Secular Trinity

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You live, and you grow, and you change. At some point you realize you’re an adult (for me, around age 25). You feel at that point you are not going to change anymore, although it still remains difficult to imagine yourself as middle-aged (and forget about “old”).

You feel “done” maturing, as if at 25 (or whenever) you will simply lock into place and be the “you” that you are now for the rest of your life.

There’s some anecdotal truths around this. For example, artistic tastes. I believe they tend to form as part of childhood and adolescence, and of course one’s taste matures and is refined by experience. But at some point, usually late adolescence, you have kind of “decided” what kind of art, music, film, philosophy, etc., that you “like” or identify with, and this gets rather chiseled in stone for many people. This is why, for example, Journey and Foreigner are still touring.

(Artists are an exception. They are always looking for the new. But given enough time, even they may lose their taste for the now.)

We’re amazed at how richly detailed our childhood memories are, our adolescent and post-adolescent memories. The time between age 6 and 21 seems a lifetime in itself, a kaleidoscope of change, when recollected at age 50. But the time after that, and all the way up to the present, seems a fleeting moment, punctuated by memories of only the most obvious junctures of change (career start, marriage, children, deaths of relatives, new job, big vacation, etc.). Personally, I can barely remember anything that happened between age 25 and 35, but I have a huge catalog of incredibly distinct memories from childhood and adolescence.

Science now has good evidence that there is a reason we have such vivid memories of childhood and adolescence—our brains are wired to create more permanent memories during these years. It would seem to go hand in hand with our greater ability to learn at a younger age.

And, as science has also proven, as you get older time does literally move faster. At least from the individual’s perspective. Gyp!

I’ve also noticed that physical aging is not a steady degrading of one’s appearance from “youthful” to “codger.” It’s a process with fits and starts. Nature, in her wisdom, seems to be most “interested” in us between the ages of 12 and 40. This makes perfect evolutionary sense if you think about it. And so, I don’t know if it’s by design or just a function of human aging, but it seems I did not age at all, physically, between age 20 and 40. I remember, when I was about 31, I walked into my first college class as an instructor. Some of the students laughed, and as I took my spot at the podium and smiled at them, some of them told me to quit fooling around and get a seat before the instructor arrived. I looked about the same as I did at 18. They ended up being a good class. (And that’s another thing – youth relates to youth. It’s not fair. A lot of things aren’t.)

Why this variability in physical aging, memory creation, and perception of time? I believe it’s because Nature has great use for us between the ages of 12 and 40 – to create and raise the next generation. I’m not saying that’s anyone’s “duty” by a long shot. Every life is valid. I mean that that is our usefulness to Nature, which is insistent that life will succeed, and indifferent to what happens after we help in that task. It is our “golden” time, the time when we are most vital, most animated, and most attractive. It’s all useful to be thus, in terms of evolutionary success. And when we get past that period, we are, I’m afraid, no longer so useful to Nature. We are free to stick around, perhaps to advise, but we’re largely relegated to being observers in the continuous cycle, the generational game that is center stage.

And then, when we aren’t looking, the fun begins.

There used to be an old joke about how when Dick Clark reached age 75 he was going to age all at once. Yeah, he was youthful for a long time. But then he wasn’t. And many are, as I was, slow to age. But to quote my old bud Robert Frost: Nothing gold can stay. Time is, as they say, the great destroyer. Or, if you’re a Jim Morrison fan: No one here gets out alive.

So now I do age. My face is fatter, my hair is thinner and coarser and grayer. My middle is more of me. My skin was perfect, now I’ve got more “character” in my face. I have a crown on what used to be a molar. I’m allergic to everything. My eyes are less bright and can’t see menus in dim restaurants. My body is, in general, less cooperative than it used to be. And I’ll be honest, it gets to me sometimes. All things being equal, it’s better to be young, healthy and beautiful. Right? Sure.

But all things are not equal.

Lately, I have felt a very odd transformation occurring. I can only describe it as being less “me” and more “us”. For my entire life, and largely based on my lifestyle, I’ve been a loner, even an outcast. It was always “me” and “everyone else.” It felt right, it felt safe and contained, and my personal philosophy had a lot to do with the idea of the “sovereign individual,” beholden to no one, bowing to no creed and no nation. I was (and am) a devotee of that famous iconoclast William Blake’s iconic statement: “I must create my own system, or be enslav’d by another man’s.”

That’s changed, at least in part. I would like to say it changed the day I married, but that would be dishonest. I was 28, still in Nature’s grip. I was not done figuring out who and why I am. I had a long way to go, and perhaps that was mutual. I suspect it was, and that’s fine. Nothing important is easy, nothing valuable happens in a moment (well, a couple of things). Building a life – an identity – I find it’s a lifelong process. And once I had decided upon my identity, way back then, it felt sound, but now it has shifted again.

Marriage is complicated, as the divorce and single-parent statistics attest. It’s not always worth it. And, most of all, the future – and our future selves – cannot be predicted, they will come to pass as they do, not as we will them to. So some fail. Marriage is a planned sacrifice of sorts, a giving up (eventually, if the union is successful) of a part of oneself, in order to accept being part of another self. I didn’t really understand this when our drunk minister, Reverend Fred, said the words in October 1990, that we were now “one.” I thought I did, but I didn’t.

Now I do. And not only do I feel I am truly not one person anymore, I’m not even limited to being two people. I can look at my daughter now, hear her words, witness her mature identity growing, and it grows like the acorn into a replica of the old oak. Really. She is a true part of the “us” that we are now, and there’s no competition regarding whom she is “more” like, because in a rather profound way we all seem to be the same person. Of course we are physically independent beings, with as much free will as anyone may have (or think they have). We have our own likes and dislikes, etc. But we do not go it alone, not at all. We are “in it” together, the “it” being life. We share it, as I have never before understood sharing.

No, it’s not readily explained.

But I know this: I’m no longer me, and it’s no longer me against the world. I’m us, and we’re us. And we are a world, within a world. And it feels better than anything I’ve ever felt before.

The Fallacy of False Equivalency

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A while back I posted a Facebook picture of my wife and me at an inauguration event from 2008, saying this was the only “political” post you’d see from me until November. I think I’ve stuck by that. My posts regarding the bizarre proposals and threats offered by the GOP nominee are not political, they are warnings about the consequences of allowing fascism to take hold of a fearful and uncertain populace (whose fears and uncertainties are ironically exacerbated by the “law and order” candidate’s disdain for actual law and order).

But I have been frankly amazed at the contortions of logic being offered by those who see the election as more or less equivalent choices between two “nearly equally evil” candidates and, if one is to follow this logic, nearly equally “evil” outcomes should one or the other be elected.

I know this position to be baseless, and yet seemingly sincere individuals offer up this false equivalency as if I should accept such a glaring fallacy at face value. “Well,” so many people say, “Trump is terrible but Clinton is not much better.” Wrong. And I can prove it.

We’ve all seen the vast catalog of differences we are either voting for, or against, the differences that sophists and sour grapes types (and just plain ignorant people) would have you ignore because “choosing the lesser of two evils means we have already lost.” Wrong again, especially when there has been no proof of any “evil” actions or intent from candidate Clinton. For all the bluster and fake (i.e. political or apolitical/anarchist) umbrage spewing from the haters of all things organized and connected and global, they cannot offer a single piece of evidence linking Hillary Clinton to an actual crime.

False Equivalency – The Commercial Angle

Pundits with various political motivations for getting us to believe in a particular reality are relatively easy to spot. I think it’s important to point out the role of the press, and especially the new “social media” press, in helping generate this regrettably common notion, this false equivalency. It helps to employ critical thinking, healthy skepticism, and logical deduction when attempting to ascertain the source of what we consider to be “knowledge.” If we “know” something, from whom did we learn it? How reliable is that source of information? What is THEIR motivation in publishing the information? What do they gain if we buy their version of the truth, if we “believe” it?

If we don’t ask these questions, we risk becoming “vessels” for propoganda that has only a glancing relation (if any) to the truth. Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that every single media source out there (including, and especially, slapped-up social media “news” sites) is a business, competing with other media for your attention and for the ability to influence the societal debate. Well, there’s no more compelling topic to Americans these days than a presidential election, unless it’s an “historic” presidential election. (Probably used to be boxing title fights, but times change). And there’s no bigger turn-off to potential consumers of media than a “non-story”, a done deal, a cake walk, yesterday’s news. In other words, the presidential election MUST be a horse race, and it MUST be neck-and-neck, or people will tune out the news media and go back to their first loves: American Idol, Netflix, and Facebook LOL cats.

So what is the media to do when one candidate is a traditional, qualified, highly educated, highly experienced former U.S. Senator and Secretary of State, while the other is a crass, bigoted, ignorant reality TV star with exactly zero experience in government and zero commitment to public service?

You crank up the false equivalency machine, of course. You magnify the problems and potential disasters facing the “good” candidate, to the point that she starts to look as “bad” as the unequivocally “bad” candidate. You make what are essentially overprotective office management blunders (based on legitimate fear of domestic enemies) look like treason, while the other candidate engages in treason – actually requests a foreign power to commit criminal espionage against the U.S. State Department.

Her Convictions are Criminal?

Her “real” crime? Being in politics for her entire life and “playing the capitalist game” because – brace yourself – she’s been a government official in a country with a capitalist economy. So..lock her up for conducting foreign policy according to the President’s direction? Lock her up for changing her views on public issues from time to time, or for engaging in common political hyperbole, over a decades-long career? Lock her up for being the Senator from New York? Lock her up for Bill Clinton’s approval of a Senate crime bill in the 1990s? Lock her up for foreign policy missteps and failures that every administration and every Secretary of State experiences in an unpredictable and violent world? Lock her up for being a hawkish neoliberal? Lock her up for accepting speaking fees as a private citizen? Lock her up for her choice of friends? Lock her up for favoring her own candidacy over that of her primary opponent?

We’d have to lock up the majority of politicians for such “crimes.” Yet her opponent is breaking the law at this very moment – right now, soliciting campaign contributions from foreign nationals, which is illegal. It is happening right now. Is that just cute or something?

Compare and Contrast – For Real

Here’s just a few of the glaring, incredibly consequential differences others refuse to acknowledge or would have you dismiss as irrelevant:

Trump: “If I don’t win in November, it will be because they rigged the election.” This is perhaps the most dangerous thing any U.S. presidential candidate has said, ever. It is on the heels of his primary promise that there will be “riots” at the convention if delegates tried to challenge his nomination. It worked for the convention. But if Clinton wins the election (which Trump seems to be acknowledging here as the most likely scenario), he is basically calling for civil disobedience, for an uprising against an imagined criminal conspiracy. In the very, very likely event that he loses, he is signaling his white supremacist supporters to bring on a national calamity as retribution for his loss. At the very least this type of rhetoric (coming off the “Lock her up” theme of the convention) seeks to delegitimize a Clinton presidency before voters can even go to the polls. This, like so many of Trump’s insane statements, is unprecedented and indefensibly dangerous rhetoric.

Hillary has never tried to foment widespread unrest and violence in the event she loses. I’m guessing she’ll skip the “it’s all rigged” tactic as well – you know, since she’s running to be president of a democracy.

Trump: “They will follow my orders.” This is his response to a question from a reporter, referencing Trump’s promise to have the military “take out” the families of terrorists. To order summary executions would be an unlawful order, the reporter says, so how would Trump achieve this? His answer is a clear indication that he has no intention of obeying the law once elected.

Hillary has never proposed a policy that includes illegally targeting the families of terror suspects for summary execution.

Trump: “Ban all Muslims from entry into the U.S….monitor the mosques.”

Hillary is not proposing immigration bans and widespread surveillance of citizens based solely on religion, acts that would violate the Constitution.

Trump – to the Russians: “Please find the missing State Department e-mails.”

Hillary has not requested a foreign power to commit crimes of espionage against the United States in order to help her win an election.

Trump: “If Ivanka were not my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.”

Hillary has never, to my knowledge, publicly mused about having a romantic relationship with daughter Chelsea.

Trump: No government experience whatsoever; no military service (draft deferments) or public service whatsoever; never elected to any office, ever. No evidence of any organizational or strategic aptitude whatsoever (trust fund/multiple bankruptcies). Extremely limited and self-deluded knowledge of world events (“I saw the Muslims celebrating in New Jersey on 7-11”), world leaders (will learn the difference between Hezbollah and Hamas “when it’s appropriate”), foreign nations’ priorities (praising the Brexit vote in Scotland, where it lost by a huge margin), and of course the U.S. Constitution.

As a recent Secretary of State, Clinton is fully aware of both world affairs and the priorities of world leaders. As an attorney and former U.S. Senator, she is likely familiar with the Constitution.

I could keep going on and on and on, but I think I’ve made my point. The notion that there’s “no difference” between these candidates is beyond laughable. It’s patently absurd.

Fear and Loathing (and Incompetence) in Cleveland

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2011_09_07_Emmanuel GoldsteinThe plagiarism charge is really not a big deal, nobody expects that someone like Melania (or even Michelle) would actually write their convention speech. The larger observation is that the campaign should not look slipshod and half-assed, but it does—and is. The campaign and the convention are supposed to be evidence that the candidate has the chops to organize a team, to head up a large group of people with various functions, and to keep them all on task and on message (and that includes the candidate himself). It’s an application for the job of president. It is the candidate’s and the party’s one shot to seriously address issues that people outside their angry white working class base care about (i.e. issues other than Hillary’s ties to Lucifer Prince of Darkness).

They have blown that chance to broaden their appeal in favor of a series of ad hominem attacks and open fear/hate-mongering, with WWE theatrics thrown in for effect. Whatever you want to call them, the GOP campaign and convention are not serious or grounded in reality. No organizational rigor or collective messaging, no coordinated message at all except “Lock her up”. (Yes, the frenzied delegates eat up the hate and fear and Clinton revenge fantasies – but there won’t be millions of hand-picked convention delegates available to vote in the general.) No serious discussion of real domestic and international issues, just “terrorists want to kill you and Democrats want to let them” nonsense. No serious foreign policy positions on trade, Syria, Russia, Israel, China, Iraq, Iran, Europe, NATO or anything else. No serious domestic policy positions on race relations, policing, women’s rights, immigration (except the fantasy “wall”), fiscal policies/taxes, corporate malfeasance, federal regulations, states’ rights, climate change, or anything else.

The speech by Ted Cruz was one of the most telling moments. The candidate’s team knew Cruz would not endorse, knew he would generate the kind of frenzied hate-filled chaos that in fact did characterize his self-serving “see you in 2020” speech. Campaign operatives were seen to be whipping up the ‘boos’ from the back of the hall, trying to fan the flames. Ted Cruz is, obviously, the campaign stand in for “The Undertaker” (or take your pick of WWE villains), his role to be the evil contrast to the candidate’s “Macho Man Randy Savage” goodness. You know, in the ring.

The Cleveland event is shaping up to be what we should have expected – a transparently amateurish reality show based on crass Hulk Hogan-style fake pageantry and cartoonish good vs. evil fantasy. A megalomaniacal, narcissistic, willfully ignorant display of white tribal hegemony, combined with a nearly fact-free hate-in against the evil “other”. A denial of this country’s growing diversity and pluralism, and a denial of the complex realities that shape the rest of the world in favor of the tired populist mantra of “Don’t worry, I’ll fix it all because I’m so strong”. A WWE-scripted make-believe machismo devoid of seriousness, evidence-based truth, analysis, insight, logic or even basic human decency.

The GOP “Insurgents”

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The very structure of our information society precludes anything like a universal, universally acknowledged truth. There can be none. If you don’t believe me, check out the Flat Earth society, or the Creationists, or the Republican Party. These organizations, and hundreds if not thousands like them, have absolutely zero interest in facts, or truth, or anything resembling a coherent logical approach to digesting “information” about the world they live in.

No, such folks are interested only in information that supports their preconceived ideas, and even then only in cases where that support applies to the exact truth they wish to believe: for example,  corporations don’t need regulating (unless they have anything to do with women’s reproductive medicine, in which case they need tons of regulating); law enforcement is universally benevolent and race-neutral when it comes to policing (except the feds, who are “out of control,” as in out to take away the guns of law-abiding citizens, steal state lands, and open up the immigration floodgates); the federal government is itself “tyrannical” and cannot be trusted (except Republicans in Congress like Ted Cruz and Trey Gowdy, who become instantly immune to the effects of Washington when they are sworn in because of their party affiliation; or in the case of a Republican being elected president, at which time anyone who has a problem with his policies magically transforms from a “concerned patriot” into a “traitor”).

When we hear Darrel Issa or Paul Ryan or Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump say ridiculous, unproven things about the Democratic presidential candidate (such as that she is “unqualified” to be president or that she is a “criminal”), they are not speaking in the way that you or I might speak about our day to day lives. We would not say “the mailman is probably evil in his heart” at home among our family and friends, because it makes no sense. It only makes sense if we are engaged in some kind of power struggle with the mailman, and our desire is to undermine his position and, if possible, destroy his reputation. In that case, it makes all the sense in the world to imply that the mailman “probably” has some base evil quality about him – nothing we can pinpoint, but you know – probably. Just look at all the things people are saying about him. Where there’s smoke, you know…just got to dig deep enough.

The dynamics of the ‘smear campaign’ are foreign to most of us, because we have no day to day interest in conducting smear campaigns. But what if I told you there was an organization in America that has been promulgating a smear campaign against a single citizen for over a quarter century? Do I need to say more? Do I need to explain what this organization is, or whom they’ve been trying to paint as “criminal” for over 25 years? No, I don’t. You know very well who the target is, and you know that she’s been a political target for decades, ever since the Clintons upset the Reagan-Bush trickle down party in 1992.

For decades, the sharpest right-wing minds in the country (*cough*)  have been bent on “getting the goods” on Hillary Clinton. Whole careers have been made (and unmade) in the process, with Darrel Issa being one of the most prominent politicians to have basically made his entire congressional salary off of “suspicion” of progressive policies and politicians. He doesn’t have to do anything, or create anything, or even propose anything of substance to earn his pay as one of our “leaders”. No, like Trey Gowdy and Mitch McConnel and so many other so-called leaders, he has not been required to lead anyone anywhere for one single moment of his career as a leader. Instead, he follows – like a bloodhound – every move made by those who are actually doing something in the name of progress – people like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton – people who are actually leading the way. But Issa, and his me-too Congressional cohort, and their pet news organizations, and their angry white voter base, are perfectly content to fill this insurgent role. It’s their ticket to relevance and something resembling a legitimate purpose in life. They are “constantly working” on a job that nobody in the private sector would consider actual work: the destruction of their political enemies through a concerted, non-stop, top-priority Republican policy objective that can be summed up neatly as: “Stop them before they do something good or popular.”

You could almost call it a vast, right-wing conspiracy. Except conspirators operate in secret, and the GOP foot soldiers currently waging full-time war against progressive politics in general and the Clintons in particular is a wide-open scorched earth campaign operating very much in the public eye.

It’s not a conspiracy, it’s the party platform.

So we have a national mise-en-scene, as it were, that no longer even resembles a “government” being administered by people who believe in the legitimacy of the government they are running. Instead, it reminds us more of a government (composed of Democrats and a few lonely moderates) in constant battle with a GOP “anti-government” insurgency, one that has made no secret of its desires (as evinced by its frustratingly smug puppet master Grover Norquist) to eviscerate itself in the name of “limited government”. In order to convince a majority of Americans to vote against their own interests (Medicare, Social Security, public infrastructure like the interstate highway system and national parks, etc.), what must one do? One must make the “alternate evil” worse than – more dangerous than – the privation and hardship that will result from following the oligarchs to the land of unregulated corporations, crumbling infrastructure, and a vanishing social safety net for American workers.

I’ve not even mentioned the combed-over walrus in the room, the GOP presidential candidate who, more and more, does not appear to actually want the job of president. He is pretty much all that’s needed to get Democrats to the polls this November. And no, we don’t need operatives like the GOP’s Gowdy and Issa and McConnel to conduct a decades-long smear campaign against the Orange One. The candidate has (thoughtfully?) smeared himself, repeatedly, all during the primaries  and so far during the general election cycle. And quite handily too. Come to think of it – he’s been smearing his own reputation for his entire adult life and probably before that.

So, again, what do you do when you have a popular progressive current president, a driven and experienced Democratic candidate for president who has proven to be unassailable even after decades of attacks, and a GOP presidential candidate who has no idea what he’s doing, and who doesn’t even appear to want the job very badly?

What else? Double down on the one shred of hope you have left: that you might finally convince someone who matters that Hillary Clinton is a “dangerous criminal” who should be “locked up” (we’ll overlook the GOP convention speaker who said she should be “shot for treason” for now).  But here’s the hard part: if you ever actually get to a trial phase for whatever crimes you so fervently believe were committed, judges and juries and defense lawyers will require something of you, something you’ve never had to rely on in the past, something possibly unfamiliar to your way of thinking:

They will require evidence.

The Freedom to be Massacred?

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It’s true, you know – freedom isn’t free. This little axiom has been used in the past to bolster support for armed conflict, as in “we have to be prepared to fight wars to ensure our freedom is not taken from us.” That has been true, though only once in the last century to my reckoning, in 1941.

But now, today, it’s different. We have to fight domestic lovers of conflict and haters of peace like the bizarre orange man-baby, the demagogues and indiscriminate saber-rattlers, the gun fetishists, the amoral greed of the military-industrial-technological complex, the soulless NRA and its meek toadies in Congress – we have to fight all of them. We have to oppose them in order to guarantee our freedom to NOT be party to the indiscriminate murder of innocents by way of legislative inaction or by allowing an insane megolomaniac to gain the awesome power of the presidency. It’s OUR government that’s doing nothing to protect the innocents, it’s VOTERS who put these people in office. Unless we act with courage against them, WE are culpable.

Thoughts and prayers? Faith without works is hollow boasting, vanity and evasion. Far too easy to cross oneself and then look away. Look back – the danger is still here, it’s not over because this week’s dead are buried. Your loved ones are at risk every day, all year long, as we know too well.

To hell with Congress’s moment of silence and Republican lawmakers’ fear of the demagogue. To hell with the transparent lies of the NRA. We need loud, angry voices decrying the inaction of cowards and the dangerous nonsense spouted by ignorant fools every moment, until we are heard.