My Country Tis of Thee

A bit of honest truth. I haven’t been sure how to sum up my feelings from the election. It’s already February 2017. Trump has been in office for about a month and is steamrolling our country towards a cliff it may not be able to avoid tumbling over. My anger towards asshole purists on the left who ate up the same bullshit lies about Hillary Clinton that the right has peddled in for so long has not abated. People who thought they were making some grand political statement voting for a third party candidate or staying home have not stopped pissing me off. Susan Sarandon is still full of shit. I really can’t read a lot of the political drivel that ends up on Medium these days. There’s a lot of places I could go here and we could go off the rails for a long while. Instead, I thought I’d tell a story.

I live in a very ethnically diverse blue collar town. My local polling place is at the local elementary school. It’s a consolidation of three voting districts in my town in the school’s gym. In the five years I’ve lived in my town, voting has been a mostly sedate affair (and yes, I vote every year. If only you Bernie Bros had that level of dedication). You’re in and out in only a few minutes. I think the longest I waited was for maybe three voters in line ahead of me in 2012. Voting in the Primary in June of last year was equally sedate. So, naturally, when I showed up to vote on Election Day, I expected the usual in and out speed of voting.

Imagine my surprise when, upon entering the gym where the voting happens, the line for my precinct was out the door. Seriously. I always hear those stories of people in big cities who wait for a long time to vote (especially when they’re in heavily Democratic cities in a state with a Republican leadership, because voter suppression and all). I’ve never actually had it happen to me.

And who was in line? A whole hell of a lot of minorities who suddenly had a very strong urge to exercise their voting rights. And, can you blame them? The candidate who won the election was advocating a policy of racial and religious purity. Scary words that whose fear has been proven since Trump’s inauguration. In a place where you can usually vote in under 10 minutes, it took over an hour to get the deed done. And this was with a hungry child who did not want to be held or wait this out (and why the one precinct worker who offered us pretzels for said hungry child was the real saint in this affair).

At the time, it was a bit annoying to have to wait this long, especially with the hungry kid. But when I think back on this, it matters a lot more. This is where the future of a progressive movement is. While the Bernie Bros want to keep the focus on white folks (and face it, this is the case), there are a lot of people who are just cutting their teeth on this forthcoming political movement. It’s easy to lose focus and backpedal where the Democrats need to go next. Looking at all these people get out and vote makes me hope they don’t lose sight of where life is taking us next.

San Francisco Days

Colin Kapernick

Sadly, I think that the whole Colin Kaepernick saga is very indicative of the overall status of race relations and police culture in our society. It is, I am sad to say, a large indication that we’re moving backwards at an alarming rate.

Look, I don’t know all that much about this kid, but it’s obvious that of late he has come around to stay woke. And that’s his prerogative. I’m not judging him. I think there are more constructive things he can do to fix issues, but let’s not dismiss that he’s getting people talking. The problem, of course, is how different sides are seeing this. Unsurprisingly, a lot of white people are againnit. Some woman went on a whole diatribe about how Kaepernick’s protest is killing our troops or something (honestly, my eyes glazed over before I finished reading this. But still). But then again, a lot of white people think if black people just kept their heads down, everything will be just peachy, right? Well, we know that’s not the case.

Even scarier is the way that the police have reacted to the whole thing. Did you hear that the Santa Clara Police union has threatened to boycott their job of security at the 49ers stadium because of this? Can we talk about fucked up? Of everything, this is the clearest example of the problem.

Police have always viewed themselves at something of an elite level. That’s not entirely unearned. We’re talking about people who voluntarily go into the face of danger to keep the rest of us safe. This is not under dispute, nor does anyone have an issue with this, I think. The issue is that the police also act like they’re more infallible than the Pope. Plus, after 9/11, we are supposed to elevate police to some super human elite status of hero worship. The side effect of this is that cops start to think and act like they’re super men and above the law. It’s a bad fucking mix. Kill some black kid in the hood? It’s OK, we’re the motherfucking police. That fucker deserved it. Who is going to say or do anything? Oh, and those Black Lives Matter people? They’re just inciting violence against us. It’s no wonder we’re in a virtual powder keg that might go off at any moment.

So back to Mr. Football Player. He may make a lot of money, but I’m sure he still looks around nervously if 5-0 rolls by. And maybe he was oblivious for a long time. But then maybe you wake up and see the world around you in a different light. And good for him on that.  It’s too bad that he even needs to do this, and that so many people are still so aghast about it all. Maybe, just maybe, we will have a day when this isn’t the case.

She’s the One For Me

I’ve considered myself a Democrat since I was 11 years old. I have voted in four presidential elections so far in my life, and this year I’ll vote in my fifth. I’ve only voted in one primary (for President Obama in 2008) before, but today, I get to vote in a second, and I’m not afraid to say that #imwithher.

Here’s the thing. I wasn’t against Bernie primarying Clinton when he jumped in the race last year. He’s forced her, and the party, more to the left by sticking around and by winning. He’s brought a lot of important issues to the table. Remember the first few debates they had, where they actually debated policy, and we felt like it was the most amazing thing ever, especially compared to the shitshow the Republicans were doing? Remember, too, when Bernie dismissed the email scandal out-of-hand like the non-scandal it really is? Shit, Bernie sounded like quite a visionary for a while.

But then Bernie started to win, and the optics changed. Bernie the visionary faded out, and Bernie the candidate faded in, and those are two very different guys. Make no mistake. Bernie may portray himself as an outsider, and may even be one to a degree, but you don’t hold political office for 30 plus years without being a politician, and getting down in the mud. Once we started there, that’s when they lost me. Now, you might refute my statement and say, but Bernie sticks to his guns, but he’s slowly been attacking her more ad desperation sets in. It’s unfortunate.

How what really sealed it for me is the rise of the Bernie Bros and the campaign’s reaction to them. This whole movement of entitled white “progressives” has taken the best parts of the campaign and ruined them. They dismiss the heavy minority turnout in the states that Hillary has done well in and said it was irrelevant. They’ve championed the caucus, which is the least democratic way to pick a candidate there is. They’ve adopted some of the worse aspects of the right wing/tea party attacks on Hillary. They put labels on her and call her a sellout and a neo-liberal who hates America. The worst part is that instead of putting this crap in its place, the Bernie campaign has embraced it.Terrible. And given the reports that Bernie himself embraces it all, it makes the choice simple for me. 

Hillary Clinton is not the most ideal candidate anyone could ask for, but I think she will take the best parts of the past 8 years and keep it going forward. I don’t want a revolution. I want to take what we have and make it better for everyone. So that is why I will vote for her without any reservations. There is only one way to go and that is forward. 

Moving Out of Iowa

So after over a year of political craziness, we’re now in the thick of the 2016 Presidential Primaries. Am I the only one who thinks that the way we do this is totally inane? It feels like the minute one election ends, we’re already on to talking about the next one. We’re subjected to months of speculation, ads, campaign nonsense, talking heads, the whole works. Plus, even with recent developments in the judicial system, corporate money reigns supreme in our electoral process, and it will be years (if ever) before we can excise it. This has led us to some less than enviable positions, the biggest one being that there is a real chance that a man who ran for little more than his own ego could be the candidate for one of the major parties. To say that our political process has become a three ring circus would be an understatement if I’ve ever heard one. There isn’t a whole lot we can do, but I have a few ideas about how to make this happen. Also, it should be noted that I’m not a Constitutional scholar, so who knows the legal validity of this idea, but I think you can make a case under Article II, Section 1 for all this.

My idea is super simple, and in two parts:

First, every state has their primary on the same goddamn day. Let’s say 6 weeks before Election Day. Every single last one. If you want to counteract the money, and limit who’s going to be serious about doing this, make them spread the wealth around. Mad because it means that NY, LA, and Chicago will become way more important than Iowa? That’s kind of the point. Democracy is about the people. Not the chosen few special white people in rural states. Sorry, folks, that’s the deal. Oh, and you can’t campaign at all until 6 weeks before this Primary Day. Announce you’re running, have a book or listening tour if you want, but you can’t make a stump speech, call someone, or knock on a door until that day. Suddenly, dumping all your money into Iowa or New Hampshire seems stupid, doesn’t it?

Secondly, Congress needs to set real standards on voting. OK, so states could have a real 10th Amendment freakout about this, but if you’re careful to word it that it’s just for Federal elections, it should get trumped. Part of this is giving teeth back to the FEC to enforce against gerrymandering, which we all know is a pipe dream, but this doesn’t happen without it. But also, it’s about making sure that voting machines are up to snuff, making their source code open source and on consumer level equipment (seriously, why could someone not cook up a hardened Raspberry Pi with some software to count votes? Plus, states won’t be stuck in that fucked up position when their election machine vendor goes under and they can’t get parts or service for their broken machines) that would be cheaper for governments to implement and more secure because you can put the best that the open source community has to offer into it. Oh, and voter verifiable paper trail, too, natch (optical scan ballots would be the best bet here).

Now, will this fix everything? No. But it’s a start. Let’s dream a little, shall we?