Political

Why Biden Should Step Aside

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Today President Joe Biden turns 80 years old. If he wins a second term in 2024, he’d be 86 by the time he left office. A former President who has already declared himself a candidate is only four years younger than Biden. 

Earlier this week, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi—who is 82—declared that she will step away from party leadership in the House of Representatives. 

Biden and Trump should follow Pelosi’s lead. 

This is not ageism. Clearly, two of these three politicians have still “got it” and have a lot to offer in terms of knowledge, wisdom, and experience. But why should we wait to retire until we can’t do the job anymore? We need to retire when it’s time to turn things over to the next generation. 

The problem is not the old folks themselves, but rather the implications of their vital longevity for the generations coming up behind them. Never before in human history (I await correction if I’m wrong) have we found it needful to name successive generations—baby boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z—because there have never before been so many adult generations competing for access and relevance. (Earlier generations have been named only in retrospect.) Boomers have continued to hold fast to the reins of power while three generations of potential successors wait in the wings with increasing impatience. This election cycle saw the election to Congress of a member of Gen Z—our President’s great-grandchild generation. Something needs to change. 

In societies the world over there have been mechanisms for moving society through generational transitions. It was a focus of my anthropological fieldwork (in Central America and later in Ireland) when I was in academia and it became the crux of the extended thought experiment I pursued more recently in a series of science fiction novels (the Recall Chronicles). As people live longer and maintain both mental and physical health well into their 80s and beyond, it becomes clear that we need more deliberate mechanisms of transition. 

Tension is increasing to the breaking point between the stubborn boomer generation and the directions Gen X and Millennials (and, increasingly, Gen Z as well) want to take our society. Some boomers have kept up remarkably well with innovations in technology and advances in our understanding of history and genetics and climate science. Others not so much. But even those who are the most tech savvy and knowledgeable are incapable of truly comprehending the experience of the younger generations who have grown up in a world that diverges significantly from the one boomers knew in their own youth. 

I’m not suggesting that the old folks be relegated to some equivalent of the Irish “west room” to which a farmer retired when they’d officially passed the farm on to an heir, becoming dependent and irrelevant as they waited to die. 

But we definitely need to talk about this. For now, the best solution is for the old folks to graciously step aside, transitioning into an informal role as elder statesmen and stateswomen. Nancy Pelosi did this voluntarily. I hope Biden will follow her lead. 

Facebook Nations

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There are always things going on outside the purview of our daily news, our daily download of statistics, that are just as real as jobs reports and presidential briefings and high level negotiations among world leaders. Such offstage movements have always been there. Mostly they intend to be secret, subversive, operating outside established channels and laws. Occasionally they bubble up into our awareness. 

Abbie Hoffman, way back in 1969, talked about the coalescing of distinct “nations” in America (my phrasing, not his). Back then, something like the Woodstock Nation had to be approached on foot, more or less. You arrived at that one via roads paved with various psychedelics, including electric roads of music. The (mostly) shared ideology was anti-capitalist and anti-racist and anti-war and (early) feminist. In the 1960s, the citizens of this “nation” gravitated not just to Woodstock itself but manifested the Nation in all kinds of gathering places all over the country. 

We’ve reached a new iteration of this kind of “nation”-building and it’s caused by the internet. I don’t mean “facilitated,” I mean “caused.” The internet and its massive social media platforms permit citizens to convene without ever leaving their homes or at least the reach of their cell service and wifi. Every once in a while I brush up against one of the alt-nations on Facebook or Twitter. Today I saw evidence of one right out here on the streets of my neighborhood. 

Lest you think this is all a wonderful manifestation of ordinary people rising up against the oppression of capitalism, be advised that to the extent that these 21st Century “nations” are rising up in cyberspace, they are highly vulnerable to co-optation by the very forces they think they’re rebelling against. Maoism? And who built this cyber-marketplace anyway? 

References:

Hoffman, Abbie. Woodstock Nation, 1969, Random House. (Yeah, Random House.) 

https://twitter.com/dailygonzalo?lang=en

What to Celebrate?

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Duke of Richmond’s fireworks display. Source: Public Domain/Wikimedia Commons

I’ve never been big on secular celebrations of human achievement. It always feels a little premature. I’d rather give this whole “Independence Day” thing another couple thousand years to see whether it works out or not. At the moment, I’m not optimistic.

On the other hand, I do like picnics. I like outdoor gatherings with family and friends (when it’s not scorchingly hot due to climate change) and I kind of like fireworks.

I like the fact that so-called “gunpowder” was invented by the Chinese not for guns, but to create more impressive explosions, which supposedly were useful in warding off evil spirits. By the time the explosive mixture made its way westward, it was referred to as “Chinese flowers.” Soon it would be turned toward more destructive purposes.

As I lie in my bed later tonight, trying to go to sleep while the neighbors shoot off their probably illegal fireworks, I shall try to turn my mind toward the dispelling of malevolent influences and envisioning colorful lights blossoming among the stars.

BOOM! BANG! POW!

What Matters

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When I look at the news–the spread of COVID-19, the national and global distribution of vaccine, the violence perpetrated against black and brown bodies, the turmoil at our southern border–I can’t help but return time and time again to Dr. Farmer’s enduring truth.

And no, it isn’t just a matter of saying “all lives matter.” We have to own the fact that our world is currently built on the unsustainable premise that some lives matter less. That is what we have to face up to and work to correct.

That’s all I have for today. I’ll let these children’s faces speak the rest of what needs to be said. Please listen with your heart.

Celebrating Shadow of the Hare

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Easter Sunday 2021 turns out to be the publication anniversary of Shadow of the Hare, the second book in my Recall Chronicles series. I’m celebrating by making the book FREE for a limited period. (Click here.)

The series is set in a world where (almost) nobody gets old anymore, and personal memories are conveniently managed by a bizarre collaboration of the pharmaceutical monopoly and the social media giants. But there’s a movement dedicated to bringing down these corporations, a movement known as Recall.

Book one begins with Jenda Swain’s chance encounter with an old woman in a sketchy side-street café, an event that sets Jenda off on a tangled adventure of self-discovery and unanticipated social activism.

The old woman was Malia Poole (the exception to that “nobody gets old” thing) and book two—Shadow of the Hare—is Malia’s story.

Unlike Jenda, Malia is a lifelong dissident, an author and bibliophile in a world where books no longer matter and barely exist. Fearful for her own life, Malia escapes to a sufficiency community called Walden 27, somewhere near Marfa, Texas. But Malia can’t escape herself, and after fifty years of self-exile, she returns to Dallas to pursue the questions that still torment her: What happened during that teenage year that’s totally missing from her memories? Is Lio still alive? What is it that Montagne doesn’t want to tell her? Malia’s quest eventually takes her to India (in the company of Jenda’s daughter-in-law), where the pandemic and the collapse of the world-net catch up with her, and where she finally comes face-to-face with answering the only question that really matters.

Yes, you can read this book without having read book one—but if you HAVE read book one, you’ll enjoy it even more, since many of the characters are the same.

For FIVE DAYS ONLY the Kindle version is FREE! Download it now and celebrate Malia’s pigheaded passion for life and books!

The Burning House

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I woke up a couple of days ago dreaming of a burning house. I was inside the house, but I wasn’t trying to get out. I wasn’t even particularly disturbed. I had closed the door to my room, trying to ignore the growing conflagration in the rest of the structure, apparently worried only about the collection of books on my shelves.

My first waking thought was: “My house is burning down with me in it.”

And I knew the dream wasn’t really about a house. It was about me, my aging body, and the fact that there truly is no way to escape. It’s burning down with me in it, and I just ignore it. I close the door and try not to think about it.

The dream may also be about the state of our world. Now that there’s no Donald Trump shenanigans to fixate on and now that COVID-19 is becoming something that is no longer an immediate threat to my life (Yay, vaccine!), I’m seeing more clearly the generally disastrous state of things—the racism and the misogyny and the poverty and the precarious climate and the probability of further pandemics and the belligerent ignorance and all the myriad manifestations of inequality and injustice that cluster on our borders and fester in our cities and towns. Our house is burning down with us in it. And we close the doors and try to pretend it isn’t happening. When some of us shout “fire,” others just look around inside their own rooms and shrug, ignoring the rising heat and all the closed doors.

What to do?

As for my aging body, I intend to pay more attention to exercise and other forms of self-care.

As for the world, I intend to emerge from my COVID isolation and keep saying what I see and what I know and writing stories about it. I may even occasionally shout, “Fire!”

Breakthrough/ Brokenness

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For all of us who feel as if a four-year log jam has been broken, releasing the waters of American democracy to flow free once again, there are also those who are experiencing their world closing in on them, as its edges collapse and a sense of betrayal gnaws at their hearts. I find myself wanting to reach out to those people, to tell them that it’s not us, but rather the rigid boundaries they’ve set up around themselves that are the true source of their misery—boundaries of gender roles and racialism and religious absolutism. Over the past four or more years during which they’ve learned to deny anything written by professional journalists or attested to by career civil servants, to believe only what one man on Twitter tells them to believe, their world has shrunk smaller and smaller and now…well, what happens next for them?

The deepest misery of my own life has come in moments of betrayal, when a friend accused me of something that only told me how little they knew my true character or when I finally had to acknowledge that a minister I had admired had indeed done something unthinkable. But each time I have rebuilt my life from the brokenness. And this is what I want to tell my Republican friends: Take a minute. Experience the truth of brokenness. Grieve. And then pick yourselves up, look around and begin to believe that those you have demonized and hated stand ready to help you put the world back together again, to build it back into a world we can all live in together. We will never agree on everything, but can’t we at least stop shouting at one another and begin to listen?

Exercise Your Right To Vote!

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Can you see the McCarthy bumper sticker in the background? I couldn’t vote, but this “art” project was my manifesto.

On election day 1968, I had recently turned 20—too young to vote at the time. The voting age was not lowered to 18 until 1971. My vote in 1968 would have gone to Hubert Humphrey, although my preference had been the anti-war candidate, Eugene McCarthy. I remember my sadness as I watched election returns rolling in on the TV in the common room of my sorority house at Southern Methodist University. Just in case you’ve forgotten—Richard Nixon won in 1968.

I was assistant editor of the SMU student newspaper that year and, with my press credentials, I had attended a Nixon “speech” (read “rally”) inside our campus coliseum at which the chair of our Board of Regents had controversially served not just as host, but head cheerleader. Faculty members wearing buttons favoring the Democratic candidate were barred entry. We published an irate editorial about the matter. We had also editorialized on the need to lower the voting age to 18, arguing that if we were old enough to be drafted to fight a war in Vietnam, we ought to be allowed to vote.

By 1972 I was 24 and a duly registered voter. I backed the losing candidate, George McGovern. In 1976, when the Democrat Jimmy Carter actually won over Gerald Ford, my vote fell into the losing column again as I voted for Independent Eugene McCarthy. The next three elections went Republican, so I lost again. Long story short? Out of a total of twelve opportunities during my voting life, I’ve only voted for the winner of a presidential election four times—twice each for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

I’m hoping against hope to be in the winning column again this year as I cast my vote for Joe Biden. He wasn’t my first choice as candidate, but he is a good man and he will serve us well.

We ALL need to get out and vote this year, whether the “getting out” is depositing a ballot in a mailbox or showing up in person at a polling place on November 3.

Have you checked to verify your voter registration? Have you filled out the appropriate paperwork to vote by mail if you’re entitled to do that in your state? If you’re voting in person, do you know how to find your polling place? Do you know what ID materials (if any) you’ll need to carry with you? Do you know all the candidates and issues?

DO NOT be misled by memes you see on Facebook or Twitter—voting regulations vary by state and you need to make sure you know what the rules are where you live. Only rely on websites that provide official information for YOUR state, YOUR county, YOUR precinct!

Please vote! Please vote wisely and responsibly.

Win or lose, make your vote count!

Verso

What can one girl do? A lot. Your own thing. Listen, World! People on the way up. A certain kind of girl. Anything can happen. A warm person is a happy person. Should you? Why wait? What the hell are we doing here? A dangerous enthusiasm. It works. (…and more)

Experiencing Racism

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Somebody on Twitter asked: “Have you ever experienced racism? Tell us your story.”

There are two ways to experience racism: As a victim and as a beneficiary. I have experienced racism as a beneficiary. It’s called “white privilege.”

And the more I observe the victims of racism, the more undeserving I feel of its benefits.

I am no more deserving than my black brothers and sisters of being able to walk (or jog) down the street without being harassed.

I am no more deserving than black Americans to feel only mildly annoyed when a cop pulls me over on the highways or city streets.

I am no more deserving than they are of living in a comfortable home in a “safe” neighborhood.

I am no more deserving than they are of being able to watch birds in a city park without others feeling threatened by my presence.

It’s been said that America will never truly rise to greatness until we undergo the genuine soul-searching and structural realignments demanded by “truth and reconciliation.” This week I’ve seen a lot of people encountering some big truths about America and who we have been (and still are) as a racially divided nation. There’s a lot more to come. And the reconciliation will never come without uncovering all of the shameful truths about our nation’s history and about how I and others like me have benefitted while others suffered.

It’s time.

You might also want to read my previous post, “This is Not a White Country.” Or this broader take on the notion of “Privilege.“

1960s Déjà Vu

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A protester carries a U.S. flag upside, a sign of distress, next to a burning building Thursday, May 28, 2020, in Minneapolis. Protests over the death of George Floyd, a black man who died in police custody Monday, broke out in Minneapolis for a third straight night. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

I got up this morning experiencing a sense of déjà vu that sent me looking for my bound volume of all the campus newspapers from my senior year in college—1969-1970. I was editor-in-chief that year, so there’s a lot of me on those pages, from editorial decisions about what got covered and what went on the front page to editorial statements (many, in retrospect, rather outrageous!) about everything that was going on that year.

There was a lot going on. There was a Moratorium declared in opposition to the Vietnam War. On December 2, 1969, there was the infamous draft lottery. We put out a special issue on the environment in March of 1970. There was also the Texas Pop Festival and skinny dippers in Turtle Creek. But I think what prompted my déjà vu was the memory of our black students’ association (yes, we had one at SMU) and the list of demands they drew up and how meticulously we tried to cover them in the student newspaper. We got criticism for that.

The previous year, in May of 1968, I had submitted a term paper in which I cited numerous political theorists and a few black activists. The paper concluded that white America had long since declared war on black Americans and that black people had every right to fight back, including with violence. I quoted extensively from James Baldwin and even included one citation of Stokely Carmichael’s writings.

There had been repeated riots through the 1960s. We may have thought that the Civil Rights Act and school integration and a few other achievements would fix things. More recently, we may have thought that having a black President would fix things.

Nothing has been fixed. The past decade has seen a vicious resurgence of (never dormant) white supremacy with its constant toxic handmaiden, white privilege. And black people and other people of color have had enough. The current pandemic has revealed the deadly extent of existing economic and healthcare inequalities. The murder of George Floyd forced us to see what we haven’t wanted to see: The heritage of slavery and Jim Crow are with us still.

When people time after time are pushed to the brink, when they ask for and then beg for and then demand change and nothing changes, eventually something explodes.

When it’s a gas fire, you don’t just spray water. You turn off the gas. And until we address the very real structural inequalities that exist within our society, we’re going to keep having explosions. Maybe even some big ones.