I’ve been rehashing a debate I had with someone on the street for several weeks, trying to figure out what about the whole thing bothered me so much. I ran into this person in front of a local farmers market. They were asking for signatures in support of rent control and a local politician who folks, at least the vocal ones, rabidly adore or think is the worst thing that ever happened to a city in America.
For my part, I wanted to like this politician when they first popped onto the scene, at roughly the same time I popped into this environment too. A lot of progressive ideals sound good to me organically when initially presented and so politicians that kick those talking points around often tug at my “take care of other people” and “the system really doesn’t care about the little guy” strings. Income disparity, homelessness, race relationships, over- and poor-policing are obvious issues for all involved (yes, including the cops), and so things like raised minimum wage, rent control, equity initiatives, police reform etc. perk my ears up.
I was walking with my partner at the time, and we’d been chatting along, so my usual anti-social shields were down when this person with the clipboard asked me if I stood with that politician. I spoke too eagerly and too glibly.
“Naw, man. I sorta fucking hate them.”
This politician’s fans are very committed in the way that fans of Populists usually are. Trump supporters are equally committed, willing to shout you down, shoot you, or storm the capitol for the person speaking the talking points they believe in. I saw this person’s eyes flair with rage.
“What? How can you hate them? They’re the only one in the system fighting for what working people like me and you need! Don’t you believe in rent control? Don’t you want to defund the police? You think these police and their Republican masters care about you? Even if you don’t like this person, do you really think we should let corporations and Republican donors recall our only voice in the system?”
I conceded that I do believe in rent control (I thought) and that I could get on the side of “defunding” the police in as much as I could see a system where we partner better-trained, guardianship-focused police with community leaders and mental health professionals, augmented by mailed citations, folks with pamphlets, and Columbo-style detectives to help and protect people, get to the bottom of important but not urgent things, and remove a whole host of work we don’t actually need men with guns and a mandate to “get the bracelets on him” to do. I couldn’t accurately say I don’t support recall efforts, though, and I began to make the argument that I wasn’t sure it was only rich Republicans supporting the thing; I could point to a fairly poor apartment building near where we were standing flying a recall flag on a top balcony. I also know a couple of houses that have written “I’m a Social Democrat” on their recall signs. I had some other things about Republicans and monoliths queued up to say.
“Well then, why do you hate our only voice in the system?”
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I loved this clipboard person. I loved the passion and rage in their eyes and, to some degree, I miss seeing that stuff in my own when I look in the mirror; I envied their certainty a little. Because of what I’m from, though, and because I’m very much less certain about anything these days, I also felt sad for the rage and the passion and the black/white thinking. I know the pain it can spread, which is sort of why I amputated a large enough section of it from myself that it’s barely perceptible, except for at its highest points, like the week George Floyd was murdered. This rage half-life is why it’s always the very young that drive change, or stand in defense of avoiding it, and I salute them for the nobler parts of what they do and are, but it’s also a sadness that ensures change is haphazard, and the young take the bullets and bats for the old talking heads. At any rate, I felt certain that the chance I was going to be hit in the head with a clipboard was not zero, and I loved this person.
Our conversation was very long; it was long enough that my partner left and did their thing before coming back and participating a little. It hit all the talking points and I’ll share both of our views on them as best I can. Please accept that I will give a poor proxy of the clipboard person’s views. This will be, in part, because, I think, they hated me and couldn’t fully articulate their views through their rage. I will try to fill in arguments in favor of their positions where they didn’t present any, for additional balance. This post will take a while, as I want to be clear about my proposed solution and the world-pain that goes into it.
An additional caveat that I find to be important is that I claim neither expertise on these subjects nor full and developed answers. My main thesis, fairly in general, is that we’re limiting our views on what the world actually is, and what we might change, to small sets within sets and taking battlelines around those limitations and that makes no real sense to me. I don’t think I’m alone in that, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
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First, the main reason I don’t like this politician, which I can only really express poorly, in over-worn words: I don’t feel like they give a damn about the actual people. The human bodies and minds in the fray, I mean. Either they are a true believer in what they preach, which is often an open call to revolution, or they don’t and are just using fervor to win political support from the downtrodden and the angry. I can’t tell which and it barely matters. In either case, people become an abstraction, only a subset matter, and they are, in the near-term, only a means to ends.
This is what every populist has ever done in all of history. I can’t like Trump and I can’t like it from a “progressive” far-left Populist either. I even hate the word “populist.” The word is almost disingenuous by itself. Here’s the definition as provided by Oxford:
Populist: a person, especially a politician, who strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups
Ordinary People and, by extension, the concerns of ordinary people are the “focus” of the Populist. I should like them; I am an ordinary person and all the people I am fully in love with are pretty “ordinary” by some definitions (not to me) too. I probably aspire to be a type of populist, though, thank any god, not a politician. They speak for the rats in the beaker and the concerns of those rats! Down with the experiment! When, though, have you seen a Populist speak on behalf of ALL the ordinary people at the same time? When has a Populist acknowledged the ordinary humanity of the scientists doing the experimenting and the rats at once? When has a Populist done more with the death of an ordinary person than use it as a talking point and fuel for fervor (like prevent that death in the first place)?
Trump and the right-wing heads parroting to “His” base :
- To poor whites in this country, disenfranchised by technology, dying industry, shit education, massive income disparity, and the evangelicalism they subscribe to themselves: I hear you and I’m for you, follow me.
- To Police: You have my support. You’re our knights doing the Good Work. Follow me.
- To ordinary immigrants, brown people, women etc.: Stop your bitching; your concerns mean nothing to me; you deserve your situation and are overblowing it anyway.
There is no regard to the where these groups may overlap. Only the “enemy” sees systemic change that impacts them, always to death. There’s not enough focus on what’s actually harming the populist’s chosen people to offer them systemic, positive change. Rage and destruction inspire as much or more loyalty at a cheaper rate.
In my city’s current political paradigm:
- Down with the corporations! (Staffed and used by tons of ordinary people)
- Fuck the police! (A wide spectrum of ordinary, misguided people)
- Fuck these landlords! (60% of whom by some accounts are ordinary people making less than $75,000 per year in a city where median household income is $102,000 distributed very unevenly.)
- Anyone from any group not directly associated with “ordinary people” or associated but in dissent of “right” action, that raises their hand to point out their struggle is shut down hard – “Fuck your concerns! You don’t know what real struggle is because you don’t have to deal with X or bring it upon yourself because Y. You’re overblowing your pain.”
I dislike any politician – and Populists in other arenas like the media, education, religion — that does this and, as with Trump and the politician I was debating about, I especially dislike any politician that waves the metaphoric sabre about it: “We’re going to take OUR country back!”
From whom if not ordinary people, you disgusting hypocrite?
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OUR country. We’re going to take it back from they who aren’t us that have grabbed it. Those people whose concerns and experiences we aren’t going to listen to because they aren’t us. THEY have got our country and are the cause of our misery and goddamn it we’re going to take it back!
They say the same thing about you and they are liars; they are immoral; we must fight them; and we must win because our lives are on the line. Vote for me and send your donations to this address. Every little bit helps, so don’t worry, in this instance, about how poor you are and how rich I am or am building this brand to be; it will all change in your interest when we defeat THEM.
Don’t be afraid to drown those other rats, or be drowned, in the process because change is painful and they aren’t us anyway and we are ready to die for the cause. Our lives are on the line so we must be willing to suffer and die and give the lives we want to protect. If you aren’t willing to die for our cause, you aren’t really one of us. Oh, but we must also mourn the tragic young lives lost in mass shooting X for Populist ideology A or in Autonomous Zone Y for Populist ideology B or in Patriotic Act Z for Populist ideology Q. Also, though, those are examples of our strength and the immorality of our enemies.
This was caused by them, not us. They’re the bad guys; we’re the good guys. The good guys are always right, even when the bad things happen after and during when they do stuff.
Remember to send your donations to that address. And vote for me.
Cue unintelligible songs about us not starting the proverbial fire.
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The first Populist that speaks to the needs of every “ordinary” person at once, including the need not to kill and die in the required systemic change such that they can actually enjoy it, gets all my donations and all my votes forever.
It’s too damn hard to do it and press the outrage buttons of the ordinary voter/donator though, isn’t it? You feel the pain you feel, not that of your neighbors, and so if I want your vote, I’d do best to call out that pain as the most outrageous, whatever it is. I definitely don’t want to say it’s your fault (honestly, it’s probably not or not just anyway. This is a collective dumbass project), and I need you to stand by me against my political opponent.
I want you to choose and come with me, not them. So, by definition, I need to create their platform and their identity and distinguish it from me and ours so that you join me. I know you have an evolutionary predisposition to tribe, and so if I want you to choose ME and not THEM, it doesn’t make any sense to say they’re one of us.
White rat or black rat? If all the rats have a point, either shared power or random choice makes some sense. Nuance and a deep dive into what’s actually the deal take too damn long, too much effort, and nobody wants to read or listen to that much talky bullshit when they’re working two jobs to not get evicted from their apartment (left) or trailer/shit single family home (right) anyway. Social media prefers and amplifies the most polar voices, but newspapers, TV, soapboxes have been doing it as long. Nobody ever stopped walking in the town square to listen to “Everyone, please gather round. I’d like to discuss the intricacies of urban planning with you and, if there’s time, the interplay of promises we made to Baby Boomers and their parents about retirement and how that urban planning is influenced by those and maybe not ideal for the up-and-coming generations.” Folks have always stopped for “It’s this one thing that’s stopping you and I will help you kill it!”
And it’s hard to vie for the throne when we rule by joyful committee.
Folk the world over listen to this, choose a side, hit the jungles or streets and literally murder some other folks who have listened to and chosen some other side or no side at all. Take a look at the ex-cop who stormed the capitol building who was re-arrested because he bought 30+ new guns afterward and his parroting populist rhetoric:
The next revolution started in DC 1/6/21. The only voice these people will now listen to is VIOLENCE. So, respectfully. Buckle armor or just stay at home.
Being nice, polite, writing letters and sending emails hasn’t worked. Peaceful protests haven’t worked. Millions of FB posts, tweets ,and other social media hasn’t worked. All thats [sic] left is violence and YOU and your ‘Friends on the other side of the isle [sic]’ have pushed Americans into that corner. The picture of Senators cowering on the floor with genuine fear on their faces is the most American thing I have seen in my life. Once….for real….you people ACTUALLY realized who you work for.
The [sic] probably shouldn’t be. The political aisle is more of a myth at this point than an actual island. He also should have all caps’d “you people.” We see the usual ideas, shared by the far-left clipboard person, just pointed the other way. I will repeat them again:
- It’s unfortunate people will have to kill or die but necessary now because “you” (the others) aren’t listening, and are profiting while we suffer/lose
- Peaceful protests haven’t achieved enough. We haven’t gotten what was promised from peace and participation in the democratic system
- Remember: They pushed us into this. We’re the good guys and we wouldn’t do it if anything else were possible.
- We have been talking to deaf ears.
- The politicians work for us but they’ve forgotten that and we need to remind them.
- I support this ONE POLITICIAN because he’s the ONLY one that has supported me. We haven’t gotten what was promised… it isn’t his or her fault, and certainly not ours.
It’s their fault.
If these true-believers act before the apportioned moment, they are labeled “lone wolves” and have committed suicide, actual or legal, like the above cop, the gal with her molotovs in downtown Seattle, some of the mass shooters, suicide and marathon bombers etc. They are quietly applauded and mourned by whatever young people have taken side with them as sad but necessary losses to the cause. They are caricaturized as demons and emblematic of the problem by their opponents.
The cycle persists. The names change. Regimes change. The cycle persists. Rats eat rats and someone always suffers while some anonymous minority “profits” and we argue on street corners about which petition to sign or not sign instead of being able to visualize something else that might be a win-win. When we form our autonomous zones to end police violence against black people, the first thing we create is a Night Watch, who polices the area, and kills some black kids or can’t prevent it. We are a species that learns and emulates within a tiny box. When we overturn the box, we just stand on it again. It would be very cool if we came to realize the words “Us v. Them” are written on the side of the box and find a new fucking box.
Our Populists rile us up, send us to die, and neither need to, or choose to, brainstorm a new system with us that can actually end the Winner v. Loser, Us v. Them, everyone-actually-loses-all-the-time cycle.
I hate them because their concern seems to be churning the beaker rats, rather than actually identifying our confinement walls and dismantling to a “Winners Only” environment. Regime change is not revolution. The only actual revolution possible for humankind at this point is a system that’s good for everybody and kills nobody to get there. To erase the “v. Them” from the box, and, having to grapple with the uncomfortable idea that “it’s just Us here,” Expand Our We, and figure out how to heal, grow, and love, or at least ignore, one another more than monkey club each other in the head.
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As an example of a talking point we approach without a Win/Win mentality or nuanced and complex solutions, let’s discuss Rent Control. I emphatically said to my person with the clipboard “Yes. I support rent control.” But because of them and our conversation thought about it for 20 minutes after, while walking around the market.
“Well, shit,” I said to my partner next to some kale, “I think I may have lied to that kid…”
“About what?”
“About supporting rent control.”
“What?! Why wouldn’t you support rent control all of a sudden?”
“Honestly, I don’t know anything about it. What is it? Like what’s the proposition?”
She didn’t know; she works in the non-profit sector around this problem and didn’t know. I’d already talked to at least a half dozen people about it, get tons of mail about it, have since googled it and, really, besides “we ought to have some,” I haven’t seen or been told a lick about what we actually mean when we say it.
The person with the clipboard repeated the same stuff as the clipboard, as the politician, as everywhere on the web in support:
- Rents are out of control at the benefit of these corporate landlords
- We need to control these rents so the ordinary people can stay in their units
- The average landlord isn’t an ordinary person because they own enough property to have a place to live and to rent the other property. They are by definition rich.
- It’s only greed and the desire not to decrease margins that makes these corporate landlords oppose it.
- We should combine rent control with laws that prevent biased renter selection.
- This will make housing available and affordable to everybody, and, if we build a tiny bit of affordable housing, end homelessness.
The rhetorical counter:
- The average landlord isn’t a corporate landlord and has razor thin margins.
- When rent is controlled, it favors the renter in a flat way, not the owner, and is not in alignment with property tax increases, inflation, increased costs of repair and upkeep.
- When combined with laws that prevent me from choosing who I want to rent to, I feel like I have to give away my property to anybody, even if they won’t care for it, upkeep and pay taxes on that property and make no money back from it even though it’s my only real retirement plan. Who is going to pay my mortgage if you give away my rental property for free or so cheaply there’s no profit? Why would I even bother renting at that point?
- I’ll sell it as a single-family home the working class can’t afford and try to live off that money.
- Investors will build condos instead of rental units because they want to turn a profit.
- Housing availability will decrease and gentrification will increase if you don’t let me make some money off of being landlord.
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While they bicker, homelessness increases, gentrification increases, the Boomer landlords actually do sell their homes and short supply does jack up the prices. Investors actually don’t build new rental units because there’s no money it. Colored folk and poor whites the nation over are forced out in some cardinal direction (in this region, it’s south). Some people make some money and the lots of those on the shit side of the curve get even worse. Economists are confused because the market isn’t working right – “wait. The market should self-regulate. Housing and storefront prices should come down when the buildings lie empty but there is some demand….” The white, rural poor glom onto the teat of one party saying “look what governmental regulation and big tech is doing to us.” The urban and colored poor to another saying “look what racism and capitalist greed and governmental regulation that favors corporations and big tech are doing to us.”
One key thing to note: everyone is so pissed and not talking to each other, or even invited to every conversation, (and definitely not wanting to make a profit of some specific margin *snicker*) that they don’t or can’t work out that thing economists are complaining about. Buildings lie fallow, folks make no money from them, people sleep in tents in any available green space and we shriek “what about the children” regarding those encampments. The combat to be the Winner in a Winner v. Loser scenario winds up Loser/Loser forever.
We believe it obvious that when “they” won’t listen to you, you have to make them listen. Hell, I believe that sometimes and I’m trying to actively write against it right now.
That viewpoint has a quiet, sad truth buried within though – you can’t make them listen. You can probably implant seeds of change in their kids and grandkids and get them to listen. But your opponent will not be forced to convert to your ideology even if it’s in their interest in the same way that it makes no sense to have any empty storefront in Brooklyn but its owner will not rent it for less than X to someone they think they can trust, even if it stops them from making the money that’s the whole point of ever having it in the first place because no such person at that rate exists.
So instead “making them listen,” looks like just enough dead kids to keep the soda bottle from exploding until it isn’t enough and the bottle explodes. We’re due up for WW3 right? Several million dead kids later, and the “Great Reset” it suggests, maybe – maybe – we’ll work out one of our issues and come closer together while the beaker rolls on?
I wonder if we believe that or have data to support it. I can’t see why that horror doesn’t just equal different tribal lines, on about something else, under the banner of some Populist of the moment willing to yell from the battlement “yea! It’s this one new/different thing you’re super mad about that’s the problem! Anybody who says different is an idiot or a liar. Follow me and we’ll get it changed.” When has any problem of any complexity ever been about one damn thing?
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Regarding rent control, there are maybe some things to consider that play within the current capitalist system and give us some ability to fix it. The first is math. It might be possible to develop a system of subsidies, fixed initial rental prices, controlled increases of a package of rent, tax, repair, and wages, and necessary profit margins/living expenses, mortgage rates etc. that balances to a win-win for everybody. If we do some math. Specifically math with all the data, which means math that listens to everyone’s declared experience, takes it into actual account, and crunches all the numbers honestly instead of leaning toward one political group or other.
The second is addressing the “Missing Middle Housing” problem. Missing Middle Housing refers to how 1940s governments decided single-family homes and car-culture were the national ideals so not only stoked that demand but built for it and, moreover, made everything else illegal. They, of course, packaged racism into the mix because why wouldn’t they. The suburbs were born and any self-respecting white family wanted to be there and belonged there, with promise of a quick, gas-powered jaunt to the office for their 70-hour work weeks and promise of a pension into the ripe old age of “please die as soon as you can.” Zoning meant you could build a mid-rise, multi-unit apartment building, skyrise condos, or single-family homes. Everything else – duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, courtyard arrangements with a shared yard, rowhouses, new buildings with shops below and a couple of apartments above, and tiny apartment buildings of random shapes and sizes that fit the space – was off limits.
Makes for a bit of an awkward situation. Either you’re too broke to buy a home like a whole lot of people so you scrap and scrape and beg for any apartment you can get near enough to work and sometimes commute three hours to have one, or you have the money to buy a single-family home, probably off in the middle of nowhere where you can afford one. Have some money but not enough for a home? Hold onto your apartment. You wind up in a situation like in Seattle or San Francisco where a huge host of the tenants are richer than the landlords but still can’t afford a single-family home, which there aren’t enough of for everybody anyway because earth surface is finite. As an investor in new buildings, you ask yourself where profit will come from and end up in political competition with your customer and argument with yourself. Should I build a mega-building with cheap apartments that I charge too much for so I make a profit or a single-family home I sell for too much so I make a profit? If you pass rent control, I’ll do the latter or condos; I definitely won’t build a single-family home to rent or do the apartment building thing unless I’m a slumlord. Condos are basically our only middle housing and they cost what houses used to cost.
Housing availability goes down, rent goes up. Folks fight harder for rent control. Folks fear-sell their properties to corporations that can take the hit, or folks that are rich enough for single family homes, rather than rent. New buildings are built either as high-rises for Amazon IT employees, single-family homes and condos for Amazon IT employees, or, occasionally, affordable housing favelas for folks with the most barriers. Most of the poor and middle class get nothing.
We could do something else. We could take a moment to re-structure our idea of what housing looks like, what government provided housing can be (i.e. not garbage), what being a landlord and a renter can be, how to help old people be visible and survive to older age with grace. We could re-zone for, re-build, and incentivize missing middle housing. We can provide economic insurance to folks with property, and economic assistance (and real, future-ready jobs) to renters, so owners can expand their trust into scarier-for-them ways.
This is just a long-winded example, though. There’s a darker, even more prevalent, and global “missing middle” problem. It’s probably what’s causing the other one.
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We hear the “Us v. Them” spiel often because it’s the Populist’s main tool, every politician props themselves up as a Populist of some subset now, there are leagues of 24/7 news channels pandering to an individual advertising demographic, and social media echo chambers have holders of individual views and collections of those views believing their tribal survival is pent up in how close they adhere to the team and its values.
We call them “culture wars” these days. We have “culture wars” over tennis players, childrens’ games and books, television shows that feature a black Achilles, stand-up comedy, coffee cups, colors, illnesses, fuck…it’s safe to say we have culture wars about culture wars (e.g. “cancel culture” as a good thing v. bad.)
I’m gonna guess that it’s safe to say that there is a very small likelihood that you are an expert in anything we have an Us v. Them split about if you participate vehemently in the Us v. Them split, or, at the least, are a mediocre “expert” who stopped studying too early.
I have found in my exploration of this weird rock that the experts I’ve met always have a healthy case of “yea… it looks like this or I believe this but…” Expertise allows for (though unfortunately doesn’t mandate) the perception and analysis of the edge case, as well as recognition of the limits of one’s own knowledge AND the limits of applying that knowledge to every other endeavor.
I can imagine a dendrologist who both insists you are wrong about the difference between walnut and ash trees correctly and also insists verbally on Facebook that the problem with America is that black people don’t pull themselves up by their own bootstraps like the model minority Asian-Americans to a resounding simple “you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.” That person satisfies the conditions of my guess as we are not split along dendrological lines, and they know dick-all about race relations, the struggle of black folk in America, the struggle of Asian-Americans in America, how labeling Asian-Americans “model” and a monolith can be harmful etc.
I’m going to hazard another guess, though. I’m going to hazard that for every one of our misled dendrologists, there’s some greater number of somebody else.
I’m going to guess that our world contains a silent, true majority of people who don’t believe they are experts in anything at all, and are just trying to “make it” in a semi-mad world that seems to actively hate them and work against their well-being for reasons unknown. Alongside them are experts in individual or a few fields who see or sense their limitations and the limitations of their expertise.
I’ll hypothesize that these folks shy away from the building-stormings, and the autonomous zones, and the amped up Facebook threads, and the clipboards, and probably government and its active arms as a whole. I’m likely wrong about the latter and there’s plenty of folks in the global equivalents of their FBI, CIA, police department, Senate desk chairs pressing the buttons they need to press to feed their kids, entirely uncertain about the whole damn thing, but determined to press well enough to get paid tomorrow, and to them, I apologize for your invisibility. (I also ask you to change that in a New York way I will explain soon.)
If I were a populist, I’d call these people “ordinary people” to try and win their support, but that’s a bullshit claim – the folks on different sides of the aisle and isle, sure that the mystery of why the world seems to actively work against the individual, or at least life is harder than it seems like it ought to be, or that the system is drowning us and doesn’t have to be, is THEM on the other side, are ordinary as fuck too – average, of average intellect and skill and expertise. What they are above average in is the ability to be manipulated by Populists and the ability to be called to arms to up-end the system by any means even if they’ll just recreate the system in the exact same image with different names to be up-ended ad infinitum. They also have extraordinary courage and a bias toward action, in the same vein of that German shepherd photographed jumping from a cliff.
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So rather than call these folks who don’t “Us v. Them” ordinary, I’m going to call them, and myself, something else entirely: Extraordinary Cowards. (See, I told you I wasn’t a Populist! Nobody ever ran on the platform of “Fuck you and me too! Don’t vote for me!”)
What else can it be but extreme cowardice to watch the coming storm that pits zealot on the left vs zealot on the right against one another for “the fate of our nation” without action?
What else can it be but extreme cowardice to give up on nuanced positions and balanced outcomes so that one can successfully participate in tribal life of some sort?
What else can it be but extreme cowardice to hide behind not knowing what the fuck to do in a situation, world, economy this complex such that we allow people — who have no more knowledge or skill about what to do than “we” do and no more experience in using “our” lack of knowledge and lack of skill to employ knowledge-gathering, skill-growing, and problem-solving methods than “we” do — battle it out, kill each other and “us” in the process, and prop up some other half-assed system painted either red or blue, that doesn’t work for everybody thereafter?
What else can it be but extreme cowardice that we can’t stand up and say the bravest and most empathetic of all phrases “you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing or why and I don’t either, but come sit down out of the sun and maybe we can figure it the fuck out together. Put down the rock because I don’t know what to do, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t the same thing that’s never worked, and come sit down with me to mourn, and eat, and plan…”?
I propose that those of us that haven’t been successfully gaslit and seduced into complacency by some Populist or other cult leader, and their well-trodden, “isolate you from everyone, following me is the only way to salvation” sociopathic, cult-building ways, may have a super power in the phrase “well..I’m not sure” or “mmm…it seems more complicated than that.”
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An illustration: it’s improbable that you are a heart surgeon and reading this (if you are a heart surgeon and reading, welcome, and please tell me that. Then make this metaphor an HVAC issue or something in your head.)
Imagine your romantic partner or sibling or self is having some heart trouble though. You are terrified. You believe they may need that bypass surgery your uncle did. You look around and find your nearest cardiologist and you rush them or yourself to that office and the “heart surgeon” there, wearing pajama bottoms and bunny slippers in a dinghy basement office, says to you that the correct course of action to treat your loved one is to install a can of Budweiser into the chest category next to the heart because recent studies have shown that Americans love Bud, and hearts just need a little inspiration every now and then. She insists that God Wills It. She shows you her diploma.
Do you proceed with this procedure with no thought as to the mental health of this person? Without seeking another surgeon’s views or googling “experimental beer surgery?”
Why not? You aren’t a heart surgeon; we’ve already established that. Who are you to doubt the accredited heart surgeon before you? Why do you think they are not “the only one” who can save your person because they have the new technique? I think the reason is simple: you don’t have to be an expert on a thing to understand when you aren’t being given expertise. You see mixed information in the environment, and you have some small level of experience via your uncle, that all give you room to pause.
“Well, the same thing could be said if they say you need a heart transplant or pacemaker, and then you’d die like an idiot,” I can hear a million trolls say. You’re right, except for not proceeding immediately isn’t the same thing as never proceeding. Iteration is also proceeding. It is possible to be without info and make dumbass decisions equal to having wrong or partial info. But here is where the power of the cowardly but wise “not sure” person in the middle lies.
What someone unsure about this surgeon, but certain in their lack of knowledge, who wants to make a wise decision is going to do is get more information. They’re going to learn all they can about this surgeon, this process, hearts, possible and desired outcomes etc. before they make a decision. They will respect urgency but do as much as they can until time is up. They will measure success and iterate thereafter.
They sure as hell aren’t going to leave it up to which surgeon yells the loudest or has the loudest mob in their waiting room. At minimum, they will devise a means to seek and vet members of a team that can make decisions with them, containing both the overtly biased (those who profit from) and not, across a swath of experience and expertise in both the matter at hand and how to get to decent answers without being an expert in the matter at hand.
Populists are these surgeons at terrible times, at the best of times misguided in the notion that a computer science degree teaches you to manage a near million soul city, or that an economics or law degree can ever give you true insight into an economic and legal machine this big (or all the massive implications of those public, macro arenas on the private, micro lives of ordinary people and vice versa), and at the worst of times, folks who are so enamored with themselves they’ll promise you all the candy in the candy store they don’t own, that will magically never rot your teeth, and will obviously cure cancer and the obsolete nature of your coal job, if only you’ll prop them up on a throne where they can get blowjobs from porn stars and eat burgers in style.
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Those of us who aren’t beholden to Populist Left or Populist Right are often called “Independents.”
In this particular political climate, where everyone says “the other guys isn’t listening to me so I have to start shooting,” and wherein any sensible action, especially when iterative by design, is stalled by bureaucracy that has little interest in delivering desired, sustainable outcomes (because tribalism is better for those at the top), Independents should no longer see it as their right to stay quiet simply because they don’t pretend to have all the answers.
I argue that the revolution we need is for that huge, too silent middle who is burnt out because
- Every single thing has to be a culture war
- Nothing can come to Win/Win ends in the current, global, political and social machine
- It’s disgusting that we have to, time and again, kill each other’s kids in the names of lore, lords, limits which increases them all
- Only very loud people are heard, even when they are clearly dumbasses
To INSIST that:
- It must be ok not to know in systems this complex
- Complexity doesn’t mean it has to be a broken piece of shit
- Lack of knowledge isn’t the same thing as lack of growth or solutions
- Lack of choosing a side isn’t lack of interest or lack of solutions
- We can vet and apply expertise and intelligent thinking even in areas where we ourselves aren’t experts by getting a clue, learning how to measure success and iterate, and making smart people and experts answer lots of questions
- We are only going to settle for solutions that seek to manifest the desired outcome of EVERYBODY IS FINE
I argue that we must insist that everybody means everybody, and if your definition of “we” mandates that there be some them, and we need to hate those folks over there, or your worldview insists that we remain forever in a zero-sum game
“We” should probably tell you to shut the fuck up in that old New York sort of way.
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New York is packed with people. It’s almost impossible to catch a second of silence, and where I used to go for that was the American art/furniture wing of the Met, because there was never a soul in the back and its climate control needs made it isolated to the city. But the city values freedom like hell. It’s just about the only place outside of Burning Man you’re gonna find a bald girl with tattooed armpits in orange lingerie roller-skate-dancing to Phil Collins in public. That place really values its right to free speech, evidenced over and over by how many times some old timer native will tell you what sandwich is best without you asking and the aforementioned roller girl.
But in a city that dense, it must also value Free Hearing. That is to say, “you have the right to your speech and your music, but holy fuck, do I have to listen to your bullshit and everyone else’s every second of every fucking day until I die?” The answer to that from a legal perspective is “I guess because no one thought the 2nd amendment should value silence” and from a moral one is often found by those that endure it to be “nah.” Enter the New York “shut the fuck up!” out of a window.
We could stand for that politically, no? We could round up — mining videos, Tweets, platform websites, talk shows, books etc. — every politician who waved a flag for some Us v. some Them as though that’s sustainable for the planet and any Us in the long-term team or ideology. Really round them up. Round up every news head, author, YouTube influencer, every rioter on either side that has rang the Populist bell or supported one. I volunteer to be rounded up too for segmenting Populists and their followers from some rest of “us” (which is why I keep putting it in quotes.) I guess that maybe we’ve all done it about something because it’s easy and normal, so maybe we all need rounding up together.
Once rounded up and listening, I argue that we, as one globe, no quotes needed, scream at the top of our lungs, one time in a way that sticks “SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP!” and then, like we would with a whiny child who wants attention, ignore every Populist who doesn’t actually represent outcomes for everyone (every single soul on this earth, independent of hue or belief or even participation in the project) for the rest of our species’ history. That would be a truly Great Reset.
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I argue that what it means to be truly Independent in this world of culture wars, bickering to the point of biting, misinformation, and overt idiocy is to be the adult in the room. To admit not knowing the right answer but choosing not to lie to the kids anyway. To apply some industriousness and unity to problem-solving. To start speaking in desired outcomes and listening to the experiences of EVERYONE so we know what’s actually going on even if we’re not seeing it ourselves and can iterate to functional responses and create those outcomes.
It would behoove us to stop trusting our eyes. It’s not that what we’re seeing can’t be believed because it isn’t there – it is and that’s why we’re seeing it. We can’t believe what we’re seeing because we can’t or haven’t seen enough. We can’t understand how deep the ley lines go, or how seemingly opposite views can be right simultaneously because the bigger picture we’re not seeing exists and they’re not actually opposites, or how limited we are as individuals and small groups. Our failure to conceptualize a harmonious planet is, fundamentally, our inability to see a whole planet at once and through time as well as our ability to see ourselves with any granularity.
I argue that true Independents, with a “mmmm I’m not so sure” and “well, yea…sounds right, but…” and “that doesn’t seem nuanced enough..” and “Sure but I’m not sure we have to care about that because it doesn’t look like it’s hurting anybody..” tendency and mindset, have a super power. They already don’t trust their eyes and know their limits.
It’s time for Independents to step in the middle of the kids fighting in the backseat, figure out that everyone’s actually fighting over the Batman toy because it’s a little warm and nobody has eaten or urinated in six hours, devise a plan, and pull over at the next available Dairy Queen.
Let’s not wait for the successful revolution of far-right or far-left and instead build what they all need to be well after listening to their experiences openly, so we can be one planet.
In so doing, let’s be sure we’re exporting something worth exporting when we launch ourselves into space.
And maybe, just maybe, prepare for the arrival of alien life, on the off-chance it exists, by agreeing in advance to call them Us, and not Them, when they get here.
We can always go back to fighting if we actually have to. We’ve got a lot of practice in that. We’ve very little in the other thing.
Happy Independents’ Day from one Drowning Rat to the rest.
The Drowned Rat Gospel Choir 