My Hope for November 2022

 WARNING - The following is a political rant...

Returning to the US after spending any extended amount of time abroad is always an interesting experience. I make it a point when I am back in London to avoid watching American media. I watch BBC instead of CNN or MSNBC. I read The Evening Standard and the Metro instead of the Huffington Post. The Daily Mash instead of The Onion, etc. etc.

Now to be fair, the United States is not alone in having bizarre social and cultural quirks that make other countries scratch their heads in bewilderment. When you look at the complete and utter dumpster fire that is the UK’s xenophobia-driven decision to economically shoot itself in the face by leaving the European Union; Aspects of our own American weirdness can seem mild by comparison.

But this past week was the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. (CPAC) Which in recent years has morphed into something of a crazy Comic-Con for the fringiest of the far right fringe of American politics. Where the ideas and attitudes that our nation as fought wars to defeat are now championed as the new conservative gospel.

Watching the Cirque du Insanity that is CPAC unfold I find myself lamenting the loss of “American Greatness.”

In the space of less than one generation we have gone from being a nation that builds, to being a nation that buys. A nation where we have elevated narcissism (oh, sorry, I mean “Social Media Influence”) as a valid career choice. Where a nation that is descended almost entirely from immigrants, has convinced ourselves that some people are somehow less “American” than others.

The nation that in less than one century created technology that reshaped the world and fundamentally changed our understanding of the universe, now wages war against innovation because it might impact the profit margins of specific industries and corporations. The country that gave the world the polio vaccine now gets into fistfights in Walmart because vaccines infringe on “freedom” … or something.

The nation that created the idea of the social safety net after the great depression, is now a place where you can go bankrupt trying to pay for health care. Where death by poverty is considered a natural cause. The same nation that enshrined personal freedom into the first ten amendments to our constitution, is now a place that will force a rape or incest victim to bear her attacker’s child. All while claiming the right to own a military grade assault weapon is sacrosanct, and if such a weapon is used to slaughter children in their classroom… That is just the price we must pay for that “freedom”.

The nation that led a global fight to defeat fascism, and then for half a century faced down anti-democratic totalitarianism, demanding the wall it built through a city be torn down. That nation is now a place where domestic terrorists who tried to overthrow our democracy are lauded at CPAC as oppressed heroes. And fascism is cheered as being “Christian Nationalism.”

The nation that inspired the world to embrace representative democracy has in the space of less that a decade. become one where one side of the political spectrum touts the end of that democracy as "Making America Great Again."

The Republican Party is now the embodiment of the idea that facts no longer matter. Where if you lose an election, just keep lying about it and incite an armed mob to attack your opponents. The idea that any science that threatens the bottom line of campaign donors must be attacked. History that doesn’t fit a pre-conceived narrative must be expunged from textbooks.

Where the right to own an assault rifle is seen as more important than a grade-schoolers right to life, let alone liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Where a woman’s right to control her own body is less protected than a corporations right to give unlimited amounts of money to politicians.

All of this, has made America... Small.

Yet despite that litany of rancid stains on the fabric of our nation. I still truly believe that we are far more potential than we are actualized. The United States of America remains, as Benjamin Franklin once described it; “rougher, simpler, more violent, more enterprising, less refined. We are new nationality.”

The potential of that remains, I believe, to be truly limitless.

But to reach that potential, to become once again that “shining city on a hill, we need to remember who we are. What we saw on display at CPAC, what we hear emanating from the dark cesspools of outlets like Newsmax, OAN and the likes of Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Alex Jones, this is NOT who we are.

It is my hope that as we go to polls in this year’s midterm elections, we embrace the better angels our national nature and remember.

So Here We Are... Thanks for that.

I get it, you didn't mean for all this to happen. But, you just didn’t like her…

You “felt” she was dishonest, you said she lied, (about what exactly, you never actually specified…but I get it..) 

Setting aside the fact that she was the most investigated Presidential candidate in American history, by both the Media, and her political opponents.

Setting aside Millions of Dollars and hours of government resources were spent repeatedly investigating her and found no crimes, ever. Setting aside that she sat and testified for 11 hours about a tragedy that happened on her watch, and yet the men whose lies took America into the war that created the terrorists responsible for that tragedy, have never even been questioned under oath.

Setting all that aside… I get it, you just didn’t like her.

Setting aside the fact that there has been an entire cable news network that for over twenty years was near singularly dedicated to accusing her (with no evidence or proof whatsoever) of everything from bad fashion sense, to first degree murder. Setting aside the fact that she was the most experienced and qualified candidate to seek the Presidency in a generation.

Setting aside the fact that she was held to a standard of public transparency and critique that NO male candidate for the same office, has ever been held to.

Settling all that aside… I get it, you didn’t like her.

I know you felt Bernie was robbed, and you know what? He wasn’t. I have a news flash for you. The majority of American voters don’t do what the DNC subliminally tells them to. Hillary Clinton won more votes.

It’s not a rigged system it was math. Even without “Super-delegates” (Which we all agree were stupid are now reformed, thanks to Sen. Sanders…). she still would have been the nominee, because (again.. math,) she won the most delegates.

Setting ALL that aside, I get it, You just didn’t Like Hillary Clinton

I know you feel both parties are part of a rigged system that deliberately excludes third and more parties. You are right. It does, and you are correct in saying it is wrong. But guess what? There was no way whatsoever that this system was going to change in time for the 2016 election.

So, the reality was neither Gary Johnson or Jill Stein had a snowballs chance in hell of winning the election, assuming even they were on the ballot in all 50 states.  So like it or not the choice was between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. (Who, I get it… You didn’t like. )

 But it doesn’t change the fact that, these were your choices. And thanks to your "protest vote" we got Trump and he ended up getting three , count em! THREE appointments the United States Supreme Court.

I know you tend to tune out when people talk about the Supreme Court, because it is very abstract. But as you apparently were willing to accept those 4 years of a Trump/Pence administration, you should at least be intellectually honest about that meant in real life terms.  

Your “protest vote” against Hillary (who I get it, you didn’t like…) was in very real terms a VOTE FOR the following:

(Taken directly from the 2016 Republican Party Platform)

Appoint anti-choice Supreme Court justices:

"Only a Republican president will appoint judges who respect the rule of law expressed within the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, including the inalienable right to life and the laws of nature and nature’s God, as did the late Justice Antonin Scalia.”

Appoint anti-LGBT and anti-Obamacare justices:

“Only such appointments will enable courts to begin to reverse the long line of activist decisions — including Roe, Obergefell, and the Obamacare cases — that have usurped Congress’s and states’ law-making authority.”

Legalize anti-LGBT discrimination:

"We endorse the First Amendment Defense Act, Republican legislation in the House and Senate which will bar government discrimination against individuals and businesses for acting on the belief that marriage is the union of one man and one woman."

Make Christianity a national religion:

"We support the public display of the Ten Commandments as a reflection of our history and our country's Judeo-Christian heritage and further affirm the rights of religious students to engage in voluntary prayer at public school events and to have equal access to school facilities."

Privatize Medicare, the health plan for seniors:

“Impose no changes for persons 55 years of older. Give others the option of traditional Medicare or transition to a premium-support model designed to strengthen patient choice, promote cost-saving competition among providers."

Support traditional marriage but no other families:

"Children raised in a two-parent household tend to be physically and emotionally healthier, more likely to do well in school, less likely to use drugs and alcohol, engage in crime or become pregnant outside of marriage. We oppose policies and laws that create a financial incentive for or encourage cohabitation."

I could go on and on. This stuff was just the tip of the right wing fundamentalist iceberg. But I hear you cry that at the time you didn’t think Trump, really believed in all that far right claptrap, so you didn’t worry about it!   

So…. To be clear, at the time you thought Trump was lying when he said he supported the GOP platform “100 Percent” and were cool with that.   Funny, I thought it was because “she lied” you didn’t like Hillary?

And I won’t even get into how your “Protest Vote” played a direct role in the death of over half a million Americans thanks to Trump’s catastrophic failure to respond to the COVID 19 pandemic before it was too late.

Setting aside all the other issues we could talk about, like an immigration, policy that kidnapped children and put then in cages, an EPA that denied climate change, a commerce department t that gutted consumer protection, or the fact we now are left with a Trump Supreme court that is issuing rulings that make Citizen’s United look like childs play.  

Oh yeah, and your prediction that the Supreme Court “would never overturn Roe” so it wasn’t a factor in your vote…. Gee, that aged well. So as much as you like to pretend otherwise, your protest against Hillary Clinton, was a vote FOR Trump and the entire GOP platform.

But I get it, the fact you “felt” you couldn’t trust Hillary was way more important than a woman’s right to control her own body. I get it, the fact that it was clear that a Trump Presidency would damage our nation’s economy, global standing, national security, and environment, was just the price we need to pay to give the Libertarian Party a serious shot at 2028… or may maybe 2032!

I get it, the lives of over 1 million Americans who died from Covid, were not as important as you being able to say you didn’t “Sell out the Revolution!” and weren’t co-opted by the party machine!

So by all means, “be unsure” of whether or not you can “bring yourself to vote in the 2022 midterms this November. Or vote for Joe Biden in 2024, because hey, I get it… you probably just don’t like him either.

Or lots of your fellow Americans... apparently,

Thoughts on the Texas School Shooting....

 

Dear Democratic Party... Why Won't You Fight?

Dear Democratic Party,

I opened my email again this morning to the regular deluge of frantic cries of doom and defeat from your email fundraising apparatus.   All CAPS and bold or italicized subject lines like “It’s over David!”  or “We are losing the fight!”.  All with fear drenched exhortations for me to donate now!  Lest the  GOP and it’s insane agenda take hold and destroy American Democracy forever… etc. etc.

Um...No. What do I mean by 'no'?  I mean why should I “join the fight” when YOU are not in it? 

 Let’s be very clear here,  the Republican “agenda” is all the of awful things you say it is in your emails.   It is the wholesale destruction of the American Experiment.  It is to deny voting rights to people of color, it is to smash the Social Security trust fund and turn it into Wall Street’s own stack of casino chips.  

It is to pick the pockets of 99% of Americans and just give their money and then some to the top 1%.   It is to ignore science, institute theocracy, make American health Care a Darwinian nightmare of survival of the richest.  It is to eliminate rights of women and demonize LGBTQ Americans with the vicious lie they are a threat to children.

It is to turn the clock back from 2022 to 1952.  It is to make white supremacy a guiding national principle and to take anyone who doesn’t fit that monochrome, monotheistic, racist, sexist, xenophobic and yes, fascist profile and regulate them to 2^nd or even 3^rd class citizenship.   All this is true.

But you won’t say that out loud.   Sure, you put it your fundraising emails.  In bold font sometimes even underlined.  But you won’t stand on the floor of the House chamber or in the Senate and say the agenda of the Republican Party is one of  liars, racists and  thieves who are going to destroy this country.   You just don’t have the guts. 

You see, you apparently think this is still the same country it was prior to 2016.  You think the old rules of sanity, civility and public decency still apply to our national debate.   You believe that if you just keep “taking the high road” the American People will see that and think “Gosh the Democrats are good people!  I’ll vote for them!”

You are beyond stupid, and if you don’t start fighting you are going to lose. America has changed, and not for better.  The true legacy of Donald Trump is that truth no longer matters. 

When Mitch McConnell stole a supreme court seat from President Obama and just handed it to Donald Trump, what did you do?   I know what you should have done. You should have shut down the entire federal government, blocked funding to every Republican congressional pork project.  And shouted into every microphone that Mitch and the GOP were attempting a coup.   

But no, instead you stood behind your podiums looking constipated and lamented the ‘unprecedentedness” of it all.

When a Republican member of congress stood on the floor of the house and bald-faced lied, claiming Democrats are satanic child molesters, what do you do in response?   I know what you should have done.  You should have stopped everything and every single member of your party should have found a camera and microphone and said that person was a fascist nutcase who must immediately be expelled from Congress, and any Republican who doesn’t agree is complete and total coward.

But no, you just stood behind your podiums again, looking constipated, lamenting the “unprecedentedness” of it all.

You signaled clearly to the GOP that you were not going to fight.  So, it just got worse.  To the point where a mob of domestic terrorists was sent to attack YOU on January 6^th.   Now, over a year later, facing the 2022 midterms you refuse to say out loud the simple truth; Voting  Republican is  voting to support terrorists, white supremacists,  and  criminals who will loot the U.S Treasury for themselves and their donors.

You don’t have the guts to win.  Your very well-paid consultants have convinced you that to speak the truth out loud might alienate “centrist voters’.  So, you will speak in vague general terms about “fighting for America’s middle class”. 

And when you lose the House and the senate this November because the GOP convinced just enough voters in just enough states that you want kindergarten students to be taught that white people are evil and gay sex is fun, you will once again stand at your podiums looking constipated wondering what happened .

And when women’s rights, voting rights, civil rights for all minorities are rolled back to ‘good old days’ when middle aged rich white men were all that mattered, you will be sad about it. But let’s be honest,  folks like Chuck Schumer and his friends will be just fine.  Their own wall street pals will make sure of that. 

The rest of us are on our own.

Asking people to vote for you isn’t enough.  I have news for you; The Republicans figured this out a long time ago.  They are not saying what they are for. Wanting to force women to bear their rapist’s child doesn’t make for a catchy bumper sticker.  The GOP is not asking people to vote FOR them.  They are telling people they need to vote AGAINST you, by using a grotesque litany of culture war lies to do so.

You need to call  the GOP what it is, an evil cult.  A cabal of con artists who will destroy this nation for fun and profit.  

They are the KKK gone political. They are racist, sexist, homophobic anti American domestic terrorists who will eliminate Social Security and Medicare (which by the way, is  actually IN their 11 point “plan”.)  and turn America into an Oligarchy the likes of which would make Vladimir Putin bust with envy.

I'll leave you with the sage of advice of one fictional Democratic operative from "The West Wing"

Until  you actually start truly fighting against the GOP, all the emails in the  world aren’t going to convince Americans to join you.

Remembering Matthew Shepard 23 Years on...

 

Wednesday October 7th, 1998 was a fairly ordinary day in Chicago. I was working for a small consulting firm in the near West suburb of Oak Park, and had spent the day in a series of fairly productive meetings. So I felt pretty good when I got home from work. I was puttering around my apartment making dinner when I picked up the remote control for the TV and turned on CNN.

The lead story was a brutal attack of a young man in Laramie Wyoming named Matthew Shepard. Shepard, age 21, had been beaten into a coma and left tied to fence along a rural highway outside the city. The news report noted that the victim was a young gay man and was not expected to survive.

I remember walking down into “boystown” (the north Halstead area of Chicago, and the center of the city’s Gay community). There were lots of people standing around outside the bars, and restaurants along Halsted Street, talking about what had happened in Wyoming. A makeshift memorial had been set up on the corner of Halsted and Roscoe.

I walked into the 7-11 there on the corner and bought a small votive candle, lit it and placed it with the growing number of candles, handwritten notes and flowers that were being placed around a picture of Matthew that someone had printed off the internet. I stayed for a little while talking to people who were gathered there. Some people were angry, others sad, but we all knew that something in our own community had changed as a result of what had happened,  hundreds of miles away in a cold field outside Laramie, Wyoming.

In 1998 I had just moved to Chicago after being overseas in South Korea. I was in the middle of my own “coming out” process,  and was gathering up my courage to have “the talk” with my parents when I went home for Thanksgiving in a few weeks time. I will admit the news of Matthew Shepard’s brutal murder shook me up. Suddenly the decisions I was making to live openly and honestly as who I was, had potentially fatal consequences.

On an intellectual level you always knew that there were “gay bashers” out there. People who were so conflicted about their own sexuality that they felt the way to “cure” themselves was to attack others for what they feared most about themselves. Yet now those hypothetical risks, were not so hypothetical.  What's more, those consequences now  had a face, and a name.

As I walked home, my thoughts turned to Matthew Shepard’s parents. What must they be thinking and feeling? Had they known Matt was gay? Did it really matter? Years later I would have the great honor of meeting Judy Shepard,  and hear her tell her own powerful story .

Now more than two decades  years later, I marvel at how my own life has changed. I see how the progress that has been made means  that the world is not as bleak and dark a place as it seemed, on that October night in 1998.

 Yet I am still saddened and angry that there are many people in America who honestly feel that Matthew Shepard got what “he had coming to him”. That demonizing , discriminating against, and even murdering Gays and Lesbians is somehow “doing God’s work”.

People with a vested interest in keeping LGBT people as the one group it is still safe to hate. People who seek to profit, personally, politically and even economically from fomenting deadly hatred and fear of others. Bigots whose actions and beliefs are the farthest thing from being Christian, yet claim to have a monopoly on what they claim God thinks and who they claim "God hates".

I really don’t have a point to make here, other than to say it’s important to remember Matthew and so many others like him who have died as a result of hatred and bigotry. If you want to get involved, here are a few great places to start...

The Matthew Shepard Foundation: http://www.matthewshepard.org/

The Trevor Project: http://www.thetrevorproject.org/

The Ben Cohen Stand Up Foundation: http://www.standupfoundation.com/

The We Give a Damn Campaign: http://www.wegiveadamn.org/

The "It Gets Better" Project:  http://www.itgetsbetter.org/

Thanks,

Dave

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Twenty Years On... Remembering a Clear September Morning.

 (The following is an update of an entry from Sept. 11th, 2011)

This weekend the media, and the blogosphere will  undoubtedly be full of all sorts of remembrances and commentary around the 20th  anniversary of the terrorist attack on the United States on September 11, 2001.

To be honest I really don't like to dwell on the topic. Not out of any sense of personal pain, but more out of respect, for those people I know who were far closer to the events of that day than I was. My experience that day was a somewhat surreal one.

I had gotten up very early and caught a flight from Chicago Midway to Houston. I was heading there for work. It was about 20 minutes into the flight, the seat belt sign had just turned off, and people where shifting about, getting comfortable. I had just pulled out my laptop to work on the presentation I was going to be giving later that day. Suddenly the seat belt sign came back on, and the crew announced that everyone was to return to their seats and prepare for landing, the flight would be returning to Chicago.

The Pilot then came on the speaker system to say that there was nothing wrong with the plane, and we were returning to Chicago because the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) had ordered the flight to return to "clear air traffic". He said that was all the information they had, and he apologized for the inconvenience.

Everyone on the plane thought the same thing. (Not terrorism.) Chicago Midway had upgraded to a new Air Traffic Control System earlier in the Summer and a few weeks prior, there had been a series of glitches that had delayed several flights.  Everyone groaned, made comments about "Government Efficiency" assuming it was yet another problem with Midway's system that was going to mess up  our day.

This  assumption that was bolstered when the captain came back on the loudspeaker  and announced  that we were not returning to Midway but rather we were diverted to Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.

The woman sitting next to me was happy about this thinking at least it might be easier to get on the next flight out to Houston. I nodded, and said "I hope so", thinking of how I might salvage the rest of my schedule that day and make my afternoon meetings on time.

It took us about 30 minutes of circling over O'Hare before we could land. Sitting in a window seat I watched as the line of planes waiting to land stretched to the far horizon and oddly enough, no planes were taking off. I commented on this to the woman next to me, and she said "wow Midway's systems must be really screwed up!" I laughed and said that what we get for Ronald Reagan having fired all the good Air Traffic Controllers. She laughed and said she had forgotten about that.

We landed and had to wait an additional 20 minutes to get a gate. but finally pulled up to a jetway , and we all lumbered off the plane into the gate area I was getting annoyed because people were not clearing the area in front of the door but were all standing around the televisions that were tuned to the CNN Airport Network. I was about to say a loud "excuse me!" when I happened to look up at the TV and saw CNN  replay footage from ABC of the second plane hitting the World Trade Center.

CNN then cut to live shot of a column of smoke and ash where the World Trade Center Towers were supposed to be, but weren't. I called my office and my boss told me not to come in, The area in downtown Chicago around the Sears Tower was being evacuated. I called my parents and let them know I was not in Houston, got on the CTA Blue Line and went home.   The rest of that day I did what most Americans did, watched the news, and when the images became overwhelming, I put on my roller blades and went blading along the Lake Michigan shoreline.

It was a brilliant sunny day. One of those late Summer, early Fall days that you get in Chicago that make you appreciate what a beautiful city it is. As I stopped at Oak Street Beach and admired the downtown Chicago skyline, I didn't think that somehow the "world had changed". But rather I found myself thinking how the United States had  sadly, finally  joined the rest of the world.

Before that that morning, Terrorism was something that happened in other places, Israel, Lebanon London, Belfast , places far away. Even the first World Trade Center bombing for many people, didn't seem like international terrorism. After all, the people responsible were caught when they tried to get the deposit back on the rental van they had used. (How sinister could people that dumb be?)    That is what changed I think, it was the moment America lost the illusion that somehow our two oceans would keep us safe from global terrorism.

For friends of mine who lived in New York on that day,  I understand  that  today  is a much different  experience for them.   A  friend of mine is  a New York City Police Officer  who  lost an arm in the attack that day.   Another friend of mine worked  for an investment bank housed in the  North Tower,  she had a doctors appointment so she didn't go into work  that morning.   For her, today  is a reminder of  the  friends and co-workers  she lost  that day.

For the numerous friends of mine who have served in the Middle East  with the American and British Armed Forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan, they deal with the effects September 11, 2001 on a far different  and more directly personal level than most people ever will.

So I, along with  people all over the world  will remember the events of that day, pray for those who were lost, and show solidarity and support for friends and family for whom this anniversary is far more personal than political.

God Bless America, God bless us all.

Pride and Prejudice...

Well it's finally  June... so we all know what that means...  Like  rainbow flags going  up on Market Street in San Francisco, the annual debate over the merits of LGBT Pride celebrations re-surfaces like a perennial weed that just won't stay down.

 It's a debate that rages both inside and outside the broader LGBTQ community.  While inside the community,  the question always gets asked ; does some of the imagery of Pride celebrations hurt the cause of equal rights?

In addition, in the wake of significant legal victories for LGBT rights, especially around Marriage Equality; Some are asking do we even need pride celebrations anymore?   

Critics and opponents of  equality love to point to that same imagery as evidence of Gay folks wanting "special rights", and then pull out their favorite chestnut, of asking why are Gay Pride Celebrations acceptable but Straight Pride celebrations are not?

Sigh.... Really? It's like asking why isn't there a "White History Month". I get tired of trying to explain to people who really do know better,  just how stupid they sound whey they try to make these types of arguments. But fine, since clearly there is some "genuine" confusion out there as to the reason for LGBT Pride celebrations , allow me to clarify.

• The number of states in the USA where you can be fired  for  being  Straight = 0
• The number of states in the USA where you can be fired for being Gay (up until last week!!)  = 29
• Number of countries that will execute you for being Straight = 0
• Number of countries that will execute you for being Gay = 10

Growing up, how many books, songs, television programs, and movies did you see that featured straight couples meeting, falling in love and living happily ever after?   Pretty much all of them. Ask someone who is Gay how many positive images in popular culture they had growing up that affirmed who they are? The answer is, none, or at best few, if any at all.

Thankfully this is changing in surprising ways and places. The advent of LGBT positive content in Asia  has led the way.    Yet for decades,  Gay characters in movies and television were either creepy villains or camp comic relief. If you doubt that, you really should check out the groundbreaking HBO documentary, "The Celluloid Closet". It shows clearly the disparity in popular culture where messages about sexual orientation were concerned.

Then there is the area of religion. The number of straight kids who have been told they are going to hell simply for being heterosexual = 0. The number of LGBT kids who have been told that they are going hell simply for being homosexual = too many to even try to count.     In the light of LGBT rights victories in the U.S. over the past few years, it is easy to laugh at the various American Talibangelicals who shrieked hysterically how the US Supreme Court ruling on Same Sex marriage back in 2015, would result in nothing less than some sort of Gay, Nazi... apocalypse. 

As laughable as  this stuff  seems today in  hindsight, but  for a young person struggling with issues of identity and self acceptance,  these toxic messages of hatred and bigotry can still  cut right through you .

To my Straight friends, I have to ask, how many times have "respected" public figures, politicians, pundits and clergy gone on national television demanding that everyone be given the chance to VOTE on your civil rights? 

 How often has someone told you that not being able to discriminate against you was somehow an attack on them? When was the last time you heard a member of the Supreme Court saying that simply by being allowed to exist, you were "an attack" on the moral fiber of America?

Anyone?? Yeah...I didn't think so... I have a flash of the obvious for you, every month is "Straight Pride Month."  There is a word for someone who truly feels that equal rights for people they don't like is somehow an attack on them. That word is "Bigot".    Saying LGBT people are human too, isn't an attack on straight people. Those people who really think it is, are, quite simply, bigots. People who say LGBT Pride celebrations need to be stopped, are in fact, the exact reason they all started in the first place.

Are pride celebrations good or bad for the cause of equality? The answer is both. With visibility comes closer examination. Anti-gay bigots love to show images of drag queens, leather daddies and nearly naked porn stars dancing on parade floats, and scream "See! it's not about equal rights! They just want to recruit your kids into THIS!!"

They never show the families, advocacy groups, welcoming and inclusive religious denominations, and workplace affinity groups who participate in Pride parades. After all, that wouldn't fit their desired narrative.

Media outlets are complicit in this, by the way.  CNN loves to show the drag queens  and semi-naked boys in their coverage, but when straight allies like the CEO of  the largest health care company in the United States rides  on a float  in the San Francisco Pride  parade every year, along with over 1.000  LGBT employees, their families, co-workers  and friends,  you'd think they were all  invisible.

Likewise, critics of  the concept of LGBT Pride , never talk about the rates of divorce, unplanned pregnancy, child abuse and neglect and domestic violence in Straight relationships.  You never see  folks like Tony Perkins, head of the certified Hate-Group, the "Family Research Council" on Fox News talking about Mardi Gras, or  "Girls Gone Wild" on Spring Break.That would be admitting something of an inconvenient truth.  It's much easier to just point at a group of shirtless men on a flatbed truck or women on motorcycles and say that they are the real threat to families.

I have always said that Pride celebrations are not really for the people who attend them. Instead they are for the people who cannot attend them. Growing up as a Gay kid in a small town in South Central Wisconsin, there were times when I was convinced I was the only gay person on Earth. The constant message from popular culture, religion, family and peer groups was "boy meets girl, they fall in love, get married (or not) and have kids and live happily ever after". There was no happily ever after for someone who felt what I was feeling.

Then, for one weekend in June, I would turn on the TV News and see thousands of people just like me, in places like New York, San Francisco and Chicago saying "No, that's not true, you are not alone, and there is a big wide world out here beyond Sun Prairie Wisconsin. So hang in there .... we're here and we're waiting for you!"

Now more than thirty years later, I watch coverage like this,  and it seems so endearingly cheesy. Yet at the time, it was a lifeline to people like me, living with the fear and isolation of being "in the closet".

Pride Celebrations are the original  "It Gets Better Project". 

My straight friends never needed to be told that being straight was okay, and that they were okay because nobody ever told them they weren't. Pride isn't about celebrating being Gay, it's about publicly showing that being LGBT is just as much a part of the the human experience as being straight is. I for one would love to see the day when Pride is obsolete. When that scared closeted gay kid, in some small town doesn't need to be told that he or she is fine just the way they are.

Even though again this year in 2021 we will be "distance celebrating" and gathering virtually instead of in places like Market Street in San Francisco, Oxford Street in London, Halsted Street in Chicago, and Fifth Avenue in New York City, Hillcrest in San Diego, Montrose in Houston, and so many more. There still is much to celebrate, and battles still to fight. 

Last year's ruling by the United States Supreme Court finally added LGBT Americans to the federal workplace protections offered through the 1964 Civil Rights Act. A ruling that though 56 years in the making, still was split 6-3. With 3 members of the court still believing it would be just fine to fire someone on the basis of who they love. 

On the flip side,  we are seeing the trend of  "Red State" Governors and legislatures desperate to distract from their many many failings,  targeting the rights,  safety and lives of  Transgender youth as their new favorite tactic to wind up their bigoted base. 

So in this Pride month , it is still vitally important  to add our voices to the “virtual throng” celebrating LGBT Pride.  If for no other reason to let that one scared  kid know, it really does get better. There is a world where  "boy meets boy" and "girl meets girl",  or  where they can just be who they are.  A world where they live, love and yes, even live happily ever after...

Happy Pride Everyone.

The Sheer Exhaustion of Defending Sanity and Reason...

Back in October 2017, I  made a decision to uproot  my life in the United Kingdom and move back to the United States. It was not a decision that  I made lightly. The Trump Administration was nearly through it’s first full year and the damage it was inflicting on the United States was already apparent to see, and this was well before anyone had heard of COVID 19.

But, the opportunity to return to work at Kaiser Permanente, and to be closer to my family in the states was too good to say no to. So I embarked on a three year plus journey of  packing and shipping belongings from Southeast London to a new home in Oakland, California.

Add to this, all the cumulative drama and stress of the 2020 Presidential campaign, knowing that a 2nd Trump term would be nothing less than a fatal blow to American democracy. It was weeks upon weeks of hearing how this was the MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION…EVER! And how it was a life or death choice for the future of our nation. And let’s be clear. It totally was. The election of Joe Biden was a course correction for a car that was literally racing full speed towards a cliff.

I had high hopes that the clear defeat of Donald Trump by Joe Biden, combined with the Democratic Party gaining control of the United States Senate (albeit by only one vote), would bring normality back to life here in the USA and to be fair to a certain degree it has. It as been a blessed relief not to turn the news on each day and be bombarded with whatever the latest insanity is, billowing out of an incompetent narcissist hell bent on using the Presidency for nothing other than his own self-aggrandizement and financial enrichment.

President Biden has been wonderfully… boring. So, what’s the problem?

The problem is the Republican Party, (or more accurately, the deranged cult of national self -destruction calling itself the “Republican Party”.) The party formerly known as the GOP has decided once and for all to throw reality in the bin, and embrace insanity.  2022, and 2024 like 2020 will be seemingly unending campaigns of Diversity, equity and opportunity versus violent white supremacist extremism. Rational global leadership and engagement, versus mindless xenophobic isolationism. 

Arizona GOP Tweet

A dynamic that manifests not just with national races like the Presidential and Congressional contests, but one that has infected down ticket races as well.  With campaigns for Governors, State legislatures, County boards,  City Councils and School Boards all turning into life or death battles where facts and reason have to complete against the worst forms of hate based stupidity.   With the centerpiece of the GOP platform being, not one of policy or ideas.  But a  hate fueled populism to which the Republican party is addicted and has no interest or desire to try to free itself from. 

With over 40% of Americans gleefully siding with chaos candidates, not because it is in their best interests, but solely for the dopamine hit of having “Owned the libs!” What is now all too clear, is that EVERY election for here on out will be a life or death battle of sanity versus Trump-based insanity.  The irony being Donald Trump isn't even a factor anymore. His monster has broken out of the MAGA Lab and running loose around the country side infecting villagers with its madness.

So I will be honest,  the idea that we will go through a new iteration of 2020 every two years from here on out;  has me questioning the viability of staying in the United Sates. I love our life here,  but  I am truly wondering if the  America I know, the American I love, the nation  of  E Pluribus Unum  has  crossed a line that we will be trying to  redraw  for the next 50 years.    I don't know if I  have the energy for that. 

I am tired of being told I have to "pick a side" between racial justice and respect for law enforcement.  I am tired of having to refight the basic battles for Civil Rights.   I am tired of living in a country where nearly 40% of the electorate thinks that if people they don't like get to vote,  it somehow makes their vote mean less      I am tired  of living with the uncertainty that a supreme court packed with appointees by a anti-democratic narcissist  might just decide to hear some random "red state" court case,  filed by anti-LGBT nut jobs hell bent on making my life a criminal offense. 

I know that last thing anyone wants to think about right now are the 2022 midterm elections.   But (and it gives me no pleasure to say it...)  that election will be (again)  the most important vote of our lifetime. 

 I guess I am just hoping that we all remember that.  Because  I for one am tired of trying to convince that 40%  that the death of American Democracy isn't  "Owning the Libs!"  But rather  delivering a  fatal blow to for their hopes and dreams as well. 

DEMOCRACY WINS

 Even in the face of treason, even in the face of sedition,  even in spite of violent ignorance;  The Great American Experiment...   continues.

God bless the United States of America...

Days of Infamy and Hindsight

Today is the 79th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Which resulted in the United States entry into World War Two. A chain of events that would culminate some three and a half years later with the dropping of the atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Actions which earned both the United States and Japan singular places in world history. The U.S. as the first and only nation to ever use atomic weapons in war, and Japan as the first and only country ever to be attacked with such weapons .

It has become rather fashionable in some quarters to debate the decision by President Truman to drop the Atomic Bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In recent years it has even become commonplace to hear the bombings referred to as “American War Crimes”. The arguments range from saying Japan was already defeated and the bomb was dropped partly as some grotesque military science experiment, and partly as a geo-political shot across the bow of Soviet Russia. A warning to Stalin to mind his manners and place in the world.

How much of that is true, and how much of that is ideological historical revisionism, we will never know. The only man who can truly answer those questions is Harry Truman, and from the day the first bomb fell to the day he died Truman maintained that his decision was the correct one.

To say that by August 1945, Japan was defeated is both accurate and overly simplistic. The question was not was the Japanese military defeated. but rather would Japan stop fighting in spite of the reality of that defeat The overwhelming evidence at the time, including statements by the Japanese high command clearly indicated the answer to that question was No. Japan would fight on, and a full-scale invasion of the Japanese home islands would be inevitable.

I often tell the story of friends of mine in Europe and in Asia and the different questions they have asked me about this moment in American history. German friends of mine will ask with genuine curiosity why did the US decide to use such a terrible weapon? While friends in Korea, Thailand and Philippines will ask with equally genuine curiosity why did the US only use two of them?

The argument that use of the Atomic Bomb was immoral and inhumane is something of a straw-man. ALL acts of war, even those that can be militarily justified are immoral and inhumane. The firebombing of Japan by American B-29’s had already killed more Japanese civilians than would die in both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks combined. Japan had already killed more Chinese civilians than Jews killed by the Nazis in Hitler’s death camps.

The atomic bomb was not dropped to win the war, but to end it. Ending it without having to invade Japan,. The best estimates held that the invasion of Japan would cost 268,000 casualties. Personnel at the Navy Department estimated that the total losses to America would be between 1.7 and 4 million with 400,000 to 800,000 deaths. 

The same department estimated that there would be up to 10 million Japanese casualties. As opposed to the roughly 200,000 deaths from the atomic attacks on both cities.

I find this perennial argument flawed on so many levels. NOBODY thinks dropping the Atomic bombs on Japan was a GOOD thing to do. The issue is was it the correct choice at the time.? To employ hindsight driven hypothetical scenarios is remarkable easy in 2020 and blithely dismisses what the otherwise inevitable invasion of Japan would have cost in lives on both sides.

The desire by some to cloak this debate in terms of were the bombings “justified” or moral is an overly simplistic attempt in hindsight to avoid the more relevant and complex hypothetical questions of what were the real alternatives at the time? War is not a moral act. The causes that compel nations to war have underpinnings of morality. Be it to end slavery or, free an oppressed people, or even self-defense. But war itself is killing on a mass scale. There is no getting around that.

To try to view Hiroshima and Nagasaki solely in that one dimension, and to frame it as a critique of the 40 years of an atomic arms race that followed, may be ideologically satisfying to some, but it is both intellectually lazy and factually dishonest

Finding Our Way Home…

As we all sit and wait and wait… for the final certification of votes in Nevada and Pennsylvania  Or recounts in Wisconsin and Georgia,  as well as the Trump Campaign lawsuits damn near everywhere else, it is an odd thing to witness. An old friend of mind posted an open question on Facebook earlier today, simply asking “How is everyone doing?” 

Having seen the news reports making the call.  I am confident in the outcome of the election, (meaning Joe Biden has been elected the 46h  President of the United States). But to be honest, as I look at the states that Trump won and the margins in the states he lost, I cannot help but wonder if it is even possible for this country to ever be a "United" States of America,

It's hard to imagine that there are people.... people I know and love, and who say they love me, who walked into a voting booth, looked back across the last 4 years and then said "Yeah. Sure, let's have more of that."

People who, in a very real sense  voted  to hurt their fellow Americans,  Voting to attack Immigrants,  blame the Poor,  deny health care to Women, and discriminate against Racial Minorities and LGBTQ Americans. People they know, and so many more that they do not, and clearly have shown  no desire to know or understand..  It has been painful to accept the fact, that when people say "This is not who we are!" the truth is; Yes this IS who, nearly half of us... really are.

People who voted to continue down the path that Donald Trump and his Party would take us, often cite a desire to “get back the country they knew”, As if America was a video you could just rewind. Undoing all the changes in our Nation that make them …. uncomfortable.   

Changes like the languages you hear on the Bus or in the grocery store. Changes like seeing two men, or two women walking down the street, holding hands. Changes like seeing more than just older white men holding political office. The list goes on and on.

I agree on one point. America is not same country it was when I was young, and that is a good thing. America was never meant to stand still. We are, and were  meant to always be, a work in progress.  A great experiment. 

We are  a nation that in less than two and a half centuries, reshaped the world, in ways both good and bad. But whose impact is undeniable and whose trajectory has always been, to go forward.

That journey took a very real detour these past four years. It is my hope, my fervent hope,  that we can find our way back to on to that path, that road that leads us forward.

I want us all to find our way back onto the road home.

For the United States of America, “home” is not a destination but a journey; A never ending, tumultuous process of seeking to create  a more perfect Union. Built upon E Pluribus Unum, out of many… one.

To disagree is not a weakness, to have differing visions of the particulars of our national journey is not a bad thing. The brave flawed and hopeful founders of our Republic knew this. That is why they threw over a King, to give voice to the voiceless, empowering the powerless, and seeking to elevate the downtrodden. There is a reason  Lady Liberty exhorts the huddled masses, yearning for freedom to look to our shores.

That diversity of opinion also yields innovation. Innovation that reshaped human history. It gave us the ability to always be looking ahead to what could be over the next horizon. It is why our Grandparents crossed oceans to fight fascism and oppression. It is what propelled us to Moon and beyond.

It is what moved men and women to march for civil rights, voting rights, human rights and seek to move us all to live up to those great truths, the ones we say we hold to be self-evident.

America is NOT, and must never be allowed to become,  a zero-sum gain  proposition. The greatest damage that has been done in the  last four years has been to convince 44% of us, that justice, equity and opportunity for all,  somehow meant less of  the same,  for them.

Donald Trump has made America… small. 

Let me be clear.  America NEEDS a diversity of voices.  I do not in anyway celebrate the death of the Republican Party as a platform for those who believe in personal responsibility, limited government and being champions of American exceptionalism.   

The greatest casualty of the last four years is that the Republican  Party, the party of Lincoln,  which played such a pivotal role in American history, is gone.  It has been replaced, with a twisted cult of personality that relies on white supremacist tropes, and a denial of  fact to hold on to its core base supporters. 

It is my hope, my deepest and most fervent hope, that we can once again, be greater than our differences, and stronger than our fears. Not just for our sake, but also because the world is watching,  and desperately hoping that  we, can find our way back to that road,  that  takes us all forward.

The road… home.