Taking Power, Taking Responsibility

Dear conservative friends, the ball is in your court. Your country needs you now more than ever. Two weeks ago we had the luxury of being opposition voters, lesser-of-two-evils voters, or single-issue voters. We don’t have that luxury anymore. Our country and the presidency are entering uncharted territory. You may not be worried, but history is littered with shocking political disasters fomented by the few, abetted by the many.

Now is the time to make your voices heard. If you are disturbed by any of the choices Trump is making, you must find a way to speak up. Trump is not going to listen to liberals right now. You might be tired of listening to them too, but please take note of the parts of their ranting that resonate with you. You are now responsible for leading. You are no longer the opposition. You have power and you must use it, especially if you call a red state home.

Maybe you are uneasy about climate change, maybe racism, or scapegoating, or sexism, or foreign policy, or conflicts of interest in the White House. We've never had a president this unconventional and you are probably right to feel uneasy. Please start talking to your friends and family about your concerns. Listen to the news. Have honest discussions. Develop a deeper understanding of the situation, something we all should be doing. And if you begin to feel fearful, disturbed, or cheated by what is going on then SPEAK OUT. Dissent is the highest form of patriotism and true dissent always requires courage. Many of us have been living in echo chambers for the last eight years and we’ve seen how unhealthy that can be. Trump is constructing his echo chamber right now. Please yell into it.

Nation’s Football Workers Head Back to the Fields

You run 16 routes and whaddya get? Another day older...

Labor day is a cruel joke for many of the nations football workers who find themselves returning to the fields each year at this time. The Seattle Seahawks are feeling particularly exploited this year as they have been singled out to report to work on September 3^rd (earlier than any of their peers) to do a job with the Green Bay Packers. Unlike the Packers however, Seattle had an unusually long work season last year.

Not an OSHA approved lift.

“As seasonal workers we have very little control over when and how long we work” reports long time runningbacker Marshawn Lynch. “Last year just seemed to go on and on.”

Multiple sources confirm that the Seahawks were forced to work well into February last year while many other football crews were released as early as December, raising concerns about discrimination and caprice among football management.

“It’s been really hard to plan any sort of vacation. Often you don’t know when you’ll get time off until the very day they let you go” says a veteran New England crew chief named Thomas Brady. Football workers like Brady and Lynch have limited job skills and it seems that certain powerful individuals have exploited this to dictate work hours and labor conditions. Brady reports that his friend Antonio Romo hasn’t even had Thanksgiving off since he started working in 2003.

Not good enough son.

A typical footballer can spend hours pushing back and forth over the same few acres of ground without a lot to show for his efforts. There are some who see this kind of labor as degrading, especially when compared with farmers or ranchers who generally own the land they work on and can dictate their own work hours. Especially frustrating is the micromanagement reported by many footballers. “There are men in black and white uniforms watching your every move,” reports Brady. “They are constantly blowing their whistles and telling us to start working or stop working or move somewhere else. It’s like they’re training dolphins or something, except that they never seem happy with our work and they rarely give us treats.”

Injuries are frequent and fights are common in the fields. Because of the stress of their jobs many footballers turn to drugs for comfort and to help them survive in a fiercely competitive work environment.

Roger Goodell, a privileged Senator’s son who seems to be pulling the strings in this industry, could not be reached for comment.

O Lord, how long shall I call for help, and you will not hear?

Money is also a concern for football workers. Goodell’s organization maintains strict control over how much money can be doled out to a football crew, yet negotiations over pay can be difficult and result in wildly divergent earnings between workers. Because of this, some have to work well into their thirties and are still expected to maintain the same grueling schedule. One elderly man, who only gave his name as Peyton, is still working in the football industry though he claims to be 38 years old. “It would be nice to retire but the bills just keep piling up. It’s hard to afford much more than a modest 4,000 square foot house. I probably should have been a doctor or a lawyer, but my dad was a football worker so it was really the only thing I knew.” For some, footballing appears to be a generational cycle that is hard to break out of.

Got your Phil yet?

The world is going to pot. The economy is built on a crumbling foundation. The social fabric is beyond repair. Our political system is an irredeemable mess. A rising tide of tiny children seems to be overwhelming adult society, making logical and compassionate living an impossibility. (That last one might just be a local phenomenon. Not sure. I don't get out much.) So, now I have finally figured out what most of you already knew: there is no point even trying to change the world anymore. So I have done what many demoralized males have done throughout history: watched streaming golf tournaments online, lots of them.

I'm not good at golf, nor do I think it is a particularly worthwhile endeavor. In fact, with an evaporating middle class and evaporating worldwide water supplies I am dubious about its future. Its best days are probably behind it. For now though, it will endure as the best way to gather all potential Cialis, Rolex, Lexus, and mutual fund customers in front of one channel.

Anyway, for some reason the other sports just aren't doing it for me anymore. So a new weekly rhythm has developed in my life.

- Monday - Is it Thursday yet?
- Tuesday - Is it Thursday yet?
- Wednesday - Is it Thursday yet?
- Thursday - Who's getting off to a good start in this week's tournament(s)?
- Friday - Who's gonna make the cut?
- Saturday - Network coverage! Let's gather 'round the TV kids. It's too sunny and pleasant to go outside anyway.
- Sunday - Let's watch the dramatic conclusion. I even borrowed an antenna so I could watch in HD.

These really are the thoughts that run through my head several times a day.

I have made feeble attempts to psychoanalyze Tiger Woods and some of the other golfers but I have "synthesized" nothing worthy of publication. But that's never stopped me before. So here are two of my syntheses.

This is almost precisely what my mind sees when someone says the word ham-fisted.

1) Phil Mickelson is the worst fist pumper ever. I find it astounding that one of the most finely tuned athletes on the planet makes gestures no more graceful than those of a wounded crow. This issue has not really been addressed online (you'll always find it here first!) so I couldn't find any montages of his atrocious fistwork and don't have the time to make my own. Usually he reminds me of a goofy computer programmer celebrating after debugging a new Fakeblock app. The gif at right is one of his better fistpumps and as you can see the drunk golf enthusiast in the front row has a much looser and more natural technique. However, if you care to see other examples you can watch last week's Open Championship highlights. His birdie putt on 14 (at 3:30) is followed by three fist pumps. The first is at least 6-8 inches up into the awkward zone. The second looks like an attempt to make up for the first. Lower yes, but really shaky at the end and honestly it looks like the motion a person would make who just completely lost his mind and decided to punch a five-year-old on top of his head. The last one is staid and sober, but looks a little arthritic. Take some more Enbrel, Lefty! And his dorky overhead double fistpumps after his birdie on 18 (at 5:30) are arrhythmic and cute, neither of which is a complement. They even show one in slow-mo so you can see his lumbering musculature vibrate and appreciate each of his lower teeth in full victory grimace.

I don't mean to be hard on Phil. Everybody loves him and I'm usually rooting for him too. It's probably because he looks just like your average shop teacher with big feet, a loping gait, a paunch, ham-fists, and somehow, inexplicably, a perfect golf swing and the best short game the world has ever seen. He's also always courteous and friendly with the gallery. I often think he is painfully self-conscious and perhaps "needs" the love from the crowd, but that's just my amateur psychoanalysis. Seriously though, he tipped his hat, nodded his head, and glanced furtively at the gallery at least 40 times on the way up to the 18th green to card his last birdie and claim his Claret Jug. I mean literally every 2 seconds. It stresses me out. Just chill Lefty. Everyone loves you already.

Anyway, Phil's and Tiger's golf skills may be about on par these days, but Tiger clearly stands alone as a fist pumper for the ages.

2) Some PGA golfers keep reminding me of actors. By the way, none of these even showed up on Golf Digest's doppelganger list. Anyway here are my top three golf doppelgangers. Honk if you agree.


Zack Johnson is...                                                                

















 Joaquin Phoenix

They also both have clefts

 










                      
Scott Stallings is...
                                           













 Thomas Hayden Church

It's more than just the ears

and Ryan Moore is...
Russell Crowe

The Fantasy of Freedom

"Liberty is the right to tell people what they don't want to hear." George Orwell

So listen up.

e duobus unum, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford together forever

Collectively we have imposed many restrictions on ourselves, some by convention, but many by law. Garbage bins of deodorant near airport security lines attest to this. "No shirt, no shoes..." No hitchhiking. Click it or ticket. No engine-braking, whatever. We can't even legally drive without like a dozen specific light bulbs on the exterior of our cars. Go ahead, stop and count them. My wife who abhors the proliferation of chintzy multi-colored Christmas lights should be even more aghast at the freeways full of red, yellow, and white that we wade through on a regular basis. The colors of our garish glowing flag and the toot of our dissonant horns are exhibited clearly from our homogenized four-wheeled chariots. We the people have chosen our allegiance: safety first.

Even so, when asked if we have too many choices or not enough choices, most of us will roll our eyes and think of the menu at the nearest Chinese food cart which offers at least 6 dozen mind-numbing ways to consume the same 15 ingredients. Even cars display many important differences while complying with thousands of protective standards. How can our choices seem so numerous and yet still be so few, so boring, and so self-defeating?

"Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither." Ben Franklin

Go to the store and buy a T-shirt. You will have a hundred choices of color, design, neck, size, fit, and brand but you will only find two materials they are made from and one process by which they are made, thoroughly understood by only a handful of people on the planet. Or how about screwdrivers? You will find a fascinating array of lengths, styles, colors, and brands but good luck finding one made outside of China or with materials acquired with any kind of intentionality (i.e. outside of a monolithic global supply chain). Imagine ever saying this, "Hey check-out my new screwdriver. Beautiful craftsmanship, huh? The handle is made from premium tar-sand polymer from Alberta and the removable bits are from steel originally mined in a LEED-certified sustainable mine and recycled just across town in Rivergate. It is fastened together with epoxy chemically engineered and produced a few miles away in Tigard."

Squirrel!

In the majority of cases (food may be a new exception in some parts of the country) we aren't given choices, we are given distractions. Distractions from the fact that we don't know anything about how the world around us works. We couldn't make it work if we wanted to. All the practical skills we had a century ago have been outsourced to machines in the industrial economy. Most of us would literally die in a few weeks or months if the stores around us closed. So maybe all our choices are necessary distractions from the fact that we are no longer in control; from the fact that we have become helpless and dependent upon the homogenizing industrialization that is supposed to be serving us.

I just finished reading The Outline of Sanity, by G.K. Chesterton. The thesis of the book (written 85 years ago) is that capitalism and communism are both going to have disastrous consequences for humanity if implemented on a large scale. The irony for we who would pit them against each other is that they will do so in precisely the same way, by producing the kind of economy we have now. Most people seem to think that communism has been weighed in the balances and found wanting. Most people have much higher hopes for capitalism, but Chesterton, that portly prince of paradox, is not so optimistic. Capitalism for him is creating "big commercial combinations, often more imperial, more impersonal, more international than many a communist commonwealth."

I agree. This monopolistic tendency in capitalism is difficult to thwart and as corporations grow and follow their bottom line, they will not learn to compete better (as Adam Smith would have wanted) but learn to crush (or buy) the competition and influence the government that oversees it all. So we will continue bailing out the GMs and the Fords rather than let anyone else try a hand at making our cars. In communism the government swallows up all enterprises and in capitalism the enterprises swallow up all government, but the end result is the same: plutocracy.

So Chesterton argues for a pastoral revolution known as distributism, a third way (neither Smith nor Marx) in which we reestablish an ethic of private land-ownership, anti-industrialism, and local control of everything, thus restoring our dignity, our souls, and our freedom.

Well, kind of. Google (all praise to our corporate overlords!) tells me that freedom means "the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint." If we are honest we will admit that this is entirely unachievable. Freedom is a pipe dream. It's the dangled carrot that keeps us in the game, but which we will never wholly grasp. If we burn down the factories and throw all the machines into a giant pit we will have more of some freedoms (like the freedom to get away from our work computers and justifiably spend time I don't know, whittling something) but less of others (like the freedom to buy a gallon of milk for a fraction of a percent of a day's wages). Some of us equate freedom with getting out of the office. Others equate freedom with unlimited discretionary spending. Whichever freedom we choose, we will still be in bondage to a million other restraints on what we can do, say, or think. By cosmic standards our bodies, voices, and brains are just too infinitesimal to ever do anything truly "without hindrance or restraint."

Freedom!

Yet, our desire for freedom and our struggle to achieve it are unrelenting. True freedom is a fundamental human desire which continues to span a wide range of human activities. Moses, Spartacus, and William Wallace aren't the only ones we remember for setting their people free. Plato led our souls out of a cave, Galileo turned our minds back from a dead end, and Dylan went electric. Isn't desire for freedom even at the root of drug addiction? People get high to escape vertically from the prison walls of their own minds.

Which leads to a deeper issue. It's not just that we want to jump higher, make more money, or have more time. We want to be transcendent. Though we are dazzlingly finite and contingent, we are still lamentably convinced that transcendence is within reach, and that hope keeps many of us going. But the truth is that we will never have the most fundamental freedom of them all, freedom from ourselves. Imagine, if you will, an existence in which you are truly free from obsessing over your appearance, your wittiness, your safety, your future, your happiness, or whatever. If we are honest I think we will all admit that we are very faithful slaves to one or more of these forms of narcissism. This, honestly, is one reason that I am a Christian. Though too rare an occurrence, it is through a trinitarian understanding of the universe that I can at times experience complete self-forgetfulness, the most glorious freedom imaginable.

"When the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed..." even from your own self. - cartoon stolen from xkcd

My Directorial Debut

Not much time for blogging lately...but I am still synthesizing! This video is my somewhat creative attempt to help my kids avoid plagiarism.

Don't Give Me Liberty. It's Better if I Have to Take It.

Libertarians have always struck me as really smart, but not very wise individuals. They are passionate and know a lot of stuff, but I wouldn't trust them to manage my stock portfolio or raise my kids if you know what I mean. They can go on for hours rationalizing their argument for the removal of government, but be startlingly unaware of the thousand ways that could go horribly wrong. Ultimately it still seems a fool's gamble that leaves too much to chance, as though simply destroying government (at least most of it) would automatically "restore" American society to a utopian state and wash away all the problems that government (along with sundry other institutions) has created. Deplorable dog-eat-dog anarchy seems to me a likely result, which is why people like me still cling to the Leviathan I suppose. I realize this is a highly over-simplified and poorly thought-out characterization and I'm sure I need to read dozens of important books about the subject before I say another word...but ignorance has never stopped me in the past.

Besides, as of today I have now read one book by a Libertarian (I had to skim much of it because I hate accruing overdue library book fines.) and I admit that I ran across some refreshing and relevant ideas in Charles Murray's latest book, Coming Apart. It is a thoughtful book about the decay American social fabric and I recommend it to anyone. One passage I found most intriguing was his speculation about what happens to people if they are kept too "safe." He basically argues that when we are protected from failure life becomes hollow and it is impossible for us to achieve genuine self-respect, meaningful relationships, and self-actualization because it becomes too easy to abdicate responsibility. Here is the beginning of the passage...

"People need self-respect, but self-respect must be earned - it cannot be self-respect if it’s not earned - and the only way to earn anything is to achieve it in the face of the possibility of failing."

Although this is true on an individual level I think it is true collectively as well and I have often thought that this is why many of America's efforts at democracy building have not been as successful as we hoped. Self-determination like self-respect has to be fought for and won. I am not one who has a problem with us ever intervening in other places, but I think we have consistently failed to consider how each citizen of that country engages with the overall narrative of their country and how people derive self-respect from it. For example, we as Americans identify ourselves with the plucky individuals who overthrew British rule and established a unique political and social culture that changed the world. I think this narrative is the subconscious source of much of our self-confidence, all the way from streetwise hustlers to elitist academic liberals. It's no good for us to think Iraqis or Afghans will embrace democracy as a gift bequeathed from someone else. We need to recognize their need to establish their own nationalistic narrative of self-respect. Coddling and attempting to mold someone into exactly what you want them to be is morally suspect, intuitively idiotic, and fraught with danger. Why would it be any different for a nation?

But this book was really more about American society. As a libertarian Murray thinks that slashing the size of government will solve many of our social ills. The main reason that I usually oppose the weakening of our government is that I am afraid it is the only viable counterweight to a competitive corporate culture which is successful largely because it fails to consider the external costs or future consequences of its actions. I know that government is complicit in the survival of this corporate culture but government has also been (think Progressive Era) successful at ameliorating its rapacious impulses in the past. But maybe it won't work this time. Maybe a libertarian would be right to say that removing government is actually the only way to defeat the current incarnation of this persistent corporate malady. Perhaps too much government has taken away our self-respect and we are losing connection with our own unique narrative. Instead of letting the government fight our battles against corporate America, perhaps we the people have to reclaim the responsibility to stand up for ourselves and defend our own future. Perhaps our older brother has been protecting us (not very well) from middle school bullies too long and if he moved on to high school we would discover that we actually have the self-respect and gumption to fight back against impossible odds. Perhaps if we realized that the buck stopped with us, and perhaps only then, we could write or rewrite our American narrative of self-respect with a renewed emphasis on civic engagement, community building, and the willingness to take responsibility for what we buy. What do you think? Wanna be a libertarian?

Warding Off Political Apathy - Part 2

I guess we're going to have to do more than just vote.

Since the last post I read Lawrence Lessig's new book, Republic, Lost and really liked it. He argues that in the U.S. a virulent new incarnation of an old political disease is threatening our republic. Politicians have recently become unprecedentedly dependent on campaign contributions. Like really unprecedentedly. They also need to spend so much time raising money that they are unprecedentedly ignorant about policy issues. Lobbyists (often politicians who have "graduated" from Congress) step in to solve both of these problems by financing and educating them on behalf of wealthy rent-seeking interests. We the people are left out in the cold.

Oregon's 1st district just chose the poison on the right
...or should I say "left." ugh!

Most of us know this, or at least sense that something like it must be true, and we tune the politics out. But we the people must overcome our cynicism (however justifiable) about federal politics if we want to prevent our government from leading us off a cliff. Simply casting our ballots is no longer enough. Both parties will continue to disappoint us. The financial power of special interests controls too much of the system. The only useful tool that we the people have left is engaged citizenship. That's the first reason why the ward system of voting discussed in my last post would be beneficial.

We can do this too, but with air conditioning and deodorant!

Reason number 1 - It will encourage citizenship. You and I still may not care about every issue, but for the issues we do care about, ward voting would be feasible to sway a large voting bloc to our way of thinking. Don't you think that would make political dialog seem worth the effort? We could meet and discuss policy and ideas with the people in our ward. Delegations could go to other wards to spread ideas and promote productive debate at a grassroots level. That sounds an awful like what those wig-wearing colonial agitators were doing in the 1780s, doesn't it? Old George and the boys didn't crowd into stuffy Independence Hall to create a set of laws so that the rest of us would never have to. They saw dynamic participation in lawmaking as the quintessential civic virtue, the only alternative to subjugation to the establishment. So a ward system would draw each and every citizen back to the founding principals of our democracy. Political virtues like conciliation, compromise, respectful dialog, empathy, deliberation, or initiative might be sorely lacking in our country now because so few of us have to actually use them.

Do not fear the ward. We're not talking about mental
hospitals or Mormon assemblies. A ward is also just "an
electoral district or unit of local government."

Also, in states that allow direct democracy (initiatives, recalls, and referendums) wards could introduce legislation or work with representatives to develop it more thoughtfully. In Oregon, a ward system would have helped us to avoid the Measure 37 debacle. Measure 37 was a citizen initiative (these usually bypass professional lawmakers) and a foolish and damaging over-correction to our admittedly stringent land-use policies. It reminded us of the benefits of a rigorous and synergistic legislative process. (Professional lawmakers are not useless!) Not only would a ward system have developed a more sensible measure, but less impulsive ward-bred voters would never have voted for it.

Reason number 2 - A ward system would reduce the influence of moneyed interests. By magnifying the effect of informed citizenship, fewer people will be swayed by fear mongering, shallow campaign slogans, and spurious arguments that corporations, unions, and wealthy ideologues use so effectively now. Measure 37 appealed to us because it purported to protect individual rights, but the people who were truly in a position to benefit were large-scale developers. These moneyed interests will at least have to make better arguments that appeal to a broader range of people if they are to successfully sway whole groups of citizen-voters.

To flex our political muscles we have to build some!

"But wait," you say, "This sounds like a lot of work." True, there will potentially be more effort involved. Some of us will undoubtedly continue to "phone it in" and engage very little in the process. Sometimes our life circumstances will even require it. That's OK. Those votes will count just as much as anyone else's within a ward, but for those ward-members who have the time and inclination they can profitably put in a lot more effort to influencing the voters in their ward. This may sound scary if you would rather stay at home and not be involved, but remember that your ward's vote still "only" counts for 1000 votes. Even if some whackjob liberal down the street from you is putting in WORK at your ward he will still only have a relatively small influence.

A lone sheep is a dead sheep.
Let's put our heads together!

And that's exactly the point. The people who will really lose are those associated with the big money that is running politics right now. It won't be feasible for them to "infiltrate" each of the 2000-plus wards that would be set up in Oregon in order to influence elections. They are happy to profit from the current system where citizenship is diffuse and money can be poured into your TV screen with great effect. But if you can easily go down to your ward to hear different points of view on a particular issue you are much less likely to default into thinking about issues in the simplistic ways that the super PACs define them. So right now you can influence politics inordinately if you have money, but in a ward system you will be able to influence politics inordinately with your sweat. That seems much more American, don't you think?

It doesn't have to be this way.

Reason number 3 - It will bring our country together politically. Politics is not considered good dinner conversation, but don't you think grown-ups should learn how to talk productively about sensitive issues? I bet we would see that although "tea partiers" and "occupiers" certainly have their differences, they have much more in common than we have been led to believe. In fact, in a ward democracy these movements probably wouldn't exist because the underlying issues would already have been addressed. We should view these movements as symptoms of our society's political dysfunction, rather than viable cures. I'm sure there will be some irritating ideologues in every ward (occasionally I'll probably be one of them), but I imagine a lot more people from the "busy majority" will be represented. In addition, these wards could foster much needed social cohesion at a local level. Rather than driving across town to commiserate with people who think exactly like we do in our clubs, activist groups, and churches, we will learn to relate, really relate, with our neighbors again. We will be able to see that the vast majority of pro-lifers or pro-choicers are rational, lovable people who grasp the thorniness of such issues much better than we would think. On most of these controversial issues we only ever listen to the radically cocksure minority. Then we hastily demonize entire thought categories because of their most vocal representatives. This silly ignorance is best diffused by providing people with the opportunity to confront the "demons" in all of their complexity.

Reason number 4 - Honesty would be better rewarded among those who hope to be leaders. Right now we the people are looking for a political savior. Our desperation is growing palpable and our ears are itching to hear the bold and sweeping promises of someone supremely confident and ostensibly competent who is faster than a speeding earmark, more powerful than a filibuster, and able to leap tall corporations in a single bound. We flit around from charismatic figure to charismatic figure hoping to be swept off our feet by another Abraham Lincoln. (Happy 203rd bro!) But as anyone on the dating scene will tell you, brash confidence looks attractive at first but usually veils a lack of substance. While we are obsessing over the latest Mr. "Political" Universe, all of the more contemplative and reflective (though less telegenic and self-assured) candidates realize that it makes more sense for them to just stay home. And when the veil is lifted we will once again find ourselves on our backs looking up at Lucy, duped again.