Musings on the Democratic Convention

This has been, unquestionably, a fantastic week for the Democratic Party. So far, their convention has been successful in helping to unify the party, provide a vision of the country, and make the case against Donald Trump. Monday night, of course, was about showcasing the progressive wing of the party, including speakers like Rep. Keith Ellison, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and Sen. Bernie Sanders. Since that night, many efforts have been made to appeal to the Sanders supporters, including allowing for Bernie's name to be placed in nomination and for the full roll call vote to go forward. One of the most emotional moments of the convention was Tuesday when Larry Sanders cast his delegate vote for his younger brother. Last night, Barack Obama and even Tim Kaine made major shout-outs to the Sanders campaign. Although there are some on the left (including myself) who will still hold-out from supporting Sec. Clinton in November, overall the Party will walk out of this convention far more unified than when it began.

More impressively, the Democratic Party has provided a genuine vision of this country, something that I did not think they could do. Of course the party has been focused on policy, far more so than the Republicans, rolling out their ideas of expanding access to education and healthcare, taking action on gun control, and protecting the rights of women and minorities, among others. Yet the Party has gone much farther than that, portraying a hopeful, optimistic vision of the country, one that is strong because of, not in spite of, the diversity of its people and its ideas. This served as a sharp rebuke of the dystopian vision spun by Trump and the Republican Party last week in Cleveland.

Trump himself was thoroughly discredited last night, both by the scathing remarks of Obama, Biden and Bloomberg and by the plain decency of Tim Kaine in making his national debut. Trump was portrayed as a national disgrace, one who does share true American values, one who does not care about anyone but himself. He was cast as incompetent and mentally unfit for office, a task made even easier by Trump's own comments seemingly embracing Russian cyberattacks on the United States. If this country still votes for Trump after everything that was said yesterday, then we truly have lost our collective mind.

Yet despite all of this, although this convention has convinced me why Donald Trump cannot be President, and even almost convinced me as to why I should vote for the Democratic Party, it has not convinced me why I should vote for Hillary Clinton. With everything that has been said, by Michelle, by Bernie, by the President and Vice President, it just seems wrong that she will be the one taking the stage tonight to accept the nomination. The moment seems right for the Democratic Party (right for the country, frankly) to be standing up to the proto-fascism and white nationalism promoted by Donald Trump. Yet she just doesn't seem like the right person for the moment.

I have spent the past few days ruminating on the fact that Bernie Sanders and his supporters are and should be the true inheritors of the Obama legacy, that he represents the ideological future of the Democratic Party, and that he would have been the strongest candidate to take on Donald Trump. Bernie was not, and is not, perfect. But he was arguably the best candidate who has ever run for the nomination of either of the two major parties and who actually had a serious chance of winning. Just think of what could have happened had the party and the media given him a fair shot and not pronounced Hillary Clinton the presumptive nominee before the race even began. This could very well have been Bernie's week, not Hillary's.

Instead, we are left with a Democratic nominee who is arguably the most polarizing figure within the Party, and second only to Trump within this country. Instead, we are left with a Democratic nominee who believes that politics should operate from the top-down, not from the bottom-up. Instead, we are left with a Democratic nominee who is uniquely vulnerable to attacks on her integrity and her character from Donald Trump and the Republican Party, even if many if not most of those attacks are baseless. Think about how Trump would have had to go after Sanders. All he could have done was attack his policy ideas and ideology, which would only have put in further relief the insanity of Trump's own beliefs.

I cannot support Donald Trump for President. I do not feel that people should vote for him, as a vote for him is a vote for racism and bigotry, a vote for fear and cynicism. I do not buy the view of some on the left that this country can survive four years of Trump, that he won't be that bad. I feel that those who say that are speaking from a position of privilege, that perhaps they could make it but that others won't. I do not necessarily fear Trump's policies; I fear the forces of reaction that will be out in force if he is elected. I fear the targeting of blacks and Latinos and Muslims that will almost certainly take place, far worse than is already occurring.

Yet I also cannot vote for Hillary Clinton. Some will say that her domestic views are not that bad, that Sanders has forced the Democratic platform to the left. This is probably true, but let's also remember the fact that the Democratic Party will almost certainly be in the minority in the House of Representatives if she is elected. None of the policies that she is proposing are likely to be enacted anyways. If I am going to vote for a policy platform that is not going to happen, why shouldn't I just vote for the one I actually want, that of Jill Stein and the Green Party?

Ultimately, for me this election comes down to foreign policy, as it is in the roles of commander-in-chief and chief diplomat where most of the power of the Presidency is vested. Donald Trump is a walking international crisis, as yesterday showed. Yet I cannot objectively say that his foreign policy positions are actually any worse than those of Hillary Clinton. In fact, although there are a couple of elements of his policy I find myself in agreement with (if not the America First ideology behind them), I cannot identify a single facet of Hillary's for which I can say the same.

In some respects, I almost wish that I could bring myself to vote for the Democratic Party in November. But I can't, not with Hillary Clinton and everything that she's stood for sitting at the top of the ticket.

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It's Over

In listening to the speakers last night at the Democratic National Convention, from the First Lady to Senator Sanders, I was reminded of the fact that the politics of hope on which this president rode into office has today been replaced by the politics of fear and cynicism. This week does not mark a celebratory moment, but rather serves as a notice that the politics of hope will die with the end of this campaign and of this presidency, regardless of the outcome of this election. Neither Clinton nor Trump serves as the rightful heir to the Obama legacy, to that one shining moment in Grant Park where it truly seemed like a new world was possible. The torch has been passed from the politics of "Yes We Can" to "I'm With Her" and "I Alone Can Fix It"; the sense of collective purpose has been lost. Although the ongoing movements for social change will persist, the climate in which they will do so has shifted from one of "we're in this together" to "us versus them".

I, like so many other young people, have been genuinely inspired by President Obama and Senator Sanders. It is the older generations who seem to be the ones infected by the all-too-common affliction of defeatism. Thus, for me this represents a lost moment for American politics. If 2008 was this generation's 1960, then 2016 is our 1968, with Clinton reprising the role of the ineluctable Humphrey and Trump simultaneously embodying both Nixon and Wallace. We live in a reality where the primary electoral asset of these two major party candidates is the unfavorability and unelectability of their opponent. This is not the politics we need in order to build on the legacy of this presidency, but unfortunately it may be the politics we deserve.

I vow to fight on, both in politics and in life, regardless of the obstacles that are thrown in my way. I vow to refuse to give in to fear. I vow to keep burning that torch of hope that was ignited eight long years ago.

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On Masculinity: Why Men and Women Need to be Friends

Last night, I watched a very powerful documentary, The Mask You Live In, dealing with how our society defines masculinity and the impact this has on the boys and young men who grow up into it. I will admit, some elements of the film resonated a bit too close to home for me. For instance, the film discusses the pressure that boys are put under to exhibit athleticism. I remember being the unathletic kid in elementary school, the one who would probably rather go off and read a book than be forced to play kickball or dodgeball. Not surprisingly, I was usually the last boy picked for a team in gym class, often even behind many of the girls in the class.

Perhaps it was this lack of athleticism, and a general perceived lack of physical ability, that by the fourth grade led some of my male classmates to develop the idea that I was gay. It wasn’t true, of course, but I decided to play into it, acting or pretending like I was and at times doing so to creep out my friends. To some extent it was all in good fun, and it was something that passed quickly, but the memory of this still bothers me to this day.

The film also described how boys are taught from an early age that they should not express emotion, especially around other boys. I can say that this is true from personal experience. Growing up, through middle school and into high school, almost all of the friends that I had were guys. When we hung out together, however, we almost never talked about ourselves, how we were feeling, or anything that might be bothering us. Instead, we would play wiffle ball in the backyard or video games in the basement or stroll over to the park to play basketball. We talked about innocuous topics like sports or maybe even school; to talk about anything deeper would have been strange, and I don’t think was ever seriously considered.

When young men can only interact with other young men under this mask of masculinity, they are not given the appropriate outlet for their feelings, their emotions, their loneliness. The only real emotion they are allowed to express is anger. The consequence of this, of course, is destructive, even violent behavior. Men may try to cope with these issues through using drugs, consuming copious amounts of alcohol, and engaging in reckless and risky behavior. (These are activities that I saw more than my fair share of once I went off to college.) With unfortunate regularity, men commit sexual assault, domestic abuse, and even deadly acts like homicide and suicide; the most extreme cases may resort to mass murder.

As this documentary shows, media does little to curb this problem. Movies and television commonly depict male characters who exhibit aggressive and violent behavior. Video games allow young men to take on the role of these characters. Media, in other words, has normalized violence to such an extent that many if not most young men are almost completely desensitized to violence. They may believe, in fact, that violence is how men are supposed to deal with conflict; indeed, that it is the only possible way.

This fact was driven home for me a few years ago when I was working with summer school students who were on the verge of entering high school. The vast majority of these students were boys, many of whom lived in neighborhoods where gang activity was prevalent. (Young people, especially young men, often turn to gang life as a way of feeling a sense of belonging.) Even at a young age, these kids had learned what they could and could not wear, what they could and could not have on themselves, where they could and could not walk, and who they could and could not associate with. For them, it was a matter of everyday survival. Although my job was to teach them tools to use to resolve conflicts, I was forced to ask myself what I could possibly teach young people who’ve grown up in environments where the only way of dealing with conflict was through violence.

There is something else that boys and young men are taught that also has very grave effects on society: that they can’t be friends with girls. Think about the extent to which boys and girls are segregated from a very young age. I remember how in elementary school the girls and boys had to sit at separate lunch tables. In gym class the guys would be on one side playing basketball while the girls would be on the other side jumping rope or playing some other game. My main social activity outside of school was Cub Scouts (and later Boy Scouts), which was made up solely of other boys. As I mentioned above, even into high school virtually all of my friends were guys, a fact made even starker by the reality that I never had a girlfriend. It was not until probably my junior year of high school that I had friends who were girls, but even then these were not particularly close; we almost never hung out outside of school.

The fact is that most men simply do not know how to relate to women outside of a romantic or sexual context. This is for at least three reasons: men believe that they are in some way superior to women; men have been taught that they are inherently very different from women, with little common ground; and men have grown up learning to sexualize and objectify women. These points are the product of the forces of socialization (family, school, church, media, and peer groups), reinforced by gender segregation (both voluntary and enforced).

Think about it this way: only in the last 30 years or so has it been seriously considered that men and women could have relationships outside of a romantic/sexual context. Prior to recent decades, men rarely interacted with a non-familial woman unless he was courting her. Women were simply not present in the school, or the workplace, or the social circle. However, as this began to change, men reacted in the only way they apparently knew how: by making undesired sexual advances on their new female classmates and colleagues. The idea of having purely professional, collegial, or even friendly relationships with women was simply too foreign, and unfortunately little has changed in our culture in that regard. Perhaps this provides some guidance as to why there is still such a prevalence of sexual harassment and assault in the workplace, on college campuses, and in institutions like the US military and even the US Senate.

Society, especially through the media, has continued to sexualize women and objectify their bodies. So-called women’s professions like teaching, nursing, and secretarial work have been sexualized in the minds of men trying to rationalize a situation that to them otherwise lacks the appropriate context. Male-dominated subcultures (like professional football, video gaming, and the comic industry) have also hypersexualized females. Just look at the cheerleaders on the sideline of an NFL game, the models depicted in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, or the accentuated (and exposed) body parts on female video game and comic book characters.

Pornography is a large part of the problem too, as the documentary shows. A lot of porn portrays women as being either highly sexually aggressive or submissive toward men. When these images are present in the minds of young men, they go out into the world thinking that women are much more sexually aggressive or submissive than they actually are. Unfortunately, this gives birth to the idea that women are “asking for it”, that if they dress or act a certain way then they must want sex. A culture that constantly objectifies and sexualizes women creates a perception about their intentions that is almost universally completely and utterly false.

One of the most commonly held beliefs about men and women is that the idea of friendship between them is just a myth. If a man and a woman become friends, it is either because at least one of them wants romance or sex, or because at least one of them is not straight. However, this is simply not true (and again, I can vouch for this out of experience). As I’ve been getting at, this is the challenge:

Boys and girls form their own gender groups in elementary school. They learn their own ways of relating to each other. So when they do get together inspired by puberty, they see each other as dating partners because they’ve never really known each other as friends.

However, this is the reality (emphasis mine):

Platonic love does exist… “friendship attraction”, or a connection devoid of lust, is a bona fide type of bond that people experience. Distinguishing between romantic, sexual, and friendly feelings, however, can be exceedingly difficult. People don’t know what feelings are appropriate toward the opposite sex, unless they’re what our culture defines as appropriate. You know you love someone and enjoy them as a person, but not enough to date or marry them. What does this mean?

In other words, although it happens in practice, it is not yet culturally acceptable for a “regular guy” and a “regular girl” to be “just friends” because society has not come up with a label for it yet. The benefits, though, are enormous, especially for the male friend. “Close male-female friends are extremely emotionally supportive if they continuously examine their feelings, opinions and ideas. Males appreciate this because it tends not to be a part of their same-sex friendships”. Men who become friends with women thus are able to find the outlet to express their emotions that they had been previously lacking.

Growing up, I was always conscious of the fact that I wanted someone that I could talk to, that could support me emotionally and psychologically, that I could express my feelings to without judgment. I lacked that until I was well into college, and even then it has been difficult to escape the notions about being emotional that I have been ingrained with (I remember being told by my mother once that I was too emotional about things). To be honest, I don’t remember the last time I cried; now, even if I want to, I find it nearly physically impossible to do so. I still feel uncomfortable telling people when I’m feeling depressed, or anxious; it’s just not what I do, let alone what a guy does. I’m not supposed to burden other people with my problems. I’m supposed to suck it up and deal with it. In other words, I’m supposed to “be a man”.

I am grateful, though, to today have mentors and friends (almost all of whom are female) that are supportive of me. I’ve found that it has been in the presence of women, not men, that I have been given the opportunity and the space to voice my thoughts, to express my feelings, my anger, my frustration, and to seek guidance.

Yet it still feels weird, given what this culture has taught us. Is it strange for a guy to have women as his best friends? What do others think when they see me with a female friend? That we’re dating? And that if not, I must be gay? I don’t know, maybe I’m just too self-conscious, but I can just imagine that this is what people actually think.

To a certain extent, it pains me when my female friends tell me that I’m not like other guys, or that they wish other guys were like me. What that tells me is that other guys don’t know how to show respect to women. What that tells me is that other guys are too caught up in their own masculinity to be able to be sensitive or emotionally supportive toward women. What that tells me is that the only thing other guys can think about in relation to women is sex. This is what our culture and our society have done, and it makes me sick.

What we need to do, as a culture, as a society, is to stop promoting hypermasculinity as the standard of maleness, and to stop sexualizing and objectifying women. We need to stop normalizing violence in our media and in our communities, and to stop dehumanizing the victims of violence. We need to recognize that men and women are equals, that we are far more alike than we are apart. Perhaps above all, we need to promote and normalize positive images of the non-sexual, non-romantic, male-female relationship. Maybe then young men will start seeing women as classmates, colleagues, and friends in the way that they should.

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My New Blog

I've decided to create a new blog for my non-sports-related posts. My sports blog can still be found at http://enlightenedfan.blogspot.com/.

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Breaking the Cycle of Cynical Manipulation

(Part 3 of a series; see Part 1 and Part 2)

"Presumably, one of the great general goals of education is the promotion of critical thinking. But despite all the lip service that educators devote to that goal, most students–including most 'honors students'–learn to avoid thinking critically about their schoolwork. They learn that their job in school is to get high marks on tests and that critical thinking only wastes time and interferes. To get a good grade, you need to figure out what the teacher wants you to say and then say it.... [T]ruth be told, the grading system, which is the chief motivator in our system of education, is a powerful force against honest debate and critical thinking in the classroom."

- Peter Gray, Ph.D.

“Modern education and knowledge is mainly about how to better dominate nature. It is never about how to live harmoniously with nature. Living well is all about keeping good relations with Mother Earth and not living by domination or extraction.”

- Victoria Tauli Corpuz

"We are shut up in schools for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing. We cannot use our hands, our legs, our eyes, or our arms. We do not know an edible root in the woods. We cannot tell our course by the stars, nor the hour of the day by the sun. It is well if we can swim and skate. We are afraid of a horse, a cow, a dog, a cat, a spider."

- Henry David Thoreau

These three quotes serve as a pretty apt summary of the failings of modern education. Dr. Gray refers to it as "forced education", in which we incarcerate young people in what amount to prisons. I would more broadly argue that we live in a society of "cynical manipulation" (which I have previously written on) composed of two stages: grade slavery as youth, wage slavery as adults.

It has become clear to me over the past several months that what is taught in our schools and colleges is characterized by a severe disconnect from reality. There is an extraordinary lack of practicality in education. Most of what we learn in school is completely peripheral to our actual needs as human beings. In essence, education has created a "culture of dependency". By not learning how to directly obtain our basic needs for survival (i.e. food, fuel, clothing and shelter) we are forced to rely on institutions that do not have our interests as their focus. How else can we explain why, in a world that has never before seen so much material wealth, there are billions who do not have enough to eat, do not have clothes on their backs, and do not have roofs over their heads?

The institutions that I refer to are, broadly speaking, business and government. Although both purport to be serving the public good ("efficient distribution of resources", "protection of the general welfare"), in practice neither does. Instead, they serve as vehicles to increase the already concentrated wealth and power of the elites of society. They are able to do so through their manipulation of the forces of political socialization: the media, religion, and education. I believe that most people would agree that the media is largely controlled by corporations, and that religion often has a self-serving agenda of its own. However, I doubt that people realize just how vital of a role education plays in centralizing power in modern society.

Some reflection reveals that our educational system isn't terribly different from that envisioned by Plato, in which he sought to establish a ruling class of "philosopher-kings". Indeed, modern education serves as much to separate the wheat from the chaff as anything else. Education, along with voting and the free market, give the illusion of a democratic society, with its role cited as being the "great equalizer". What is usually failed to be pointed out is that those who come out at the top of the education system are the ones who started high up the ladder in the first place. Criteria used for college admissions generally favor those who come from wealthy families and live in wealthy school districts. Who you're connected to is often more important than how intelligent you actually are.

Furthermore, what is taught (and how) is highly elitist. Most history courses, for example, focus on the "great men", the kings, generals, presidents and captains of industry who made our world what it is today. This approach fails to acknowledge the contributions made by the oppressed classes of people in driving society forward, such as women, minorities, and the poor. In other words, history is taught from the "top-down", not from the "bottom-up". This furthers the idea that the average citizen is relatively powerless, and fails to challenge the notion that citizens' only duties are to vote, pay taxes, and obey the law.

I would thus propose that any fix to our supposedly "broken" schools would be to change what is taught in the first place. Currently there is a big push to emphasize the STEM subjects in schools: Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. While they are undoubtedly important, putting them front and center is an unfortunate (though calculated) decision. All of these subjects are highly regimented, lacking the open-endedness and ambiguity that promotes independent critical thinking. In addition, it sends a message that "progress" is our ultimate goal, and that human suffering will end once we have bent nature far enough to our will. The consequences of this worldview, of course, are now the threats of global warming and climate change, nuclear annihilation, pandemic disease, and mass crop failures. All of these prospects have been caused by the so-called advances of human society.

A more appropriate education would instead focus on fostering genuine curiosity, creativity and critical thinking. Doing so would turn our young people into lifelong learners, who are able to direct their own education based on personal interest. Children in primary school should be exposed to art, music and theater, and encouraged to use play and interaction with the natural world as learning experiences. They should not be spending springtime sitting in classrooms preparing for and taking standardized tests.

Secondary school curricula would focus on more practical manners. Civics courses would educate young people on how they can participate in the democratic process, through a combination of bottom-up history lessons and directly exercising their own First Amendment rights. Courses in current events would be offered to allow them to engage critically in modern issues of foreign and domestic importance. Classes in personal economy would allow students to prepare for managing their own finances when they enter adulthood. Health classes would be improved and expanded, particularly in the fields of nutrition and sexual and mental health. Lastly, courses promoting sustainable practices, such as conservation and small-scale agriculture, would help prepare for the transformation in daily life that will be brought about by global warming and climate change. These would all be complemented by voluntary courses in literature, philosophy and the arts, for those who want to explore their creative passions. 

Colleges and universities would have their status as vocational schools strengthened. It is here that the next generation of teachers, doctors, scientists, engineers and the like will receive their training. These schools would place much more emphasis on field-learning and much less on classroom pedantry. The main difference, however, would be that the students entering these schools would be much better critical thinkers and, frankly, better human beings. They would be less focused on advancing their own careers and making money, and more focused on using their education to better the society around them.

The most pressing change needed above all, however, is the abolition of grading systems. They serve only to encourage unhealthy competition and to fit every student neatly into one statistic. A more beneficial system would be similar to a narrative evaluation, which would promote introspection on the part of the student and free the teacher from having to place everyone on a bell curve.

Our current "one size fits all" education system serves only to further centralize power into the hands of the few. The changes suggested above are necessary if we are to achieve the Jeffersonian vision of a democratic America. 

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On Cynical Manipulation, Self-Sufficiency and the Value of Human Death

If nothing else, I hope that this essay reveals the immense power that a single Calvin and Hobbes comic strip can have.

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The Illusion of Progress

One can only imagine what Henry David Thoreau would think of modern society. He would see a world of superhighways connecting suburbs to the cities, on which people drove their gasoline powered cars from home to work and vice versa. He would see a world of industrialized agriculture, of tractors and trucks, of hydrocarbon based fertilizers and pesticides. He would see a world of corporate advertising, of mass media, of consumer culture. He would be, I think, rather appalled.

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