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Give Veterans More Than Lip Service

People on Facebook and Twitter are honoring U.S. veterans with words of gratitude and awe. All well and good, but not nearly enough for the countless vets who suffer in silence.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:0dOg1ySSI7NkpAe89Zo0b9]

In so many ways, we continue to treat our veterans like shit. We let so many of them live on the streets, without proper shelter or medication for the mental illnesses they caught from watching comrades get ripped apart by shrapnel on the battlefield.

We look down at veterans every day as lazy, crazy, smelly vermin who prowl the streets scaring our children. We have no idea of what they’ve been through to get so scarred, and a lot of us don’t really care — even if we say we do.

Flashback: September, 2010:

 I’m walking the streets of Brooklyn on a beautiful night, and a guy comes up to me. He has a hole in his head where his left eye used to be and burn scars up and down one arm.

I’m smoking a cigar, so he approaches me for a light. He tells me he was maimed in Afghanistan during military service and asks for some change so he can get a train to somewhere. He tells me he’s in New York looking for work and was stranded without money.

I give him the change from my pocket and then he’s gone.

Is he telling the truth? I have no idea, and I don’t really care. He just looked like a guy in pain who needed a few quarters to survive the next few hours, and that’s all that mattered at the time.

Flashback: Late April, 2011:

I’m on Facebook one afternoon and I see a friend commenting that he’s disappointed that some of his friends have decided to “like” a page that makes fun of a fellow known in Haverhill, Mass., as Crazy Mike.

In any city there’s a guy like “Crazy Mike.” The stereotype is usually a long beard, ratty clothes and the fellow is usually living on the street. He talks aloud to no one in particular and falls asleep on playground equipment. People like to laugh at him.

A lot of these so-called crazy guys are homeless vets whose luck ran out somewhere between the battlefield and the hard re-entry into society.

After a few seconds of thinking this through (admittedly, a few seconds is never enough time to really think things through), my temper reaches full boil and I pound out a blog post called “Liking The Crazy Mike of Haverhill Page is Sad and Stupid.”

Discussion follows online, with a big question being if Crazy Mike was in Vietnam and, as a result, sick on the streets with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. One reader insists he is indeed a veteran, and that other homeless people keep stealing his medication. Someone else says she knew the family fairly well, and that Mike is not a veteran. He’s simply a guy who has a serious mental illness.

To me, it doesn’t matter if he was in Vietnam or not. Instead, two realities have my mind spinning like a top on fire.

One is that a lot of people assume he is a veteran, but treat him like shit anyway.

Another thing is that there are a lot of homeless who ARE military veterans, and most days we don’t give them more than a few seconds of thought before we walk on by.

It’s almost as if we honor them on holidays to make ourselves feel better about being the assholes we often are.

I say this as a guy who is admittedly one of those assholes. I’ve made my share of fun of people like this, and in the rear-view mirror, looking back at my own struggle with mental illness, it makes me feel ashamed.  Back when fear, anxiety and addiction had me by the balls, I used to walk or drive the other way when these guys approached. It makes me the last guy on Earth who would be fit to judge others for poking fun at someone less fortunate.

It’s not just the homeless vets who get shafted every day. It’s also the ones who have managed to stay off the streets but need special medical attention. Every day, the system set up to help them fails them instead. Sometimes the intent is good, but the message doesn’t get out to those who need to know.

Here’s an example, courtesy of my friend Magen Hughes, who once volunteered for the Compensated Work Therapy (CWT) group:

What they do is they provide vocational therapy, training, etc. to veterans who are not only homeless, but also those who suffer from addictions of various kinds as well as mental disorders.

The group isn’t really well known (or at least, that was my impression while I was at the VA Hospital), so a lot of the veterans who could benefit from the vocational therapy are left continuing down the path that they’ve always known, no matter how destructive it may be. Or they are shoved in one of the psychiatric wards or the nursing home.

That was probably the most heart-breaking part about volunteering, was seeing that there was a service that could help them out, but no one either knew or cared enough to really do them any good. I vaguely recall even being chastised once when bringing up CWT to a nurse as an idea for one of the patients.

They didn’t think that there was a group like that at the VA and I shouldn’t be worrying about “adult stuff like that.”

Veterans need our undivided attention, every day. A holiday here and there is not enough.

Maybe we can start doing better by not ridiculing the guys that have to sleep in our playgrounds and town commons.

I count myself among those who need to do better.

I’ve driven past these guys many times. I don’t go to memorial services on Veteran’s Day like I should. I certainly didn’t adequately appreciate my grandfather’s valor when he was alive.

We all have work to do.

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Christian Intolerance Or Universal Snobbery?

Though I’m a devout Catholic, I sometimes shake my head in disgust over how some of my Christian brothers and sisters behave.

I’ve mentioned before how some in my church community are quick to judge other people and how others seem to think you have to be a member of a specific political party to be entitled to Christ’s love. Democrats are often labeled as abortionists. A friend shared this cartoon this morning and I think it speaks a lot of truth:

There does indeed seem to be a lot of anger among so-called right wingers when you try to offer a more moderate position.

That last frame in the comic, where the woman screams about being persecuted, rings especially true. When a person’s beliefs are questioned, they instantly become victims.

To be fair, Christians have not cornered the market on hypocrisy and intolerance. I’ve had many a conversation with people who think anyone who believes in God is a sheep or an idiot.

I’m a Christan. I believe Jesus Christ died for my sins. But that doesn’t mean I think everyone has to believe the exact same thing. I really don’t care if you’re a Wiccan, Buddhist, Jewish or Atheist. A good person is a good person. A bad person is a bad person.

When you label someone a bad person because their beliefs aren’t perfectly aligned with yours, that makes you an asshole.

Here’s the element people seem to be most consistently daft about across the board: The idea that a person can be figured out and branded for life based on what their current belief system is.

Today’s right-wing nut job isn’t necessarily tomorrow’s right-wing nut job. Today’s satanist isn’t necessarily tomorrow’s satanist. We are constantly evolving.

We should really stop haggling over this stuff and focus instead on being the type of people we want others to be. Not Christian or Agnostic or Islamic, but kind, open-minded and willing to admit along the way that our belief systems need fine-tuning.

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Learn From My Mistakes

In all my efforts to get sane a few years ago, I did a lot of stupid things. I’m sharing it with you here so you don’t make the same mistakes:

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/l4Xx_vjGnlo

–Don’t try to control your compulsive binge eating problem by fasting. You won’t make it through the morning, and then you’ll binge like you’ve never binged before.

–Don’t mix alcohol with pills that have the strength of four Advil tablets in an effort to kill your emotional pain as well as your physical pain. That sort of thing might kill you.

–Don’t hate the people in your life for the bad things they’ve done. Remember that they’re fucked up like you and that hating them will never make the pain go away. In fact, it’ll just make it worse.

–Avoid the late-night infomercials. Those things were designed for suckers, especially suckers who can’t sleep because they’re so overcome with fear and anxiety that they see knife-wielding ghosts around every corner. You might find yourself falling for it and spending stupid sums of money on fraudulent bullshit like this.

–Don’t spend every waking hour worrying about and rushing toward the future. You will miss all the beauty in the present that way, and that’s a damn shame.

–Don’t try to control everything. Doing so just makes you look like an asshole.

–Don’t put down others just so you’ll feel better about yourself. You’ll just ruin another life, and you will not feel better. You’ll feel worse.

–Don’t try to eradicate your mental disorder. Learn to work with it instead, because once your brain reaches adulthood, there’s no turning back.

–Don’t spend your life trying to please everyone. You never will, and they usually won’t deserve the effort.

—Don’t over-think things. Thinking doesn’t make you smarter.

—Don’t bitch about your job. You’ll just annoy people. Change yourself and your attitude first. Then, if you still don’t like the job, work on finding a new one and keep doing your best at the current job in the meantime.

—Don’t whine about how tough everything is. Life is supposed to be tough at times, and wallowing in it keeps you from moving on to the good stuff. To put it another way, stop seeing yourself as a victim.

Class dismissed.

OCD Diaries

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Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Man, is this fighting between the Occupiers and Tea Party people getting nasty.

Yesterday, my wife posted something about the occupy movement and poked some nerves.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/XvInEYevpmw

There was this comment from our cousin Ed:

“I’m sorry Erin, it’s hard for me to compare the Tea Party movement — a political party with an agenda — to a bunch of bored kids trying to find themselves and making US pay for it! I applaud the action, but now I want to know what they want and to move on already!”

That got this response from our friend Jesse:

“The idea that the 99% is a bunch of “bored kids trying to find themselves” is so utterly offensive that words fail me. REALLY? That’s why the movement is global?

“We have troops in Uganda, Iraq, Afghanistan, and are building schools in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the former Yugoslavia with taxpayer dollars. The “war” in the middle east is virtually without objective at this point, costs us millions a day and has cost us trillions in total.

“Our public schools languish in poverty and our healthcare STINKS. We are 27th in the world for maternal fetal medicine and infant mortality! Haverhill is the largest city in the state without a band or orchestra (middle or highschool) for example.

“Additionally, with 2 jobs I am unable to make ends meet. Despite that I’m pregnant for over 2 months I worked 6-7 days a week (7 most of the time) until I became to ill to continue doing so and even then I was NOT making ends meet. I have a Bachelor of Science degree, extensive training in 2 other areas and a TON of work experience in NYC and Kansas City.

“The father of my baby is irresponsible and nearly entirely uninvolved (I’m being diplomatic here I assure you). I haven’t earned so little per hour for my brain and hards work since I was in my early 20’s. I’m 40. I’ve had numerous surgeries and 7 miscarriages and 2x bailed myself out of 10’s of thousands of dollars in medical debt WITH insurance mind you.

“My credit score dropped from 800 in August of 2010 to 650 by August of 2011 because of medical bills and prenatal care/lab bills that I am unable to pay and which the father will NOT help pay.

“Please don’t compare me, the 99%, to the Tea Party where the women leaders boast about returning to a “more constitutional government that our forefathers intended” when those forefathers didn’t even give women the right to vote! I could not possibly care less if you are a Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Independent, Tea Party member or entirely apolitical. JUST PLEASE give a crap that we have outsourced nearly all of our manufacturing and that the ratio of profit dispersement/pay between the typical American CEO and the average worker is now $459 to $1.

“It is criminal, disgusting and if people were not in a television, sugar and carb coma they would absolutely NOT tolerate it. Apparently those who do not tolerate it are only JUST begining to be heard. If you think we are bored kids you are in for a rude awakening. WE are not going away. WE are the sleeping giant who has been awakened and is starving after way-too-long a hibernation.”

This is what happens. If you’re on one side, the other side is evil.

This is nothing new, of course. It’s always been this way.

People get fierce in their opinions and breath hell fire when they’re disagreed with. Then someone comes along and asks, “Can’t we all just get along?” Seconds later, someone comes along and punches out that guy’s teeth for raining on a good parade.

In my opinion, there are some smart, thoughtful people on both sides. I know them. I work and play with them. Our kids go to school together. I’m related to many of them. They are good people, but they disagree viciously from time to time.

Some say it has to stop. I say screw that. A good debate keeps our minds sharp.

Here’s where we are better than some who quarrel in other countries: We yell, but most of us aren’t punching and shooting each other. That does happen, but the vast majority of people on both sides keep it peaceful.

Disruptive? Absolutely. Loud? Sure. But we’re all (mostly) still talking to each other, and I think that says more about our nature than the more violent stuff.

In a bigger sense, we are getting along. We just disagree passionately about a few things.

That’s perhaps one of the better legacies of the Founding Fathers, that the system they created has made for mostly peaceful discourse in the last 230-plus years. Well, except for the Civil War.

People love to quote the Founding Fathers like they’re gods, forgetting that they allowed slavery to exist and, as Jesse noted, forbade women the right to vote.

It just goes to show how this country is deeply rooted in dysfunction. But for the most part, it’s a good dysfunction, because people are still generally caring and responsible beneath all the yelling.

Carry on.

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Judith Miller: The Liar’s Journalist

Judith Miller is one of many reasons I left mainstream journalism years ago. I forgot about her until Fox News decided to run this piece of filth about the BlackBerry outage and cyber terrorism.

If you want to see a true specimen of fear-based journalism, read that article. In it, she takes the recent BlackBerry outage, which was the result of tech failure and not terrorism, and connects it to cyber terrorism anyway, despite the absence of facts to support her thesis.

From her article:

An RIM spokesman has said that the outage was caused by what Security Week called “a core switch failure within RIM’s infrastructure,” and not by a deliberate disabling attack. But the outage highlights the threat that determined cyber-warriors could pose to the nation’s communications systems if they target them. For over a decade cyber-experts have urged the U.S. to upgrade critical infrastructure to protect vital dams, power plants, and communications systems from cyber-crime or cyber-attacks from rival countries. But the country remains complacent and highly vulnerable, as the BlackBerry outage shows.

Amazingly, she goes on to connect it to biological terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, two subjects she wrote about at length last decade as a reporter for The New York Times. She scared the shit out of a lot of people with those articles, including me. The slimy part isn’t that she scared people. It’s that she scared people with stories that turned out to be inaccurate or completely false.

As her Wikipedia profile notes, Miller was later involved in disclosing Valerie Plame’s identity as CIA personnel. She spent three months in jail for claiming reporter’s privilege and refusing to reveal her sources in the CIA leak.

She willingly engaged in the fear-based journalism after 9-11 that lead to a lot of heartache and loss later. Her stories were used by the Bush Administration to build the case for going to war in Iraq. We went in unprepared for the bloody insurgency that followed.

I should probably laugh at this kind of journalism when I see it and move on. But the fact of the matter is that this stuff used to leave me a crippled mess.

When you have an out-of-control case of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), you latch onto all the things you can’t control and worry about them nonstop. Nothing feeds that devil like the kind of crap Miller writes and Fox News delivers. I’ve written before about the anxiety and fear I used to have over current events. I would think about all the things going on in the world over and over again, until it left me physically ill. I personally wanted to set everything right and control the shape of events, which of course is delusional, dangerous thinking.

Right after 9-11 I realized the obsession had taken a much darker, deeper tone. This time, I had the Internet as well as the TV networks to fill me with horror. Everyone was filled with horror on 9-11, obviously, but while others were able to go about their business in a depressed haze, I froze. Two weeks after the event, I refused to get on a plane to go to a wedding in Arizona. Everyone was afraid to fly at that point, but I let my fear own me. It’s one of my big regrets.

Part of the problem was my inability to take my eyes off the news. To do so for a five-hour plane ride was unthinkable. To not know what was going on for five hours? Holy shit. If I don’t know about it, I can’t control it!

I really used to think like that.

Her reports about the potential for bio terror fed the beast. I wouldn’t mind at all had her reports been based on truth. When there is a real danger people need to know about, you have to report it. That’s when people need to hear the scary truth. But I do mind, because the fear she threw around was not based on truth.

I can’t blame her for how I reacted to the coverage. I had a crippling mental illness that was still years away from being diagnosed. I can’t blame anyone for that. It was my problem to work on.

But I worry about people who are at the stage of illness I once found myself in. They will read Miller’s BlackBerry article and react as I once did.

True, that’s their problem. But if you are the writer, you should care about how people will react.

Then again, if you’re willing to write lies, you’re not really going to care about that, are you?

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Axl Rose: Still A Jackass

Guns n Roses singer Axl Rose is still a jackass after all these years. Consider the following:

Mood music:

From the metal news site Blabbermouth.net:

GUNS N’ ROSES‘ continual tardiness is making things rough for concert promoters and fans alike, with long waits for Axl Rose just as much a definite at a the band’s concert as hearing “Paradise City” or “Welcome To The Jungle”. At the Rock In Rio concert on October 2, GUNS N’ ROSES came onstage two hours late despite having reportedly agreed to pay a heavy fine for making the audience wait.

GUNS N’ ROSES‘ defended its actions with a brand new post on its Facebook page, stating, “Love it Hate it Accept it Debate it — You want 8 o’clock shows go find F-R-I-E-N-D-S or hit a cinema somewhere.. or you wanna be informed go catch the 10-o’clock news.. this is Rock N’ Roll! Treat yourself don’t cheat yourself thinking you’re gonna go to school or work or whatever you ‘normally’ do the next day. Oh and remember before you get high and never want to come down. ‘you can have anything you want but you better not take it from me!’ This is GUNS N’ ROSES and when the time is right the stage will ignite. Looking forward to sharing that with rockers soon!”

GUNS N’ ROSES‘ 2001 show at Rock In Rio saw them take to the stage two hours late, and while the crowd waited patiently for them on that occasion, this has not been the case at other shows.

In March 2010, fans of the band rioted in São Paolo, Brazil after a private show was canceled at the last minute, and in 2002 fans in Vancouver, Canada and Philadelphia in the U.S. rioted when shows were canceled on the day.

Also in 2010, organizers of the Reading festival in England pulled the plug on the band’s PA, silencing them after they took to the stage an hour late and tried to overrun the event’s curfew time by over half an hour.

Here’s what Axl doesn’t understand after all these years: When you pay to see him perform, it’s reasonable to expect the band to take the stage close to the time the ticket states. People travel from far and wide to see their favorite bands. Some disrupt their schedules to get to the venue on time. Most have jobs to get to the following morning.

Axl thinks it’s wrong for people to get upset with him for not fulfilling his side of the deal and that they should “treat themselves” and not “cheat themselves.” But it’s not a treat to spend two extra hours in a concert hall waiting for something to happen.

Axl’s mental health issues are the stuff of rock legend. His mood swings have led to riots and a world of hurt for those around him.

After more than 20 years, one would have hoped he grew as a person; that he brought his selfish instincts to heal.

But apparently not.

I feel sorry for him. To go through all these years and not learn from mistakes seems like such a waste.

Perhaps it’s hypocritical of me to say these things. After all, I have plenty of things I still need to work on.

But I can’t help myself.

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Faith: An Excuse To Duck Personal Responsibility?

A friend and reader is unconvinced when it comes to my posts about surrendering to a higher power as part of recovery from addiction. Here’s what she said:

“Bill while I agree with a lot of what you say in this article. I fail to see the “surrender to a higher power model.” In fact, that is one of the many flaws I find in AA styled groups. I have no addictions (well maybe caffeine), but have read a modicum of information about them. My perception is that yielding resolve to a “higher power” seems to be an excuse for not taking responsibility. I say this after spending a good deal of my early 20s looking for some spiritual certainty. At various points I think I’ve found it, but then I realize it was just my own inner-needs presenting a false image.”

She makes a fair observation. On the surface, it’s easy to see addicts turning to Faith as just another crutch. And I’ve known people who use it to justify bad, selfish decisions. One guy would prattle on about the Lord providing whenever he borrowed money he never repaid. Others seem to have a level of Faith that grows when things are good and dwindles when things don’t go well.

So let me try to answer the question. First, I’ll point out that this is how I see it. Any number of religious people might explain things differently.

For me, when I try to control everything and handle everything by myself, I overwhelm myself and everyone around me. Part of my problem is that I can’t control a lot of things. If I crash and burn, I blame it on how hard life is and how I’m working so hard to handle all the challenges. When I do that, I’m avoiding personal responsibility.

It’s a common problem with addicts. We need help because we are too mentally damaged to make good decisions when we’re under the spell of our substances. We see things as us against the world. There’s nobody to help us. We’re on our own. And it’s hard to face your fears when you’re alone.

You can lean hard on other people, but when you do that you eventually burn them out. When someone is constantly calling you or showing up at the front door because they can’t handle life, it becomes disruptive to everyone in the immediate vicinity.

Enter the Higher Power.

A person’s higher power isn’t necessarily the conventional concept of God. It’s simply the realization that something bigger than yourself is at play and ready to help if you simply accept it. Your Faith can be rooted in Buddhism. You could be a Wiccan or Jewish. Or, like me, Catholic. You don’t necessarily have to be a regular church or temple goer, though I choose to go to church at least once a week.

It’s about the higher power of YOUR understanding.

While this is a central part of the 12 Steps and AA, I don’t believe that this is the only way to kick an addiction. Some people just decide to stop drinking, eating or drugging and manage to quit cold turkey. I envy them. Others do it with a strong support system of family and friends. Others, like me, need more.

Personally, I think surrendering the idea that I could control my demons alone was the first step in taking responsibility for my actions. The surrendering isn’t an act of giving up and becoming dependent on Faith like a cultist robot. Specifically, I surrendered an idea and a behavior that wasn’t working. I surrendered the image I had of myself. That’s when I was able to move forward.

It doesn’t mean I’m cured. I still struggle. But if I fall on my face, the responsibility is all mine. I think people who expect God to keep them from failure and bad fortune are delusional. Our mission is to learn to stay upright when things aren’t going so well, so we can come out of it better than before.

I hope that helps.

Art by Bill Fennell
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Mentally Ill Behind Bars

Came across a disturbing report by Steve Visser in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that clearly illustrates how far we have to go in getting the mentally ill the help they need.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/yndfqN1VKhY

The headline: Mentally ill inmates languish in local jails

From the article:

Detention Officer Terroyanne Harris considers the inmates she oversees on 3 North as much patient as prisoner. They suffer from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress and other mental illnesses. Some walk aimlessly around their cell block. Some are lost in hallucinations.

Most are in the Fulton County jail because they are more of a nuisance than a danger in the free world.

Taken into custody for petty crimes such as trespassing, damaging property or resisting an officer, some end up trapped in a revolving door of arrest and release. Others languish behind bars for years as they wait to be declared competent enough to stand trial.

Fulton County is not an aberration. The same is true in DeKalb, Cobb and Gwinnett counties, as well as some rural counties in the state.

Jails have become the new asylums. In Georgia, more mentally ill people are locked away than are treated in all the state psychiatric hospitals combined.

This is bad for a variety of reasons, the first being that a mental illness sufferer’s chance of recovery is seriously diminished in a bleak environment like that. Environment can make all the difference. I know from experience.

My OCD and depression run hot whenever I spend too much time indoors, hidden from the daylight. Even walking into a hospital to visit someone for an hour has a depressing impact on me. It’s a bleak environment, where people are essentially imprisoned by their illnesses. But it’s still better than the inside of a jail cell.

The article captures one aspect of this tragedy quite well:

With more mentally ill people on the streets, more have run-ins with the law. A Supreme Court decision in the mid-70s made it harder to involuntarily commit those with mental illnesses. Jail is where many land.

I can’t help but think of the fellow in my hometown people call Crazy Mike.

In any city there’s a guy like him.

The stereotype is usually a long beard, ratty clothes and the fellow is usually living on the street. He talks aloud to no one in particular and falls asleep on playground equipment.

People like to laugh at him.

I’m no saint. I’ve made my share of fun of people like this, and in the rear-view mirror, looking back at my own struggle with mental illness, it makes me feel ashamed. It makes me the last guy on Earth who would be fit to judge others for poking fun at someone less fortunate.

Is Mike better off in a jail cell? I can picture him easily getting detained for disturbing the peace and ending up in the slammer. But I can’t picture him being better off.

I think of all the war veterans who are on the street or in jail because their experiences in combat left them traumatized for life. They fought for their country and deserve better.

The state of Georgia needs to reform its system now. Locking the mentally ill away in jail isn’t just tragic. It’s outrageous. I don’t fault officers in the correctional facilities. They seem to be doing the best they can with the tools they have. The problem is that these inmates shouldn’t have landed there in the first place.

Here’s hoping Georgia and other states find a way to solve this problem.

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Racists AND Idiots

I’ve received some interesting feedback to Friday’s post about the gay soldier who was booed during the most recent Republican debate. Instead of repeating all the background, I refer you to the post “Gay Haters Or Just Idiots?”

I suggested that there was more stupidity than racism going on, but I’m thinking these comments from a couple friends are painfully true as well:

Mood music:

Joe Yuska: “What made this so egregious was that after the boos no one rebuked the booers, in fact Mr. Santorum tossed red meat to them in his answer. Silence in this case is consent.”

From a friend I’ll keep anonymous, since this was a direct message: “Does it get any worse than booing a soldier asking a question at a political debate? And no one on stage condemned it? WTF”

I’ll wrap up this sad chapter in the political discourse by saying the following:

–Rick Santorum is just another empty suit who will say anything for an applause line. He also ignores the fact that sex happens all the time in the military. I don’t feel strongly one way or another about it. It’s simply a matter of being human: People meet and fall in love in work settings all the time. Anyone who expects something different from the military is ignoring that simple reality.

–That none of the other candidates said something about the booing being wrong shows the lack of guts and honesty in politics today. There are exceptions, of course. But the people on stage are more about throwing red meat to the lions than about speaking up for what’s right.

It’s just another reason why I’ve all but given up on politics.