Category Archives: Politics & Social Issues

Dear World, about this election. . .

“I write only because there is a voice within me that will not be still.” – Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath captured the best reason of all to write – because you have to. Martial Arts are my profession, writing is my practice. It keeps me sane. Today is a good day to stay sane.

America just elected a man who intentionally barges into the dressing rooms of teenage girls, as President of the United States. How could this happen?

Here are my thoughts. If they ease even a little anxiety for you, even better.

The end is not near. Penn Jillette is right.

America’s institutions were created and organized by very smart human beings. Our founding fathers understood the need for a balance of power. Now is the time when that balance will be put to the test, and I’m optimistic our institutions are up to the task. That is an optimism built from knowledge, not propped up by hope. Those of you who know me know that I don’t believe in faith. I don’t believe that pretending to know something you don’t, is better than admitting you don’t know. I believe that belief should be proportioned to the evidence. And I believe that we must always endeavor to look reality square in the eyes. So with faith and hope aside, what, post-election, do we know?

We know a man that openly admitted to physically assaulting women, has just been elected to the highest office on the planet. And we know, despite his lies, that bragging about grabbing women by their private parts isn’t just “locker room” talk. I’ve been in lots of locker rooms. I’ve made a living around athletes. I’ve heard all the bragging, and I’ve heard the less mature among us declare just how badly they want to do lay with someone, or how hot they find someone. But I’ve never heard a man, in my presence, boast about assaulting women. That’s not locker room speak, that’s degenerate needs a beating speak, and we all know that.

We know a man who has casually discussed taking the lid off nuclear proliferation, is going to be commander in chief. What most Trump voters cannot know (based on how they voted) – is just how dangerous that kind of thing is. The cold war, believed to be long over, doesn’t hold the same level of concern it did when I was young.

Those weapons are all still pointed at us, and those bombs can still be sent, ending the world as we know it – within minutes.

What’s kept that from happening? The decades long moratorium on the mass spread of these civilization ending tools, which now sits perilously on the edge of the fence. Whatever you think about Black Lives Matter, transgendered bathrooms, PC speech, or gun control, if that fence breaks, you may find yourself fighting the next culture war with sticks and stones, as opposed to words typed furiously on the internet.

We know a man who has talked openly about murdering and torturing the families of suspected terrorists, will now be sitting in an office that would allow for him to give such orders. Orders which, by definition, would be illegal – orders which, if given, throw the Nation into an immediate constitutional crisis.

And we know, I think, that all three of these things, boasting about sexual assault, casually pontificating about the spread of nuclear bombs, and suggesting State sanctioned assassination and torture of suspected terrorist families – were given very little, if any, conscious thought, prior to be said out loud. And given that the wrong words from a President of the United States have the power to send markets crashing and Russian tanks rolling – I also think we know just how dangerous that kind of weakness of character could be, for the entire world.

Yet – he was voted in. With his terrible comb over, vulgar mannerisms, orange skin, and toddler like temperament – he was voted in.

He was voted in by fewer votes numerically than Mitt Romney received when he lost. But he was voted in nonetheless.

And so now we must ask, why?

To my friends on the left, the progressive “Social Justice Warrior” branch among you has created a toxic environment. By so quickly branding anything that doesn’t conform to their dogma ‘racist’, ‘sexist’, or, borrowing a term created by the Islamist group, the Muslim Brotherhood – ‘Islamophobic’, you have produced an environment where people who may disagree with you are afraid to speak their mind publicly, to pollsters or in polite company, for fear of being smeared and maligned.

The result? Take a look around today. People who are afraid to tell the truth, and a world where – when a true sexist pig does arise – you lack the authority or public trust needed to point it out. You’ve so misused these pejoratives that you’ve rendered them toothless – at least, in so far as they come from you and yours. You’ve lost moral authority, because you handed it over to the most obnoxious and entitled among you.

You’ve also made common cause with hate groups like Black Lives Matter, which openly chant for the murder of police officers – and then feign indignation when the men and women of law enforcement refuse to vote for a woman who invites Lezley McSpadden, the mother of Michael Brown, the convenience store robber and attempted cop murderer, to stand on stage at the DNC convention. A decision she later, thankfully, pulled back from. But not before her attitude of contempt for the people who put their lives on the line daily for us, revealed itself in a way no pant suit could hide.

I could go on. Whether it’s the Southern Poverty Law Center branding a true hero like Aayan Hirsi Ali, an “Islamophobe”, without any irony or sense of shame – or the ease at which you dismiss someone based solely on skin color, sexual preference, or genitalia; assuming that color is white, that preference is heterosexual, and that genitalia is a penis.

My friend Sylvia Benner wrote something this morning that captures much of this better than I can:

“So my wall and media commentary are full of people who say something to the effect of: This just proves that American is full of racists and misogynists.

That is precisely the wrong analysis, and repeating the mistakes that very likely either created or at least contributed to the Trump phenomenon.

By saying that, you imply that Trump’s supporters had absolutely no bona fide issues, that the only reason someone could vote for Trump is out of racism or sexism. Is this really your position? Do you really think they had no bona fide complaints, and that nothing about Trump could be attractive to them if it wasn’t his comments about women and minorities? Then I allege that you are NOT thinking!

Furthermore, these are the same accusations that the left has been making for a long time, and it feels to people who are sympathetic to any of Trump’s positions like pure and unmitigated bigotry – and they are right. It made your side unattractive because it made your movement look like it was composed of a bunch of unpleasant people. In addition, it created a sense of beleaguered minority status (true) and a sense of victimization (irrational) in people who were sympathetic to Trump. This may rock your world, but let me tell you that people outside of the traditional victim groups can experience a sense of oppression. Now, they are as wrong about that at the traditional victim groups are in 2016, but people on the left just never even consider the possibility that this may be their experience. And the left has been reinforcing this sense of victimization by saying the most awful things about Trump supporters in particular, and less educated whites in general, for months and years. It is ok to assume the worst about their intellect and character simply because they are not protected by a history of victimization. But they noticed! The left invented identity politics and victimhood politics. You are the ones who invented the idea that certain beliefs are so beyond the pale that they should not even be expressed. That the expression of those ideas constituted psychological “violence” against you (do you know what “violence” is, by the way?) You are the crowd that thought that certain things should not be expressed in polite discourse. You not only cast aspersions on people’s character, but you actively tried to shut them up. Well, this is the result. When people feel beleaguered and you give them a sense of tribal identity, they will circle the wagons. Good job! Well done! Really splendid work on your part! Now Trump is getting the nuclear codes. Can’t wait!

And last night, one of the women at the party I attended made another excellent point: Why was everyone so sure that Clinton would win? Because supporting Trump was not socially acceptable, and expressing support for Trump resulted in attacks on one’s character, so many Trump supporters simply didn’t dare be honest about their support, even anonymously. In other words, Trump supporters were shamed and bullied out of the conversation. The price we all paid for your incivility and hubris, my dear LINOs (liberals in name only), was that we were unable to accurately measure the level of support for Trump, or to engage in productive, respectful, persuasive conversations. I was massively wrong about the election outcome. But as for the illiberal bullying – I’ve been bitching about it for months.

By all means, attack the candidate on the issues, on his temperament, intellect and knowledge as qualifications for the presidency. But stay away from his supporters’ character. And don’t give me a Tu Quoque, now. First, it’s irrelevant to my point, and secondly, only the left committed the offense of trying to bully one point of view out of the national conversation **as a basic MO of the entire movement** instead of the actions of a few.

I really, really hope that this will lead to some introspection. But in the media and on my wall, I mostly see doubling down. There cannot possibly be any other reason for a Trump win than raging racism and misogyny in society, they say. You. Will. Make. Things. Worse.

Also, you are not winning this fight. Time to de-escalate.”

I hope some prominent Democrats pay attention to what Classical Liberals, like Sylvia, have to say.

For my friends on the Republican side of the aisle, you have much to answer for. From Lee Atwater to the Southern Strategy to Roger Aisles to the stupidity of the birthers – you intentionally set about creating a Frankenstein’s Monster of ignorance and fear. And now you must feed it.

You have a voting block so ignorant, many think Obama is Muslim. And you have amassed a group of Republican sycophants so hypocritical, they can rant on endlessly about Hillary’s e-mails, without ever mentioning the 22 million the Bush administration deleted; repeat “Benghazi” over and over, as if it were a magic word, exploiting the loss of four Americans for political gain – all the while willfully ignoring the 13 embassy attacks and 60 deaths that occurred when Republicans held the same office. And never once, not even for a moment, admit to the fact that their placing of party above country reveals them to be anything but patriots.

And now you’ve done it. You have a voting block that calls the opposition “Killary”, think a sitting President was born in Kenya, and while unable to point out Russia on a map, have become a useful demographic in service to a former KGB agent turned autocratic sociopath – who seeks nothing less than the destruction of NATO, and dominance over the Western World. If there was a hell, I think the Rosenbergs would be doing high fives in it.

Well done, Republicans. I’m sure Reagan would be shocked.

I’m also sure Putin feels like the dog that just caught the car he’s been chasing for years – as America just elected a 71 year old degenerate who has admitted to intentionally barging into the changing room of underage girls, our daughters, in order to catch them naked – and none of what I’ve just said, requires faith, because I’m following the evidence where it glaringly leads.

So am I depressed, am I despondent about the future of our Nation, am I going to mope around in despair?

Hell no.

Our Nation isn’t run by one autocratic leader. The reason the average American born today will live one third longer, make more than twice as much income, and have double the education that someone born the year I was born had, is, as I discussed in my last essay – our institutions. Those institutions are, for the most part, run by smart people, with good intentions, and specialized expertise. If they weren’t, the kind of massive progress we’ve been making as a Nation wouldn’t be occurring at the pace that it is.

So the next time you feel yourself feeling despondent, or the next time you hear someone spouting off about how none of it matters, remember that fact – the reality of our progress. Because it isn’t the gloom and doom crowd that has made our lives better – it’s the men and women who wake up every day, put one foot in front of the other, down a coffee, make a commute, and work to advance us as a people – in the courts, in the schools, in the agencies, in the hospitals, in the police stations, in the universities, in the military, in our homes, on Wall Street, on Main Street, and in service to our government.

Put your trust in them. Not out of blind faith, but rather, informed optimism – an optimism that recognizes the great trials we have already overcome, the great advances we have already made – and the structure our founders put in place.

Let’s do what we always do, set aside the circus that is politics, and go back to loving our kids, building our businesses, and nurturing our tribes – and America – will – advance.

When there are no Walter Cronkites left

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CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite reports that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

Watching Bill Maher last night was both frustrating, and consoling. Frustrating because David Frum’s consistent attempts to get an important point across to Maher seemed to fall on deaf ears. And consoling because it’s often cathartic to hear someone articulating an important truth that you believe needs saying. And last night, that someone was Frum.

“They could hack the voting machines. I wouldn’t put it past them,” said Maher, as he passionately made the case that Donald Trump is something different, something un-American, something authoritarian, something dangerous, a something we haven’t seen before. A something that past Republicans like George W Bush, Mitt Romney, and John McCain shouldn’t be compared to. A notion that, given Trump’s own behavior and words, is hard to disagree with.

Frum tried reminding Maher, in a way that may have been too polite, that such rhetoric, ‘the system is fucked’ populist theme song, is in part, exactly why Trump has risen to become the nominee.

Turn on right wing talk radio or look up some far left websites, and the message is clear. It’s the same plot line on the Alt Right as it is the Social Justice Left. It’s the same memorandum contained in just about every movement that was known as ‘populist’. It’s the core belief shared by the most militant Jill Stein supporter, and Milo Yiannopoulos. Though I’m sure neither would want to acknowledge their kinship to the other. It’s the message that is delivered up in various packages by every cheap, and they’re all cheap, demagogue to ever walk the planet. What distinguishes the left from the right within the populist movements is never the reasoning or uniformed pessimism; all that ever differentiates them, are the scapegoats they choose.

The system is rigged. The whole thing is corrupt. They’re all just as bad. They’re keeping us down. They like us uniformed. Corporate media is in on it. Every one of them is rotten. The establishment is against us. Burn it all down.

We’ve heard it all so many times before.

But is it really true?

Does corruption exist? Of course it does. That’s not an interesting, or even, intelligent question. The more relevant question is, is it any worse than it’s been in time’s past? That’s a question that no serious person can pretend to know the answer to based on their own anecdotal experience, or as gleaned from the bits of information they allow themselves to take in from their hand picked news sources, which offer cherry picked, ideologically conforming, narrative building, easy to digest, bite sized story lines.

Let’s take a step back for a minute and look at the planet as whole, and our Nation, the United States, over the past century. Let’s begin by going back just 50 years in the USA:

– Since the 1960’s, life expectancy has grown by almost a third.

– Median income per person has risen 167%, and that’s adjusting for inflation and purchasing power.

– The average length of education time per student has seen 115% increase.

Americans in 2016 compared to Americans in 1966, on average, live 30% longer, make more than twice as much money, and have double the years of schooling.

How about worldwide? How’s everyone else doing?

– Pollution is less than half of what it was just 25 years ago, even with the growing economies of the East.

– Within the last 30 years extreme poverty has been cut in half. Predications state that by 2030, such poverty will be non-existent.

– Homicide, due to violent crime, war, and human atrocities, has been decreasing steadily, and is at an all time low. Even with the two World Wars of the 20^th century, and the never-ending fertilizer factory that is the Middle East.

The list of amazing achievements and real progress, goes on and on. From hunger, to education, to quality of life, to safety, the long-term trends are clear – everything has been, and is, improving. There are of course, looming issues that need addressing. Nuclear proliferation and global climate change being two such examples. But taken as a whole, over time, life has been getting better for just about everyone – factually speaking. The old cliché is true, there are two things you can always count on. First, most things are getting better. Second, most people, most of the time, think most things are getting worse.

This reality should give us pause. Just how informed can those who rant hysterically about everything falling apart, really be? And second, what is it exactly that’s been driving this success story of human advancement?

Let me address the second question first. What has been driving this progress?

That answer admits to multiple factors, two of the largest being free market economics, and our long-standing institutions. And it is those institutions that Frum was speaking to on Maher’s show.

What was it about a tiny Island of English speaking people, which allowed them to become a dominant world power? What was it about the British Empire that made them so successful? If I were forced to sum it up in two words, the answer I would give is – their institutions. Their legal system, beginning with the Magna Carta. Their economic system, which was captured on paper by Adam Smith. Their system of government. Their military system, most especially, their Navy. Their education system, which, at its most elite levels, still remains premier. Institutions – organized structures that built upon the work of previous generations to advance the field. That is in large part, what made England great.

Those institutions gather together qualified individuals for a common purpose. Those professionals then reach consensus with the professionals of other fields, a process that is rarely pretty, and progress, slow as it may seem in a given moment, but impressive as it always is in its aggregate, is made.

That requires people devoted to law. Yes, we need attorneys. It also requires people devoted to trade, banking, education, science, agriculture, engineering, medicine, law enforcement, national security, journalism, and even, regulation. Yes, we need bureaucracies. Just as we need entrepreneurs.

Earlier in the show when Maher interviewed the President, he tried asking a slightly classier version of his ‘aren’t a lot of Americans just dumb’ hypothesis. The President’s answer was that most Americans are just busy working at their jobs, taking care of their families, and paying their bills. They don’t have time to get into the minutia on a subject like Syria, or the latest international Trade bill. And he’s right. That’s why, David Frum explained, we have to be able to trust our institutions. Institutions, which, for the most part, are filled with dedicated specialists who are authorities within their own field. When those institutions themselves are no longer respected, there is nowhere for that active and employed average American, who is busy dropping off the kids at football practice, paying the electric bill, and taking care of grandma, to turn to for counsel. And demagogues of all flavors, swoop in.

My attitude on a lot of things related to public policy softened quite a few years ago when I realized that the easiest thing in the world to do is criticize longstanding institutions you are unqualified to participate in. Problems that have been with us for extended periods, are problems that are by definition, hard to solve. Those kinds of problems don’t admit to simplistic answers. Even if we find such answers comforting. They require study, focus, compromise, and time. They require scholars and veterans from within the field. Men and women who are willing to devote their careers to that particular sub-set of human endeavor. And those men and women require a certain authority, and deserve a certain amount of respect. That authority and respect, afforded to them by the population at large, let’s them get on with their work. The work that’s made all of our lives better – the reason we live longer, safer, healthier, wealthier lives.

When Jill Stein, Milo Yiannopoulos, Alex Jones, Naomi Wolf, Mark Levin, Donald Trump, the cashier at WholeFoods, and the former hippie and now neo-Marxist professor at your local community college start talking about “rigged systems” and the pernicious nature of the “establishment”, what they certainly don’t recognize is that the real threat to human progress isn’t the perpetually out of focus, like every photo of bigfoot you’ve ever seen, caricature of the thing labeled frequently as ‘Them’ – big-media, big-business, big-agriculture, big-pharma, and the rotary club; what’s truly dangerous is their attitude. An attitude that says rather than buckling down and learning, rather than doing the hard work required to pursue a real education in the field, rather than rendering myself qualified to become a peer within this subject and then entering into the arena and engaging in the conversation in a meaningful and important way – I’m going to declare the whole thing corrupt, and lobby to burn it all down to the ground. And while I disagree with Bill Maher on many things, I think he’s better than that.

I don’t ever want to see someone like Alex Jones sitting across the stage from someone like David Brooks. It is beneath Brooks, and it is beneath us – us being every thoughtful American. The tin foil hat crowd doesn’t get a seat at the adult table because they’re unqualified to offer anything that’s not impoverished by comparison with those educated in the topic. They dumb down the discourse. They confuse the already uninformed. They slow progress. They self-righteously lower the tone of the entire conversation, and in the process perform a great disservice to those people who lack the time to gain expertise in a subject because they’re busy taking care of their own lives and making this Nation run. I don’t ever want to see a man like Donald J Trump sitting behind the desk a man like George Herbert Walker Bush once occupied, for the same reason I don’t want to see a witchdoctor in my hospital room alongside my neurologist after I’ve had a stroke. And if you think I’m exaggerating the disparity in maturity and expertise between the two men with such a comparison, you don’t understand the complexity or gravity of that office.

We need to hold the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the major network newscasts, our mainstream columnists and journalists, and our academic experts and scholars, to high standards. And we need to hold our politicians to the same scrutiny of character that we do our doctors, judges, teachers, and engineers. But, we also need to recognize that we would be fools to believe that having professionals who serve in these fields, who belong to bar associations, who mingle with each other at gatherings, and who’ve devoted their lives and careers to a complicated and nuanced specialties, yes, including the specialty known as politics – is anything other than good.

The massive improvements we human beings have made within the last several centuries hasn’t come about as a result of our purchasing callow utopian policies sprung forth from the mind of idealistic thinkers incapable of distinguishing the perfect from the better. We don’t live longer and have more because every few generations we set fire to our establishment and begin from scratch. Abject poverty and ignorance are our natural state – and we must never forget that it is the very institutions, so derided by the low-priced thinkers on both sides, that helped us climb out of it.

As to the questions I began this essay with – is it true that things have become more corrupt than before, that our system is failing us, that the Nation is in decline?

No, not by any measurable standard.

We lost 620,000 Americans in the civil war. We defeated the global threat of fascism. We faced down what was rightly called the Evil Empire in a cold war, and we survived a constitutional crises brought about by President Nixon. There will always be problems. And lots of people will always believe their generation has been dealt a worse hand than the one that came before. And they will, as they’ve always been, be wrong.

When America has lost all confidence in its longstanding institutions, when the professional establishments, which have produced the progress, are no longer afforded respect, when there are no Walter Cronkites left – that’s when we need to worry. But given the fact that the type of people, of every generation, who profit in conspiracy theories, pessimism, cynicism, anti-intellectualism, utopian idealism, black and white thinking, and uninformed opinion – rarely have the maturity, work ethic, or IQ required to reach positions of responsibility within relevant institutions – I wouldn’t lose too much sleep over it.

Let’s hope next Tuesday, November 8^th, I’m not proven wrong.