What Do We Accomplish By Marching?

Donald Trump is still President. His cabinet of incompetents, grifters, and deplorables is as likely as ever to be confirmed. The conservative agenda of small-government austerity and the rollback of hard-won rights and protections is still on the table in a House and Senate likely to ram them through and — to borrow a phrase from the folks doing the ramming — down the throats of the citizens of these United States, whether we like it or not.

But yesterday, the day after the least popular incoming President in history held his poorly-attended inauguration, four million Americans took to the streets of cities and towns across the country to march for women’s equality and women’s rights.

A cynical person might ask what it is we think we accomplished. All of the above is still true, after all, and it’s unlikely to change as a direct result of the largest political demonstration in our nation’s history.

It’s a fair question.

The simplest answer is that we came out and showed our sheer numbers. It makes a splash, makes the media pay attention. It changes the conversation. It puts our elected representatives on notice that the ideals and policies we marched for has a constituency they ignore at their political peril.

Those answers are meaningful. Important. But they aren’t the whole story.

A cloud has hung over vast swathes of the American people these last two and a half months. A feeling like we lost something important. Like something critical to our happiness, our well-being, our safety both personal and economic died. We have been grieving that loss. Mourning it. Fighting hopelessness and despair.

But not today.

Today my social media feed is full of fired-up, hopeful, and energized people. People ready to organize and fight for what they believe in. People whose faith is re-energized. People whose hope is restored. Whose resolve is galvanized, and whose hearts know joy again after a long, gray season of despair.

And that, to me, is the real answer to the question. What do we accomplish by marching?

We march to turn grief into power.

And with our faith re-energized, our hope restored, our resolve galvanized and our hearts filled with joy, we will overcome. We will bend the moral arc of history towards justice. We will make an America whose greatness isn’t grounded in power or wealth, but in fidelity to our highest ideals: to life, liberty, equality, opportunity, and security for every American regardless of who they are, what they want, or what they believe.

Yes we will.

What I Will Do Today

Today I will work on my novel. I will string words together in service to a story and character that grabbed hold of me four years ago and still won’t let go. A story of, in its essence, a clear-eyed woman’s ascent into power from nothing, fueled by her wit, grit, and resolve.

Today I will go to my wood shop. I will take salvage and scrap, the used-up, cast-off pieces, and make them into something useful and beautiful, through the work of my hands and the labor of my heart and mind.

Today I will go to the gym. I will challenge and refine my imperfect body, work it to exhaustion, that it might become stronger and healthier for the work that lies ahead.

Today I will read a book. I will fall into another world, another mind, another way of seeing and experiencing, that my own world, my own mind, my own way of seeing and experiencing will become larger, more encompassing, more compassionate and clear.

Today I will be kind to every person I meet. I will willfully and purposefully manifest what is best in me, and offer it freely to all I encounter. I will do my best to be the change I want to see in the world, to let the better angels of my nature take flight.

And tomorrow? Tomorrow, I will march. But today I will do those things that give my life meaning. I will ground myself in them, to give me strength and fuel my resolve for the long, dark road ahead.

I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On: Taking Action in the Face of Despair

Depending on how well you know me, you may or may not know that I suffer from depression, and have for most of my conscious life. Most of the time it presents as a sort of miasma in which everything seems pointless, or requires too much effort, or is just overwhelming enough to keep my brain turning in circles, which feeds the miasma because I use all my energy being anxious about how I’m not doing all the things instead of doing all or even some of the things.

At its worst, the despair is acute enough that I understand why people might take their own lives to make it go away, even if they know consciously that it will go away, because it has before. And before you freak out, no, I am not declaring myself a suicide risk, nor need you concern yourself overmuch about my condition, which I’ve been living with and learning to manage for my whole conscious life.

No, my purpose here is to share some of the strategies I use to move forward and accomplish things. Because let’s face it, there’s a lot of despair going around right now thanks to the election and the political situation in these United States, and if we’re going to make it better, we’re going to have to figure out how to move forward and accomplish things in the face of the depression and despair that situation engenders.

Some of what I’m going to say will seem contradictory, even paradoxical. This is partly due to the welter of contradictions-in-tension that makes up who I am. But mostly it has to do with the fact that you need different tools for different jobs (and the wisdom/know-how to pick the right one).

So, let’s jump right to the first contradiction: self-care and abnegation of self. Continue reading “I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On: Taking Action in the Face of Despair” →

On This Idea That Things Have to Get Worse Before We Can Make Them Better

Short on time, so I’m going to keep this quick and dirty.

The notion that if things only get bad enough that suddenly the progressive agenda will become more widely appealing (and thus easy to implement) is a fucking canard. Ain’t gonna happen, no way no how.

If you have to destroy the village to save it, you didn’t save it.

First off, we tried it back in 2000. Maybe you forgot, or weren’t alive, or weren’t old enough to be paying attention, but things were going pretty fucking well at the end of the ’90s. The economy was chugging along pretty well, and there was plenty to go around. Yeah, not everyone was doing great, but there was a lot of cause for optimism. We hadn’t been in a shooting war in decades. Hell, our worst threat was a bunch of goat-fuckers in camps in Afghanistan who wanted to hurt us but mostly weren’t pulling if off.

Was it the best of all possible worlds? No. But things were good and getting better. There was a solid foundation to build further progress on. Hell, it seemed eminently reasonable to vote for Ralph Nader, if only to elevate the Green Party to minor party status and get it some federal funding to build a roots-up political organization that could do some good in the world. I, myself, voted, donated to, and volunteered for Ralph.

Then Bush won, and shit went south pretty much right away.

Not one but two massive tax cuts for the wealthiest of the wealthy. 9/11, which happened at least in part because Bush et al took their eyes off the aforementioned goat-fuckers. Then the Iraq War. Guantanamo. Abu Ghraib. CIA black sites. Katrina. Two Supreme Court Justices — including a new Chief Justice — who have contributed to decisions like Citizens United, and Shelby County. Oh, and let’s not forget the US Attorney scandal, in which they tried to fire ostensibly independent LEOs for not prosecuting enough Democrats or, God forbid, prosecuting Republicans. And, of course, the financial deregulation that gave us the Great Recession, which continues to fuck the economy to this day despite the best efforts of the Obama Administration.

We lost a *lot* of ground towards the progressive utopia we all want to see brought about, thanks at least in part to a solid chunk of the population that thought “If it gets bad enough, people will see the foolishness of conservative/Republican governance, and turn, as they must, to the other side.”

I mean, seriously, if you’re worried about, say climate change — and if you aren’t, you’re a fool or at least fooling yourself — just think for a moment what eight or even four years with the guy who made An Inconvenient Truth in the White House might have done to make progress on fighting or at least managing it.

Then we got Obama, who’s done a pretty good job turning things around, but could have done so much more if liberals, progressives, and generally sane people hadn’t sat out the 2010 Census Year Mid-term elections in such big numbers, allowing the Republicans and their Tea Party bomb-throwers to gerrymander a damn near unsinkable House Majority for a whole fucking decade.

So here we are now. Things are turning around. Yes, it could be faster. Yes, the system’s corrupt. But again, we’ve made some real progress. Laid a foundation for more. We’ve got a Democratic candidate in Hillary Clinton who ought to be a progressive dream candidate. Not only a woman — and holla for breaking that glass ceiling — but one running on the most progressive platform in the history of ever. Even if her opponent wasn’t a racist, sexist, xenophobic, fascist idiot narcissist in the pocket of the Russians who genuinely doesn’t understand why we don’t use the nuclear weapons we have or any other goddamn thing, anyone who even remotely identifies as liberal or progressive ought to be jumping for joy at the prospect of the most qualified and capable candidate for the highest office in the land in the history of the goddamned Republic.

But, again, we’ve got a bunch of people who just can’t bring themselves to pull the lever for her, and who think, once again, that if we let the racist, sexist, xenophobic, fascist idiot narcissist in the pocket of the Russians win that things will finally get so bad the Glorious Progressive Revolution will come of its own accord.

The problem, aside from the damage done and the many, many steps backward that will entail, is that human nature doesn’t work that way. A progressive society is contingent on prosperity. When people ain’t got shit, they start looking out for them and theirs, and fuck everybody else. They cling to their guns and their religion and their tribe harder than ever, because if there ain’t enough to go around then they’ll make damn sure they and theirs get what they need first, and the rest can go hang.

Look. I get it. There’s a lot to object to in the way our country is run. But if the choice is between an imperfect status quo and the goddamned apocalypse, then that shouldn’t be a fucking choice at all. If you have enough privilege to ride out the serial disaster that would be a Trump administration, bully for you. But there’s a whole fuckload of people who don’t, and way way way too many of them stand to get hurt while you wait for the revolution you haven’t really thought through to ripen.

You want progress? You want change? Then not only do you have to vote for Hillary Clinton (hold your nose or no, I don’t really give a fuck). You have to vote Democrat all the way down the ballot. You know why shit’s so dysfunctional? Because the goddamned Republicans put party before country, and have sabotaged and vandalized and obstructed every fucking thing that might make things better. They have to, because their whole thing is that government can’t work and is never the solution and if you elect them they’ll prove it to you, as they fucking have for decades now. The Democrats may be imperfect and their tent’s big enough that they’re as centrist as they are liberal, but at least they want to keep the fucking lights on.

It’s not sexy, I know. But if you care about making the world a better place by enacting a progressive agenda, then you have to build on the progress we’ve already made.

The Limits of Argument

Man, do I love a good argument. Seriously, ask anyone who’s known me at any point in the last forty years and they’ll tell you. It’s like my brain’s factory wiring was optimized for it. It’s such a rush, when I’ve got a really good one going with a smart, well-informed person whose positions and beliefs are different from my own. It does for my brain what playing soccer does for my body.

I’ve spent decades doing it, in all kinds of situations, with all manner of people. It’s honed my critical faculties and made me question the assumptions at the foundation of my worldview. I’ve learned many valuable lessons as a result.

The most valuable lesson I learned? If you actually want to change or even open someone’s mind, arguing almost never works.

Here’s something that’s happened to me more times than I can count. Maybe it’s happened to you, too. You get into it with somebody. Things get heated. You’re going back and forth, back and forth, and you realize you’re both making the same argument in different words. And if you’re like me, it’s kind of frustrating, because you’re all het up and there’s nothing to argue about anymore.

After the nth time that happened, I started to realize that, at least for me, the contentiousness was the pay-off. The heated back and forth. A chance to let my rage nugget vent a little steam so it doesn’t boil over some inappropriate time. Like when I play soccer.

And I’ve come to think of argument in the same way as soccer. For me, at least, it’s best approached as a sport, a competition I engage in with fellow enthusiasts whom I cultivate online and IRL, who approach it with the same understanding. It won’t surprise you that most of them are lawyers and academics.

But if I want to get through to someone, and actually change the way they see the world (or at least get them to take a look at how I see it), getting all het up and marshalling facts and arguments and statistics and memes isn’t how I go about it anymore.

Nobody, but nobody, likes being told they’re wrong, and they like it even less if you can prove it.

In my experience, if you want to change someone’s mind, the best you can do is plant a seed and hope it takes root. And to do that, you have to find common ground to plant it in. It’s surprisingly easy to do if you start from a position of respect. If you frame what you have to say in such a way that it’s taken for granted that the person or people you’re dealing with have reasons for their views that they find genuinely convincing and good. If you ask them to explain, make the positive case, nine times out of ten you’ll find something in there you can both agree on.

Once you’ve established a rapport by genuinely engaging, and built goodwill by finding some point of agreement, you can show them the way to where you’re at from where you’re both standing. Connect the dots, make the positive case. Let them decide for themselves.

Will it work? Sometimes. And almost never right away. That’s why I use planting a seed as a metaphor. If you want a plant to grow or an idea to take hold, you have to find that common ground, and prepare it. Then you can plant the seed and, if conditions are favorable, the seed will sprout. It will grow roots, and when enough time has passed it will break ground into the light, and grow organically on its own.

Changing people’s minds is a really hard thing to do. But even if you just open them up a little bit more, that’s a good thing. A net gain for the ideas and ideals that you’re passionate about. And in my experience it’s a hell of a lot more effective at spreading them than browbeating people til they submit or defriend you out of exasperation.

Arguing and debating is a really fun sport, with the right people. But when the chips are down and the stakes are real, I think I owe what I believe in its best possible chance of spreading and taking root. Because the more of us there are, the better the chances of making it happen. Which I think will be good for everybody.

Even the people who disagree with me.