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[astudentscribe-blog]

Let’s talk about fascism

I have a lot of opinions about this administration and damn if I couldn't ramble on about how the policies they put in place hurt a lot more people than most probably realize. But today is not going to be some broad philosophical discussion about whether or not you can really be apolitical - spoiler alert: you can't, and you can find explanations of that all the way back to Aristotle. Nope, today is going to start more abstract and then get quite a bit more specific and inflammatory but fuck it.

Let's talk about fascism.

Not in a historical context - though that would certainly help motivate a lot more people right now -  or in the "everyone who disagrees with me is a fascist!" way (which if often used to dismiss rightful concerns and appeal to folks more interested in civility than truth or dignity or a number of other things). I mean fascist in the sense of policies used to exert control through fear, intimidation, and suffering, all in the goal of creating a nationalist society that believes itself superior to all others because of its heritage, history, and the narrative created through brands and iconography, both of the leader and the heritage it claims to represent.

I promised specifics, so let me give you some that should sound familiar.

Fascism is when a media organization, the New York Times doesn't run an article or a piece about policies that separate families because they're a deterrent and that is exactly how they were designed because they don't want to offend the source, Stephen Miller, who told them that.

Fascism is when someone, which Trump is doing in multiple tweets and through his surrogates on Fox and Republican officials, insists that one party is at fault when they hold no means of changing policy because you want to win an election and the truth is far less important than power.

Fascism is when parents are picked up on the streets and deported, or when children are taken from their parents and put into cages because they came from a different country, or because they speak a different language, or because their skin is darker than yours.

Fascism is when you use the real pain and discomfort of people as fuel for your campaign, and say that those people are the cause of your problems, that they are the ones who are ruining America and we need to take back our country, to make it great again.

The apocryphal statement, often attributed to Sinclair Lewis, 'when fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross' certainly rings true but it has the benefit of quite literally being able to fit onto a bumper sticker. I prefer a more substantive quote myself (as if that should be a shock to anyone) given by John Thomas Flynn:

But when fascism comes it will not be in the form of an anti-American movement or pro-Hitler bund, practicing disloyalty. Nor will it come in the form of a crusade against war. It will appear rather in the luminous robes of flaming patriotism; it will take some genuinely indigenous shape and color, and it will spread only because its leaders, who are not yet visible, will know how to locate the great springs of public opinion and desire and the streams of thought that flow from them and will know how to attract to their banners leaders who can command the support of the controlling minorities in American public life. The danger lies not so much in the would-be Fuhrers who may arise, but in the presence in our midst of certainly deeply running currents of hope and appetite and opinion. The war upon fascism must be begun there.

The last three years have given us an example of just what American fascism would look like, be it coming down the escalator at Trump Tower, or through the mouthpiece of wealthy white men on Fox News trying to seem like they're helping fight the elites, or people in power and privilege not speaking up for fear of losing one or both. It is hard to decide whether it is the latter or the warping of "freedom of speech!" and "protect our liberty!" into cries for authoritarianism that is the most insidious and perhaps the most damning indictment of what we have become. There will always be terrible people and those in power who seek to abuse their position, but when we are silent in the face of evil is how evil is victorious; and knowing when to fight back against those trying to use our rights to deprive others of them is crucial to ensuring that victory does not come.

Fascism does not require you to be a white supremacist, though there is certainly plenty of crossover; it does not require you to be vicious or spiteful, though that is how much of fascist policies are practiced; it does not require total political power for its impact to be felt, though that is the ultimate goal of any such movement; it does not even require you to believe in much of the narrative that is spun in service of terrible actions, though just by refusing to refute said narrative you help its spread.

No, what fascism requires is for you to be complicit.

I wrote this because I have felt increasingly worried that there is nothing I can do to stop what I believe is the destruction of my home and my country. It may be that we cannot arrest this spiral into cruelty that marks the rise of fascism in America. I do not believe there is some design or plan that will save us, some innate morality or salvation that can be found through faith - in anything - alone. If there is no higher power that bends the moral arc of the universe towards justice, as Dr. King and President Obama have referred to the history of progress, then we must grasp it with both hands to do so.

Perhaps the most important aspect of this is: what can I do? I find myself more often than I would like to admit feeling like I have not done enough, or that I will never be able to do enough. I know that I am far from alone in feeling like that, but intimidation - even at the scale of the task before us - is one of the many tools that fascism uses to force its way on a society, no matter how unwilling that society may be.

For those who can, take part in local activism - which, while most prominently is viewed through protests and marches, is not solely about going door to door. Street-level activism is incredibly important, but there are other ways to fight back that must be exercised if we are to succeed. If you have the means, make donations to legal funds and organizations that are fighting back, like the ACLU or the Hispanic Federation, or dozens of others. If you can't do that, then donate your time by creating signs or working phonebanks or writing letters or any number of other efforts. If you can't do those, then support others who are, because this fight will be exhausting (ask anyone who's disabled, or a person of color and they will tell you just how much so, not the least of which because they have been doing this for years, if not the entirely of their lives) but it is worth fighting. And when you need to take a break or a breather, do so; being able to stay in the fight is the most important part of all of this, because this is not a battle that will be won in days or weeks, and we cannot lose you in the process of fighting.

Push back against people you know or work with who go along with the idea that, yeah, maybe it's alright to "deter" people from crossing the border by taking their kids, or that "well, he's just speaking the truth!" It will be uncomfortable, but it should be uncomfortable to support fascism, even unknowingly; by making it more so, you make it that much more likely for someone to turn away when presented with that choice.

Ask questions, especially of those in power. Every single person running for elected office should have to answer what they think about the detention camps, and if they're elected what they'll do to stop them. And if that person thinks putting children into cages is a good policy, then make sure everyone knows it. I do not like using shame as a means for pushing someone to change, but much like with many other such rules, combatting fascism is worth the exception to that rule.

Help those running for Congress or elected office who will stand up to Trump and fascism, and that means - at this time at least - Democrats. For every sad tweet or call for justice and return to bipartisan cooperation from a Republican in power, there are ten times where that same Republican could have stood up to these atrocities and did not. While it will not be everything, a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives or Senate can be where investigations and oversight can take place, where a break can be placed on inhumane policies, and where those invested in fighting back can be given a platform is vital to the survival of the republic.

And in that same vein, to my Republican friends - if you don't support these policies, say so and loudly. Not just by asking for thoughts or saying that the people in power have to make tough choices, because we all have to make them, and the people in Washington aren't the ones being locked up and having their children taken away for seeking safety. Push your friends, or bosses in the case of some of you, to take principled stands; and if, the suffering of other people is not enough to motivate them to act, then for their own sake. If you are silent, then this is what you stand for and this is what the Republican Party stands for, and will go down as such in history.

Far better descriptions than mine exist of what Hannah Arendt coined 'the banality of evil' exist, and certainly more pithy ones. So too do far more apt and eloquent explanations of how we got to this point, both in well-thought out and developed articles or from professors of political theory and American government who can explain more practically in 200 words what I have done in nearly 2000. And arguing for truth and justice and equality does not mean that we must engage in a war for purity while we lose our country that, however imperfect and flawed and heinous in its own ways, will be far worse off if we do not act to save it. But if this venting of helplessness and rage and hopefully some ways to take action can provide some guidance or reassurance that, no, you are not alone in feeling like there should alarms ringing in every corner of society, then that is a start.

[astudentscribe-blog]

Tech Dopes and Politics

https://www.recode.net/2017/7/3/15904484/pincus-hoffman-linkedin-zynga-clinton-win-the-future-democrats-dnc-trump

This became MUCH longer than I thought, and yeah, it’s a slog.

Oh, where to begin with this shitstorm. Let’s start with some snark and then move onto more serious concerns (though really, it’s not like those are going to be held too far apart because good lord).

This is the kind of idea that two dopes in a sitcom or movie would be talking about to anyone who would listen. They’re young, white, male, and rich, though not necessarily in that order. They’re tired with politics or the delivery business or media - really, the exact what they’re tired of doesn’t matter so much as the disdain for “X as usual” (which they never really define nor care to). They’ve got this great idea though - “what if you could change the way X worked with just a click? Introducing, Win The Future! (with a giant poster board of a “WTF” logo in simplistic font, probably with some kind of geometric-esque symbol for branding)”

Everyone, except maybe the most gullible person, or someone who has no idea how politics or the internet work, in the room look at these two like they’re probably high. They never get mentioned again, except as a brick joke several acts later, and only in a positive light if the writers are trying a “take that” at consumerism and such. You’ve probably seen something like this in numerous versions of media, enough that I don’t even have to really give a specific scene because the idea of two rich novices trying to tell everyone EXACTLY what will fix their problems is built into satiric writing. Shit, the Big Bang Theory’s probably done this more times than years I’ve been alive.

In this article? Played completely straight. No winks, no asides (except one kinda-sorta-maybe), just two scrappy underdogs with degrees from little-known universities like UPenn, Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford, armed with only $5 billion between themselves, trying to change the world. The underdogs in question: Mark Pincus, co-founder of Zynga (of Farmville fame, among others), and Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn (the eternal punchline of social media platforms).

I’m trying not to dip into ad hominem too much here because there are plenty of smart, compassionate, self-aware people who happen to be wealthy, I’m sure. Not most of them and certainly not the ones you hear the most about, but I’m willing to grant that not everyone with an income over $250k a year is an abominable moron divested from reality. But as the tone may suggest, I’m skeptical.

And it certainly does little to suggest you fit in that category when you spout this nonsense:  

“It’s become this competitive insider’s world,” said Pincus, who has donated nearly $2.5 million to candidates and causes, according to federal records. "Whether it’s me or my family and friends … we just feel - we’ve always felt - left out. It just feels like the bar is so high for any of us to have a voice and choice.”

Setting aside for a moment the gurgling rage that threatens to dispose of my ability to construct coherent thought, the lack of self-awareness in those three sentences is almost staggeringly funny. It almost makes me think the writer was trying to slip an aside in about how absurd that statement is, coming from that source, but given a) it’s from recode and b) the generally positive tone of the piece, it seems unlikely.

Mark Pincus is from the neighborhood in Chicago were the terms “Trixie” and “Chad” sprung up to describe the young affluent type who was as vapid as they were wealthy, and boy does it seem to fit. Pincus’ career tab on his wiki page goes, “Before he became an entrepreneur, Pincus worked in venture capital and financial services,” which is shorthand for ‘he wasn’t quite rich enough to buy an island, but enough to make some really dumb purchases at the yacht dealership” and was rich enough to be “an early investor’ in basically every major social media platform of the early-00s. Richard Hoffman has a similar setup, growing up in Palo Alto and Berkeley, attending Stanford and Oxford, becoming an “angel investor” and investing in too many startups to list here for practical purposes. They are, if you hadn’t guessed, both white, live/work in the Silicon Valley area, and incredibly well-connected (Hoffman’s a member of the Bilderberg Group, if you ever want to fantasize about the closest thing to the Illuminati in real life).

This is not to diminish anything good either of them has done. Jury’s out on social gaming’s ultimate effect on society, but I lean towards neutral at worst, and it’s been helpful to people in all sorts of ways, and Zynga upended the market and general consensus on that. Hoffman, while being one of the guys behind PayPal (yeah, another one), a member of Microsoft’s board and has a history of investments in Facebook and Airbnb, is probably most notable for a number of tech-related philanthropic endeavors and was the money behind Crisis Text Line.

The notion they’re advocating, of a more democratic process, is not a bad one at all and if we’re choosing between folks like these two and Peter Thiel or even Mark “I’m So Normal Guys Look I’m Going To Iowa” Zuckerberg, I’m with Hoffman and Pincus any day (Never mind that a world relying on the deep pockets of tech billionaires for political reform makes me gag). But to call these two anything but “insiders” is a fundamental failure to grasp how much power and access that the people with lots of money (remember: $5 billion between them) have compared to the vast majority of voters in this country.

And, you guessed it, it gets worse. The only platform items that the WTF (I still cannot fucking believe) have committed to far are “Whether or not they believe engineering degrees should be free to all Americans, and if they oppose lawmakers who don’t call for Trump’s immediate impeachment” per the article above. Which, uh, that’s cool how about college for everyone not just engineers (while super important and underappreciated), and second, again, uh yeah but that has the same effect as threatening to boycott space travel: the people who agree with you are already there, the people who dislike it aren’t gonna move (especially for you), and there’s really no practical effect that’ll happen in the near term (i.e. Elon Musk loses it Howard Hughes-style, Spruce Goosing our way to space and when a Democratic majority takes the House, for space and Trump respectively).

Worse, in the same vein as saying they’ve “felt left out” the article details an approach that is, well, concerning.

In politics, though, Pincus sees a similarly — needlessly — complex game. Replace the Xbox controller maybe with the impenetrable machinations of Congress, where bills and markups and votes are often the stuff of hard-to-discern theater. So, too, are the costs of playing increasingly high at a time when political money can — and does — flow uninhibited to campaigns in the forms of hard-to-track nonprofits and super PACs.

Simple things are not bad - simple ideals like universal health care, college tuition for all, anti-discrimination laws, equal pay for equal work, guaranteeing the right to vote for every person in the Constitution are all ones I’ve heard Democrats talk about and I for one embrace enthusiastically. But this isn’t about simplicity of ideal, this is simplicity of process - and democracy, even the lacking measures that are so often twisted or bandied about for gaining power, is inherently messy and complicated. It’s designed that way, because if something is simple, then it is easy to manipulate and seize control of. Tech guys, more so than most businesses it seems, are all about efficiency - getting down to basics, streamlining workflow and production, which again! All good things! But politics and civic service is not a business, and it cannot be operated on the same principle of a business - those in power have to be held accountable, and that means you will inevitably sacrifice some efficiency. Not the kind of partisan wrangling and obstructionism (again rooted in accumulating power rather than serving the people or process, but that’s another rant for another day) that has been a problem for the last two decades, and for both parties but predominantly the GOP; complexity is not a vice - if we wanted simple and efficient, we’ve had plenty of examples and most of them we’ve fought wars again at one point or another.

No, this kind of simple suggests that you just don’t want to learn or be troubled to get your hands dirty in what you see as a nasty business, the holier-than-thou kind of simple. It’s the kind of simple where you run into a problem you can’t fix with a check or a call to someone you know, so you call the system broken and impenetrable and fund-raise or petition based off of the frustrations of other people, usually those who have far less money, power, access, or time than you do. It is the simple that is based off of good intentions because it’s easy and you’re scared and you’ve seen the other side go for easy and simple and win, even while lying or rejecting reality entirely. “He doesn’t speak like a politician, he thinks like one of us! He’s authentic!”

And now this is the part where I have to make more in the way of conjecture rather than history and background, but it’s equally important.

As a general rule, Pincus told me in June, WTF aspires to be “pro-social [and] pro-planet, but also pro-business and pro-economy.”

I said this already on twitter, but how can you much more of a useless “both sides” centrist techie stereotype can you be? Other, just as useful ideas from this platform:  

"We’re pro-puppy, but also pro-kitten."

"Pro-blue skies but pro-clean water.”

“Pro-justice AND pro-equality”

Also, “pro-social” - whatever the fuck THAT means - is the only mention of anything in the ballpark of issues of racial justice, economic inequality, women’s rights, LGBTQ issues, and more. Hold onto that for a moment.

The exact direction is up to its supporters, who can steer the organization through the campaigns they choose and promote, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that WTF seeks to push Democrats further to the political left.

“I’m fearful the Democratic Party is already moving too far to the left,” Pincus said. “I want to push the Democratic Party to be more in touch with mainstream America, and on some issues, that’s more left, and on some issues it might be more right.”

Yeah, this is pretty concerning, especially given a long list of failed centrist political programs like No Labels or Americans Elect. Both of those groups (which, disclaimer, the latter I signed up for with its “national online primary” in 2012) tend to focus towards “fiscal responsibility” and “treating America like a business” and policy like a balanced budget amendment (nope) and tone policing stuff like you see from Peggy Noon or David Brooks. It usually couches this in “both sides are bad” rhetoric or in the case of some more progressive elements, decries both parties as being basically the same (see: “She’s no better than Trump!” for a more progressive take on it with 2016).

What WTF isn’t: “Pro-politician,” Pincus said. “So we’d like to see either political outsiders or politicians who are ready to put the people ahead of their career.”

And then we circle back to the “simple because it’s easy” route, where anyone can look at the current White House and go “jesus christ, I don’t have any experience but I can certainly do better than that!” Because politicians are an easy target (boy howdy do I know that) and it’s easy to find things in the political system that seem antiquated or archaic or overly coated in red-tape and you can sure bet that some of them are. But it’s the one we’ve got, and making another out of whole-cloth should terrify anyone who understands half of what that’d entail.

Time to come back to that idea I said to hang onto at the top of the page, “pro-social.” As I noted, there is not one mention of what are commonly referred to as “social issues” - LGBTQ rights, civil rights, women’s rights, all of which (if the names didn’t tip you off) tend to be about what the folks in power already have and minorities tend to not. There’s one mention of immigration policy, and that’s in the context of the Muslim travel ban being a catalyst for rounding up an email list of wealthy white liberal donors, and “affordable healthcare” is similarly piled into that one block quote from said email. And that’s frankly not surprising.

These two, and pretty much everyone else mentioned or sniffed at for this idea, is of that rich, white, male, and young demographic I talked about back in the beginning of this novella. So, no, it’s not surprising - it is still frustrating, and dangerous because it begets ideas like this:

Initially, Pincus had planned to solicit feedback at launch on recruiting a potential challenger to Democrats’ leader in the House, California Rep. Nancy Pelosi, in a primary election. That idea is on hold — for now — but Pincus and Hoffman are still trying to solicit candidates to run elsewhere as so-called “WTF Democrats.” For Pincus, one of his early targets: Stephan Jenkins from Third Eye Blind. The two have met in recent months, in fact.

At first, Pincus planned to pitch potential supporters on challenging Pelosi, an audacious move at a time when insurgent Democrats are wondering if her leadership in the House has given Republicans too much opportunity to go on the attack. Days before the launch of WTF, however, the Zynga leader opted against proposing such a plan. (Asked if he backed a fight to unseat Pelosi, Hoffman told me hours earlier he was “waiting to see,” but stressed that he’s “certainly not opposed to it.”)

Also on Pincus’s potential target list: California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who he derided as a “career politician.” Feinstein also isn’t an introductory target for WTF, but Pincus said he’s already had conversations with folks like Jenkins, the frontman of Third Eye Blind, about someday challenging her.

Pelosi and Feinstein, two of the most powerful women in Congress, are the only listed targets this group has been public about so far. The only reason for doing so seems to be that they’re folks who have been in politics for decades and based in the San Francisco area. You could say it’s the “career politicians” thing (see: No Labels for an example of another centrist group that talks about experience in political arenas like leprosy) but that doesn’t really add up. There are Democratic leaders in Congress like Senator Chuck Schumer of New York (18 years in the Senate, another 18 in the House), Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont (42 years in the Senate), Steny Hoyer of Maryland (36 years in the House), or John Lewis (elected just months prior to Pelosi in 1987); all of which are senior to Pelosi and Feinstein, but with zero mention - and while you can make arguments that careerism has influenced any and all of the individuals I just listed along with Pelosi and Feinstein, only the latter two are singled out as public targets.

Yeah, you can probably guess the difference, but here it is: tech companies are shit when it comes to women in their midst. Tech culture (and venture capital and business in general and… ad infinitum) is notorious brutal to break into, and even more so for women who often deal with harassment, stagnant wages, lack of promotion, and hostile atmosphere. The most visibly toxic results of tech culture’s osmosis into society are, unfortunately, displayed often enough on Twitter and the White House (and sometimes at the nexus of the two), but it also manifests itself in ways that are, in the big picture, subtle or even benign in their appearance, but have the overall effect of leaving women on the outside of policy and power - and leading to bullshit like Viagra being covered by every fucking insurance plan in the known universe, but birth control being a coin toss (at best) prior to the ACA.

Ridding Congress of the deadwood is a popular drumbeat and has been more or less since there’s been a Congress to campaign about, and especially against. But kicking out people based solely on the fact that they’ve been there for a long time is a great way to ensure that the folks who make up the institutional memory of how to get things done and passed (see the current Republican Congress as to how important it is to have the folks who know how to make a deal and negotiate with the other party). And when it’s clear that you’re only thinking of doing that, at first blush, to the women in power, including arguably the most efficient and successful political operative the House has seen since Henry Clay?

Yeah, fuck that nonsense. I’ll ride with Nancy Pelosi and complexity any day over two rich bros who think they know just how to fix all our problems with one easy solution.