Bad People

During the 2016 campaign, I opined that anyone who would vote for an explicitly racist, bigoted misogynist who showed no understanding of important issues or the basic functioning of government was a bad person. An acquaintance took umbrage because he knew some of those people, they were his friends, and he knew they weren’t bad people, even if he didn’t agree with their choice. They were mothers and fathers, hard-workers and taxpayers, good Christians who helped their communities and treated people with respect. He had a point.

I didn’t admit to being wrong (because who does that) but further clarified my statement. No person is entirely good or bad; we are all made up of positive traits and negative ones, with a balance that shifts and a rather arbitrary line that demarks one side from the other. It is quite possible to commit a bad act and yet have enough good deeds to make up for such an error. I should have said that voting for such a horrible person, giving an ignorant buffoon such power over our lives and the world we live in, was a truly awful act, but that one act, no matter how reprehensible, did not determine the balance of a person’s soul. As my acquaintance so desperately wanted to believe: they could still be good people.

But that was before the election, before the very clear evidence of exactly what the presidency of such a petulant man-child would look like. Now we know. I’ll say once again: anyone who supports the administration, the racist policies, the dismantling of our social safety net, the disregard for the basic rule of law and principles of democracy, is a bad person.

Let me expand. Their support is bad in the good vs. evil sense of the action, but as I stated earlier a single action cannot define a person’s totality. They may very well have a lot of good in them. But bad also refers to quality, of the good vs. poor kind. If someone can look at the past six months and not realize how awful it has been, who doesn’t see the danger in our executive branch obstructing  investigations into their own criminal behavior, who can’t recognize the constant lies and misinformation, who won’t admit the hate and harm coming from the head of our government - well, that’s a bad person. They are bad at being a person. They are a failure at adulting.

Being a person, as opposed to an animal, requires thought and reasoning, a sense of our own sentience, and an understanding of the basic facts of reality in our world. If you can’t think on your own and simply believe the lies coming from the White House and its many right-wing propaganda arms, you are a disgrace to your own humanity. I know it’s a sweeping pronouncement, I know it includes a significant portion of our populace, and many of those folks do, indeed, possess positive traits and contribute to good in the world. But incompetence on this basic level, and never in my lifetime has there been a case of government evil so basic and understandable as our current situation, is simply inexcusable. Anyone exercising even a small amount of gray matter put towards understanding how we got here, what is happening, and how much harm is being done to millions and millions of people, could not fail to see the error in our electoral choice. This is bad, the people who support it are bad. But they could change.

The thing about being bad at something is it also implies the ability to improve. You can get better if you work at it. Read some history. Study some economics. All you need is the basics, simple understanding of accepted facts. Then listen to the words of your neighbors. Read mainstream (and historically accurate) sources. Stop repeating the lies and talking points. Become a better human being and join the rest of the world in repudiating the hatred and ignorance that comes from our Commander in Chief. We all can do better. We can be good people.

Analogies: Fair Play

Imagine you’re playing a basketball game, but for some arbitrary reason the refs decide your team only gets to put four players on the court against your opponent’s usual five. Clearly, that’s unfair, and you complain, but the refs won’t change their decision. What do you do? You play as hard as you can. Your work your butt off, you expect your teammates to do the same, and you give it everything you have. But the result is most likely you will be way behind by half-time. So maybe the refs then decide it wasn’t really fair. So for the second half you’ll get to play with five players. All good, right? No, not really. Even at five on five, is it really fair? After all, the refs who disadvantaged you are still calling the game. How likely are they to be fair in the second half? Especially if you look at the stats and see that they call more penalties on your team. Wouldn’t it be quite reasonable to be suspicious of their ‘fairness’?

But even if the refs were truly impartial, the game wouldn’t be fair. You’re starting the second half way behind. Maybe if they forced the other team to play with four players against your five in the second half, that would be fair? But do you think the other team will agree to that? No, so you’re still likely to lose the game. How long do you have to play at five on five before it’s fair? The next game? The rest of the season? No, that loss will still affect your chances of making the playoffs. You’d have to play a long, long time, much longer than the one half you were disadvantaged, before it would approach fair. And everyone deserves fair play, right?

We had slavery on this continent for three hundred years. We had Jim Crow laws for another hundred. We still have a lot more fouls called on African Americans and people of color than on white Americans. It isn’t fair yet.

Be a Better Ally

As most people do, I think of myself as a good person. I’d like to think I’ve always been a good person, but I know my actions in the past haven’t always lived up to my ideals of the present. One regret, in particular, is that I haven’t always been the best ally. You see, I’m a well-educated, middle-class, straight, white male in America, and that means I’ve received a lot of support and deference from the world around me. My life has been enriched by many people, some who do not share all those traits and have faced greater challenges than I simply because of their skin color, gender identity, or sexual orientation. They deserved more help from me along the way. I grew up without racism mostly because my town was all white so it was nowhere to be seen. We did have one black kid in school but he was a couple years behind me so it was easy enough to never notice him. In junior high an Asian kid moved to town. I liked him well enough and we treated him like every other boy on the playground - meaning we teased him mercilessly. His nickname was Gook and I didn’t even know what that meant, much less had any incentive to rebuke my peers for using crude racial slurs. It barely occurred to me that it would be hard to be the new boy in school, much less to have to smile and laugh along with jokes about your slight accent or clueless questions about life in the jungle. He deserved more understanding. My college was far more diverse and liberal, but I didn’t have time for politics, too busy on the tennis court and in the physics department. Science didn’t care about personal identity, at least so it seemed to me with a Korean advisor, a hippy lab professor, and the rest of the good guys on the faculty. We even had a solid 25% female class (2 out of 8). I was surprised in my senior year to discover that both of the women were also applying to graduate programs; more surprised to learn they both had GPA’s comparable to my own; downright shocked to learn they didn’t receive the same support and encouragement from the faculty that I, the golden boy of the department, had. They always seemed so quiet in class and never joined in our study groups. It wasn’t until much later I realized maybe they were quiet because I spoke so loud, and maybe they didn’t feel welcome at our beer-and-pizza study sessions late at night at the far side of a dark campus. They deserved more consideration. My graduate school class only had one woman (out of 25) but lots of ethnic diversity (mostly foreign nationals), yet without trying I ended up with a circle of white, middle-class American friends. We were the cool kids - cool as far as physics grad students go. When one of the guys came out as gay in the second year I had the same reaction as the rest of the group: so what, no big deal. Science didn’t care about sexual orientation. When he drifted away from the group I eventually understood it was a big deal for him and that was the whole point. He deserved some caring. It wasn’t until after more life experience, more interactions with the big, broad world of people that I woke up to the little differences that separate us in vast ways. I had always been too busy working my ass off to get ahead to really stop and consider how I had gotten to be a frontrunner, that perhaps I had a head start and an easier road. I try not to beat myself up too much over my failings. I was young. I treated everyone with the same respect and consideration that I would have wanted. Now I know that all those people actually deserved better. They had accomplished much more just to catch up to me. I should have known, should have understood. I was young but not stupid, and it doesn’t take much smarts to know you should help those less fortunate than yourself. These days I try to be a better ally. I try to pay attention to the differences even when I can’t see them right away. I withhold judgment until I have the full story. I try to listen more. When I do speak up it’s to magnify the words of those whose voices are often ignored - especially the ones I don’t even know. Everyone has their own struggle and the world is much bigger than the people you interact with personally. The faceless masses often need more help than your neighbor down the street and the only way we can help everyone is to expand our range of compassion beyond our line of sight. I can’t change the past, I don’t know the future, but I can do what I can in the present. Maybe some others can learn a little earlier than I did. Take a moment and think about the people around you and how their world might differ from yours. More importantly, think about the groups of people who are affected by policies which you vote on, through officials you elect, and consider them as individual human beings who struggle to make the best of their life, the same as you and I do. If you don’t see those people, can’t talk to them and get to know them personally, read about them. Read what they have to say. Listen with an open heart and mind and consider the person, not the people. We live in an age where ignorance is a poor excuse for anything this important and our quick reaction based on personal experience is simply not good enough. It’s time to stop demonizing the other, it’s time to stop ignoring the powerless, it’s time to start making equality a reality. Whatever social capital you have, whatever gifts hard work or good fortune have blessed you with, use your power to raise up those who still face challenges from an inequitable world. Now is the time that matters and the good people need all the allies they can find. Even if you’re already a good person - you deserve to be better.

In Times Like These

Has anyone ever seen times like these: a President with no regard for truth or respect for the rule of law, a Congress of Party-men turning a blind eye to our government’s downfall for the sake of their petty goals, a media bifurcated into opposing camps with separate realities and a public too shallow to glean fact from fiction. We live in an age where hyperbole is understatement and the dangers to our society are imminent but invisible. The question that surfaces time and time again, more often as an excuse than an inquiry, is: What can I do about it?

Without a true historical precedent, the answer is elusive, yet history is where our thoughts should lie. What would I have done? That’s the question we often ask when we read about the pivotal periods of history. Would I have marched against segregation? Would I have taken up arms in the Civil War on the side of my neighbors or of my country? Would I have risked a beating to march in the streets to demand women be given the right to vote? We’ve all read the stories of the courageous souls who put their bodies on the line for what was right and their actions have given them some immortality. More importantly, they made the world a better place. We all wonder what we would have done if we lived in such tumultuous times. Perhaps we do.

It’s easy to believe that we are all caught in the mundane and commonplace if only because we are in it. But if history is any guide, we are no longer in the everyday; we are in the moment of decision. An administration under investigation (by a Special Counsel) for colluding with a foreign power to affect the outcome of our election. A President who has all but admitted obstructing that investigation. And the Party in power behind him complicit in it all with their obfuscations and dismissals, intent on using their ill-gotten position of power to enact legislation woefully unpopular among the populace. It’s time to consider how we all want to be remembered in history.

Can anyone still doubt that history will look back on this moment as a betrayal of our country by a group of privileged and mean-spirited men? 120 days into the Trump Presidency and we are rocked by scandals, with executive orders squashed by the courts, an unwinding of much of the social progress made in the last half-century, with nothing but plans for worse to come. The writing on the proposed wall couldn’t be any more clear and we all need to take a step back to take it in.

What can you do? You can decide to be on the right side of history. You can speak up, call out those who enable this travesty to continue. Voice your anger to those in power and hold them accountable at every opportunity. Use the most powerful tool ever given to a people: vote. Vote in a fair and democratic election and make sure everyone else does the same. Help those who need to register; stop those who try to deny a citizen their voice. It’s a new time but it requires an old solution. Power to the people.

Contact your Congressperson.

The Conservative Reality

It's easy to talk about concepts and ideas, and easy to make arguments about hypotheticals and statistics. What's harder is understanding reality and empathizing with people who are different than you. As a well-educated white man in America, when I hear political discussions amongst my peers I too often hear a pseudo-academic sheen applied to what conservatism means and where its heart lies. For 'conservative' in this sense, I'm talking about the Republican Party, both in its official capacity and in the minds of the members of the party who support its positions, as demonstrated in their policy positions and arguments. They are heartless.

The general arguments on welfare are a clear example. The conservative position is that welfare only breeds more welfare, that people become dependent upon the government, and that the free market is the solution to any economic ills (this last is the favorite of those with a libertarian bent). So when they talk about the poor they see no need for the government to help (no food stamps, no medicaid, no Planned Parenthood, no after-school programs, no decent education). But instead of The Poor, lets look at one poor young woman. What about her? Well, if that girl ends up pregnant, she made a bad choice and needs to take responsibility for herself. If she has to drop out of school to care for her baby, she just needs to work hard. If she can't get a decent job without education, she needs to educate herself, if her job doesn't pay well or provide time off to care for a sick child, she should find a better job. If she ends up on drugs, if she has overwhelming medical bills, if she feels nothing but despair and hopelessness that is evidence of her poor moral character. The conservative view is that we all have opportunities (whether or not they are all equal), and we all need to make the best of our situation regardless of how difficult it might be. The government's role is not to help out.

Let's accept that for the moment. Let's put aside the government assistance that small businesses gladly welcome in the form of government loans and grants, let's put aside the corporate welfare that allows many of the largest companies in this country to avoid paying any taxes, let's put aside the great respect conservatives show the millionaires who have inherited their wealth. Let's admit that the young woman made some bad choices. She shouldn't have gotten pregnant in high school. She should have taken better care of her health and worked harder to educate herself. She certainly shouldn't have tried drugs. Maybe she could indeed have become a better person. But she didn't. She should face the consequences of her actions.

In the free market utopia of conservatives, what are those consequences? First, there shouldn't be any minimum wage, so an uneducated person who needs to care for a child has no right to expect a well-paying job. If healthcare is strictly for-profit she certainly can't expect any healthcare she can't pay for (which means cancer is a death sentence and a moderate car accident would put her in debt for the rest of her life). If she can't afford food then she will have to go hungry. If she can't afford rent, she will be homeless (but not in my neighborhood - that's a crime in these parts). Sure, she will be miserable, but that's what happens to those who can't compete in a market-place world. It's the only thing that encourages people to work hard - she serves as an example for everyone else to avoid.

That young woman brought the misery on herself and it simply isn't the government's role to ameliorate it in any way. But what about her son?

This is where the religious-cum-libertarian bent of the American conservatives really fails humanity. First, that child must live because to terminate any pregnancy is not allowed. If the mother can't take care of the child they can give it up for adoption (of course, that will probably mean foster care, which is heavily government subsidized, so we really shouldn't allow that either). Either way, that child won't have a true family to support him. He won't have a mother who can nourish him because she can't feed herself. The child won't have a roof over his head or be able to receive medical care. He won't be educated because public education is not capitalism. He will suffer in misery that is every bit as bad as his mothers but he will have had no choice in the matter - until he grows into an adult. If he manages to survive that long, then he will be expected to make good choices, to have educated himself along to way to find a decent job, to work hard and contribute to society in spite of all the suffering his life has entailed. And if he fails, if he repeats his mother's mistakes and becomes a burden upon the good folk of the world, that will be his failing, his poor decisions and our government bears no responsibility to help him in any way.

People do make bad choices, even those who have every advantage and plenty of opportunity to make good choices. but even those people do not deserve unlimited suffering. And those who never had a chance, who face harder choices every day than those who have the luxury to sit and pontificate about the nature of political philosophy, they deserve a safety net. We have the capabilities as a society to eliminate extreme suffering among all our people, even those who may deserve it. To choose not to do so in the name of some abstract concept of an economic system whose practical failings are numerous and obvious is disgraceful.

We can afford to educate everyone. We can afford to offer everyone healthcare. We can food, clothe, and house all our peoples. Many comparable societies in the world have shown us how it can be done. We can even do all of that while running a market-based economy that allows for competition and innovation. It's a little harder to do all that while spending ten times more money on defense spending than any other nation on the planet, but it would still be possible. But first, we need to show humanity and compassion, and we need to do it through the representation of ourselves that is our government. We need to choose who we want to be and how we want to treat each other. Not as class segments, not as statistics or demographics. But as people. One person to another. That is the philosophy that should guide a government. From there it is free to use data analytics, to use market-based forces to figure out solutions to the problems of society. But no one deserves misery. Not that young woman. Not her child. No one.