Tag: liberal

March for our Lives: Stop Exploiting our Children

On By Jason FIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

In honor of March for our Lives, I thought I’d share what’s on my mind as I watch the coverage.

Every life affected by gun violence in schools, especially those lost, is tragic beyond description. The country is united in a desire to make sure that the violence and loss stop, here and now. Republican/Democrat, conservative/liberal, male/female, LGBTQ/straight. theist/atheist… There truly is no race, class or creed in the horror over what we have suffered due to gun violence, or the desire to put an end to it. Our hearts go out as one, in love for our children and our fellow human beings, and in a desire to protect every precious life, young and old. The thought of a school shooting sickens me. There is no moral argument, no evolutionary principle in favor of the willful and senseless taking of life.

I turned on the TV this morning, hoping to see a change in the political discourse that we have become accustomed to. I was disappointed, to say the least. Then I felt anger and another, different kind of sick.

I saw young, intelligent people expressing powerful emotion, and laying blame for tragedy at the feet of the NRA, the president, and inanimate objects (guns). I saw an ocean of youth raging at the powers that be. There is a righteous and justified anger moving about, and there should be.

What I did not see or hear was any clear policy recommendation, or discussion of what the majority of Americans believe we should do to protect our kids. Shouting “enough is enough” at a problem, and railing at the president, conservatives and the NRA does not get one any closer to a real solution. While it is good to see America’s youth engaging in political activity, what I saw today was exploitative. The March for our Lives has been a large, very carefully organized political event. The degree to which it helps lawmakers wake up to the need for non-partisan cooperation and legislation has yet to be seen.

We need to find common ground if we are ever to affect change. Most Americans agree that we should find ways to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill. According to Reuters, 75% of Americans want armed guards at our schools (Reuters, March 22 2018). There is non-partisan agreement that anyone on the no-fly list should be kept from possessing firearms. So why don’t we start there? Start where we agree, find the best solution for enacting laws to enshrine the principles we agree on and work the political process. By all means engage our kids nationwide in the process of doing so. They cannot vote, but they can certainly use their collective intelligence to learn to examine the data and develop common-sense policy. Their voices need to be heard. They are the ones affected most directly by school shootings, and they fear for their lives. Let’s help them by getting our shit together – and instead of railing at each other from the opposite ends of the political spectrum, work together where we have common ground.

What sickened me today is that I saw our children used as pawns in a political game. Their fear, their pain, and their energy were organized and directed by people who want to advance partisan ideology. That is not fair. It robs kids of their dignity, and encourages the kind of emotional reasoning that will make it impossible to implement solutions.

Many of the young people at today’s march showed great courage in standing up and being heard. The clever ones will eventually see how they have been taken advantage of, and will be wiser for it.

Is Milo Yiannopoulos the Devil they say he is? (Part One…)

On By Jason FIn Uncategorized1 Comment

If you’ve been following recent news, you may have heard about a violent riot at U.C Berkeley, which broke out on campus during the protest of a speaking appearance by Breitbart News Tech editor, Milo Yiannopoulos. The stop was just one in a nationwide tour of college campuses, which Milo titled the “Dangerous Faggot” tour. Yiannopoulos intended to be provocative in naming the tour – he is openly homosexual.

I became aware of Milo Yiannopoulos roughly around the time that he was banned from using the Twitter platform. This event made national news. I love a good controversy, and I had to know why. The brief internet news snippets in my periphery indicated that he had launched a campaign of racial attacks and abuse toward Leslie Jones, a comedic actress on NBC’s Saturday Night Live. After brushing up on the coverage across multiple sources, here is my summary of what happened:

  1. Leslie Jones began expressing her dislike of messages she started receiving on Twitter regarding her role in the recently released Ghostbusters film (2016). I am unable to find these messages in order to learn of their content.
  2. Milo Yiannopoulos, under the handle @Nero, tweeted the following in response to Leslie Jones:“If at first you don’t succeed (because your work is terrible), play the victim.”

    “EVERYONE GETS HATE MAIL FFS https://t.co/W572qB4Vqw”

    “- Milo Yiannopoulos ひ✘ (@Nero) July 18, 2016”

  3. Leslie Jones reported this message as abuse of Twitter terms, and blocked Milo from following her account.

Stop right here. Read Milo’s tweet a few times. While you’re doing that, ask yourself: do you see anything you would consider racist in his comments? Hold that thought.

I have been fascinated by the expansion of Milo’s reach over the last couple of months, kind of watching in disbelief as events unfolded. The plot thickened quickly. I do not have the space to recount it all in one shot- this is going to be a multiple-part post.

What is interesting to me, however, is not only the provocative crossing of lines that has landed Milo in trouble; it is also the power of the media to assassinate one’s character, the free speech implications, and the current political climate.

Reading recent coverage in the mainstream news, you might already have the impression that Milo Yiannopoulos is a misogynistic, transphobic, Islamophobic white supremacist – a real life monster. The media have propped him up as some kind of alt-right demon, an embodiment of everything nasty they’d like you to believe the new conservative movement stands for. As always, there is more to the story.

Part Two forthcoming.

Whatever Happened to Polite Discourse about Ideas?

On By Jason FIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Regardless of where you stand on recent political events, I think you would be hard-pressed to argue today that tolerance for conflicting ideas and freedom of speech is being observed. The news of late has been a carnival of misinformation, name-calling, slander and hatred, the likes of which I have seldom seen, with warring sides laying claim to the “real” truth and leveling horrific accusations at one another. Reading and listening to the news has become akin to voluntarily drinking poison – the venom and vitriol are acidic; and bitterness and rage are contagious. I do not choose to surround myself with corrosive influences in my personal life, but they are finding their way in through my desire to follow current events. I am in a toxic relationship with the news.

The climate is not improving in the wake of the recent presidential election. It is getting worse. We are a nation at war with itself, and a house divided cannot stand. This concerns me deeply. Rather than polite discourse about ideas, we have a kind of raving domestic violence case. We are shrieking incoherent condemnations in a pitched battle for total control, aiming for complete annihilation of our opponents. When emotions run this high, we lose sight of real issues. At the end of the day, we are all in this American thing together, and we have more in common than we are letting on. We are focused on our differences, and inventing boogeymen. Who exactly is attacking race, religion, and gender? Who is promoting the exclusion of anyone from constitutional protection, or proposing that anyone cannot be part of this nation based on the above, should they pursue it legally? I could argue convincingly that men, and especially fathers, have been stripped of their reproductive rights and the right to pursue happiness by corrupt government bodies and family court systems – who out there cares about that, when we can decry male privilege? Maybe putting an end to toxic masculinity is the higher priority. When did feminists decide to take up defense of Islam and Sharia Law, systems that actually do oppress women and deny their fundamental rights?

Dogma. It is in part why I abandoned my religious upbringing. When your arguments don’t make sense anymore, and are not grounded in reason, but are driven by a desire to advance your worldview and see your ideas implemented at any cost, then truth becomes subjective. I have seen journalists and talking heads using the term “post-truth” to describe the condition of our present discourse, implying that we’re not working with facts anymore; we’re just saying whatever we want and calling it truth. They are right, to a degree. Where they err is in the assertion that the political right is the faction creating this post-truth culture. It is everyone. Liberals are outraged when they claim that conservatives don’t pay any attention to data, and then they present disingenuous interpretation of data to serve their cause. Take the gender wage gap myth. The only way to argue that there is a gender wage gap is by taking the mean salary of all employed American males, and comparing it to the mean salary of all employed American females, regardless of title and position. The mean female salary comes out lower.  But when one accounts for all relevant variables, by taking a look at mean salaries between males and females working the exact same jobs, the gap is reduced nearly to the vanishing point. A reporter for the Huffington Post, a left-leaning news outlet, revealed this in an article entitled “Wage Gap Myth Exposed – by Feminists” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christina-hoff-sommers/wage-gap_b_2073804.html). And yet, we still hear the wage gap myth coming out of government talking heads and feminists everywhere. If you point out the facts, and you happen to be male, you are labeled a misogynist, a woman-hater. God help you if you are also white.

We are witnessing a war on truth, a siege on ideas. Somehow we have lost our ability to discuss our differences politely – that, or wherever it happens, it’s not getting attention. Free speech is under attack. Race and gender baiting are shamelessly leveraged to arrest the discussion of actual issues. I’m not saying our country doesn’t have any issues to deal with in these areas, but for everyone’s sake, we must stop generating hysterical national crises that do not exist.  I would like to turn on the television one day and hear a real debate, where meaningful data is evaluated rationally, and minds change in the undeniable light of the facts. Where hatred and incoherent rhetoric are no longer mainstream. But I do not believe that goal can be achieved by the silencing of dissenting voices in order to create a safe-space utopia where nobody is ever offended. We will always be passionate, emotional, conflicted human beings. We will always think and say dumb and hurtful things. That is our right, and that right is protected by the first amendment.

America, please… can we just talk?