Now Is Not The Time To Run.

I'm not going to tell you that everything is going to be okay.  The chances of everything being okay seem about as good as the proverbial snowball's chance in hell.  Chances are very good that a significant number of Americans (specifically those with serious chronic illnesses) might not survive the next few years of our new government if the protections provided by the ACA are lost.  Chances are good that the families of people I love are going to be torn apart, and that people I care about will lose the right to marry and adopt (I presume that the constitutional protections against retroactive laws will protect the marriages of those already married, but we will see).  The government we have elected campaigned on promises to harm people I love, and that does not even consider the campaign of our presumptive President Elect, Donald Trump.

So no, I can't tell you that everything is going to be okay.  But I do want to tell you not to give up hope.  There is a future, and that future can still be better.

But for that better future to come we will have to stand and fight.

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It has been hard to stay hopeful these last few days.  A man who campaigned on a platform of ethnic nationalism won the US election.  He won that election at a time when unprecedented obstruction by our legislative branch means that he will immediately be able to alter the balance of the Supreme court.  Simultaneously, the Republican party won both the House and the Senate.  This means, in essence, that despite our Constitution's careful system of checks and balances, Donald Trump comes into office with no branch of the government to oppose him.

Trump comes in to power following a campaign that saw unprecedented foreign interference in a US election.  Foreign interference on the part of Russia in support of Donald Trump.

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Long ago, in those far off days of the 1990's the US had a monitoring program set up to keep North Korea from getting nukes in exchange for aid.  It was controversial, but it worked for as long as the US maintained it.  Following the 2000 election, Bush II decided to abandon the monitoring program in favor of stiffer restrictions on North Korea.  Following the 2002 US abandonment of the agreement, North Korea resumed their nuclear program, and in 2006 successfully tested a nuclear warhead.

Today we have a similar monitoring agreement with Iran (which had been on the verge of gaining nuclear capability prior to the agreement) which has kept Iran from gaining nuclear capabilities for the past year.  Donald Trump has promised to violate that agreement.  If Trump keeps his word, then it seems almost certain that we will have a nuclear armed Iran shortly thereafter.

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Talking about Iran and North Korea might seem like a digression, but I bring the issue of nuclear armaments up because I fear that if the US ceases to act as a restriction to Russia's ability to act more openly and violently, particularly against Muslims, that we could end up facing a true clash of civilizations (If you are not familiar with Samuel Huntington's article The Clash of Civilizations? I suggest you familiarize yourself with it).  If that clash does occur, and if it involves nuclear armed nations on both sides, nuclear war is as likely as it has been since the end of the Cold War.

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So how do those of us who value human rights and cultural diversity find hope?  Well I can't speak for you, but I can speak for myself.

My immediate reaction to Trump's victory was to start thinking about moving to Canada.  I know that this seems like a trite bit of hand-wringing, but I am serious.  I am a dual-citizen of the US and Canada, as is my daughter.  I actually can go.  I was motivated in my fear by the shocking rise in antisemitism I have seen in this country over the course of the Trump campaign.  Thousands of years of history also suggest that when ethnic nationalism picks up things get dangerous for Jews.  My immediate thought was that I don't want to wait for our synagogue to get firebombed before I get my family to safety.

But that is a false choice.  There is nowhere far-away enough in this world to protect us from nuclear war.  And even if the people who want to harm my family have been empowered, we are not on Trump's hit-list.  At least not yet.

Not everyone can say that.  My gay friends ARE on the GOP's hit-list.  My chronically ill friends ARE on the GOP's hit-list.  My Muslim friends ARE on Trump's hit-list.  And my Latin American friends and family ARE on Trump's hit-list.

Considering all the people who ARE in harm's way right now, it would be cowardly to run because danger MIGHT come my family's way.

If WWIII happens, then Canada won't be far enough away to protect us.  And if WWIII does not come, then we need to do what we can to protect those who are vulnerable.  In the face of this wave of dehumanization there is no moral choice but to fight.  I spoke to my ex-wife following the election to see if she had plans to move back to Canada.  I think she said it well when she said "There is no running away from this.  Neither do I want to, I think it's better to stay and be the change."

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I can't tell you how to fight just yet.  I am still getting my bearings.  This is an uncomfortable place for me to be.  I have no choice but to consider the GOP the enemy until they repudiate ethnic nationalism.  And with the defeat of Hillary it seems that the liberal wing of the Democratic party is ascendant.  For a centrist like myself who doesn't particularly care for all of Bernie Sander's Democratic Socialism this is extra hard.  Yes, I support human rights, cultural openness, and environmentalism, but I don't really think of those things as political values, I think of those things as human values.  On the things that I do consider political values (economic policies, limited government, gun rights, reproductive rights, etc.) I am a mixture of positions.  There is no political home for me right now.

When it comes to how best to organize from here on out, I am not yet sure.  But I do know that we have to be vigilant, and ready to fight.  We cannot stand by idly when our government moves to harm people in our name.

To end off I will quote my friend Eric:

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P.S. On the topic of people lobbying to try to get Electors to vote unfaithfully.  Yes, I understand that the electoral college was created explicitly to prevent someone like Trump from gaining power, but I feel very strongly that electoral college shenanigans could trigger civil war right now.  Trump is set to harm a lot of people, but open armed conflict in this country would hurt a lot more people.  This feels like a perilous time.  I do not support trying to subvert the electoral system. (I also consider there to be other value in having the Electoral College.  You might not agree, but here is a video that captures what I normally like about the system.)

Marriage is Finally Legal For All Americans

It is with great pleasure that I read the news this morning that the Supreme Court of the US has ruled that Gay Marriage is legal.

Yay!

As I have written before, the majority of people in the US have been in favor of legalization of marriage for gays for a couple years now.  This is in clear contrast to the legalization of interracial marriage which took 30 years of legality to gain majority approval.  It was seriously not until the late 1990's that the majority approved of interracial marriage.  Of course, many people in the US still vehemently oppose gay marriage.  Rick Santorum described the decision as "Judicial Tyranny."

If you grew up in a place like I did, where interracial marriages were the norm (Nome Alaska, fyi) it might seem strange that until the late 90's most Americans still opposed interracial marriage.  But when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of interracial marriage in 1967 only 20% of the population approved of interracial marriage, and change was slow to come to the hearts of the majority.  Today 84% of Americans approve of interracial marriage, but most of that change happened over just the past 20 years.  When interracial marriage was legalized it truly was Judicial Tyranny.  It was also right, and just, but there was no way that the majority would have voted in favor.

I feel like the conservative anger at this decision has a lot to do with the fact that conservatives know that there is no rolling back this decision.  The majority is on the side of justice and equality when it comes to marriage.  The days when the numbers were on the side of those who wish to suppress homosexuals with the force of government are gone, but for conservative politicians this is a problem.  No politician can get elected without getting the support of their base.  The majority of conservative voters oppose equality for gays, even though the majority of America as a whole is in favor.  This means that there is nothing that conservative politicians can do to change the outcome, all they can do is ride the anger of their base.  You can rest assured that anger over gay rights will remain a caucusing issue for a while yet, but the anger will be politically impotent, which will likely make the anger burn hotter in the short term.

For conservatives the best option for venting that anger is to decry "Judicial Tyranny," even if polling suggests that the Supreme Court, in this case, is actually more accurately reflecting popular opinion.  

But why did the Supreme Court need to rule in favor of Gay Marriage if the majority was in favor?  The answer is of course my favorite political hobby-horse, division politics.  The US is not divided into two clear cut camps, the vast majority falls somewhere in the middle, but about half fall a little more conservative, and half fall a little more liberal.  To gain traction most politicians need to appeal to the more politically active people who might support them, and those people are usually more extreme than the middling majority.  So issues like Gay Marriage are a good way to make sharp divisive distinctions for politicians, and stumping on those issues gets the base mobilized.  

This means that even though the majority of the population is in favor of equality, a little over half of the elected legislators are beholden to a active minority that opposes equality.  In this case, division politics allowed a minority to block any legislation that might have legalized gay marriage.  But now the Supreme Court has moved, and that minority is not going to be able to put the genie back in the bottle.  I'd hardly call that "Judicial Tyranny."

This is good news.

There is a part of me that can't help but wish we could have had a vote, like Ireland, but I understand that the US political climate makes that too tall an order.  Our political system feeds on anger and fear on both sides, and a vote on an issue like marriage is ultimately asking people to vote on an issue of hope and fairness for the future.

But in any case, now that gay marriage is legal there is no way that a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage is going to pass.  Marriage equality is here.  Our country just got a little fairer.  And this is not an isolated thing either.  Despite what you may hear, our country is actually doing pretty well.  Our country is changing rapidly.  Feminism and civil rights, which were so very radical 50 years ago, are becoming the norm.  This same time period over the past 20 years that has seen the majority come to approve of gays and interracial marriage has also seen the precipitous drop in homicides and gun violence (yes, despite what you read in the news gun violence and homicides are at historically low levels in the US), crimes against children are down, the list goes on.  

For all the fear that plagues our politics and media, our society is actually improving.  Ironically, the same ubiquity of information that makes our society's problems seem worse seems to make our society more sensitive to the problems and awareness makes the problems less common.  Our modern connectedness is like a searchlight lighting up all the dark corners, and while the things we find in the dark corners may make us recoil, there are fewer places for bad things to hide.

This makes me hopeful.

And the legalization of gay marriage is another part of this sweeping change in our country, and it also makes me hopeful.  It leaves one less place for discrimination against homosexuality to hide.  Less than 20 years ago Matthew Shepard was beaten and tortured to death, and the defense was "gay panic."  That is emblematic of how rapid the change regarding homosexuality in this country has been, and just how bright the light shining into the dark corners is these days.

And now, I think it is tie to stop using the phrase "Gay Marriage."

It's just "Marriage" now.