Tag Archives: Politics

When Politics Becomes a Team Sport

Voting by identity instead of values

We have a problem — and it’s us. We treat politics and government as binary, as if they were an either-or situation. You’re either this or that, with no room for nuance, complexity, or actual thought. That’s how we end up voting along party lines, like a team sport instead of choosing what aligns with our values or what might actually serve the whole. And this is why/how the Democrats continue to drift further right every cycle, and the Republicans continue to become more extreme every election cycle, and we become more polarized, tired, and confused. It’s intellectual laziness dressed up as political identity, and the politicians just become more feckless.

Here are examples of what I hear.

If you are pro-Second Amendment, you must be a Republican.

Millions of gun owners exist across multiple disciplines in the spectrum. And whether or not you’re a gun owner, when you question certain gun-control proposals, suddenly you’re accused of wanting children to die in schools, or you don’t care about the Second Amendment. Nuance? GONE.

If you believe in secure borders, you must be a right-wing nut job. OR You don’t believe in what ICE is doing, so you’re okay with illegals raping and murdering U.S. citizens.

It couldn’t possibly be that maybe you are a Republican, or you’re a Democrat, progressive, or independent who simply believes safety and humanity can coexist. In the either/or narrow world, you either want open borders or you’re a Marxist. There’s no room for the idea that security and compassion are not mutually exclusive. (Commentary on ICE is a whole issue of horrors on its own, as well as all “illegals” being criminals.)

If you are a Republican, you must have voted for Trump.

Because apparently no Republican with a functioning brain could ever make another choice. Again, nuance? Nope.

If you didn’t vote for Kamala Harris, you must be a closet Republican or you hate Black women.

Or if you didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton, you must hate women in general and simply don’t want a woman as President. The possibility that their policies weren’t compelling enough — and that the DNC continues to fumble — is never considered.

If you supported Zohran Mamdani in the New York City mayoral race, you are a communist or want New York to turn into a Muslim state.

It couldn’t be that you want corruption out of politics, or that you want a city that works for everyone. No — you must be a radical jihadist.

If you want law enforcement reform, defunding, or abolition, you are okay with murderers and rapists running free.

It’s reasonable that a system with a foundation rooted in slave patrols has evolved into state‑sanctioned violence rather than community safety. Let’s talk about how we pour more funding into policing year after year, yet crime rates don’t drop enough, neighborhoods aren’t improving, and the abuses and atrocities continue. But imagining something better is apparently out of the question.

If you refuse to vote for a candidate because they refuse to condemn violence against Palestinians, you’re antisemitic, or a single-issue voter.

Genocide, anywhere and against anyone, is morally a full stop for many. It’s not about hate for an entire group, but being opposed to systems of oppression, suppression, and, frankly, crimes against humanity. If there is no line drawn there, my God, where is it then?

Every election, there is someone who tells me to f*ck off because I don’t bow to the DNC like them, or thinks that they can bully me into voting for the candidate that mainstream media says is “the one.”

This is the nonsense that got us into our current mess, and why we are in this disgusting political situation. Some of us have been warning (screaming!) about what was coming for years, while others sat back, ignored the signs, and — even without realizing it — voted for the very outcomes they feared. Someone once said to me, “You better vote for ______________.” I remember thinking, Or what? What are you going to do? Revoke my citizenship? Snub my Constitutional right to vote? Stop talking to me? Get out of here. People who claim to know me (should) understand that ultimatums without evidence are pointless, and bullying is the fastest way to make me stop taking anything you say after that seriously.

If you dare criticize a politician from your own party, suddenly you’re the unhinged one.

We’ll fight tooth and nail against the atrocities of “the other side,” yet somehow develop complete cognitive dissonance when it comes to our own favorites and eat our own for daring to call out their wrongdoings.

People don’t want to take the time to follow the money, the votes, the practices that count.

They don’t track how their “favorites” actually vote in Congress. They won’t take the time to look up where their donations are from. They’ll cheer a lengthy, fiery, made‑for‑camera speech on the House floor, then ignore the fact that the same representative turns around and votes against their interests. We don’t build the habit of holding elected officials accountable, and we certainly don’t develop the muscle memory to remember their records. Sometimes I wonder if this same pattern shows up in people’s personal lives too — trusting leaders who rely on apathy, convenience, or complacency to get away with things they shouldn’t.

I’m having a hard time even finding folks engaged enough to sign a petition.

It literally doesn’t get any easier than that. Someone once told me it was “too much reading.”

“I don’t know much about politics, but I’m voting for Gavin Newsom for President because he’s so good looking.”

A woman once told me this while we were waiting together, and there are other similar instances where this sentiment prevails. This level of engagement is concerning. I’ll admit I get a kick out of his snarky posts on X, but that’s not what earns my vote.

The “Gotcha!” Conversations

“If you say this, then you must be that” is a tired conversation, not a flex. We’re in a political culture that’s forgotten how to think, afraid to question, and unable or maybe unwilling to imagine beyond the either/or commentary. We’ve become lazy voters — quick to embrace our favorites, but willing to ignore their failures, their records, or face challenging, inconvenient facts when they surface.

Now we're here — stuck with a festering boil of a narcissist in the White House, taking a chainsaw to our democratic experiment, shredding the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and every amendment he can get his hands on, while we stand around daring to wonder how it all went so wrong.
Recent conversation with someone who seems to believe that
belonging to a political party makes you a monolith.

It’s a System and I Take It Personal

I know you might find me confounding and even exasperating at times. I know you may not understand (or care) why my voice is so loud and my energy so explosive.  It’s possible that you think I don’t handle things appropriately, whatever that means to you, and I’m sure some of you think I do too much and others think I don’t do enough. It is what it is. I’m sure I could use some balance.  I am sure of a lot of things, and I am sure that I will not apologize for any of this. I appreciate the truth in matters, even when it forces me to change direction or it makes some “side” look bad and it doesn’t feel good. I may not always get it right, but I know I get it wrong less. I am a human being first, and a mother second, but the second feels like my most important job. Like most people I am a lot of other things as well – hooks and edges, bumps and curves, questions and answers, some broken parts – but both of those pieces, human and mother, drive me the most.  What I want for my family is nothing less than I would wish for yours, but NEVER at the EXPENSE of the LIVES of mine. 

Political Hypoxia

“The trouble is, we think we have time.”

Jack Kornfield

Centrist ideals and actions, passivism, and just plain refusing to see (cognitive dissonance) are killing this planet. Essentially, it is killing us. You may have the urge to blame it on those that are obviously being destructive, or obviously protesting that climate change is even real. But every time you make up an excuse for our government officials and political groups ignoring the issue of climate change, you are aiding and abetting those that intentionally have ill will for this planet as evidenced by their desires for personal gain over a survivable planet. And when you think about it, you have personal gain issues, too. Yes. “We have more important issues at hand,” has been said to me. I wonder what that could be? I’ll tell you what it is, and it’s not what you think. It’s your fear – your irrational fear that Trump is the biggest thing we have to defeat – over anything and everything else. F.E.A.R. I don’t know about you, but most people don’t operate in their best thinking when they are coming from fear. We’re all afraid, but we shouldn’t let our fear have us operate from the inability to move out from in front of our noses, unable to see the bigger picture.

Right now the Amazon Rain Forest is burning at phenomenally faster rates than have EVER been known! Some of this is on purpose – for monetary gain. How disgusting! Climate change is killing it as well. We laugh, scoff and wag our fingers at climate change deniers… but how is waiting around for a better time to do something about it any better? In my opinion, that’s even WORSE, because we know better.

I am in an ongoing fight and struggle for equality for all persons on this planet, as many of you may be. If you know me, or have read many of the things I write, this is likely not news to you. Off the top of my head right now, I can’t think of anything more important to me than seeing a world that works for all. Full disclosure is, I selfishly do this because ultimately that’s the world I want for my grandchildren. I’m probably not going to see it. Maybe, but probably not. That’s OK. That’s the bigger picture. It doesn’t mean I’m ignoring the louder, more current concerns or that I’m not afraid. But the bigger picture speaks louder to me than the current, temporary ones. Does that mean that I/we ignore the current madhouse? No, not at all. What it means is that we should not put all our eggs in the basket of fearing the current madhouse. There has to be a balance. But if we’re reacting now without any regard for later, that is a God-awful strategy for our future. If your child is crying because he has a wet and soiled diaper and he’s hungry, but you just realized you’re out of diapers and formula, are you going to run out and get diapers to avoid the current mess, but wait on the formula because it’s less pressing at this moment? Or do they both require your full attention?

This is where we are. Mother Earth is SCREAMING for help, but many of us can’t seem to focus our energy on anything other than the mess in front of us. It’s urgent, yes, but there’s something bigger and also urgent that is starving for our attention as well. And if we don’t take care of it, there won’t be one single reason for any of the rest of it. The thing about starvation is, once it’s noticeable, there’s very little time to correct it, if at all. And even once it’s corrected, there may be lasting, irreversible damage to the point that saving it is in reality only slowing down the inevitable.

This is not about how much or little you might be doing for a better world. This is not about making the important work any of us are doing now suddenly worthless. IT’S ALL IMPORTANT. IT’S ALL NEEDED, ALL NECESSARY. But operating out of fear to the degree that we let ourselves be led by the nose, to ignore the underhandedness of those that we allow to represent us is going to be our end. And we do this for the short-term goal out of fear. Fear has us blind. Fear has us deaf. Fear has us cutting ourselves short. It’s sad. It’s maddening watching some of those that I love, appreciate, and think so highly of, and know without a doubt to be otherwise intelligent folks give it all up for the moment.

If you think we have bigger fish to fry than climate change, or that it can wait until after the next election, you clearly need the oxygen that we are currently running out of. This is dire. If you actually think the DNC or GOP has your best interests at heart, you MUST be suffering from hypoxia and can’t think straight. Wake up… while you still can. How is it that you can look the other way while they make up their own rules and decisions, mostly ignoring what the voters want, bowing to them out of fear instead of standing up to them and being fearless. Last election, and it looks like the upcoming one as well, so many people wanted to blame people like me for a sub-par candidate losing the election. You should be blaming yourselves and the DNC who led you by the nose KNOWING BETTER. Many of us tried to tell you, and you ridiculed and laughed at us. We’re telling you again, and you’re still laughing.

I wish I could say that “I told you so” tasted sweet, but I have to wade in the bitter poison right along with you.

Your social justice and equality issues also do not take a bigger stage than climate change. Again, these issues are not less important, but to be perfectly clear, they won’t be an issue at all if we keep ignoring climate change or putting it off until ____________. If you care so much about social dynamics and the struggles that are going on right now in our communities of color and our underserved communities, then you absolutely SHOULD be thinking about climate change. Why? If you have your community activism hat already in any arena involving those communities, then I already know you are aware of how they get hit the hardest, the fastest, and the longest when anything bad comes down the pipeline. They also take the longest to recover – if ever. Sometimes it’s actually by design, sadly, and sometimes it’s because of positioning. Here are just a few examples: housing crisis, redlining, gerrymandering, poverty, bank bailouts, war on drugs, high cost of pharmaceuticals, disparities in healthcare, inflation, etc. DO YOU THINK FOR ONE SECOND THAT AS OUR CLIMATE AND EARTH DETERIORATE THAT THESE COMMUNITIES WON’T SUFFER HARDER, FASTER, AND LONGER THAN OTHERS – THAT SOMEHOW THEY’LL ESCAPE THE USUAL ROLL CALL FOR THIS? Like I said, if you already have your community activism hat on, it shouldn’t be hard for you to see how this will go. All our work will be for not if we refuse to address our climate issues NOW – not after the election; not after… anything else. NOW.

Look, I am also guilty of waiting to fully address climate change, and not being willing to realize that if our world deteriorates, there is no point at all to anything else that I work for, strive for, pour my heart and soul out into. My selfish reasons for the other activism work that I do has to be, and is, the same for climate change. I want my grandchildren to grow up in a world that their Gram helped make better and survives for them. I don’t want them to suffer from the effects of racism, classism, bigotry, hunger, violence, xenophobia… and I most certainly don’t want them to suffer because they can’t breathe or the little food that’s left or the water is poisoning them. As a bonus, I would also like to live out the rest of my life on a planet that is being loved and nurtured, knowing it’s going to be a safe place for my Milani Jhené and Joshua Rey, and whichever beautiful grandbabies that might come next.

We need to stop wishing for a better tomorrow before all we can wish for is any tomorrow.

Please donate.
Supporting Amazon Watch is a critical way to protect the rainforest, defend indigenous rights, and address climate change.