Politics

The Inevitable Trump Column

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OK, fine after hearing about Trump repeatedly, I figured I should weigh in because everyone else has and I’m bad and shutting up.

Besides, I have a few observations I figure are worth sharing.

THIS IS HIS NEXT THING: Trump has pretty much committed to politics; he’s defined his brand and burnt many bridges. I may not be sure how wise he is, but I can’t see these decisions being made without some idea of implications.

HE WANTS HIS OWN PARTY: Trump owns things, he puts his name on them, and it’s clear by his occasional flirting with independence he wants to own a political party. If somehow he is pushed out of canidacy you can bet he can take his ball and go elsewhere.

HES GOT ENOUGH SUPPORT TO BUILD ONE: Sure The Party Of Trump may not be big, but he’s got enough support that I think he could easily get a good 10+% vote in a general election. In local elections, a Party of Trump could take some smaller offices. This may not be presidential power, but Trump owning his own party would give him an ego trip for the rest of his life.

THIS IS THE RESULT OF PAST MEDIA INFRASTRUCTURE: The Republicans built their shows and their own network and the like – they built a system meant for epistemic closure. The thing is that anyone who can work the system can walk off with it – and Trump has.

THIS IS THE RESULT OF PAST CHOICES: Trump is exploiting just about every right-wing dog-whistle from the Southern Strategy to fear of Muslims. A lot of past political choices paved the way for this.  This is similar to the media infrastructure being exploited.

THIS IS IN THE OPEN: Now a lot of people are comfortable being openly racist and bigoted. Some politicians and such will continue to exploit this. It has, to some been made acceptable. We’ll probably be putting up with the fallout from this for one to two decades – in the form of crazy policies, open bigotry, and the fight against it.

THIS CAN LEAD TO A DEMOCRATIC SUCCESS: If The Republicans can’t shake Trump and others try to be trump-lite, the Democrats are going to exploit this. They are already, if subtly, but mostly they don’t have to interfere with the brand destruction. If Trump continues to be out there, you can bet he’ll be a successful campaign issue and many Republicans will be Trump Tarred.

THIS CAN LEAD TO REPUBLICAN OPPORTUNITY: At the same time, if the Republican party wants to purge themselves of the rather bigoted baggage that was cultivated, this would be a chance. Tossing Trump away and letting his followers go with him, as painful as it is, would draw a distinction. Though it would take time to re-align and recovery, it would be better than a meltdown -and I’m betting some of the old-school politicians and lobbyists would see this as a way to reassert power by jettisoning extremists and having an issue to bring big-money donors to heel (“don’t be a Trump”).

(I doubt the above will happen, but I consider i theoretically possible)
THERE ARE TOO MANY VARIABLES: I give Trump’s chance to get the Republican nomination to be low, under 30% (requiring a kind of interparty meltdown and opportunism). That’s about the ONLY thing I feel comfortable guessing at however – there’s things I can think MAY happen, but the above is about all I can say with any confidence. Trump’s shaken things up.

A BROKERED CONVENTION WILL MEAN A TRUMP THIRD PARTY: If the Republican convention ends up Brokered and Trump doesn’t get the nod? You can bet he will storm out, the publicity that follows will let him easily form his own party, and he’ll go after Republicans first.

Any thoughts?

  • Steve

#YesAllWomen And Addressing Sexism

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Watching reactions to #YesAllWomen continue to roll in is insightful. It’s informative, and I began to realize something that had been missing in a lot of people’s lives, and something #YesAllWomen is about. Something that is often missed.

So let’s talk about work.

At work someone was giving me advice, and helped me realize that many of us have multiple problem-solving modes. These modes aren’t always the right way to solve the problems, but boy can we get stuck in certain ones because they seem to work or work well enough.

Me, my two modes are the Problem Solver and The Listener, which I imagine are the modes many people have. The Problem Solver dives into things to tackle them, the Listener listens first then suggests or enables. Yours truly has jammed in Problem Solver mode more than once, and now and then people have to smack me out of it or I realize it’s time to be The Listener.  I imagine you’ve been there yourself.

Now I can discuss this intellectually, but #YesAllWomen slapped me in the face with a hard truth.

It’s a call to listen.

Among the stories I saw people not engaging, but judging (it’s anti-male) or making jokes or riding in on their own agendas. But these people weren’t listening.

#YesAllWomen is about women telling their stories so people hear them.

That’s it. People need to listen so we can solve these things – but it takes listening first.

One of the reasons that I’ve posted on this a lot, I realize is that I slowed down and listened here – I wasn’t in Problem Solver mode. Thus it hit me deeply.

Listening impacts someone – it impacts the listener. It changes them. Listening changes us so we can help.  Listening shows the respect people need so they can open up.

So it’s about listening.

A lot is, really.

We all need to listen more, I’d guess.

– Steven Savage

Elliot Rodgers: A Disease Model And Responsibility

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I’ve been following reactions to the Elliot Rodgers shooting, and the #YesAllWomen hashtag it inspired.

As women share their experiences with harassment, misogyny violence, and cultural biases towards women, I’ve also seem many questions come up.  Was Rodgers mentally ill, what other things influenced him, can we blame misogyny if he was mentally ill, and of course who is responsible, etc.  As you can guess I’ve been following this in case you hadn’t noticed from my posts on the subject (one of which made it to Comics Bulletin).

From what I can tell (and this may update) he was troubled, he did get some therapy, he seemed aware of what he was doing, he may have been on the spectrum, and I’m frankly not sure what was up with his family.  However nothing happens in a vacuum.

Now let me state that I consider Rodgers responsible for his actions as he seemed clearly aware of them.  But his horrible crime is calling attention to the world he inhabited, from our culture at large to the MRA/PUA forums that are so often documented at We Hunted the Mammoth.  That bears discussion, because as horrible as he seemed, his crime spotlights problems in cultural enclaves as well as our culture at large – as the #YesAllWomen hashtag notes, for many women, Elliot Rodgers was an extreme of something they’re used to.

So in discussing Elliot Rodgers, his crime, and the role of culture, I’d like to use a metaphor to clear up my take on it – and how we can help.

Let’s talk disease.

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Imagine a society where a disease is extremely common.  People are used to it, and in many cases for a long time didn’t even realize it existed.  The disease had terrible effects, but people kept living and going on with their lives, they were born and died, and in general society went on.  It’s presence was really normalized and not even questioned.

Some were terrible infected, some lightly infected, but it was there and it was passed on.

Over time, people began realizing there was a sickness.  They sought cures or cured themselves, and over time people began realizing that something was wrong.  Folks began speaking up about the effects of this all-too-common illness.

In time it was treated, if in a terribly erratic fashion.  More and more people woke up to the fact something was wrong.  Parents made efforts not to infect their children (or make sure they weren’t as badly infected).  Some people managed complete cures, others managed to put the disease into remission with temporary flare-ups.  In times many people began realizing there was a sickness, though there were arguments over how bad it was, how infected someone was, and so on.

But there were those who didn’t want to be cured.  They thought the disease was normal, or they benefitted from it, or they didn’t know better, or they celebrated it out of a weird contrarianism, or they feared change.  Some of them were so extreme they mostly interacted with other infected people, and their diseases got worse and worse, and some who found them became easily infected.

However, by now people knew enough about the diseases that those who regarded it as normal or even something to celebrate were usually doing so as a choice.  They were presented a healthier world and option, and choose otherwise – some even recruited into their odd worship of the illness.

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Misogyny is a cultural disease.  It turns people against each other, limits members of society, produces violence, restrains growth, dehumanizes us, and holds down the members of a society.  It’s out there, it’s out there in force, but people have been fighting it in whole or half-heartedly, and I think we’ve certainly reduced the infections, had remissions, and even had people get cured.  We’re more and more aware of it.

Elliot Rodgers was at least a troubled person if not someone who needed a lot more therapy.  At best he was a person who wasn’t able to cope and chose a dark path, at worst he had the mental equivalent of a compromised immune system.  Either way, the world of misogyny he waded into was a place where the disease was worshipped, and he got infected bad.

Wether he sought infection or was vulnerable, a cultural pathology was a gateway to him becoming a murderer.  It ended up in his bizarre manifesto which seems to be every misogynistic trope and fantasy I’ve seen on the internet, clearly pointing to how he was “infected” by the various anti-women groups.

Elliot Rodgers was infected with a problem of our culture.  Any debate really is about the method and how it could have been prevented, not if it existed.  He became the embodiment of a larger problem, an extreme case of an already extreme world.

So that’s how I view it.  Our culture has a disease that harms us, and we need to address it – and to do that we need to be aware and admit it. #YesAllWomen is a way to say “here are the symptoms, there is a problem, it is real, and it is true.”

In the end, Elliot Rodgers didn’t take responsibility, blamed a bunch of other people, and killed folks.

We can be responsible, fight the disease in others and ourselves.  But we have to listen.

As for taking action? Beyond some of the resources I posted:

  • If you’re male, honestly review your behavior and ask female friends/relatives if you’ve shown any misogyny.  Be open to criticism.
  • Call out misogyny when you see it.
  • Join an organization, donate to one, or otherwise get involved in something that assists fighting misogyny.
  • Support the #YesAllWomen hashtag.  I’m an admitted skeptic of hastags, but this one is getting attention, showing camaraderie, and also giving useful ideas and information.
  • Pay attention to gender politics when you vote, and look for people that support human rights versus those biased against genders.
  • Come up with your OWN advice and post it to get people to take action.  Let me know.

 

– Steven Savage