Shame on The Universe   Poetry and Thoughts on the Universe

Above all the other issues, disagreements, and topics I could write about, there is one that bothers me most.

That is the disappearance of nuance in our discourse, this almost intentionally shrinking middle ground in our politics. We are lacking a real option for those of us who don’t ascribe to the primary color palette of the US’s political system and I’m tired of picking the choice that is the least crappy or the most popular with my friends. This ever-present, us-or-them, Sith-versus-Jedi, I’m-right-so-you-must-be-Satan type of conversation has gotten beyond annoying.

I don’t know exactly when or how this toxic trend began but I believe the culprits are gerrymandering, social media, and outrage culture.

Gerrymandering is the practice of manipulating the boundaries of a voting district to favor a specific political party. It is illegal, but it can be hidden under the guise of electoral redistricting, which is a necessary process as a city or state grows and moves around. However, many states give that power to their legislature, which means that the control over how the lines are drawn are in the hands of the party currently in power. This allows them to get up right to the line between legal redistricting and illegal gerrymandering, and piss all over it.

The lines for political districts are supposed to have a sensible outlay to them. They were broken out simply by neighborhood, or by specific landmarks and roads. There wasn’t a regard for what party wins votes in what district by how much. With the power in the hands of the victors, the lines changed so that the people who don’t vote for them are now stuck outside of their zone, and the people who do are brought further in. The next election they only have to appeal to a friendly audience, as the “others” are excluded. If the winning party loses control, the opposing party can get revenge by redrawing the lines in their favor, leading to a crazy mess of districts that does not correctly represent the constituency. When your district resembles an octopus or a pair of headphones, I think you might be gaming the system a little too much.

It leads to the situation we have now, where Republican districts are extremely Republican, Democratic districts extremely Democratic, and moderate and independent voters mostly ignored. A potential candidate has to fit every part of their party’s base, or they can’t win. This means in many places you can’t run as a republican unless you shit AR15’s and tax breaks, and you can’t run as a democrat unless you want to repeal the second amendment, and raise taxes on the rich unquestioningly.

This extremism flows up from the local level all the way to our national presidential elections. You no longer have to try to appeal to the moderate. In fact, trying to appeal to the moderates and independents in local elections will usually hurt you.  Since you don’t have to try to convince people to vote for you, you get lazy rhetoric. Just shout “9/11”, “Immigrants”, and “Muslims”; or “Gun Control”, “Global Warming”, and “Amnesty; and you too can get your own position in our government, and a 15 minute segment on Fox or MSNBC. No need for thought.

This is something that seems to be getting addressed, mostly in the Supreme Court since people aren’t willing to play fair. However, social media and outrage culture play a much greater role and are intertwined with each other.

Outrage culture doesn’t have an official definition, but is our current obsession as a culture with flying off the handle at the slightest provocation. It is this culture of micro-aggressions, political correctness, and thin skin. Now, that doesn’t mean I think people should run around being jerks, or that using someone’s preferred pronouns is dumb, but when someone comes up to me and starts speaking Spanish (I’m half Latino), I tell them I don’t speak Spanish and move along. If they are rude about it, I tell them off more rudely and move along more rudely. What I don’t do, is scream at them, go home, find their Facebook, throw it up on 8chan and try to ruin their life.

Now, that is a bit of an extreme example, but society’s current reaction is to get mad, to point out ignorance and bias in anger, instead of turning the other cheek or giving others the benefit of the doubt. This discourages nuance because many people are still learning about these issues. They don’t know everything so they may misspeak or say something offensive. For example, someone saying, “Oh, are you transgendered”, as that –ed at the end could offend people by implying that it was something done to them, as opposed to saying they are a transgender individual, which is more respectful. However, a person will not want to interact or learn these specifics if your reactions to fly off the handle.

On top of that, if someone says something that you feel is offensive, and you scream at them and quit the conversation, you may miss out on some real understanding and common ground. I notice this from footage at Trump rallies. The anti-trumps will get offended at the first mention at border control, because they are outraged at Trump’s rhetoric. They don’t listen to the supporter’s reasons, which tend to be more nuanced and less extreme. It doesn’t make it them correct, but we lose potential solutions and opportunities for growth when we refuse to give people the benefit of the doubt. We need to chill out and analyze things with the effort they deserve.

Social media destroys this.

Our society has become one of memes, jokes, 6 second videos, and 140 character conversations. Nuance takes time, which is something people either don’t have or aren’t willing to give. They would rather look at a picture with a witty pun that reinforces what they already know. They want to drive by shoot off their opinion and leave the victim to bleed out on their own.

Hell, I am pretty sure I’ve already lost most of the people who started reading this post. Partially, it could be because I’m not a good writer. I also wouldn’t be surprised I pissed off someone by forgetting about Grey Jedi in my Star Wars comparison at the beginning. If you have made it this far, thanks! I’d still probably write this, but it is good to know I am not a man shouting into a vacuum.

I could’ve probably gotten 5 or so likes by posting a TL;DR version akin to:

Think critically newbs! #FeeltheBern #ImWithHer #CantStumpTheTrump

However, I’m more verbose than that, and this topic is more complex than that. I am a fan of brevity, but something like abortion or immigration cannot be handled that quickly. Things like racism, sexism, poverty, gun rights, prison reform, etc.; are muddy, complex, nasty issues that involve some effort to understand and solve correctly. We aren’t going to be able to do that with a hashtag and some lolcats.

As a country, we cannot allow this to become the norm. We can’t let our discourse devolve into poorly stated shouting matches and ego-masturbation via Facebook.

I know this post sounds cynical, but I don’t mean to be. I believe part of the reason independents have grown as a voting bloc recently is because of this frustration. I can’t be the only one who wishes people would give this pressing issues, the time and attention they actually deserve.

So before you post that great “icanhazbernie” pic, before you tweet #nevertrump or #feelmyJohnson, before you dive into the asininity that is the YouTube comment section, I ask that you take a moment to think about what you are going to post. Think about why you are saying what you are saying. Is it because it is something that you truly believe in, a cause that you’ve given deep thought to? Or is it because you want a friend you’ve had a crush on to think you’re #deep and give you a handy on Tumblr”?

Life isn’t black and white, so try not to act like it is.

Thank you for reading,

Shaman

I am a bit of an opinionated jerk. (Surprising, I know.)

Because this jerk has driven his friends and family with said opinions, I’m going to start writing about my politics on this blog. (It also doesn’t help I have been listening to Hamilton non-stop, which made me want to take my shot at politics.)

This blog has been nothing but poetry for quite a while, and I imagine most of my current followers want more of that. I still plan to write and post poetry here, as it is a passion of mine and I want it to continue. Plus, it is quicker to write and post than a political rant.

But fear not, poetic perusers, I will make it easy for you to look past any sort of political rantings, as I assume (at least for those of you in America) you get more than enough of it in your daily lives. My political rants will be prefaced with Politalking, because I feel clever for coming up with the name, and the only other site using it is a blog that has been dead for 5 years now. So, when you see that in your reader, feel free to move along if that’s not what you are into. I won’t be offended.

Now, to establish a little bit about my political views, and how I approach things like this.

I am a Centrist, according to Isidewith.com. I take a complicated, nuanced approach to politics, and I reserve the right to change my opinions and ideas whenever I get presented with new ideas and evidence. I feel one of the biggest problems in politics, whether it is the US or the EU, is that people aren’t allowed to change their mind or show growth. To admit you might have been wrong can be political suicide. Something someone said 15 years ago will be brought back up and thrown at them to make them look like a hypocrite or a liar. If your opinion hasn’t grown in 15 years, you either haven’t tried to challenge yourself and have stale and outdated beliefs. Or you think you have challenged yourself, but refuse to change for the reasons that have little to do with the political arguments themselves, and have everything to do with what people will think of you or other emotional things. I try to foster growth through challenging my worldview. So you may see something you don’t like here, and you are welcome to challenge anything you read. Just try to keep it civil.

I also want to state that I absolutely hate identity politics. People are more than the sum of their labels. I see no problem with someone being a Christian conservative who also happens to be gay and polyamorous, or someone else being a pot smoking atheist who is pro-life, pro-gun, pro-“traditional” marriage advocate who votes libertarian.

It not that things like that don’t matter; they definitely do. A woman has a much different view than a man does, and most likely has some valid complaints. A black man has experienced racism, and you shouldn’t ignore his experiences. But when someone’s whole argument comes down to, “I’m gay so I’m right, now shut up”, there is no point in engaging, as they are using that to stifle discussion and debate.  It is also far too easy to do the opposite, and write off somebody as a just their label, ignoring what they have to say.

“Oh, he’s conservative, so he just wants guns so he can shoot black kids and gay people.” “He supports Bernie Sanders, so he must be a lazy entitled brat that hates the American flag and hard work.” “He’s a libertarian, so he just some crazy nut-job who wants to watch the world burn.”

Is any of that helpful? Or does it just boost your own ego so you can give your self a mental pat on the back because you aren’t one of those nasty, “others” that all your friends think are stupid. No, you are one of the cool kids that get everyone to like their Facebook statuses, and who gets huge compliments on their bumper stickers. Agnostia forbid you try to think for once.

Now, if you put a gun to my head and forced me to pick, my views at the moment are closest to a left leaning libertarian. Which may explain why I feel like I am not really represented in today’s political atmosphere. None of the mainstream candidates lean libertarian, although they don’t lean too authoritarian either. They mostly stay on that liberal-conservative line. The Libertarian party is… a little eccentric. Although he’s not going to win, any part that has the likes of John McAfee or Penn Jillette might be a little to chaotic for my taste. (I don’t dislike either of them, but I’m not sure I’d want them making political decisions for the majority of Americans.) Plus, the American libertarian part tends more to the right than the left, which makes me less interested in throwing in with them.

So, until the let’s-not-be-dicks party emerges, I am going to stay an independent centrist and judge people on their policies and character, and not what color light saber they think they deserve. Pretty much all of them are just Sith in denial anyways.

Regarding the types of posts I will write, I am not going to try and keep abreast of current political events unless I feel I have some sort of unique perspective to add to the discussion. Mostly I am going to stick to higher level issues, like gun control, abortion, capitalism vs communism, etc; while also writing more informative, generalized posts. I may also decide on other things not listed above, but if any of it is political, then I wont be talking about it. I will be Politalking about it. (I am almost ashamed at how proud I feel about that name, but I can help it. How is that not some sort of blog or podcast yet?)

I will try to keep the offense down to a minimum, and show the proper respect to the issues and to others. However I will not coddle, nor will I censor myself just to spare someone else’s feelings or ego. But I can promise that my intent is to discuss issues, and not antagonize. If I do, it is probably because I am an opinionated jerk. 🙂

Thank you for reading,

Shaman

P.S: Seriously, if you have any appreciation for music or musicals, go listen to Hamilton. It’s absolutely amazing, and free to listen to as well.