An unfiltered Letter to the Democratic Leadership ...

Dear Democratic Party Leadership –

Here’s some critique and some advice from a white female educated southerner who now lives in Ohio but goes home regularly. For the record I’m middle-class and, so far, a yellow-dog Democrat.

1. You need to get your sh*t together.

2. Develop real economic, educational, international and social agendas with real policies and how-tos – Invite in all the smart people to work on this. It’s not a party platform to say we’re not Trump. Trump is lifestyles of the rich and famous. People are not going to turn away from that if you don’t offer something real. Also you have to address this line of “personal responsibility” that folks like Ryan spout. There’s a fantasy that there are scores of people not taking responsibility and the rest of us are suffering for it – there are, but they’re not who they’re saying it is.

3. Develop bipartisan strategies. Identify people across the aisle you can work with. Help the Republicans moderate. Make this part of what sets you apart – educate the public on what is good government and best governing practices. (Look into this so you know what you’re talking about.) Don’t attack someone just because they’re a Republican – make it worth their while to work with you. Become the grown ups we so desperately need. A functioning government requires dialogue, compromise and coalitions. We need to move away from all or nothing.

4. Pick your candidates and establish strategies now for 2018 and 2020 – manage expectations. You screwed the pooch on this in Georgia. Georgia was actually a win because it was a fight and it got a message out but you lost this gain when you failed to manage expectations.

5. Stop eating your young. This Bernie vs. Hillary thing is absolute bullshit. Identify talent – cultivate it – push it. You're distracting from your "young" talent by all of 2016 rehash. Do understand what you did right, and what you did wrong, but not everyone needs to be at the autopsy.

6. Develop strategies and best practices for being heard on social media. Educate your field troops in how to go about it. You suck at this. You try to play Trump, et.al.’s game and it stinks. It stinks when they do it and it stinks worse when you do it. Stop the hyperbole. Stop the name-calling. Go troll hunting but don’t be a troll. Let the professionals - the Baldwins, Larry Wilmore, Robin Thede, Samantha Bee, Trevor Noah, Stephen Colbert, etc. - handle that – they’re very good at it and its funny. Everyone else - at every turn speak truth to power but do it without Bullshit. Call out racism, sexism, classism, homophobia – at every turn – but do it without bullshit.

7. Inform and persuade. Take the time to inform people as to what Populism should be, the differences between private and public and what it means to provide for the common defense – the limits of libertarianism – how bias works and how f**ked up our legal system is, etc.

8. The accusation that you’re elitists is mostly true. Those not like you, who don’t agree with you, you hold in contempt and you heap ridicule upon them. The Right and alt-right does this too and to a greater degree, that doesn’t make it good, right, or fair. Our culture is drowning in contempt. Yes – there are people with some mind-blowing views but you have to do the hard work of winning hearts and minds. Some of those ideas are soul-cringingly repugnant (white nationalism for example), but if we don’t take it on at its core, we will never “win” – (stop a moment and think about what “winning” should mean). Check your prejudices at the door – (as a white southerner with a certain accent I’ve run into this) - all of them. Figure out why folks on the other side think the things they do and speak to it. Build a coalition with the religious left. Don’t shy away from religious issues. Have a real economic strategy for areas that struggle economically. Education is part of this and not just jobs training, but the kind of education that can lead to careers. Identify the drivers of homegrown economies that can lead to economic stability in areas like the South, the Rustbelt, the Midwest, those Urban centers that are struggling – what is your plan to build the middleclass? How do you cultivate entrepreneurship and small businesses? Stop writing off “Red” states – go there – talk to people about what matters to them – F**king persuade them. Be in this for the long haul – have principles and risk losing for them – know what you’ll die on your sword for – make sure people know what these are. We are in a fight for the soul of this nation - f**king act like it.

9. Give people room to change – when a public figure yields ground let them – praise them – give them credit – when they uncynically apologize or “flop” on an important issue – support that – keep watching - but give them room to come around.

10. Manage expectations – yours and others.

11. Have a f**king vision.

For Liberals and Conservatives - a note on feeling(s)

Feelings are not truth – Feelings are not truth – Feelings are not truth – Feelings are not truth -

Acting on your feelings doesn’t make you authentic, but it can make you reckless and ill considered.

Serial killers act on their feelings, rapists, abusers, racists – all are feeling driven.

Feelings are the source of racism, misogyny, prejudice, sexism, and bias of all sorts.

Less antisocial but equally valid as an example – people with bipolar disorder must regularly sort through what is a “true” feeling and what is a product of brain chemistry –

Children, before they’ve learned self-discipline, are examples of an unexamined emotional life capable of equal parts joyful and uninhibited; and cruel and unrestrained.

Narcissists believe in the truth of their feelings.

Feelings are sometimes just intrusive thoughts that need to be ignored. YOU may not be the author of them. They may be a product of conditioning through life experience – or chemical shifts beyond your control. In the medieval period, intrusive feelings were sometimes thought to be the product of Satan or a demon.

Everyday minor biases play out so that we privilege those we FEEL comfortable with over those we FEEL less comfortable with. The system is an accumulation of these choices. It’s not always or even often a conspiracy, but most often a byproduct of people with power helping those they feel comfortable with – generally with no ill (but ill considered) intent -

Feelings are how the system gets rigged.

When you meet someone and you instantly dislike them; when you automatically choose to hire the friend as opposed to the possibly more qualified stranger; when you assume the guilt of someone without evidence but based on what you imagine about them - (how you imagine someone’s motives or intentions absent evidence) … these are feelings at work and they lead to an out of kilter system.

Good news – you don’t have to feel guilty for your feelings, … just for not examining them.

I think it’s important that we consciously decide what principles we are committed to and then as objectively as we can apply ourselves to these. It’s important to build systems that remove the potential for bias as much as possible. We must test what we do against the logic of what we say we believe.

For example – if you believe that it is an ethical imperative that we love one another – then what you say or do should follow the logic of this. Just as some feelings are a negative product of conditioning, some positive feelings must be cultivated, and we must condition ourselves to them.

If we long for a system that is fair, a world where everyone begins on equal footing, then, we really do have to examine our feelings and cultivate those that make us who we hope to be, as individuals and as a nation.

Our Sacred Duty ...

Image Source - America's Library - Original Draft of Declaration of Independence

As citizens – as patriots – we have the obligation to be educated and informed: to come to our civic responsibilities with seriousness, with our homework done and in a thoughtful manner. We’ve allowed our political process to take on the most despicable aspects of a sporting rivalry. Too often we don’t think, we just scream our team’s name and talk trash about the “other side.” The problem with this is that it’s the kind of thing that leads to the horrors of history. If we vilify and dehumanize one another then we run the risk of repeating those histories. We create an environment where people feel justified in participating in the Kristallnacht, the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing or the attacks in Dallas or Orlando.

Bear with me –

We’re responsible. We allow and propagate shaming and hate baiting.

If we don’t want body shaming or people derided because of how they look, then we can’t participate in that. If we say we believe in religious freedom then that means for everyone. If we want our candidate or our ideas considered on their merits – then we have to do the work.
If we ridicule Trump for his appearance we perpetuate this practice.

If we accuse Obama of being a secret Muslim, …

If we deride someone through memes or ugly pictures – we perpetuate that practice. I’ve seen terrible pictures of Melania, Michelle, Hillary and Donald.


If we demonize, if we vilify, if we use foul terms to refer to one another, if we engage in name calling and lose sight of our mutual humanity, we perpetuate, cultivate this kind of culture. When we lose sight of our individual humanity, when we demonize groups and refuse to engage in the harder work of taking us each on the content of our characters (King) – then we lose our empathy. Empathy is what holds us back from violence. Empathy knits us together and cultivates caring. Let us try to imagine into one another and understand where we are coming from.

I beg you to take a pledge to not participate in hate baiting – to be a bit more forgiving, a bit more kind …

Do the thinking. Discuss what bothers you, your fears, your hopes, how we can together achieve a better world. Do comparative research. Do the work of having real exchanges. Let us privilege a conversation of ideas and policies. Let us take seriously the future of our nation. Let us cultivate the “angels of our better nature.”

The Rules for (Political) Discourse ...

I believe the world would be better if we could argue and debate without it turning into mutual loathing. I truly believe that if we could step back and allow ourselves to be moved sometimes –

Well toward this end these are the rules I’ve laid out for myself – and of course I won’t be perfect but I am going to try.

1. Do not betray your ethics. You know it may sound sappy but I believe in all of the love one another stuff. I’m trying. Evaluate what you say and do against that ethic. Try to be a decent human being.
2. Try not to bait people and try not to take the bait.
3. Try to stick to issues – try to lay out positions cleanly, without getting personal.
4. Let people you don’t agree with have room to speak. (I won’t defriend you for differing views but I will for hate speech.)
5. Don’t call people, known or unknown, what my mother would have called “ugly names”.
6. Try to find the overlaps. Seriously – TRY TO FIND THE OVERLAPS.
7. I don’t have to have the last word.
8. Let go of anger – it only closes us off from one another.
9. Work in the garden, read a book, run, walk, watch the sunset – make art – dwell on what you love - see things for what they are.
10. Life – the world – is an aggregate – do your best to make your part of it kind.

ethics...

Pictured: Caravaggio, The Raising of Lazarus, Museo Regionale, Messina, 1609


Metaphysics –
“… metaphysics was the ‘science’ that studied ‘being as such’ or ‘the first cause of things’ or ‘things that do not change.’ It is no longer possible to define metaphysics [in this way] … there are many philosophical problems… now considered … metaphysical … in no way related to first causes or unchanging things; the problem of free will, for example, or the problem of the mental and the physical.”

From a renaming of fourteen of Aristotle’s works that have been given the collective title “Metaphysics.”

• Chinese metaphysics = “that which is above matter” (the study of)

- the science of divine things.
Reference: http://plato.standford.edu/entries/metaphysics/
Viewed May 30, 2009

Metaphysics – an umbrella overarching.

I have been thinking awhile on Metaphysics and as well as on Derrida’s theology. Derrida’s is I think perhaps a purer theology than some others in that it is freed from the theos.

Also I have been thinking awhile about the nature of ethic/ethos. How does one become “ethical”? How does one know “good”? To define a “good” first one must become awake to a need to define a “good:” a conscious examination of what is a “good” and by what criteria it will be measured.

Can that definition come from the exterior? To some extent it must. It comes in part from instruction and in part, and perhaps more fully, from the observation of the consequences resulting from the choices and the acts of the individual and others. This need for study makes pre-requisite the passage of time and in some measure of awareness.

How long does it take to develop a knowing of “good”? For some a “good” is never known because it is never questioned, never consciously considered. It is for most a process of degrees that does not end until this self is ended.

“This becoming responsible… This trembling seizes one at the moment of becoming a person, and the person can become what it is only in being paralyzed [_transie_], in its very singularity, by the gaze of God. Then it [the person] sees itself seen by the gaze of another, ‘a supreme, absolute and inaccessible being who holds us in his hand not by exterior but by interior force’ (Jan Patocka, Heretical Essays on the Philosophy of History, 116 – quoted by Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death, 6, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1995)

Consciousness is the waking of the interior witness. As discussed in Patocka, it is the presence of God. It, the witness, becomes the self that is aware. Without this awakened self it is impossible to take responsibility. “To take responsibility” requires a self-interrogation, an awake interior witness that holds the self accountable to a criteria. This constitutes the integrity of the self. The consistency of the logic exercised is the only means by which the ethical nature of the exterior self is manifested. The interior witness is unknowable, un-accessible to any other but the self to which it bears witness. It is a mystery. Its nature can only be imagined through the logic which is demonstrated by the actions of that external self.

Lack of responsibility grants authority to something other than the witness/self. This “other voice”, of my mother, of my teacher, of my neighbor, of my community’s collective voice, of my political party, of my gang, of my religion, or yet some other-other; may define for me an externally determined “good” and become an internalizing of a “better than.” By employing this authority I may employ a criteria that places my performance of “goodness” as a contrast to the definitions of “goodness” held by others. This accounting to an external authority reassures me that I am better than some other and relieves me of doubt and the work of self questioning.

Eg.: the making of a bowl – clean and perfect – demonstrates to you, the external, my ability to “make good”; to follow the rules of “goodness” – those rules unto which I have been inculcated, they are second nature, an interior, yet un-interrogated voice.

This is the performance of training; doing without thinking; doing without consideration.

An individual’s ethics are played out in the performance of the good. How deeply interrogated are its conditions? How consistent is the employment of the logic extended from it? And what are the limits of that logic’s extension?

It requires the work of thinking to take responsibility. It is reasonable, and almost impossible to do otherwise, to make a formulation for what will constitutes ones ethics from other sources, but it is irresponsible to do so without an interior dialogue which questions the meanings and applications of the positions: to think closely, to take the time to denote and privilege what one values.


How do we know good?

Who is it that I want to be? How do I reconcile my failures with my ideals? When do I become awake?