Hellection Part 2

...Now it's personal. Wrote this a couple days later. Just trying to vent but also connect oddly enough. Also cross-posted on FB.

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So I know "liberals whining about the election on FB" is SO OVER, and I already did this a couple of days ago, but I'd like to add personal context to last week. Maybe this time with less swearing.

I've had a terrible year. Not as a victim of anything other than my own decisions and malaise, just a bunch of things all in a row. I know I'm not alone and I know I haven't gotten thew worst of it. Spiritually sick is how I'd describe myself. Been that way for a long time.

Part of the problem is, I was trained to function in an Adventist environment and I'm never going back to Adventism. The hypocrisy of adventist actions vs words bothers me yes, but I flat out don't believe I was born into an alien empire as a de-facto lawbreaker and need to condition myself to feel bad every day and seek an authority figure to absolve me just to feel even a little good about myself. I think training children to hate themselves for making mistakes and insisting they grovel to adult authority figures as the only way to feel good is emotionally abusive and I'll have no part of it again. I know adventists hold this idea in cognitive dissonance with "love yourself as god loves you." but they are flatly incompatible frameworks. It's not a holy mystery, ya just gotta pick the one that makes more sense to you. I pick "ya gotta love yourself" because you can't hate yourself and love other people. These are not thoughts I picked up from anyone else, these are the responses that naturally formed after living in an oppressive religion for two decades, paying attention, and coming to my own conclusions. And that's not even starting to get into the issue of being queer and adventist, which is not a picnic. 

That said, I have found living in the secular world no picnic either. A lot of the hypocrisy and tribalism that drove me nuts in adventists culture is all over the place out here as well. As of yet I have found no replacement community where I feel like I belong and will never feel like I really belong in adventism either. You know how easy it is to explain to non-adventist people that you don't feel comfortable dancing because your childhood religion was so terrified of sexuality that they couldn't risk letting children learn how to dance? Not very. I am caught between worlds and I do not enjoy it.

So I've been depressed and isolated, this year in particular. The only place I understand is adventism and I'm never going back. And I have yet to find another place in the world that begins to make sense to me. I have no replacement spirituality or philosophy to hold onto either, just the vague remnants of adventist morality and a general "try not to be an asshole" feeling. These are not strong principles to guide one through hard times.

So an election that has been ripping bright division lines through our culture, when I already feel fairly separated from people, has been kind of depressing. 

In addition, my job may finally be imploding. Research science always has fluctuations in funding and you never know when or if they're coming back. And as a climate scientist, a political party taking unfettered power that has convinced themselves that climate science is the haven of charletans and liars is not a good omen for future funding. So thanks for that.

Voting in a party traditionally hostile to gay rights isn't helping with the "hey, you don't belong here." feeling either. We'll see what they actually try and do I guess, but I'm not optimistic. People like Mike Pence dont' give me reason to be. So thanks for that too.

On the flip side, I get that I now feel the way conservatives felt under Obama, scared and uncertain. I think your leaders lie to you shamelessly and exploit your fear but I get that this is how you felt. I watched Obama extend a hand in friendship for 8 years and watched Rush Limbaugh scream "he's reaching for your guns!" every time he did and every one ducked and cowered and thought he was a monster without checking with their own two eyes to see what he was doing. The same kind of misinformation exists on the democratic side to a lesser degree, but they're nowhere near as good at is as the fox news/conservative talk radio complex is at convincing their own people up is now down. That said, I do feel the empathy for how conservatives have felt. I'm feeling it now.

Conservatives are crowing and clucking at liberal protests like "we see how you really are now." which is kind of fair, but I see how conservatives are now too: people who delight when liberals are sad and scared and upset. I get that it's a sort of comeuppance, but I'm not seeing a lot of halos on the right now either. Thanks for feeling good when I'm sad.

I think we all trust bad filters to feed us information, FB foremost among them. Facebook's feed algorithm works to isolate us into tribes and, we've just learned, feed us an alarming number of outright fake news articles. I suspect we're all less informed for being on Facebook at all. I worry that we've entered a new era where facts and truth no longer really matter, and we'll believe whatever is most entertaining, or most in line with our fears and prejudices, and that goes for the right AND the left. I don't know how we come back from that without it blowing up in our collective spaces in such a damaging way way that we're forced to take a deep breath and go "Woah, what are we doing?" The longer we delay that moment, the worse it's going to be I think.

That's probably going to be how climate change goes too. It's gonna be a liberal conspiracy and a pack of hysterial lies right until Florida sinks below the waterline and then it will be true believers and bitter recrimiations all around and then hasty, far-too-late damage control. 

This election was an awful choice between Democrats holding minority rights hostage at the cost of little change and Republicans voting to blow the whole thing up, not really realizing it was going to blow up in their face too. We were probably going to feel bad any way it turned out. But this feels really bad for so many reasons that don't look to be getting better. I want to be optimistic, but I don't see where that comes from in the near term. But ultimately I was hoping Democrats were going to do what they said, and Clinton was going to be who she said she was and you're hoping Trump was lying about a lot of stuff. I know one of those votes was more nihilistic than the other.

So here's what I've realized. I can't do anything about the Trump administration, nor do I plan on running for office any time soon. So I'm going to try and worry less about that (although things get bad enough to require I join the protests, I will). Instead I'm going to focus on being a better person, because I am far from the person I want to be right now. I'm going to try and find a community I belong to, I'm going to try a philosophy or spiritual practice that makes sense to me and that seems to increase the overall amount of good in the universe and that helps keep me focused on being an agent for the same, and I'm going to try and find a way to be optimistic, hopeful, kind and enduring in the face a world that currently seems to be heading toward a selfish and angry place. Because the theme for the last year has been losing hope for me and this last week has done little to assuage that. But ultimately I am only really the captain of my own ship, so I'm going to spend some time trying to make things shipshape. Hopefully that will mean less time on FB and more time focusing on things that make the world a more bearable place.

I don't write this so anyone worries. Once I figure out this job situation and find a community and some reasonable sense of purpose that makes sense to me I'll feel much better about everything, even Trump's America. This is just me admitting out loud it's finally time to stop feeling bad for myself and actually try and make those things happen. And that probably starts with NOT endlessly scrolling twitter and facebook, hoping for something that's never coming down the feed.

I wish you all well through the holidays and hope that above all else we can keep a level head and good heart in what is likely to be a trying few years.

Hellection

Cross-posted from my FB account. Was writing to conservative friends kind of?

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First, some concessions. The Democrats and their supporters have been unbearably smug at times. Once liberals felt they had the cultural momentum and had been endowed by gods unseen as unstoppably on "the right side of history" they mostly stopped any pretense of trying to convince people and started delivering a message that more or less boiled down to "join the only moral side you hateful pieces of shit," which, as I have been trying to tell people, is not a message the unconverted are going to be inclined to buy into. Bullied into maybe, but who wants to win that way? Conservatives had not made kindness easy, nor are they shining champions in the "kindness to the other" department, "but you treat people like shit so I get to treat you like shit" is an argument stuck on stupid from both sides and it spirals into nothing good. 

In addition, democrats ran a bad candidate and a bad campaign. Trump, for all his many, many faults at least had the presence to make a slogan that referenced something bigger than himself. "I'm with her" was a slogan for a vanity candidate. It pointed to what you could do for Clinton, not what Clinton could do for you. They completely misread how fed up people are with "business as usual," and trust me, I am too, and put the thumb on the scale for Hillary because it was her turn. And then ran with that attitude running into the election. As it turns out, people don't like it when you just assume you should win without making much of an argument for why you should. I would have preferred Bernie, or even someone to the left of Bernie, or, god forbid, some viable 3rd parties, because I want some fresh blood in government too, but I didn't have those options. I would have enjoyed a conservative option that seemed reasonable but that wasn't on the table either, so I voted Hillary. It seemed the least bad option in a situation where there were no great options. But she ran a bad campaign. So bad she couldn't beat a reality TV-star with zero political experience. And I accept that he won, GOP efforts to curb the vote in the few states and an FBI investigator with wavy hands and nothing to show aside, more or less fair and square.

That said. Donald Trump is not a good man. His obvious lack of qualifications aside, he ran a venal, vulgar, mean-spirited campaign, and I only say that because I've listened to what he's said and watched what he's done for a year and a half. He's hurled insults and accusations and childish retorts and so many lies it was hard to keep track. My dad once had a student who was a compulsive liar. He watched him break a window right in front of him and confronted him on it, but the student replied, "No, Mr. R, I didn't do that." "Well, I saw you do it." "Nope, I didn't do that." That's my overwhelming impression of Donald Trump. Show him a tape of him lying and he'll just calmly deny it happened at all. The debates alone had multiple incidents just like that.

If people describe him a petulant bully it's only because he's behaved that way for years, on stage, in writing, on video. a dozen women came forward alleging sexual harassment. He's on tape bragging about all the groping he can get away with as a powerful celebrity. Not to mention all the race-baiting. Promising to keep mexicans and muslims out. The KKK loves him. Asserting again shortly before the election that the central park 5 should have been executed, long after DNA evidence exonerated them. It's fair to say not all of his supporters are racists, there's no basis to even claim the majority are, but I'll be goddamned if I'm going to pretend there isn't a racial animus in his message when I can see and hear it with my own ears and eyes. Nor am I going to pretend he and his movement have been misunderstood when I've seen the harassment of minorities and women from his supporters with my own eyes. I've seen the chants at rallies. I've seen the armed guards the press hired to keep themselves safe at his rallies. Donald Trump has spent the last year and half showing me exactly who he is, and friends, I take him at his word.

I believe we are in for a bad time. I believe Trump voters have made a terrible mistake in choosing a hero. I believe Trump fights for Trump first and last. I never seen behavior in him that I would describe as "selfless." There is no evidence he's ever donated to a charity that wasn't Trump-related. He certainly doesn't have a temperment I would describe as presidential. All a foreign leader needs to do is mention he has tiny hands and watch him get red in the face and wait for the ensuing impulsive over-reaction. It may just be an angrily-worded tweet, but hey, that's just how our new president rolls.

Liberals are scared right now because he has fostered an atmosphere of hate and suspicion towards minorities that some, let's assume, minority of his followers may act on. You were mad that liberals thought you were hateful pieces of shit (and that's admittedly a maddening attitude to be confronted with). Liberals are afraid their minority friends are going to be killed because enough of you are willing to look the other way. Is that overly hysterical? Maybe, but like it or not there is some history here that justifies the concern. 

LGBT like myself are worried a man who chose Mike Pence as a VP are going to have their rights taken away again. Controversial things like the right to marry the adult, consenting person you love and the right to be employed while openly homosexual. Trans individuals are worried about their rights to use a public bathroom (hint: they want a quiet place to pee like the rest of you. They don't care about your business.). Are those fears going to be born out? God I hope not (and I see some hysteria on the left right now that seems overblown), but given the tenor of the campaign and the rhetoric coming from Trump for years now, we have good reason to believe life is going to get harder, especially for those of us who are a little different.

I thought about going all self-righteous on you and declaring Trump voters irrideemable, that's not fair. I think they've made a bad choice they will come to regret, but it's not my place to punish people for their vote (obviously), and like I mentioned at the beginning, liberals have some serious, serious soul-searching to do on their own on how they treat people and what kind of inspiring message they're going to present going forward. Any party that's been losing so many state legislatures and governorships and now the presidency needs grapple with the fact that they're doing something wrong. And to be honest, I suspect living under a President Trump and living with the knowledge that you voted for him will be punishment enough. But do I understand why so many "good christian people" could vote for such a transparently vulgar, unchristian man? No, no I do not.

Here's the thing though, going forward. You control the presidency, congress, and are on the verge of dominating the supreme court for a generation. For the first time in my adult life, I would like to see conservatives take responsibility for the consequences of their actions and hold their leaders accountable. If your president is plagued with scandals, that's on you. If Obamacare is repealed and healthcare isn't suddenly sunshine and roses because they don't have a real plan to replace it, that's on you. If the economy craters because of austerity measure or tax cuts for the wealthy, that's on you. If we go to war, that's on you. If the war goes badly, that's on you too. Because I'm tired of the endless finger-pointing at every convenient scapegoat and now that you run it all, you don't get to do that. And considering the unprecedented obstructionism of republicans in the Obama years, you don't get to complain about that either. If you're going to be the party of suit-wearing grown-ups then fucking act like it. Similarly, if liberals consider themselves the standard-beares of a kinder, compelling, more evolved future, then they need to fucking act like it too. I admit democrats/liberals/progressives have some work to do on themselves but goddamn it you need to admit you guys do too. Claiming to be on the right side of history is not enough. Claiming to love Jesus is not enough. Do more. Do better. Believe people when they tell you how your behavior affects them. Consider the possibility that you're wrong.

At this point, I don't know who started with the smug assholery first, but we're all locked in a death spiral because we can't admit we might be wrong and we can't see ourselves in the other half anymore and friends that leads nowhere good. There's very little room for reconciliation and kindness in demonization, and acres of room for violence, despair and misery there. Literally, it leads to death if you're not careful. If your opponent is not human, then how bad should you feel if they die? That's the scary territory we've been edging towards for years now.

I'm sick to my stomach about President Trump. But I'm willing to admit that good man or not, he could bring about a new and beautiful age for us all. I think it unlikely given his unsubtle displays of character, but I'm willing to believe what my own eyes tell me should that come to pass. I guess the question I'm asking is, if Trump turns out to be as incompetent, divisive and dangerous as liberals fear, are conservatives willing to admit they were wrong too?

At this point, I have little hope things will get better before they get worse, but manoman would I love to be surprised. You've made a huge, reckless gamble with President Trump. We're all understandably nervous. I hope to god it pays off.