Thank You John McCain

A 2008 John McCain photo from his bid for the Presidency.  Taken without permission from Minnesota Public Radio https://blogs.mprnews.org/newscut/2018/08/on-john-mccain/

John McCain has passed.  A public servant whose career spanned six decades has left us.  His life and career were marked by triumphs and tragedies, scandals and heroism, controversy and bipartisanship.  Through the last three decades of ever metastasizing political balkanization, I have known John McCain as a steadfast voice of fairness and conciliation.  In a political landscape dominated by division politics, McCain strove to promote bipartisanship and a US for all Americans regardless of party affiliation.  McCain was a conservative Republican, but unlike the tribal identity politicians that dominate that once Grand party today, McCain's tribe was not the people who call themselves "Real Americans," his tribe was all Americans, including the ones who disagreed with him politically.

More than any politician that I have followed during my adult life, Senator McCain modeled an attitude that political rivals and opponents were not villains or enemies, but rather they were people with whom one could disagree on some issues while seeking to cooperate on others.  And consistently over the last 20 years, the Senator was someone who spoke out against torture, human rights abuses, hyper-partisanship, conspiracy theories, lies, and the incivility that threatens the survival of civil society in the country.  None of those things are unconnected, because they all stem from the idea that other people are human beings, and the belief that the best way to make our lives better is to work to improve our shared world.

Now, in fairness, John McCain was often too conservative for my tastes, and there were plenty of issues where I disagreed with the man on how to make things better, but he stood for an ideal of liberal democracy that I think stands above specific policy positions.  That ideal is that a liberal democratic society is not just for the winners and the majority, it is also for the losers and the minorities.  A liberal democracy is different from a direct or true democracy.  The core of that difference is the rule of law.  The idea that it is laws (not individuals or the electoral majority) that rule us, and those laws apply to all equally.  This means that if the majority votes to strip a minority of rights, life, or liberty that they cannot, because in a liberal democracy the rights of the minority are protected by laws.  For a contrast we can consider Soviet Gulags, wherein political dissidents were imprisoned and worked to death.  In that situation there was no protection of the rights of minorities or political losers.  In a system were simple majority rules (which would be true democracy), there is no protection for the rights of the minority.

Extremists of all political stripes frequently criticize many of the "undemocratic" provisions of our Constitution that seek to limit the ability of electoral majorities to force their will on others.  One very common refrain on the Left-wing of the political discussion is that the electoral college should be abolished because it prevents people who live in large urban areas from dictating policy to rural people.  On the Right-wing, a common gripe is Judicial Tyranny preventing religious conservatives from forcing their beliefs on everyone else (note that complaints about the judicial branch come from all sides depending on who is in power, because the judiciary acts as a check on legislation, so whoever is passing laws is the side getting shut down by the judiciary, and every new President tries to stock the judiciary with people that will obstruct the people that succeed them in the next inevitable pendulum swing).  And in fairness, most people do live in cities, and most Americans are Christians, so why can't urban Americans just tell rural people how to live, and why can't Christians deny the right to exist freely to people of other faiths?  Because those other people, be they rednecks, gays, hipsters, or Muslims (or gay-redneck-hipster-Muslims) are also Americans, and they have rights.  More broadly even, liberal democracy holds that all people, being human, have rights.

This ideal is foundational to this country.  The second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence lays it out clearly: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."

The United States of America is founded on the idea that all people have rights by the simple fact of their existence as human beings.  That is the core of liberal democracy, and that is the core that John McCain fought for and defended, and that core is the reason that I have been such a John McCain fan, even as I disagreed with him on many specific issues.  Now I can't let discussion of liberal democracy pass without acknowledging the fact that our country has NEVER truly lived up to its ideals.  At the time of the Declaration of Independence, that definition of people did not include women, or blacks, or in many cases non-land-owners.  We have never truly had a country where all people are equal and all humanity's rights are equally protected.  But we have had the idea that we should have a country where everyone is equal, and that idea is worth fighting for.

No one on earth has ever lived in a society with truly perfect equality, and while we can all imagine such a society, no one truly knows what such a society would look like.  And that is why civility in society is so vital, without civility it is impossible to work with people who disagree on how best to achieve a more perfect union.  This is why the Regular Order that John McCain spent so long trying to protect and restore is of value.  Regular Order is not just people being polite to each other, it is the essence of non-violently resolving political differences to maintain the rule of law in this country.   Regular Order has failed before.  When it breaks down the results can be catastrophic, to the tune of more than a million dead one time when people got tired of being polite.  Of course in the instance that I just mentioned, the disagreement was over whether or not human beings can be property, and I don't think that is the type of disagreement that we can allow to stand, Regular Order or not.  But I don't think that we are facing (at least within mainstream American society) any such fundamental disagreements today.  And yet Regular Order is suspended in our government, and partisan rancor is at a dangerously high level.

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Whether you agreed with McCain's positions or not, I hope that you were able to appreciate his defense of Regular Order.  I know that he first came to my attention in the lead up to the 2000 election (the first Presidential election I got to vote in).  I was impressed by the way that he seemed to be championing an ethos of cooperation.  You hear politicians talk all the time about how Americans need to "Come Together," and yet that message always seems to imply that if only the other (bad) side would stop being unreasonable and acquiesce to all of this (good) side's demands everything would be great.  In contrast, McCain seemed to talk about compromise and bridge building.  As an idealistic young man I was shocked that his message didn't seem to galvanize others.  I have since come to realize that people don't get nearly as excited about incrementally getting some of what they want as they do about promises to have everything their own way.

I came of age in a unique time.  The Cold War was over.  We had won.  We had no Enemy with whom we were struggling.  The US was at peace and unchallenged for global supremacy.  The economy was booming.  Tech was offering the prospect of unlimited wealth and people were retiring at 30!  The US had finally brought spending and taxes into line, and there was a budget surplus.  The national debt was being paid down.  It was a hopeful time.  As a teenager and very young adult it felt like there was no real need to worry about politics.  What could go wrong.  Endless peace, prosperity, and budget surpluses were what we had.  All our leadership had to do was stay the course and things would go on being fine.

As we all know, that Pollyanna analysis of mine was overly simplistic and doomed.  The prosperity that seemed to be the new normal turned out to be a bubble.  But peace and budget surpluses should have been easy to maintain.  Leading up to the 2000 election I felt like it didn't really matter too much who won.  We would all be fine.  But it would be nice to have someone like McCain who might save us from the kind of partisan gridlock that resulted in the President being impeached for lying about cheating on his wife.  When McCain lost the primary to Bush II, I shrugged.  I didn't think it mattered too much, and so I voted for Browne since I didn't like any of the other candidates (Gore and Bush seemed like Tweedleblah and Tweedledumber, and Nader was simply too progressive for my tastes).

I want to avoid falling into the trap of bashing on other politicians while trying to eulogize McCain, so suffice to say, the 2000 election did matter after all.  It mattered a lot.  Eight years later the budget surpluses of the 1990's were a long lost memory replaced by unprecedented deficits and generational war.  Meanwhile the culture wars of Gingrich vs. Clinton had been replaced by government sanctioned torture and assassinations, and the legislative gridlock of the 90's had been displaced by executive fiat and signing statements.  We were living in a country where the President could wage war unilaterally, meaningful legislation was hard to pass so the President simply gave executive orders to run the country, prisoners of war were declared unlawful enemy combatants and held in extraterritorial centers without trial, tortured, and/or assassinated remotely by drones.  Through this time McCain remained a lonely voice among his caucus-mates calling for a return to Regular Order.

At the end of those eight years, I (like many) believed that our country needed a radical change in regime in order to return to a government ruled by laws rather than an autocratic executive.  I thought the only way for that to happen was to vote in a Democrat.  So even though I still liked McCain, I thought Obama was the one who would restore Regular Order and the rule of law.  Once again, I was wrong.

Again I want to avoid falling into the trap of bashing on other politicians while trying to eulogize McCain, so suffice to say, after eight years we were living in a country where the President could wage war unilaterally, meaningful legislation was hard to pass so the President simply gave executive orders to run the country, prisoners of war were declared unlawful enemy combatants and held in extraterritorial centers without trial, but mainly just assassinated remotely by drones.  Through this time McCain remained a lonely voice among his caucus-mates calling for a return to Regular Order.  Not everything was the same though.  ICE (which was founded under Bush II) had grown into a monster that held children in cages as the Obama administration tried to passively use the mistreatment of immigrants as a proof that it was strong on borders while contradictorily using executive orders to protect some illegal immigrants like the Dreamers (which ultimately only managed to make everything more of a mess).  And the unlimited program of robotic assassination had grown and become more fully automated.  Nowadays not only does the US use robots to kill you if it decides you should die, it uses a computer program to decide if you should die (No, seriously, we are identifying and killing people around the world based on metadata analysis algorithms).

And as we all can see now, these decades of erosion of political civility and the steady accessioning of powers to the chief executive have lead us to an almost complete breakdown of Regular Order and a vicious cycle of political whiplash as successive autocratic Presidents bypass the rule of law and force their will on the political losers through executive fiat.  John McCain was not without flaws, but he did fight against this.  He fought for a government in which disagreements were resolved through compromise bills, not executive declarations and unilateral railroading.

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I have recently come across a political analogy I really like, it is the sinking boat analogy.  I saw a comic strip that had some people at the prow of a sinking ship, high above the water, while while others frantically bailed water in the stern.  This analogy was referencing the rapid and extremely troubling growth of wealth inequality in our society (this is actually relevant to my last post).  I am not trying to falsely claim that John McCain was really trying meaningfully to fight wealth inequality, but this final digression does have a point, I promise.

I find that I really like this analogy, and I will briefly explore why:

I think that a clear majority of people in this country at this point feel like the Ship of State is sinking.  The naval metaphor is a long standing common one.  We are all familiar with the concept of the Ship of State, and sayings like "righting the ship" or "staying the course" are in common usage.  Using the metaphor of a ship or boat helps reinforce the idea that we are all in this thing together.

As long as the boat keeps floating pretty much all people argue about is where the boat should go.

But when the ship begins to founder (as all boats will take on water without constant maintenance) people start to argue about how to fix the boat.  Some might say the boat just needs to go faster for the water to drain out the scuppers (boost the economy and everything will be fine), and some people say we need to patch the holes to keep the water out (strengthen the safety net to keep people out of poverty).  Obviously both approaches should be considered since both the engine and the hull need to be sound for the ship to survive.  The trouble comes when only one approach is taken to the exclusion of the other for too long.  If you just keep goosing the throttle while the hull shakes apart, the ship sinks.  If you kill the engine you don't go anywhere while you wait to sink.

So what happens to the Ship of State when endless goosings of the throttle (tax breaks) and pulling the planks off the side to feed the boiler (austerity) have failed to fix the holes in the boat?  It sinks.  And as the ship sinks, the prow is lifted into the air.  The foredeck, crowded with the officers who have commanded the ship are high and dry, while the mass of humanity that is working the boat and now being fed into the fires drown first.  But this is always only temporary.  Eventually the whole ship will sink (failed state) and all the crew, officers included, will be set adrift (refugees).

As long as there are other boats around to pick up people, it is okay.  But when there aren't enough lifeboats we get refugee crises.  Usually other Ships of State have no problem picking up the floating officers (rich people), but people usually get grumpy when a bunch of swabbies (unskilled workers) try to climb aboard.  And there is always the fear that if too many people climb aboard the whole ship will swamp and everyone will be right back in the water.

The obvious solution is to try to fix the boat before things get so bad, but when things get bad people stop wanting to fix the boat.  The people on top don't want to get wet, so they don't want anything to change unless it lifts them higher out of the water.  The people already underwater probably just want a new boat (revolution).  The problem is the status quo is self-destructive, and building a new boat usually is pretty disastrous (most revolutions don't turn out real great.  Russia's October Revolution and China's Cultural Revolution are actually the recent success stories.  Take a look at Syria, which now looks to be heading back to something like the old status quo, for comparison).  Building a seaworthy ship (a country with a strong economy and protections for the rights and well-being of its people) is very hard to do, most Ships of State in history have been leaky wallowing tubs if they floated at all.

So you have leftist radicals who want to blow up the ship and build a new one without a bridge, and you have nationalists and fascists who want to throw people off the boat until it floats again.  The people who want to throw everyone else off are probably the people who either see the water coming or are starting to get wet around the ankles.  Right now that crowd is ascendant, but that means that an awful lot of people are still above water.  We can still fix the boat.

I want to fix the boat.

And in order to fix the boat we need to fix it for everyone on the boat.  Not just crew, not just officers, not just left, not just right.  We are all in this ship together, and if we don't want to be set adrift we need to fix the boat.  But there are a lot of different ideas about how we should fix the boat because no one has ever made a perfect boat.  We can't even start to fix the boat without cooperation and compromise.

I disagreed with John McCain on a lot of things, but I always felt like he also wanted to fix the boat.  And I thank him for that.

(It is extra fitting that McCain was a naval officer as were is father and grandfather before him)

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I feel a personal sorrow at the passing of John McCain beyond the death of the man who is the closest thing I have to a personal political hero.  The last time I wrote about the Senator in my blog was to scold him on the healthcare debate. I had been meaning to write something positive about him, and the influence he has had on me politically, before he died. I knew I was running out of time, but I procrastinated. Ultimately it isn't like he would have read anything I wrote about him, but I am sad the last time I wrote about McCain before he died it was a negative piece.  This post is in part an effort to rectify that imbalance.

John McCain is gone, but I pray that we shall see his like again and again.  Because we need people who will defend civility, the rule of law, human rights, and compromise.  We need people who will work to find common ground with people they disagree with.  We need them if we are going to fix this boat.

I thank John McCain for doing his part to try to fix the boat.

Goodbye Senator, I wish you fair winds and following seas.

Charlottesville (With Pictures)

Fields driving his car into counterprotesters

The violence and terrorism in Charlottesville was not a fight between liberals and conservatives, it was a fight between people who think that only white Christian men deserve to have full rights and liberty and everybody else.

Tiki Torch White Nationalism

Let us be clear here.  Charlottesville was a clash between white supremacists and those who opposed white supremacy.

The emblem on the shirt is an Identity Evropa symbol

White supremacists and people protesting against white supremacy.

The "legal demonstrators" did not come prepared for a peaceful protest

Not between liberals and conservatives.  Not Democrats and Republicans.  Not Christians and non-Christians.  If you can't differentiate between Nazis and Republicans/Christians/conservatives/etc. that is not my failing, that is your failing.

Armed militia members were out in force

If you see the far larger group of people who stood up against a white supremacist rally as something other than people standing up against Nazis and racists, that is on you.

A shield wall

If you can look at an act of domestic terrorism and the one sided casualties caused by the armed and armored white supremacists and claim that the counter-protesters were to blame, that is your moral failing.

National Socialist Movement Flag

If you cannot condemn Nazis and the KKK without trying to bring up other people and events unrelated to the Charlottesville violence in order to avoid distancing yourself from Nazis, that is yourself supporting and aiding Nazis.

White supremacist marchers

Opposing Nazis and the KKK is no more a partisan issue than opposing ISIS or al Qaeda is.  Everyone should be opposing terrorists.  If you see the opposition to Nazis as being opposition to you, then you need to ask yourself why you are putting yourself on the side of the Nazis.  My expectation is that as a decent human being you should be opposed to Nazism, white supremacy, or whatever you want to call a specific strain of ethnic nationalism.
If you are on the Nazis' side it is not because I put you there.  You put yourself there by refusing to disavow them.

This is not a patriotic display

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Image of the Vanguard fascists from their Twitter page

If you are trying to tell yourself that the man, James Alex Fields Jr., who rammed his car into the counter protestors was in any way different from the fascists that held the Unite The Right protest let us be clear, he was one of the fascists protesting.  And I am not just saying fascist, here he is holding a fascist shield.  The bundle of sticks with an axe is the symbol for fascism.  Fascism is a reference to the strength of a bundle of sticks (a fascia) working together as opposed to a stick alone.

Image of Fields with the other Vanguard marchers

Fields is literally, not figuratively, a fascist.  A fascist who marched against the rights of people different than him.  A fascist who marched with a shield seeking violent confrontation with people who would oppose him.  A fascist who committed an act of domestic terrorism.

Why would anyone choose to be on his side?

Shame On You, John McCain

Shame on you, John McCain

If you have not listened to McCain's speech, I suggest you do so.

I may be disappointed in the man, but it is still a good speech.

A big part of why I have not been as active on my blog has been my desire to avoid talking about Trump. I don't want to engage in the type of political writing that increases the divisions in our society. I write mostly about politics and knives, but if my political writing only contributes to the fracturing of our society then it serves no purpose, and is best for me to keep quiet. And just being another Trump-hater does nothing to help. But I can't keep quiet today. I have been sorely disappointed by one of my political heroes.

For decades McCain has been a voice working against the disintegration of our National identity.  He served in the Navy (and was tortured as a Prisoner Of War) and then went on to serve the nation as a Senator for three decades.  During the George W. Bush administration he was a consistent voice for bipartisanship and amity even as the parties moved further into divisiveness.  In 2002, after almost a solid decade of bipartisan work, he helped bring the McCain-Feingold Act to fruition to fight against campaign finance corruption.  Despite having been tortured by the Vietnamese, he worked to normalize relations with Vietnam.  I could go on (his defense of Bill Clinton's appointments of SC Justices for example), but suffice to say, McCain has had a distinguished career as a politician who I have long believed worked for the good of the Nation before partisanship.

So far as I have had political heroes, John McCain has been chief among them.

Now, I feel disappointed in McCain. I have long been a fan of John McCain. I wanted him to win the nomination in 2000, and I think he would have been a good President. I have supported and defended him, but today I am greatly disappointed. 

Following the vote to move forward with debate on Republicare he gave a lovely speech about bipartisanship, and pledged not to vote for the bill as it stands (even as he helped it forward), but the hypocrisy of his vote stunk like a week old pile of salmon guts in the sun. Perhaps the early detection of his brain cancer will only buy him a few extra months or a year, but those are months and years that he would not get without the regular screenings and checkups that are only possible through quality health insurance. Glioblastomas usually double in size in 50 days.

50 days. Think about that. 

If he didn't have insurance he probably would not have found the tumor until it had seriously impinged on his ability to function. And that probably would have been in 50 days or less, and he would have been well on his way to dying. Whatever time he has left on this Earth is thanks to taxpayer funded healthcare.

Some people (Dr. Drew Pinski--of whom I am a fan--comes to mind) like to point out that in the US people are not denied healthcare regardless of ability to pay. And that is true, but misleading. McCain would not have been denied care for his brain cancer regardless of his ability to pay or possession of health insurance, but it wouldn't have mattered, because if he didn't have health insurance he would probably be dead in three months anyway.

Today, he fought through pain of recovering from medical treatment to act to assist in denying millions of Americans of the chance at a few more months with the ones they love that he is currently enjoying. If he is alive in 10 months, then I hope you can all remember that--despite his calls to unity and bipartisanship--when faced with his own mortality, he placed partisan victory over his honor, humanity, or legacy.

Shame on you John McCain. Shame.

Dear Liberals, Stop Saying Pence is Worse Than Trump

Dear Liberals,

Please stop saying that Pence is as bad/worse than Trump.  To put it simply, Pence is a conservative, Trump is a fascist.  If you can't tell the difference then that is a you problem, not a Pence problem.  Yes, Pence is an extreme Religious Conservative, but you know what, conservatives get to win elections too.  If you can't differentiate between a threat to our democracy and a politician you disagree with it makes opposition to Trump come across as sour grapes.

Trump ran on a platform in direct opposition to the Constitution (Here's another better link), in collusion with foreign powers, is a walking conflict of interest, is a threat to the rule of law, and with his reckless belligerency is endangering human life on this planet.  That is not conservative, that is madness, and that is far worse than a very conservative president who acts within the law.  Anything that a President does that leaves the rule of law and our system of government with its checks and balances in place can be undone when the pendulum swings again.  That is how it works.

I always try to include a graphic, and this fabulous, detailed and huge infographic by Randall Munroe does an excellent job of capturing the complex, ever-changing ebb and flow of the left-right pendulum swings of our government.

I am not trying to downplay how bad Pence would be for a lot of people, particularly the LGBT community.  Yes, Pence hates gay people, wants to take away their rights to marriage and adoption, and has in the past appeared to support conversion therapy (if you are unfamiliar with conversion therapy, some methods have included electroshock, but I have not found any actual clear unambiguous support of conversion therapy by Pence).  So yes, Pence doesn't like gay people and doesn't think that they deserve or are entitled to equal rights and protections, but Pence is far from alone in this.

It is fortunately true that homophobia is in sharp decline in the US, and the majority of Americans believe in equal rights for homosexuals.  However, there was always going to be hard pushback on gay rights.  If Hillary had won the election it would not have meant that politicians who wanted to deny gay people the right to marry and who wanted to break up non-traditional families were never going to win again.  This was always going to happen, it was just a question of when.  That doesn't mean that the LGBT community should just say "oh well, no problem if you want to take my rights away Mr. Pence," of course the coming assaults on equal rights for all Americans need to be fought, I am simply arguing that you can't fool yourself into thinking that Pence is a wild aberration.

Pence is extremely conservative, but so is the majority of the Republican party (thanks to the ascendance of the Tea Party), and about half of the country is conservative.  And even if it was a smaller portion of the population that was conservative, we have a liberal democracy in this country which is designed to prevent the majority from trampling over the rights and voices of the minority.  We are all used to thinking of groups like African Americans and the LGBT community as minorities, but the Anti-LGBT crowd is actually a minority now, and they still wield significant power.  The same system that keeps anti-gay politicians from rounding up and imprisoning the homosexual minority also keeps the majority of Americans who think that all Americans deserve equal rights from silencing those who want to eradicate homosexuality.

The good news is that the majority of Americans no longer side with people like Pence (on LGBT issues), but the bad news is that anti-gay rhetoric is still very popular among the Republican base, which means it isn't going away.  It is division politics in its clearest form.  By catering to people who hate gays you can win your primary, and then once you have won your primary you have other wedge issues to campaign on to ensure that the unpopularity of homophobia doesn't cost you the election.  Anti-gay politics is not going away until the Republican party breaks from it cleanly, which will fracture the religious vote.  The last time a similar policy pivot was made by a major party was when the Democratic party abandoned segregation.  That shattered Democratic power in the South, and continues to this day, and that Democratic power in the South had been in place since the Civil War.  Decades later the Democratic Party has still not recovered in the South, and the fallout from that decision led to massive changes in the US political system that are still with us today.  This should give you a better idea of why anti-gay politics are not going away.

But I am not trying to convince anyone to support Pence.  I am a centrist, I don't support extremists on either side, and I especially don't support anti-gay politicians.  As far as I am concerned, gay people are human beings; that means that they are entitled to the same rights as anyone else.  I don't really understand how this is a political issue.  But Pence is not "worse than Trump."

If you want to effectively fight the rise of fascism, authoritarianism, and ethnic nationalism in the US then you are going to have to realize that conservative ≠ fascist.  Trump is not the same as other Republicans, and he is not conservative.  If you conflate the two then it means lumping the half of the population (and vast majority of territory) into the same pile.  That "Basket of Deplorables" rhetoric is a big part of what got Trump into office, and if you cannot distinguish between the moral depravity of someone like Steve Bannon and a politician that disagrees with you then it is going to be a very long road back from Trumpism.

I will quote David Frum, a staunchly anti-Trump staunch conservative:

If you want to save the country, you have to work with people you disagree with on almost every ordinary political issue.

— David Frum (@davidfrum) November 11, 2016

The point of this post is that Trump is not just another conservative, and when you cast conservatives as the same or worse than Trump, then you empower Trump.  More than anything else right now I am struck by how the demonization of political opponents has paved the way for Trump and our scary slide toward authoritarianism.

This didn't start with Trump.  It also didn't start with Obama, but I am going to use Obama to explain why division politics are so dangerous.  Obama came into power on promises to bring change and to undo the authoritarian overreach of Bush II.  Instead, confronted with a steadfastly oppositional legislature, Obama doubled down on the authoritarianism.  Liberals have given him a pass on this since after all, as Benjamin Netanyahu has said to justify his belligerent approach to Palestinians, "there is no one to negotiate with."  When you can just blame the other side for intransigence, any measures taken can be justified.  But politics swing like a pendulum, and when we do not stand up to authoritarianism we invite worse erosion of the rule of law.  You might not have minded Obama's authoritarianism, but his actions have made Trump more dangerous.

Now we need to be clear about what we are opposing when we oppose Trump.  We are not opposing conservative values.  We are opposing fundamentally un-American demagoguery.  We are opposing authoritarianism.  We are opposing fascism.  We are opposing ethnic-nationalism.  We are opposing a short-tempered, corrupt, and unstable politician who will soon have the ability to start nuclear war based on his lack of tact and huffy truculence.

When you say that Pence is worse than Trump you turn all of that into "I don't like Republicans."  Stop it.  You don't have to like Pence, but don't equate him to Trump.

Sincerely,
The Center Gnome
(AKA Jon Krier)

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.)

Why I Can No Longer Morally Justify Voting for Republican Candidates

I usually avoid really sharply partisan posts in this blog, but I feel like I have something to say.  Plus, at this point, everybody has their mind made up about the Presidential Race.  I don't imagine I will change any minds, but I have things I want to say.

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It seems like there have been a lot of things that have upset me lately.  It makes it hard to figure out what I want to write about when everything just seems to pile onto the mass of anger and sorrow I have been feeling.  The acquittal of the Malheur Occupiers a few days ago certainly triggered a major surge of anger for me.  The idea that armed occupiers who had seized control of the wildlife refuge for 40 days, while damaging public property, stealing government equipment, damaging archaeological sites, and interfering with curated archaeological materials, all while publicly documenting their actions and publicly proclaiming their intention to permanently take control of the refuge away from the government could somehow be found innocent by a jury of their peers boggles my mind.  When the handling of the Malheur Occupiers and their subsequent exoneration is compared with the ongoing #NoDAPL protests and the stunning relative lack of media coverage as hundreds are arrested while trying to protect water and cultural sites the irony takes on the aura of a surreal caricaturization of injustice rooted in institutional and individual racism.

The acquittal of the Malheur Occupiers makes me question the integrity of our legal system.

Have the forces of division and disunity in our culture become so pervasive that even the matter of guilt in the commission of publicly documented crimes can be denied by a jury?  It's as if the nature of reality is a partisan construct.  That is the only way I can understand the verdict.

The in-your-face racism of the response to the Dakota Access Pipeline protests makes me question whether our culture is progressing to a more racially equal society.

The apparent lack of interest among those outside of indigenous circles, the brutality with which the protesters are being treated, and even the (unsubstantiated) law enforcement claims that the protesters have been doing things like shooting arrows at helicopters is amazing.  The worst part is that the total lack of real media coverage means that all that can be known about the situation is essentially competing unsubstantiated claims and social media memes.

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But I think that the crescendo of anger, sorrow, and frustration that I have felt over the last few days was not just in response to the news, it was also rooted in a deeply personal space that may seem strange to some of my readers: For the first time in my voting life I did not vote for any Republicans.

I'm sure that for many people that would not feel like a cause for sorrow, but for me it is.  I couldn't bring myself to vote just for Democrats, but I feel that there is no morally justifiable way to vote for Republicans at this point.  Even as the Republican party has steadily lurched toward Constitution shredding institutionalized corporatocracy while flogging the pony of theocracy, I have been able to feel like there were enough individual Republicans trying to do good work for good reasons, that I could justify voting for individual Republicans.  But this election cycle has changed that for me.

Growing up, and throughout my young adulthood I always thought of the GOP as the grown-up party.  Yes, I disliked the explicit linkage of Christianity and politics (particularly linking Christianity with economic and social policies that are the diametric opposites of those espoused by Jesus), but I believed (and still believe) that empowered individuals, limited government, and personal responsibility are fundamental keys to a free society.  And I think that freedom is a virtue.  Despite the cleaving of the GOP to Evangelical Christianity, I still thought of the GOP as the party of limited government, prudence, and personal responsibility.  So even though I am a centrist, and have never been totally on board with modern Republican planks, I retained a fondness and partiality to the Republican party.  I'm not a conservative, but there are certainly conservative values that I feel at least partial agreement with.  If you want to understand the kind of conservatism I value, this article by Russell Kirk is a good example.

That was why the George W. Bush years felt like such a betrayal.  It wouldn't have felt like a betrayal for the Democrats to shred the Constitution, engage in wars of aggressive choice, and tolerate massive graft because that would have been more in line with what I would have expected from the party of Tammany Hall.  But from the Republicans it felt even worse.  Still, I could vote for individual Republicans.  I looked at people like Senator McCain and thought, there are still principled Republicans committed to good governance who understand the need for compromise.

Then I felt deep conflict in 2008 when the candidate I had wanted for president in 2000, McCain, finally got his chance.  But I felt that the leadership of the Republicans had taken the country into dire straits, and I wanted a regime change.  Sadly, Clinton did not win the 2008 nomination, but I was sure that Obama would still be better than four more years of Republican evisceration of the Constitution, rampant secrecy, and executive overreach.  After all, he promised to be more open, to pursue compromise, and to close Guantanamo.

In 2008, for the first time ever, I voted for a major party candidate for President of the United States of America.  I voted for Obama.  For change.  Instead I got Obama.  Who did not close Guantanamo.  Who did not curtail executive overreach, but instead doubled down on signing statements and executive actions.  Who did not govern more openly, but instead became the most secretive president in history.  Who did not rein in the transgressions against the rights of US citizens and shredding of the Constitution represented by the Patriot Act.  Who did not end the practice of Presidents waging unending wars at the sole discretion of the executive against nations that do not threaten us, instead he broadened the unilateral war making of Bush II into new countries and added assassination via drone to the US arsenal.  In short, Obama doubled down on everything that I had hated about Bush II.

But it didn't feel quite like a betrayal the same way.  In 2012, when the GOP nominated a candidate that promised no improvement on anything I cared about, reactive rollbacks of social liberties, and an even more irresponsible economic policy, I returned to my roots and voted for Johnson (Libertarian, my usual POTUS vote).

Yet I was unprepared for the 2016 primaries.  To make a long story short, the 2016 Republican field was narrowed down to a choice between a toddler and a fascist.  Cruz's whole platform is that he won't cooperate with anyone and he doesn't compromise.  That isn't conservatism, that is being a toddler.  I have a toddler at home, I know what I am talking about.

Then there was Trump.  Surely Trump had no chance.  This was America.  We fought against people who proposed ethnic cleansing as government policy.  We stood for religious freedom.  We stood for democracy and decorum.  We were the moral compass, the shining city on a hill.  We were America, and America was exceptional.  There is no way that the GOP could ever nominate a candidate who stood in opposition to every value I had ever associated with American virtue.

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The nomination of Trump has shaken my belief in American exceptionalism.

If a man like Trump could become a major party candidate then the US was not exceptional.  We have no moral core to our beliefs that keeps us from becoming endlessly debased, corrupt, and violent.  Could it really be true that there is no moral and spiritual core to the American people that makes us any better than the forces of authoritarianism, totalitarianism, and ethnic nationalism we once fought so hard against?

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I am not quite ready to abandon the idea of American Exceptionalism.  I still believe in the values of freedom, democracy, and personal liberty, and I still believe that the US has a singular importance in promoting those values and opportunities for all of humanity.  Let's be clear, I don't believe that the US has ever lived up to those values fully.  Nor do I believe that other nations are incapable of such values or leadership.  But I do believe that the US has had a unique spirit of always trying to perfect our union.  A spirit of always trying to live up to our values.

Because I do not think that the values that we must try to achieve are truly achievable.  Perfect freedom, equality, democracy, and personal liberty are ideals we strive for.  But one of the keys to truly becoming better, as individuals or as a country, is to always have our guiding principles be aspirational.  If you can actually live up to your own standards, then there is no room to improve yourself.  You cannot become better than what you are unless you accept your own imperfection and then try to improve your flaws.  Your reach must always exceed your grasp if you want to become better.

And that is what I feel is the truly exceptional and uniquely American value that makes us exceptional, our reach.

The very first line of the US Constitution is "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union..."

(The full Preamble: We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.)

The first line of the founding document of our government and nation is a statement of a People reaching for the ungraspable.

You cannot make things better unless you first acknowledge that they are not perfect.  This means on the one hand that hypocrisy is essential to improvement.  We cannot demand moral perfection as a prerequisite of those trying to make things better.  That also means that denying problems is an obstacle to the betterment of our society.  You can't fight racism if you deny it exists.  You cannot repair the relationship between the public and the police if you deny that there are problems on both sides.  And you can't improve the public's relationship with the government if you deny the need for a government.

That for me is the heart of American Exceptionalism, and that is what I have believed has made our nation great.  It is not wealth or military might that makes America great.  It is not even, as Hillary likes to say, our goodness.  What makes America great is constantly trying to be better than we are.  That means that it is our patriotic duty to acknowledge our imperfections, but the belief that we CAN be better is what allows us to in fact become better.

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Donald Trump does not believe in American Exceptionalism.  He is not alone.  I have many friends and colleagues who no not believe in American exceptionalism.  In fact I expect that I will catch a lot of flack from my Anthropological peers for defending the idea.  But I do believe that the US is special, and historically, the political home of that belief has been the Republican Party.

But no more.  The GOP has nominated a candidate who disbelieves in the greatness of our society.

Donald Trump wants to bar Muslims from entering the country.  He wants to bar almost a quarter of the world's population from the US.  That is clearly in direct contravention of the first line of the first amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."  The US certainly does not have a spotless record when it comes to freedom of religion, but to my knowledge Trump is the first candidate to run on a platform that includes doing away with the First Amendment protection of religious liberty.

But that is not what scares me most about Trump.  Trump's promotion of ethnic nationalism scares me much more, and that starts with another constitutional amendment that Trump wants to do away with, the 14th amendment.  The first line of that one is "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."  Trump wants to get rid of birthright citizenship.  The worst part is that this is not just Trump, it seems that much of the Republican party has decided that American-ness is an ethnically derived quality.  Just witness the rhetoric around the idea of an "Anchor Baby."  The very concept of an anchor baby is that such children are not true Americans.  In an immigrant nation that is a pretty astounding claim.  If that idea had held currency in the past then no one who is not of Native American ancestry would be a real American.  The idea that there is some group that can be considered "real Americans" is the very heart of ethnic nationalism.

Nationalism is the idea that a nation is made up of a people (As opposed to being made up of people).  A separate, defined people, different from all others in the world.  For example, the Jewish People, the Ethiopian People, the German People, the Chinese People, etc.  The idea is that each of these peoples should have their own country independent of other people.  In order for there to be "real Americans," rather than just American citizens, it means that there has to be a distinct people who make up the entirety of the American People, and that those American People have the right to exclude all others from the nation.

For an example of this idea in action, consider Trump's claim that a US born judge was incapable of judging him fairly because he was a Mexican.  Trump believed that the ancestry of the judge precluded him from being an American.

But Trump does not simply stop at the promotion of ethnic nationalism.  What I find scariest about Trump is that he actively promotes ethnic cleansing, and his supporters love him for it.

Make no mistake, when you claim that Mexican is an ethnicity that is not American, and then you call for a force to be created dedicated to the rounding up and deportation of "illegals" you are calling for ethnic cleansing.  There is no two ways about it.  And there is no moral justification for ethnic cleansing.

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When Trump calls for a wall between the US and Mexico, he is calling for a physical manifestation of the other-ness of Mexicans.  A physical proof that those people belong on that side, and we belong on this side.

When he calls for a halt to Muslims entering the US, he is calling for an explicitly religious partitioning of humanity.  And he is making the claim that Americans inherently cannot be Muslim.

When Trump says that he will make "America Great Again" he is arguing that the root of America's greatness is ethnic in nature.  That there is something in the American ethnicity that has been contaminated and debased by immigrants and Muslims.  And he is arguing that the way to restore American greatness is through cleansing America of those ethnic contaminants.

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Of course, no scapegoating ethnic-nationalist ethos is ever satisfied with just labeling people as others.  The world is full of examples of what happens when ethnic-nationalists come to power.  In the US we tend to go straight to Nazis, but they are far from the only group to engage in ethnic cleansing, even limiting ourselves to the 20th century we have examples all over the world.  There is no continent or religion that has been immune to nationalism.  For example, there is a tendency in the US to think of Buddhism as somehow above such things, but the Sri Lankan Civil War is an excellent example of Buddhist ethnic nationalism and ethnic cleansing.

Unlike Trump supporters, I can not think of the ethnic others as strangers.  In particular, as an archaeologist and father of a Jewish family, I can't help but think of the history of ethnic nationalism in the West.  Everybody gets fixated on the Nazis, but for roughly the last 2000 years, every time a Western power has whipped up the fires of ethnic nationalism the Jews have burned in those fires.  The closest that the Jews came to extermination was not actually the Nazis, it was the Romans.  According to Constantine's Sword the grand total ended up being about 90% of Jews being killed by the Romans, and the remainder were sent into diaspora.

And from that time on there was a seemingly endless series of atrocities and pogroms.  In the Crusades, while Muslims may have been the main enemy, Jews were also collateral targets.  I won't go through a list (you can find a partial list here if you want), but the example that comes to my mind is the Spanish Reconquista.  The Reconquista was the cleansing of Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula; but, as is always the case, the ethnic cleansing did not stay tightly focused.  Jews were persecuted and murdered for centuries.  The Spanish Inquisition was famously brutal and terrible in their persecutions.

But you might wonder what 2000 years of repeating history has to do with today.  Okay, you are probably only wondering that if you don't like history, but let's get to specifics.  Trump has not explicitly called for violence against Jews.  Sure, he re-tweeted an obviously antisemitic anti-Hillary picture, but he claimed it was supposed to be a "Sherrif's Star."  And Donald Trump actually has Jewish grandchildren thanks to Ivanka converting and marrying Jared Kushner.  But that has not stopped Trump from repeating claims by Alex Jones.  And that has not stopped Trump spokespeople like AJ Delgado from re-tweeting things from prominent antisemitic voices.  A specific example my friend Ben brought to my attention was:

By itself, this tweet seems innocent enough.  But if you go to TheRightStuff's feed you can see the tweet they put out before that one:

And if TheRightStuff's other tweet doesn't seem that bad to you, then I will state that TheRightStuff is also the originator of the alt-right movement to put (((echoes))) around the names of Jewish journalists.  And if that still isn't enough for you I will point out that TheRightStuff's avatar is an oven.

A fucking oven.

But surely I am catastrophizing.  Surely, even though Trump is advocating ethnic cleansing, even though Trump is advocating religious criteria for being American, even though Trump and his proxies pander to antisemitic groups, and retweet antisemitic messages, surely conflating all of that with a pattern that has been pretty reliable for thousands of years I am being needlessly alarmist.  Just because Trump retweets crap from people who apparently want my daughter put in an oven doesn't mean that there is anything antisemitic about his movement...  right.

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Let's be clear here.  I don't think Trump hates Jews.  I just think he doesn't care enough to not stoke the flames if he thinks it helps him.  And he certainly has helped bring antisemitism back in a big way.  Speaking anecdotally, a few years back I was telling a story to a group of my college classmates that involved the derogatory term "kike."  None of those 20 somethings even knew what the word meant.  Today I get to hear about 20 somethings getting called "kike."

Trump is advocating for the ethnic cleansing of Mexicans and Muslims.  The problem with ethnic nationalism is that it does not obey rules, and it doesn't stick to scripts.  It is an ugly problem endemic to all human cultures.

But I had always thought that the US was an exception there.  I didn't think that ethnic nationalism could take hold here.  That the great American melting pot could turn into a refinery.

But Trump doesn't believe in American Exceptionalism.  He doesn't believe in freedom of religion.  He doesn't believe in pluralism.

And the Republican Party nominated him for President.  And that is a betrayal I cannot forgive.

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At this point I cannot imagine anything less than a radical reordering of the GOP that would make me feel comfortable voting for them again.  No party that is willing to stand behind a candidate advocating for ethnic cleansing can be supported.

Trump stands in opposition to just about every American virtue I can think of.  He stands in opposition to the values that the Republicans have claimed for decades.  Trump stands in opposition to fundamental human decency.

And a party that stands with Trump is a party that needs to end.

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Maybe someday I will get to feel morally okay with voting for a Republican again, but that won't happen until the Republicans abandon the Trump base.  I would like the party of Lincoln to stand for American values and our exceptional reach once again.  I'm not about to become a Democrat, but I can't imagine voting for a Republican any time soon.

And for now:

Good night, and good luck.

Who Should You Vote For if You Hate Trump AND Clinton? (Especially if you are in Alaska)

Who should you vote for?  It depends...

Mike Rowe makes a good argument in support of the idea that if you cannot be bothered to educate yourself on issues and political worldviews, then perhaps you should not vote.  He argues that voting is a right, like the 2nd Amendment; and, like the 2nd amendment, that right is not a duty.  You are not obligated to own a gun that you do not know how to use, and you are not obligated to vote for leaders whose positions you do not understand.

I take a different view.  It is perhaps not a coincidence that I think that gun safety training should be mandatory for all Americans.  Because I believe that in a country where gun ownership is a right, you have the obligation to gain a functional understanding of what guns are and how they work even if you choose not to own or operate them.  Likewise, I believe that all Americans have an obligation to educate themselves about our political system and to make their voices heard, even if they do not choose to vote for one of the two major party candidates.

Even if your vote goes against mine.

Even if your vote is for someone who can't win.

In fact, especially if your vote is for someone who can't win.

This is probably the image you have of US electoral maps.  The 2004 electoral map that was seared into the American consciousness as the modern normal polarization.  The common phrase in 2004 was the United States of Canada and Jesusland.  For the last quarter century this has essentially been the political partitioning of the USA.  In any given election there has been variation in battlefield states, but the essential shape of the geographic divisions stays pretty stable.  2004 was unusual in having all of the battleground states vote Republican, but this is essentially the electoral world that more than 60% of Americans have known.  If you are under 46 then you have not voted in an election where the outcome was not dictated largely by geographically determined tribalism mixed with a smattering of battleground states.  For most of us, presidential elections have essentially been the urban archipelago against the rest of the country.

Sure, in any given election there are factors that can sway certain individual states.  Bill Clinton was able to swing more Southern States along the Mississippi than subsequent Democrats, but even in 2012's very lopsided electoral victory, the basic shape of the American divide remains visible.

But it wasn't always this way.  The major parties did not always have the luxury of simply having to appeal to fractured demographics.  Once upon a time Politicians tried to persuade the whole county that they were the better candidate.  We used to see electoral maps like:

or

While geography clearly played a role in the 1964 election, it played a much smaller role.

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But this doesn't answer the question of who you should vote for, or why.

Obviously, if you feel that one of the two major party candidates truly represents a political philosophy that you support then you should vote for that candidate.  However, since both candidates have majority unfavorable ratings, the chances are very good that you do not feel that either candidate is a good candidate.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I actually do like Hillary Clinton, and I think she is an excellent candidate, as I have written in the past.  However, my personal support of Hillary in this election, and my abhorrence of Trump is not the basis for this post, nor is it tied to the party affiliation of either candidate.)

For a great many Americans pondering the candidates this election, the idea of choosing between the lesser of two evils has never been more extreme.  If, as immortalized in the ERB between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, the 2012 election was seen as choosing the "shiniest of two turds," the 2016 election is seen by many as choosing between two world devouring devils.  Do you vote for the evil treasonous Killary, or the racist nationalist Drumpf?

My position is that, if you feel that way, you should vote Libertarian.  It is never wrong to vote your conscience, and if you cannot bring yourself to vote for any of these three options, then feel free to write or vote for the candidate of your choice.  But a vote for Johnson should not be viewed as simply a vote against either of the two main candidates, it can be a vote for a future in which the parties actually have to appeal to the country, not just their bases.

The widespread dissatisfaction with the two main parties is nothing new.  And yet, despite quadrennial griping about choosing between the lesser of two evils, in election after election only two candidates get any electoral votes.  The last time that any third party candidate got an electoral vote was 44 years ago.  And in that election the American Independent Party (AIP) won as many states as the Democratic Party.

(If it is unclear what issue the AIP campaigned on, the 1968 electoral map should make it clear.  The AIP began as a segregationist party working to undo the Civil Rights Movement.)

Both of these maps reveal a very different America from the one we know today.  It should come as no surprise that rapid change in issues surrounding civil rights can cause major instability.  The 1960's were marked by massive social changes and upheaval, and that upheaval marked the last time that large numbers of Americans were angry enough to act against the two party system.

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In a lot of ways we are at a similar point today.  We are a country locked into ongoing expensive foreign wars for opaque reasons.  There is major conflict over civil rights, including friction over extending the definition of who can marry (back then it was about miscegenation rather than gay marriage, but the arguments on both sides were the same).  And then, as now, unrest over police brutality and racism was leading to massive protests and frequent rioting (people opposed to contemporary civil rights reform like to pretend that the 60's civil rights movement was all MLK, sunshine, and rainbows, but that is a patently false misrepresentation).

In the late 1960's neither major party was willing to be the party of segregation and Jim Crow, and so that led to a fracturing and the emergence of the AIP.  Whereas the Republican party has remained steadfastly against Gay Rights, the Equal Rights Amendment, women's reproductive rights, police reform, and addressing racial inequality.  The Republican party has also been trading heavily on anti-Muslim sentiment.  All together this has meant that the even though the Republican elites had maintained a more measured practical stance on governing based on small government and free market they were pandering rhetorically to a socially regressive base.

In this election cycle the decades of divisive rhetoric resulted in the Republican party nominating a candidate who is essentially running on an AIP platform.  In fact, Donald Trump and Pence are in fact the AIP nominees in this election.  Rather than trying to appeal to the majority of the population, the nomination process has become so centered on division politics that the Republican candidate for President is literally the same person as the American Independent Party candidate.

In a political ecosystem dominated by division politics, the extremists determine the shape of the national debate.  Neither party is trying to represent the entire country.  In earlier eras extremist and fringe political movements were the third parties.  Today the major political parties pander to the Fringe elements while trying to actually nominate far more centrist candidates.  The nomination of Trump and the major insurgent movement by Bernie Sanders illustrate the ways that the division politics ecosystem has made political positions that were once fringe into powerful elements of the parties' bases (I am not equating Sanders to Trump, but Sanders as a Democratic Socialist does represent a set of positions far to the left of traditional Democratic nominees for the last 80 years or so).

In the past third parties represented the fringe.  Today the major parties represent the Fringe and no one represents the majority of the population.  Today we need an empowered third party to drive the major parties back to campaigning on governance, rather than on division.  The largest third party in the US is the Libertarian Party.

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The Libertarian Party is not really very centrist, but if they can capture a significant portion of the vote it could force a more diverse set of voices into US political debate.  The Trump campaign is seriously threatening the cohesion and viability of the GOP.  The Libertarian Platform is in many ways closer to a traditional Republican platform than Trump's platform.  If enough voters abandon the major party candidates it could lead to a fracturing of the Republican party.  I doubt the GOP would be supplanted by the Libertarian Party, but it would necessitate a major shake up.  My hope is that it could lead to a more powerful centrist party.

But the only way that we as a country can get parties that do not campaign based on dividing the country into Balkanized tribes is by forcing a realignment.  The best way to do that is to vote in large numbers for a third party.

Realistically, barring some Earth-shattering revelations the chances of Trump winning are minuscule at this point.  As of the writing of this post, Trump is polling so badly that Arizona is potentially in play as a battleground state, and Arizona has only voted for a Democrat once in the last half century.  A vote for Trump is not realistically a vote against Hillary at this point, it is just a vote for Trump.  But a vote for Johnson is a vote against the system that gave us the choice of Trump or Hillary.

I'll admit that Johnson has not shown himself to be adequately informed or prepared to be President of the United States of America, but I cannot conceive of a scenario that allowed him to win the election.  But if Johnson could win a state it would be a major moment in US political history, and it could loosen the stranglehold of the current political system.

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Why is this particularly important if you are Alaskan?

Alaska has a history of voting heavily for third party candidates.   In 2000 a full 20% of the Alaskan vote was for Nader.  That was 4 times as large a percentage as the closest state.  In current polls Johnson is not far behind the two main candidates in Alaska, and by some polls third party votes might actually be beating Hillary.  Johnson has a real chance to win Alaska.

Alaska is not likely to ever decide a national election, but if Alaska did vote for a third party it would send a very strong message, and it would change the nature of the the 2020 Presidential Race since it would show that third party candidates can win states in modern America.

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So to sum up, if you actually support a candidate, vote for that candidate.  If you like Trump, vote for him.  If you like Clinton, vote for her.  If you like Johnson or Stein, vote for them.  But if you are really just angry at the system that gave you Trump and Clinton, I think you should vote for Johnson.