the power of his message in spots with a holier-than-thou tone. As my wife, Erin, put it, the “mansplainy, academics-of-the-past-were-better tone is so off-putting, especially for those with little experience with the ivory tower attitude.”

But there’s a lot in there worth unpacking. Here are some of his points, followed by mine:

To be a freethinker has little to do with mastery of rhetoric and everything to do with introspection. It is all very well engaging in a debate in order to refine our persuasive skills, but it is a futile exercise unless we can entertain the possibility that we might be wrong. 

Look at most Facebook debates, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find people who admit when they are wrong. They are always right, period.

Too many are seemingly determined to turn difficult arguments into zero-sum games in which to give any ground whatsoever is to automatically surrender it to an opponent.

When one thinks they are always right, they can’t grow as a human being. In my own battle with the demons, I’ve learned this lesson the hard way. Wanting something to be true doesn’t make it so. Insisting on spreading misinformation and not fact-checking oneself contributes to the disease.

The natural human instinct for confirmation bias presents a further problem, one especially prominent among ideologues. Anything can be taken to support one’s position so long as it is perceived through the lens of prejudgment. … Worse still, such an approach often correlates with a distinctly moralistic standpoint. Many of the most abusive individuals on social media cannot recognize their behavior for what it is because they have cast themselves in the role of the virtuous.

This point is especially true in the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Convinced that stay-at-home orders and mask mandates are the lash of the dictator? There are always data sets floating around the internet that you can deconstruct and rebuild to prove your point. I see people do this all the time with state-by-state COVID case numbers. Typically, they point out low death rates to prove that government is lying to us, while ignoring the horror stories coming from multitudes of people who have had the virus and continue to suffer lingering and permanent damage — not to mention nurses and doctors from hospitals in hard-hit areas that have been overrun.

On the other side of the spectrum are those who find data points to shame people for not wanting to wear masks or watch the economy crumble amid lockdowns. Instead of responding with a dialogue about what we should or shouldn’t be doing, about where the masks help and when they don’t, about how we can avoid lockdowns with other measures, it’s another all-or-nothing response. If you don’t want to shut everything down again or if you don’t see the logic in wearing a mask if you’re outside and no one else is around, someone on the left is there to vilify you. You’re selfish and don’t care whether people die.

If we’re ever going to heal our discourse, the treatment begins with two conclusions from Doyle:

  • More humility could stem the tide of narcissism and the decline of empathy that has taken root in recent years. In other words, be willing to see when you’re wrong and admit it.
  • Schools need to do a lot more to train students in the art of critical thinking. Arguing and calling people names is not critical thinking.

In the words of Edward R. Murrow: “Good night, and good luck.”

Yellow square with the text "How to be an elitist prick (a diagram" next to a yellow and aqua triangle. The word "You" is at the top of the triangle. Beneath that is "All the people who do things differently (crossed out), than you do things (crossed out), and wrong."
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We’re Better Than Our Online Personas

Amid despair over our broken civil discourse, I’ve found reason and perspective in recent American history.

Mood Music:

Buried beneath all the news about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death and the resulting political chaos was an article about her friendship with then-fellow Justice Antonin Scalia before his death in 2016.

Scalia’s son, Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, described the friendship this way:

They were both New Yorkers, close in age, and liked a lot of the same things: the law, teaching, travel, music and a meal with family and friends. They had a bond, I think, in that they both grew up as outsiders – to different degrees – to the elites who had ruled the country: she as a Jew and woman, he as a Catholic and Italian American.

They shared a passion for opera and even once appeared together as extras in the Washington National Opera’s opening night production of Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos. 

This, even as they passionately and consistently opposed each other over law. Scalia once quipped: “What’s not to like, except her views on the law.”

Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsberg seated next to each other during an interview. Both are smiling at an unseen person.

American history is full of such friendships. Sen. Ted Kennedy, the liberal lion from dark-blue Massachusetts, and Sen. Orrin Hatch, a devout Mormon from the red state of Utah, were close friends. President Ronald Reagan and House Speaker Tip O’Neill were fierce political adversaries who still bonded over their Irish heritage and a love of jokes.

These friendships reflect what many of us experience on a personal level. We have friends and relatives who have political beliefs opposite ours. We argue a lot, often heatedly and in public places like Facebook and Twitter.

But when it comes to the health, safety and happiness of our families and fellow friends, politics takes a back seat.

We laugh at the same jokes and Facebook memes. We delight in the same movies and music many times. And we come to the rescue when someone in our orbit is in trouble. Who they’re voting for doesn’t matter in those moments.

As ugly as this political season has been — compounded by months of pandemic and civil unrest — we haven’t lost the ability to rise above politics and be good to one another. I see abundant examples daily of personal bonds being stronger than the things that divide us.

It’s just easy to lose sight of that when we spend too much time on social media. I’m guilty of that.

We’ll need those bonds to survive the next few months, which promise to be as hard as recent months — maybe even more so. The coming election will almost certainly be rich with chaos. The pandemic will continue to dog us. The economy will take a long time to recover.

Our empathy for each other might be our greatest weapon against the darkness.

One of my friends from the information security community, Don A. Bailey, captured the things that matter most in a recent Facebook post:

No matter which side you’re on, half the country is going to have a very bad 2020 in November. Now, more than ever, is time for empathy, patience, and communication with friends whom think differently than you. Your candidate won’t save the country, only we can, one deescalation at a time.

Thanks for that perspective, Don.

Call me a hopeless optimist. Call me naive. But I truly believe our better angels will overcome the ugliness of 2020.

There are more than enough Ginsburg–Scalia friendships in America to carry us through to better days.

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Why We’ll Survive This

Recently, my posts have trended toward the darker side, with laments over our broken political discourse and inability to coalesce around common goals. That doesn’t mean I’ve lost hope, however.

Here’s why.

Mood Music:

When shit rains down in our communities, we continue to come together. That’s an old story, with such examples as people combing through rubble and tending to the injured at the WTC in the wake of 9-11 and the rescue missions immediately after Hurricane Katrina.

As Mister Rogers once recalled his mother telling him, “The helpers always come.“

I’ve seen abundant examples during the current pandemic — nurses and doctors I know personally, driving their sanity to the knife’s edge to keep patients alive regardless of their politics, food drives overflowing with donations to help people who have lost their income, success of a thousand Facebook donation drives.

At a more personal level, despite what you see daily on social media, people remain good, able to see past politics to care for people.

My late father-in-law was an inflexible, often angry Trump supporter. He was socially conservative to the core. But he loved his “liberal” family members as much as the conservative ones. And it didn’t matter what you believed or what color your skin was or what your sexual orientation was: If you were burned out of your home, in legal trouble or broken down on the side of the road, he dropped everything and did what he could to make your burden a little less crushing.

I have a cousin who I constantly spar with on Facebook over politics and what we should or shouldn’t be doing amid COVID-19. When we meet in person, we argue about none of that stuff. Instead, we share in the joy of the little kids running around us and the concern for family down on their luck.

I have a friend from the old neighborhood who is far to the right of me politically. But our shared past and relationships forged there far outweigh the squabbles of the present.

Humans can be terrible to each other. But enough of us are kind to each other to re-enforce my belief that when push comes to shove, we can still come together.

That’s why, as bad as things are right now, I think we’ll get through this. I don’t know how long it will take, but it will happen.

"Spectre of the Past" by Eddie The Yeti. A brown and black image of a human skeleton with skeletal wings.
“Spectre of the Past” by EddieTheYeti

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Observations of a Centrist

When it comes to politics, I claim neither purity nor perfection. Mine are simply a set of beliefs collected through life experiences and a vigorous read of history.

One thing I’ve always tried to do is be open, adjusting those beliefs in the face of fresh evidence. Such evidence has come my way more times than I care to admit. To me, the ability to be flexible in this arena is necessary for personal growth, evolution and my usefulness to society.

I spent part of my teens and early 20s as a libertarian before swinging the other way toward left-wing liberalism.

By the time I reached my 30s and since then, my political leanings have remained mainly in the middle. I vote for Democrats and Republicans, depending on who I think shows the best ability to lead.

I like a vigorous debate between those on the left and right. When the country faces a crisis like the current pandemic, I prefer that leaders be willing to cast aside parts of their ideology and meet the other side halfway to do what’s necessary.

Most people agree that the current situation is dangerous — a new virus we’ve failed to get accurate measurements on, resulting in people forced to stay home, keep their distance and freeze the economy.

Most people agree Congress must pass another massive emergency aid package as the economy plunges to depths unseen since The Great Depression.

Most people agree we need far more extensive testing and that without a more accurate count of who is sick and who isn’t, most other data points are useless.

But the public discourse has become overrun by people from both political extremes.

Many on the far right are shouting that continued social distancing and mask mandates are acts of tyranny, that this is local and national government grabbing power for power’s sake.

Many on the left argue that those who want social distancing to end are heartless tyrants themselves, willing to sacrifice grandma and countless other lives out of a selfish need to restart the economy.

We continue to argue and vilify each other. This scenario is now playing out against the backdrop of the 2020 presidential election. People at one extreme believe universal mail-in voting is the only way to stay safe. People at the other extreme insist mail-in voting is a recipe for massive fraud and will undermine the accuracy of the election.

President Trump, who has skillfully played the emotions of both extremes like a master conductor, claims mail-in voting will rig the election against him, even as his policies undermine the U.S. Postal Service, increasing the likelihood that things will go wrong.

As I sit here in the center, it looks to me like the far left and far right are easily played, becoming outraged at the drop of a dime. If you disagree with the far left, you’re a fascist too dumb to know what’s correct. Trump knows how easily riled they are and presses their buttons effectively. The far-right casts aside reality not because they lack intellect but because they’re convinced they’ve been lied to over and over again. Yet some of the things they’ve been willing to entertain as truth boggles the minds of centrists like me.

Against that backdrop, here’s what I believe:

  • Mail-in voting is no different than absentee voting, which has mostly worked for decades. If it worries you, spend less time crying foul and more time demanding that the postal service receive all necessary resources to make this work.
  • Americans are spoiled when it comes to election results. Except for 2000, we’ve had an outcome on election night for decades. To make mail-in voting accurate, we should be willing to wait weeks and even a month or two for careful counting and recounting. Then, it will be harder to discount the election outcome’s legitimacy, no matter who wins.
  • Though I think mail-in voting can work, I also believe in-person voting can as well. Most of us make regular trips to the grocery store, where we spend a good hour (I do, anyway). Voting can be a quicker process, if everything possible is done to provide enough polling places and move people along. You just follow the same rules as you do with every other outing. Mask up and don’t linger.
  • With a hybrid approach, we can have a fair election.
  • The government has grown rotten and we’ve been lied to repeatedly. If the government tells you something is necessary, it’s not the act of an uncaring person to be skeptical. In fact, it’s a healthy reaction.
  • But it’s not enough to sit around and bitch about it. People of all political leanings must demand more transparent government. That’s a cause as worthy of the kind of protest we’ve seen with Black Lives Matter (peaceful protest, not the looting and vandalism that rightly sparked outrage). As the late John Lewis used to say, some things are worth causing “good trouble” for.
  • The Founding Fathers built this nation to avoid extreme outcomes. Checks and balances demands compromise.
  • It’s fine, even appropriate, to look on government officials with skepticism. Both parties have done things to make the American experience a terrible one in this regard. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo — a Democrat — is often lauded as an example of good leadership in the pandemic but some of his early decisions were disastrous, particularly his order to put COVID-19 patients in nursing homes, which infected and killed people who might still be with us today. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — a Republican — refused early on to institute safety measures. Florida is now a hotbed of sickness and death.
  • Some claim the pandemic itself is a conspiracy and a scam. It doesn’t take a genius to see that when there are millions of sick and dead people out there it’s real. I know several people who got sick and at least one who died.

The only way America will endure is if many more people meet in the middle and cast aside tribalism for the greater good. That means doing or not doing things that would seem appropriate in normal times.

These are not normal times.

"American Rag Doll" by Sharane Wild
“American Rag Doll” by Sharane Wild

Editor’s note: Prints of “American Ragdoll” are for sale, with all proceeds being donated to the Elizabeth Stone House in support of survivors of domestic violence in the Boston area. If you’d like your own print, email sharanewild@gmail.com.

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Memes That Divide Us

In my recent post, “The Corrosion of Public Discourse,” I started with examples of how the American conversation has grown rotten. To recap, people:

  • Share memes without checking to see if they are based on truth or misinformation
  • Talk past each other rather than to each other
  • Slice, dice and distort data points to fit their viewpoint
  • Talk down to other people and confuse this as an act of virtue

A day after I published that, one of my Facebook connections posted a meme that exemplified those points:

Table with the title, Vote Wisely in 2020. The left column lists 20 items Democrats are supposed to be for, many of them false or exaggerated. The right column lists 20 items Republicans are supposed to be for, many of them false or exaggerated.

To me, it’s just another meme that plays fast and loose with the truth and paints huge parts of the population with the same brush. All the standard tropes are present. In this case we have a conservative saying they’re a beacon of virtue, a champion of freedom and the rule of law. Everyone else is shit.

I know just as many Republicans as I do Democrats. Some people genuinely try to solve serious problems with an exchange of ideas, but neither group neatly fits the columns assigned to them. Both groups have faults and virtues.

America has often been at its best when people on both sides compromise for the greater good. I personally prefer that to “us vs. them” memes like the one above.

And so, a suggestion:

If you’re going to make your point with a meme, fine. I do it all the time.

But before sharing, perhaps it’s not a bad idea to examine whether it truly aligns with reality, or if it’s merely painting huge groups of diverse people with the same sloppy brush.

I’ll try to do that, too.

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The Villains Aren’t Who You Think They Are

“Don’t assume villainy where it is merely different goals.

Andy Ellis, CSO, Akamai

The conference presentation of a friend and former boss has been on my mind as I’ve watch people argue about how we should conduct ourselves during a pandemic.

Mood Music:

Andy Ellis is CSO at Akamai, where I probably leaned more about the technical nuts and bolts of security in three years than I had in the previous decade of writing about it as a tech journalist. His presentation, “Humans Are Awesome/Terrible at Risk Management” covers how people make decisions concerning risk.

He uses the OODA loop decision-making model developed by U.S. Air Force Col. John Boyd to explain why humans are “awesome” at risk management.

The model frames decision-making as a repeating cycle of observing what’s happening, orienting (filtering what’s happening through past experiences and values), deciding what to do next and acting on that decision.

I’ve tried to apply the OODA loop to my personal and professional actions of late and have mapped out the experience in a recent post.

Humans are horrible at risk management! How are we even still around?And yet, we are still around. Humans are awesome at risk management; we’re now the dominant species on the planet.

Andy Ellis

Andy cites humanity’s advantages in making rapid, generally correct risk choices, even when those choices seem baffling to others. To understand the other person’s decisions, he suggests:

  1. Unpacking how risk choices that appear unreasonable from the outside may not be.
  2. Learning how to identify the hidden factors in someone’s risk choice that most influence it.
  3. Finding out how to help guide people to risk choices that you find more favorable.

I’ve been trying to follow those suggestions as I navigate the seemingly endless arguments on social media about how to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.

On myriad Facebook threads, people share articles and make statements that fall into one of two camps:

  • That in a health emergency like this, the best decision is to stay home and minimize the virus’ spread — thus saving lives
  • That the current lockdowns are tyranny: massive, fear-driven overreactions that have allowed authorities to exert unprecedented control over the masses

My own views are somewhere in the middle. I believed the lockdowns necessary at the beginning to slow the spread long enough to give hospitals time to bulk up on supplies and workers to take care of everyone who is sick. I also believed it necessary to buy us time to ramp up testing so we’d have a better picture of who was infected and who wasn’t.

Three months in, we’ve slowed the spread in places but don’t appear much better off. We don’t have nearly enough data points to know what we’re dealing with. I’ve begun to question the wisdom of staying locked down, thinking instead that we must figure out a way to re-open carefully and learn to live in a pandemic without staying seized up.

Along the way I’ve found myself exasperated by how people in the two camps above have vilified each other. Camp 1 brands Camp 2 as a bunch of selfish right-wing thugs who care more about their economic pursuits than protecting grandma. Camp 2 sees Camp 1 as a bunch of government-controlled sheep who submit to tyranny as easily as past generations submitted to Nazi and Soviet subjugation.

One good friend, from Camp 2, suggested that those who support the lockdowns support tyranny and should renounce their American citizenship. I called him out on that. Another friend in Camp 1 repeatedly attacked people on my wall for being OK with people dying. I rarely unfriend people I disagree with but did so in her case.

Along the way, I keep coming back to what Andy said: “Don’t assume villainy where it is merely different goals.”

It’s good advice.

Most of us have rigorously thought-out reasons for staying home or arguing for a re-opening. We all weigh the risks on criteria colored by our personal experiences. There is no villainy in that.

People will believe what they will believe and act on it. Their intent is good, though sometimes distorted by a lack of reliable data.

In the weeks and months to come, I hope for more common ground.

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When Kindness and Reason Break Through Facebook’s Wall of Vitriol

Firestorm in the shape of a fist and the middle finger
Firestorm in the shape of a fist and the middle finger

Most days, scanning Facebook reminds me of a picture I found online a few years ago — a mushroom cloud giving the finger.

Sure, there’s plenty of love and amusement to see on the Book of Face. But when it comes to political discourse, particularly in the U.S., people go nuclear with their beliefs.

They verbally vaporize anyone in their path who thinks differently. They drop labels like “fascist” and “liberal.” When challenged on their positions, they respond with “fuck you” while questioning the intellect of whoever’s comment rubbed them wrong.

Conservatives do it. Liberals do it. Centrists do it. And everyone gets shanked from it.

Mood Music:

When you see that shit often enough, it’s easy to miss the better parts of humanity on social media. You see so much hate, rage and self-righteousness that it poisons you.

The other day, several of those middle-finger mushroom clouds came from good people who believe the current strategy of social distancing and economic lock-down is the only sensible approach. The target of their outrage?

A guy worried that those measures are a threat to personal liberty and economic stability.

Irritated, I went on Facebook and scrawled this:

Some of those 78 comments were the predictable rehash of fixed opinions.

Another exchange — between the guy I was writing about and a nurse whose kids went to elementary school with mine — gave me something to be grateful for:

A reminder that in the Facebook viper pit, kindness, reason and understanding do exist if you pay attention.

I know these individuals fairly well and there are political positions they would not agree on. But in this exchange, that didn’t matter.

They connected over things that go beyond economic, political and spiritual ideology: the shared experience of losing loved ones and doing a job in dangerous conditions.

While they traded kind words, others in the thread discussed the challenges at hand and truly seemed to be seeking common ground.

Maybe — just maybe — we can get past petty differences and tackle the bigger problems.

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We Can’t Allow Pandemic Fear to Erode Liberty

Fear makes us do horrible things. It can drive us to ruinous financial decisions and plunge us into addictive behavior. It can make us alienate those we love. And it can drive us to accept government actions that kill our liberties.

Mood Music:

The Patriot Act passed at the height of our hysteria over 9-11. At the time, a lot of us thought we were seeing terrorists holding vials of smallpox and suitcase nukes at every street corner. We were so freaked out over the next potential attack that we gave government the keys to do anything it wanted if it would just keep us safe.

Back then, I was perfectly willing to accept expansion of government power if it meant my friends and loved ones wouldn’t be blown to bits. As government power expanded unchecked, I came to see the folly in my thinking.

Fast-forward to the current pandemic. The federal government and states are imposing lockdowns and social distancing because, we’re told, we must flatten the curve of COVID-19 infections and protect loved ones. I believe that’s true and am doing my part. But I see things that will come back to haunt us — things we must be hyperaware of now because, if we’re not, the government’s reach could grow to totalitarian levels, regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans are in charge.

As we grow increasingly restless and desperate for some return to normal — if that’s even possible — we must view the following as red flags:

Apple and Google are working to add technology to their smartphone platforms to alert users when they have come into contact with a person with Covid-19.

From the article:

People must opt in to the system, but it has the potential to monitor about a third of the world’s population.

The technology, known as contact-tracing, is designed to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus by telling users they should quarantine or isolate themselves after contact with an infected individual.

I don’t think contact tracing is a bad idea in itself. Part of why we’re all holed up right now is that testing in the U.S. is way behind where it should be, leaving us with no accurate measurement to see exactly how and where the virus is spreading. If we had that data, we could enact more moderate, commonsense measures to protect the most vulnerable and keep the rest of society functioning. Contact tracing can be a useful measurement.

But if those apps are left running, the government’s ability to see and control our daily lives might become limitless.

Once we enable an app on our devices, it’s very easy to forget it’s there and running.

Meanwhile:

The government is considering immunity cards for people who have recovered from COVID-19.

From the article:

Immunity certificates are already being implemented by researchers in Germany and have been floated by the United Kingdom and Italy, the most recent epicenter of the global outbreak in Europe.

In parts of China, citizens are required to display colored codes on their smartphones indicating their contagion risk. The controversial surveillance measure facilitated earlier this week the end of the lockdown of Wuhan, the city in China’s central province of Hubei where the novel coronavirus first emerged.

I’ll admit that my reaction to this idea might be extreme. On the surface it sounds reasonable: This is another tool that could allow free movement. But it’s a paper-thin surface. It fills my head with visions of Star Wars storm troopers patrolling streets with blaster rifles in hand, randomly demanding passersby show their papers.

A more extreme vision — one I hate to use but can’t dismiss — is that of Jews walking around with stars and other badges during the Nazi era. Suggesting that we’ll reach that point feels like tin-hat theory, but the likelihood is not zero.

I spent years working to overcome the fearfulness that can be a byproduct of OCD, anxiety and depression. Most of the time I do fine, sometimes I fail. Admittedly, in this environment it can be easy to succumb. When a friend first shared the contact-tracing app article on Facebook , my reaction was to comment that it was great news. Not long after that, the second thoughts emerged.

These are scary times indeed. But we must keep our heads screwed on straight and remember what it means to be American. If we give up our rights out of fear, we cease to become the land of the free and become something else.

We shouldn’t push back on the technological tools that can help us get a better handle on the virus. But we must be very, very careful.

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Depression and Anxiety in the Age of Trump

This post isn’t to endorse or condemn either of this year’s presidential candidates. It IS acknowledgement that people are shaken by the election of Donald Trump as president. For many, the uncertainty and fear translates into depression and anxiety.

If Hillary Clinton had won, there’d be a lot of Trump supporters suffering in similar fashion. So I would have been writing this post anyway.

The big question is how to move forward if the election has left you in a state of darkness. What follows are my suggestions. They are not scientific and I’m certainly no doctor. It is simply based on what I’ve learned in my own journey through the darkness and light.

Mood music:

For me, the fate of the world used to seem to hang on the next election.

In 1994, I was a lot more liberal than I am today. (I’ve gone from slightly left of center to dead center politically over time.) That year, the GOP swept both chambers of Congress and I was devastated. Two years before that, when Bill Clinton was elected president, I thought all would be right with the world. A lot of people had the same emotional jolt eight years ago when Obama was elected, while folks on the other side of the spectrum were as depressed in 2008 as those now dismayed by Trump’s rise.

As I got older and did a lot of work to manage my demons, I found that my personal happiness wasn’t tied to which way the political winds blow. What says it all are the lyrics from the Avett Brothers song I started this post with:

When nothing is owed, deserved or expected
And you’re life doesn’t change by the man that’s elected
If your loved by someone you’re never rejected.
Decide what to be and go be it.

My life has taken turns for the better and worse regardless of who is in office. Government can’t change me. Only I can.

But that’s where my journey has taken me. It would be unfair and unrealistic to ask people in the throes of election-induced depression to simply flip a switch and approach it like me. So I’m going to point out a few things that might make you feel better in the short term. Some of it is serious, and some of it not so much.

  1. His time is limited. People looking at the next four years with a sense of doom should remember that there’s a mid-term congressional election in two years. Given how divided the electorate is, it wouldn’t take much for a wave of voter discontent to change the balance of power in Congress. That happened to Bill Clinton and Barack Obama early in their presidencies, and it happened to George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan halfway through their second terms. The voters have a habit of balancing the scales when Washington goes too far in the wrong direction.
  2. A burning forest gives way to new life. It’s been said that a lot of people were willing to vote for Trump despite his racist, sexist comments because they saw him as a Molotov cocktail they could throw at a capitol rife with corruption. Indeed, Democrats and Republicans in Congress have failed the American people badly these last 15-plus years. Trump doesn’t have many friends among them and that could have a burning effect on the establishment that forces both parties to change their ways.
  3. He may not be so bad. If you look at his history, Trump has put women in high positions. He relies heavily on the counsel of a son-in-law who is devout in his Jewish faith, and he has said that same-sex marriage rights are settled law. He’s also backtracked on his talk about killing Obamacare, instead talking more about reforming it than replacing it. The healthcare law is certainly in need of fixing. Maybe he’ll turn out to be pretty middle-of-the-road, and the worst-case scenarios won’t materialize. All that could be wishful thinking on my part, but one never knows.
  4. New Star Wars films are coming. No matter how bad things may get, Disney has ensured that we’ll have a new Star Wars movie for each of the next four years. Star Wars always makes things better.

Whatever happens, we need to take care of ourselves. If you are prone to depression and anxiety, seek out your friends and family. Talk to someone. I’m always happy to lend an ear. If you have a therapist, keep your appointments. If you think you might need medication, talk to your doctors.

All this may seem like the obvious, but we need constant reminders — especially when we’re down.

As long as we work to be the best individuals we can be, and as long as we keep the things beyond our control in perspective, we will survive and even prosper.

donald trump by gage skidmore 12

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Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers on My Right

The morning after Donald Trump was elected president, I posted this:

I didn’t vote for Trump. I don’t like him. I didn’t like Bush, either. But the left survived Bush and the right survived Obama. We’ll survive Trump, too. If we as individuals keep doing our best every day and be the blessing to friends, family and colleagues, everything will be fine. A better world starts with you.

I also posted this, after seeing a Trump supporter gloat over the despair of Hillary Clinton supporters:
To the FB connection gloating about how great he feels to see HRC voters at work dejected, you are part of the problem. People on both sides have been brutal this election cycle. You could have set aside political differences and been decent to your fellow human. You could have shown some compassion and humility. Instead, you were an asshole — no better than those who may have unfairly labeled you for supporting Trump.

Some of you didn’t like that, saying I should have shown the same compassion for Trump supporters traumatized for being called racist and sexist. Truth is, I find it just as bad when Trump voters are called names. As the old saying goes, two wrongs don’t make a right.

Mood music:

There’s plenty of blame to go around for this shitshow. Here are my thoughts.

When bigotry isn’t a deal breaker
It’s true, millions who voted for Trump are not racist or sexist. They chose based on years of economic frustration and a feeling that the left talks down to them. Some of you complained bitterly about being branded a hater. Fair enough. I know a lot of Trump supporters who are great people. But they still voted for someone who used hateful rhetoric to rile up people who are in fact bigots, and a lot of good people have a problem with that. Instead of whining about being labeled something you’re not, maybe you should listen to the other side and clarify your own views.

Personally, I thought Trump’s candidacy should have fizzled after he mocked a disabled reporter. I’m still floored that so many voters were OK with that. Do I think Trump himself is a sexist bigot? Well, he has placed women in high positions over the course of his career and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is devout in his Jewish faith. But his comments about women in that leaked Access Hollywood tape are impossible to ignore.

I’m also not encouraged by Trump’s decision to make Steve Bannon a senior White House advisor. Bannon, head of Breitbart News before joining Trump’s campaign, has linked Breitbart to the “alt-right,” a movement of people who view immigration and multiculturalism as a threat to the white race.

The inconvenience of truth
Instead of reasoned debate, a lot of you shared articles on Facebook that were false and often malicious. This was truly a bipartisan failing. Left- and right-leaning friends were equally prolific in sharing content that fit their preconceived notions. I often wondered if people were even clicking on these articles and reading them first. I have no doubt people saw headlines they liked and that was enough.

Posting untrue tripe on Facebook is nothing new, but some of you really upped your game this year.

Free speech didn’t end with the election
Some of you have complained that the election is over and that people unhappy with the result need to grow up, get over it and move on. That’s some bullshit right there. When Obama won in 2008 and 2012, a lot of you reacted the same way Clinton supporters are reacting now. You had your right to a mourning period. So do they.

And just as you are entitled to your opinions, so are those who don’t agree with you. Telling people to shut up makes you a hypocrite.

The left must listen
Now that we have President Trump, the left must come clean about a huge failing that helped feed the man’s rise. Specifically, some of you have repeatedly talked down to conservatives in rural America like they’re idiots when in fact they work hard and want the best for their families, friends and neighbors, just like you. Are there bigots among them? Yes. But most people are just trying to survive economically, and the global economy has not been kind to them. You should spend less time talking at them about how things should be and more time listening.

My friend Nick Selby said it best in this blog post: “Democrats believe truly that they have moral righteousness and certitude of intelligence. You don’t.”

Democrats also have to acknowledge that they left blue-collar America behind long ago. In the early 21st century, the party shifted from being one that stood by union workers to one that catered to Wall Street. Raising money became the priority, and the party lost its way. A lot of the people left in the lurch became Trump supporters. The same is true for the Republican party, but the left needs to own its own part in this.

I still believe humanity is good. I’ve seen people who disagree politically help each other time and again in hours of need and enjoy each other’s company during good times. When bad things happen, the best of humanity always steps up to alleviate pain and suffering, regardless of political beliefs.

Now, if we could just stop being assholes the rest of the time.

fight