Since starting this newsletter, writing about politics while staying above the daily firehose of news and events has been challenging.   Every day, there are important events that I weigh in on in group text threads with my liberal and conservative friends.   For this project, however, I want to stay focused on problems from a higher altitude because, while it’s seductive to want to weigh in on every fight and every slight as they come in wave after wave on social media, there are already plenty of people slugging it out in the trenches on social media. Our collective problems are much more significant and interconnected than the soundbites on the news and clickbait headlines online. I hope that by approaching these issues in a more holistic, less combative way, we can better come together as citizens instead of tribes to tackle them. In my last post, I wrote about my epiphany on the road living with mountain men and women in Montana and how that experience taught me to be suspicious of the left/right political divide on environmental protection that we take for granted.  

As a country, America is trapped in a cultural war left over from the 1960s, and it’s quite literally going to kill us. As long as “environment protection” and believing we must take action to mitigate “climate change” are synonymous with being a “lefty,” voters who don’t identify as such will continue to vote against our collective long-term best interest, even if they essentially agree with the outcomes many of these policies intend to achieve.  

Our inability to act will mean the difference between our ability to live, thrive, and evolve on this planet versus humanity being forced to contract, mass migrate from the equator, and claw out our daily existence just to survive. Do you worry that immigration is too high now? Imagine what it would be like if the equator became unlivable.  

Cultural divisions designed to protect politicians are the seeds of our environmental destruction and paralysis to this day. 

Most people understand that, when it comes to the environment, some compromise and risk are necessary to feed, clothe, house, and sustain human life at the scale humans exist on this planet. There will be some environmental degradation or even destruction to power our homes, drive our cars, grow, harvest, and deliver our crops, and support the manufacturing processes that power our modern lives; this just is and has been for as long as humans have been on earth.

We can accept this as accurate without turning it into a zero-sum game.  Humans can also thrive alongside the environment and do.  What is not sustainable, however, is to continue our current quality of life using the same systems, policies, technology, and market incentives that we’ve employed since the start of the Industrial Revolution more than two hundred years ago. We must start transitioning because, contrary to what big business interests and their puppets, I mean pundits, want you to believe, there will not be any climate havenson the ever-warming planet on which we depend.

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Now, some argue that capitalism is fundamentally at odds with the environment, as it is destructive and exploitative by design. Without question, history has born this out from the earliest days of modern capitalism. On the other hand, despite capitalism’s abysmal record on the environment, slavery, and exploitative destruction, we cannot ignore its role in lifting the human species out of an existence that was “nasty, brutish, and short.” While we cannot know if another economic system would have had the same impact on our quality and quantity of life, we do live better and longer due to advances that may not exist were it not for capitalism’s often brutal rules. More recently, there have been institutional and cultural efforts to mitigate at least some of those destructive tendencies. Some argue that this is merely a shell game or, at best, a stall and survival tactic. One that dresses up a few sustainability “show ponies” while capitalism’s real players continue to move its destruction to parts of the world that are least equipped to deal with it. 

With all that said, this blog isn’t the place to spin our wheels arguing about various economic structures; it’s about politics, and for far too long, because of the way we’ve defined environmental champions, politicians have used the environment as a wedge to pit Americans against each other so they will not collectively demand change. I want to explore ways that we can change that.

To understand how to move forward, we must know how we got here.

Americans have been fighting to protect their local environments since the late 1800s. However, the most relevant event to our modern cultural paralysis is rooted in the early 1960s, when Rachel Carson first published her findings on the danger of pesticides in The New Yorker magazine.   Soon after, she released her book Silent Spring. Her conclusions caused what the boomers used to call “a sensation.”

In Silent Spring, Carson made a damning case against the wholesale use of DDT in our environment and its deadly impacts on bugs, which in turn moved up the ecological food chain with the potential to devastate our agricultural system. I’m paraphrasing here for brevity, but Silent Spring was a watershed moment in American life and politics. It’s been credited with creating the modern environmental movement and significant legislation.  Ultimately, Carson’s work led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Nixon and brought America back from the brink of ecological suicide. (Yes, that’s right. Nixon created the EPA, which is more proof that environmental protection transcends political ideology and can again.)

Carson and her claims faced immediate pushback from the chemical industry, which launched a sustained, coordinated slander campaign against her. Americans across the political aisle were alarmed by Carson’s arguments that chemical pesticides were not only killing bugs, which was impacting our entire food chain but potentially harming children directly. The chemical industry took a defensive stance, and that defense would prove to be an effective template that we remain shackled by today. The industry didn’t just attack Carson’s science but her character and credentials, going so far as to accuse her of being a communist “in league with “sinister parties” in the Soviet Union.” 

Though the “Red Scare” era of Joseph McCarthy technically “ended” when the Senate censured McCarthy in 1954. Labeling opponents as communists or socialists was an extremely effective tactic for decades, as many Americans remained suspect of all things “communist” until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. (Some argue that conservative politicians, desperate for a fear-based wedge to hold on to power, swapped the “red scare” for a “green scare” following the collapse of the Soviet Union.)

Silent Spring may have been the seed of our current cultural war over the environment, but it was the subsequent two decades that cemented the false narrative that environmental protection is somehow a “lefty” value. The rise of the counterculture generation of the 1960s and 70s created a cultural schism between “liberals” and “conservatives” over the environment.

Ronald Reagan and other savvy politicians weaponized this rift when they exploited political identity as a tool for power. Since then, politicians, their proxy organizations, think tanks and mainstream media have reinforced, enhanced, and manipulated this idea that Republicans trusted business and markets to “do the right thing” while painting anyone who stood in the way of short-term economic interests as anti-American.

To protect the environment, a focus on winning elections is not enough

While many people say they want to protect the environment and better care for the health of the oceans, megafauna, and forests, we are much more vocal about what’s good for our economy and immediate future. This is frustrating, but we have evolved to focus on the next meal vs. the next century. Further, the cultural West is the product of centuries of capitalism and a growth-at-all-costs mindset. This deeply embedded cultural mindset makes it easy for politicians and business interests to position the economy over the environment as a zero-sum game.

Candidates must know this because, if you are following the 2024 Presidential election, you might have noticed that neither campaign spends much time discussing the environment.  This might seem odd, seeing how, in every state, people are experiencing climate change in deadly ways. Weather patterns, fed by warming weather, create wild, catastrophic events that cost lives and the vast destruction of property.  The choice to only respond and rebuild after these events is far more expensive and will ultimately destroy our local, state, and national economies.

But even if Democrats, who most people assume are the party to champion environmental policies, win the next election at the national level, there’s no guarantee that anything will change. Without a shared cultural demand around the necessity to slow climate change, the structure of our government ensures that we’ll likely see watered-down legislation inadequate to curb the worst outcomes of an artificially warmed planet. At the same time, the very next election may sweep Republicans back into power and undo most of those even modest gains.

No, a short-term focus on winning the next election will not be enough. Any gains will remain too small and too temporary. To address human-caused climate change, we must get enough Republican voters to realize and accept that climate change is a real threat and, in turn, demand their Republican representatives treat it as such. 

Relying on one party to address climate change also risks the inherent problem when one side of an ideological aisle dictates any policy: terrible legislation. We’ve all seen how badly well-meaning proposals driven by ideology can fall apart once they meet reality.  Tackling climate will impact every aspect of our society, and we need everyone at the table to inform those decisions.

To succeed in slowing climate change, we need honest conversations that include conservatives, business and industry leaders, farmers, activists, and especially everyday “normie” Americans. I am confident that we can tackle this challenge together in ways that change but still ultimately grow the economy, build a sustainable energy platform, and protect our only planet.

But first, we must win over enough voters to reject the ancient cultural divisions that are no longer relevant or reflect our times. Here are some ideas on how to break from our grandparents’ shackles and come together on enough points to take real action:

1. Voters must reject the false choice between “the economy” and “the environment,” and politicians must help them do that:

   1. Any politician running must speak about the environment in ways that resonate locally and talk about how we transition from an ancient industrial economy to a modern one built for the 21st century.

   2. Protecting the economy is a valid concern, but all too often, it’s an excuse for inaction. The Biden Administration achieved a significant win with the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, but that is only a tiny step to mitigating climate change. We can and must do that while easing economic hardship and anxiety among voters. This may seem obvious, but preying on economic anxiety is the most effective tool to slow, stop, and reverse any progress we make on environmental protection in the wake of each election.

2. We need an aggressive but integrated transition from our ancient power grid to a modern one:

   1. Think of it like the transition to electric vehicles: many people want one, but range anxiety is enough to stop them. We need an accelerated program that invests in transitioning to a cleaner economy using the infrastructure and workforce we have in place. That means replacing the electric grid’s parts as they age out with cross-compatible systems that can drive energy from either coal or solar, wind or natural gas. This way, we aren’t “stuck” with an ancient system that will cost trillions and decades to replace.

   2. We need a Green Rush that energizes, excites, and inspires a new generation of seekers looking for gold, only this time, it’s by nurturing inventors, entrepreneurs, investors, and scientists to boldly head into the future, knowing that America has their back. Some will fail, some will thrive, but that cultural backwind will benefit us all. The Green New Deal tried this approach in many ways, but the messengers are as crucial as the message, and this is not something that can borne of nor sold by “the Left.” This drive must come from a mix of business leaders, republicans, and other aspirational influencers and validators.

3. Use science to reinforce our narratives, not define them:

   1. The fact is that most people do not care what “the scientists” or “the experts” say. Sure, some do, but the environment already has those people on its side, and my whole objective here is to reach people who are not already singing with the choir.

   2. Use what they call “yes, and” in improv: admit that the earth’s temperature has always fluctuated while immediately putting that into the relevant context; we, or most mammals, will not be able to survive outside a narrow climate threshold that unmitigated warming will destroy.

   3. We must speak about the climate in grounded language that connects voters to their immediate experience. The polar ice shelves may be experiencing catastrophic melt, but that message, to many voters, feels like we’re talking about another planet altogether. People who campaign on or speak about the environment must keep it local, immediate, and tie in economic impacts in the short and mid-term, not just generational crises in the long run. Sadly, we already have too many local examples that aren’t conveyed effectively.

4. Caring for the environment IS patriotic AND pro-life:

   1. Instant gut poll: Most of the people driving around and enjoying our National Parks in giant RVs are conservatives. These people love this country and its boundless beauty as much as any van-life liberal you’ve ever met. It’s time we treated the environment with the same flag-waving love we show our veterans. While veterans put their lives on the line to protect our country, the ground, air, and rivers define our nation. To love something is to give your everything to protect it.

   2. Acting to prevent the most predictable, severe impacts of climate change is how we (actually) care for our children and their children and generations to follow.

   3. Clean, locally produced energy is authentic freedom: The military knows this, too. They have been researching and implementing sustainable energy and conservation for decades. They know you can’t be free while relying on a multi-trillion-dollar global infrastructure to get gas to your warships, jets, and jeeps. Right-wingers must understand that their giant, gassed-up pick-ups would get about 100 miles before they, too, are worthless in a time of conflict and uncertainty.

5. Environmental sustainability is a conservative value:

   1. Environmentalists and politicians pushing for action on climate must stop using liberal frames.

      1. Conservatives value self-reliance and independence; sustainable, locally sourced, clean energy is the ultimate act of self-reliance and freedom because it is much more resilient than mining and transporting fossil fuels, be they on the other side of the planet or the country.

   2. Conservation is a conservative value. Conservatives value preservation and resist change: Throw a dart at most any country music songs over the last 80 years, and you are bound to land on one that laments the loss of wide-open ranges giving way to concrete and asphalt.

   3. Conservatives fear environment policy because they equate it with limiting the freedom of markets and individuals to use the environment as they see fit to their benefit. This is a false choice. Conservatives living on the ground want to protect the land they hold sacred, just like everyone else does.

   4. We must confidently define “freedom” as self-reliance that gives us cheaper, home-grown energy while remaining sustainable for our kids and their kids. We must move from a culture of “freedom for” those with money and power to one that values “freedom from” toxic air and polluted water.

      1. A protected environment means freedom from the anxiety of an unsustainable food chain

      2. A clean, sustainable energy system means freedom from a global infrastructure that poisons our skies and depletes our rivers

      3. And all of it means freedom from an artificially warmed climate that drives catastrophic weather events that devastate our communities.

   5. Conservatives do not have to go full “Al Gore” for America to slow climate change:  

      1. We must let go of this zero-sum game that for the environment to win, conservatives must lose. We must also let go of the false choice that pits the economy against the environment. These dichotomies only benefit the politicians, pundits, and media machines. Politicians use it as a wedge to stay in power, pundits use it as a platform for fame and fortune, and global media conglomerates keep us glued to our screens while we sit on our hands. These people have no interest in fixing anything because the problem is so profitable.

I could go on and on, but this post is already too long (and it’s Part II!)

The most vital thing is that more people see this left/right dichotomy on climate as the fabrication it is. It is the only way we can move past it. Until we choose to break free from living in the cultural dichotomy of the 1960s, we’ll continue to boil slowly, like frogs in the pot that is our planet, because we won’t control carbon emissions.

We must let go of that past, turn off the political pundits and leaders that reinforce it for their benefit, and come to the table to mitigate economic impact while making bold progress on our transition to a modern energy infrastructure.

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Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, it doesn’t matter where on the political spectrum you or anyone falls; we all intuitively understand that we need clean water to live, clean air to breathe, and a functioning, thriving environment for both things to exist. Not just for now but for future generations, our kids and their kids, and so on.  Why, then, is being “pro-environment” considered the purview of “Lefties” and Democrats?  Why do so many Republicans believe that supporting renewable energy, for example, means that they are betraying conservative principles, and why do liberals think that anyone who doesn’t support an all-hands-on-deck approach to tackling climate change is an idiot?   

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In America, conservatives are far less likely to support politicians and policies that address the human causes of climate change.  At a more fundamental level, it seems that so many on the Right feel that, for the environment to win, conservatives, or one of their common cultural proxies such as “business” or “the economy,” must lose.  So long as this remains the case, America will remain paralyzed to act in meaningful ways that stem most of the predicted outcomes of severe and irreversible climate change.

This is happening even now, as ever more extreme weather events upend not just lives but cost us hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money in the wake of disaster after disaster after disaster. If something isn’t done, climate change will destroy our communities, budgets, quality of life, and future.  

But even outside of the existential threat that climate change likely poses, most Americans agree that we must care for our environment. So, why has the environment as a political issue become such an explosive wedge between us?

For me, the most frustrating part of America’s left/right dichotomy regarding the environment is that it’s a cultural relic from fights in the early 1960s. These fights were instigated by industries that utilized tactics and messaging designed to shift the dialogue and blame about their products and practices to protect revenues and market share.

I will get into the specifics of these fights more in Part II of this post, but know that, over time, these battles over public and policy outcomes bled into and infected our cultural politics. Today, we’re tortured by the false choice of a left/right divide on how we engage, use, and protect the environment. What gives me hope is that I believe this can be changed.  Europe has many conservatives but, to a large enough degree, doesn’t suffer the same paralysis to act as we do. Regardless of party, most people in those countries agree on the human-based causes of climate change and what can or should be done to slow it down.

I know the choice between the environment and political identity is false because I’ve seen it among deeply conservative men and women who care for the environment as much or more than anyone.  

My epiphany around this happened while hitchhiking across the country in 2003.

I was in Montana at the time, just out of a three-day backpacking trip in Glacier National Park and walking down US Highway 2 headed west, hoping for a ride to Whitefish or beyond.

My thumb wasn’t out for long when a white Ford Bronco pulled over and waved me to the cab. Per my usual routine, I checked the backseat for red flags as I walked up to the truck's passenger side.  In the back of the Bronco, laid out in a loose pile, were a couple of hunting rifles and three bows.  It was early summer and not yet hunting season, but I didn’t feel the driver posed any danger.  

I climbed in, and we traded the usual hitchhiker’s exchange:

Him: “Where are you headed?”

Me: “As far west as I can get”

Him: “Where ya coming from?”

Me: “Just got out of a three-day backpacking trip in Glacier.”

From there, we spoke about what I was doing on the road (“traveling around the country, writing about my experiences”) and how long (by then, about two months).

He asked if I had a few days to spend with him and his people before moving on. I agreed, and before long, he turned off the highway onto a narrow dirt road heading up into the wooded hills north of what I think was Columbia Hills. (This was 30 years ago, and the certainty of some cities and towns eludes me now).

On the drive up, my ride explained that he lived in a tiny community of people who had chosen to live ‘off the grid.’  They lived in cabins or campers with whatever electricity they could muster with generators and a grid of small solar panels. Most of them worked “in town” either in the trades or hourly jobs, and for the most part, they lived without many of the comforts we take for granted.  They hunted “one or two bears” a year, lived on venison as often as possible, and salted, cured, or stored as much meat as possible for the winter season when the hunting is more challenging amid deep snow and frigid cold. Though they did go to town for some provisions, they worked hard to hunt or grow as much food as possible for themselves.

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We reached their encampment after about an hour. It was composed of three fifth-wheel campers and two smaller trailers parked in a spread-out, disorganized circle against the tree line of a large clearing, at the center of which sat a fire pit. On one end of the clearing, one of the members constructed a small wooden structure the size of a large backyard shed.  Powered by a generator to keep its bags of ice frozen and cases of beer cold, this “shop” sold paper goods, some canned foods, and a sprinkling of other necessities in case anyone ran out of something and didn’t want to make the long run into town.

There were also a couple of cabins tucked back in the forest. My host owned one of the campers.  Folks kept to their respective places for dinner (my host handed me a plate of grilled venison and roasted potatoes out of a cast iron skillet) and gathered around the fire pit as dusk settled in. Though I was a stranger, the people of this community seemed excited by a visitor, and what felt like a muted, happy energy permeated the evening.  They lit a large bonfire while, in the quiet background, a small boombox played music from a local country music radio station. 

As we sat around that roaring fire, we shared our stories; there were a lot of questions about where I’d been and why I was on the road.  We spoke about “big government,” why they chose to live off the grid and off the land, what it takes to be self-reliant, and the best way to care for and nurture the environment.

They wanted me to know they were not a militia or part of one, which they offered because such groups had seen a resurgence during the late 1990s. They made fun of who they called “weekend warriors in Walmart camouflage” who wouldn’t “last a day in a real war.”  (This was during the very early days of the “war on terror” and a few years before our next generation of ill-treated veterans would return battle-tested and battle-scarred.)

As we spoke, it was clear that these folks loved the environment as much as any environmentalist; they just engaged with it differently.  Living directly off the land forces one to be intimately aware that things like a sustainable food chain, breathable, fresh air, and clean water are essential for life, as is a thriving, healthy ecosystem.

Their direct and intimate interaction with the environment and their grounded, common-sense approach to caring for it left a mark that I carry to this day. 

These were not liberals, of course. They believed in small government, low taxes, and, most of all, to be left alone.  Their problem with how liberals approached environmental protection was rooted in their experience with who they called “slick, city lawyers” and their top-down “hands-off approach” to the environment.   I’ll let my host explain:

“The trouble is, these environmental lawyers don’t know the first thing about living in balance with nature, so their first instinct is to leave it alone. But leaving a forest alone is a disaster for it and us.”

He pointed to the small city below us in the distance and then beyond to the tree-covered hills that rose behind it. Above the tree line, a thin layer of gray fog hovered.

“That smog is not from cars or factories. That’s carbon from dying trees that cover the forest floor. We used to be able to go up there and log that stuff, but not anymore (remember, this is 2003; things may have changed since).  That land is protected, or, I should say,” – he raised two air quotes – “protected.” It’s dying because there are too many trees, and they choke out the younger saplings while the dead ones fall and dry out. The carbon from the rotting trees overwhelms the living trees’ ability to clean it all, and they, too, start choking.  Soon, as the forest continues drying out, you have one hell of a tinderbox for one fuck of a forest fire. And sure, a million years ago, lightning would scorch the area to clear out the dead and let the young trees grow to replace them. But this ain’t a million years ago, and humans live in that city that will burn with the forest.  This ain’t how you live in balance with the forest.”

I asked about logging and suggested that maybe some of the pushback came from logging companies completely clear-cutting forests with no checks, balances, or regulations.”

“Up here,” he replied, “we’re as suspicious of big business as we are of big government. If you ask me, all of them are the same city folk dressed to the nines in fancy suits with fancier degrees and all trying to control something they don’t understand for their own gain.

“Speaking for me, and I think all of us up here and many Montanans down there, we don’t want some big company coming in and trying to clear-cut our forests, pollute our rivers and choke up our skies any more than I want some government agency telling me that I can’t hunt a couple of bears a year or build a house on land my family laid claim to one hundred years ago. I just want to be left alone and in peace.”

I wanted to reply, “Sure, your way of life is fine for the 20 or so of you that live here, maybe even a thousand, and IF you live like early settlers or Native Americans had for millennia. But this quickly becomes unsustainable the minute there are thousands of you or more, especially in anything remotely reflecting modern living standards.   And these lands were claimed by Indigenous Tribes at least a millennia before any white person even stepped foot in Jamestown, Virginia…” 

I was about to say that when I remembered that I was at least an hour’s car ride, in a vehicle I didn’t have, from the nearest paved road, surrounded by men and women with strong opinions and armed to the teeth, each a couple of beers deep, and all as dusk gave way and a curtain of stars drew over the darkening sky.  So, instead, I took another sip of my beer and looked as if I was considering his truth. The silent standoff broke when another resident of the compound, many more than a couple of beers in, suddenly burst into the clearing with his four-wheeled UTV at full throttle.  

“Damn it, Danny!” Someone yelled, “You’re going to kill yourself!”

“So long as he don’t take me with him!” Someone else replied.

Danny didn’t die that night, but he did hit a berm so hard that his UTV popped straight up into the air, seemed to freeze upright and midflight like a small plane stalling out, and landed upside down on its reinforced roof.  The wheels of his UTV were still spinning when Danny turned off the engine, climbed out, dusted himself off, and stammered to bed somewhere in the darkness.

I remained in that community for a few more days until getting that promised ride through the open range and farm expanses of Idaho and into Spokane.  But then and now, to this day, I know that most Americans, left and right, want to care for and protect the environment we all live in. 

Part II, to follow, will explore how the environment became just another partisan issue dominated by grievance and hostility and why, for the environment to “win,” the Right feels that it must “lose.”

I haven’t wanted to weigh on the Presidential race because we have So Many Other Problems in America to explore – honestly – and I don’t believe in the idea of One President saving us All. When it comes to Presidential power, there will never be one executive who can fix everything.  I also don’t want this blog to be another cheerleader for Harris here; she has plenty already and from people with far more reach and influence than I do. Nor do I need to spend my time (or yours) going after Trump, as plenty of troops are carrying that water, too.

My objective is to stay above the trenches because, all too often, we get lost in the moment's immediacy and lose track of the more significant problems that befall us.

While there’s been plenty of coverage on the debate already, I want to focus on why so many Americans, according to polls, and despite the Trump campaign’s descent into ignorant madness, remain so hesitant to support Harris.

First off, let’s write off the radical Forever Trumpers, those who will support him no matter what.  These people are beyond saving and not worth anyone’s time trying to understand. By their own words and actions, they are racist, misogynist, wannabe fascists who probably don’t even know what fascism is.  But in most elections, there are frankly not enough of these idiots to matter.

The people who will impact this election are the sane segment of independent voters who, so far, continue to support Trump in enough places to keep this race close.  These are people that, for reasons I’ll get into below, feel more comfortable voting for an obvious, rapidly declining psychopath than even consider pulling the lever for any Democrat, let alone Kamala Harris. If Democrats do not work to understand why, they will be caught flat-footed again in November.

This isn’t a matter of party politics, either. Many Trump supporters aren’t Republican, and many Republicans loathe Trump. Harris is winning people of color, women, and young people by solid margins.  Since Harris’s initial surge after Biden dropped out, polling has leveled off in the last few polling cycles.  Most of the mainstream sites dedicated to the polling science of the race show that, no matter how much momentum Harris has experienced, she is still very much considered an underdog who has plateaued despite her opponent defending the January 6 rioters, pledging to be a dictator on day one and demonizing immigrants.  She is behind even without every Democrat’s built-in disadvantage in the Electoral College, even if they win the popular vote.  The fact is, a consistent subset of voters seem to be looking for a reason not to vote for Harris in a way that we’re not seeing with Trump, whose base is baked in, with a ceiling of support that has remained the same for years now.

To understand why so many independent, largely working-class voters support Trump, it’s vital to understand how Democrats lost these voters in the first place.

1. Many independents do not trust Democrats, and for some valid reasons.  

One of the core reasons I started this project is because I am one of the people who do not inherently trust Democrats to get things done once in power. But let me unpack that.  As mentioned in previous posts, I grew up in a working-class neighborhood amid a very liberal New Jersey town outside New York City.  They called it a ‘bedroom community’ back in the day.  My neighborhood was primarily 1^st and 2^nd generation Italian immigrants, but not exclusively. There were remnants of the previous immigrant generations, German and Polish families, and newer, inbound immigrant families from South America.  Though the wealthy in my town were very liberal, our neighborhood was on the conservative side of the spectrum. This being the 1970s and 80s, that meant in the Ronald Reagan mold: hopeful, patriotic, cut our taxes (or that of our employers), and we’ll keep more of what we (or they) earn (and hopefully our bosses pass some of those savings down to us.) These people fully bought into the ideal of America as a place where, if you work hard, you can achieve a better life for yourself and your children.

At that time in pre-NAFTA America, a lot of the divide between liberals and conservatives in the northeast was still socio-economic. On the wealthy side of town, many of the center-left Democrats, whom we called liberals, were lawyers, administrators, and other skilled, educated professionals (doctors are an exception and tend to lean conservative). On our side, most people were employed either hourly, in labor-intensive jobs, or salaried, working in one of the many factories in the Newark area.  At best, a working-class family might have more success and independence running small businesses like a landscaping company or working in semi-skilled labor like construction.  

This was also a time fresh off the Civil Rights and Vietnam War protest era, as well as Watergate, the 1967 Newark riot, and New York City’s “descent” into crime and drug culture, at least by way of what they watched on the nightly news.  It’s important to remember, too, that, in 1980s America, the 1960s and 70s were relatively yesterday. (For context, 1985 to 1969 is the same as looking back to 2008, when Obama was first elected President.)

People were scared, as they often are in times of great change, and it felt like Democrats were in charge in the American cities where they saw most of the chaos unfolding on the evening news. Add in a decade of headlines about corrupt, power-hungry union leaders making “backroom” deals with self-dealing politicians, and you have the seeds of generational resentment toward liberals and, in turn, Democrats.

By the time this era of violence and uncertainty transcended into Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America,” a generation of immigrants, white democrats, many former union members, and their kids had gone from optimistic Kennedy “idealists” into cold-hearted Reagan “realists.”    When the 1970s and early 80s malaise era finally gave way to exciting economic tailwinds, the late 1980s felt like America had returned from the verge of collapse. Reagan and his policies would get a lot of credit for what felt like prosperous times back then, even if those policies and zero-sum politics would also sow the seeds for so much of our broken discontent today.  

But getting from there to here needs more context.

What fed those seeds into a deeply rooted, multi-generational distrust of Democrats are the neoliberal economic policies supported by President Bill Clinton and the Democratic Party in the 1990s and 2000s.

Though actual liberals, those to the left of the Democratic party in the 1990s, fought NAFTA tirelessly before it was passed, for many people, especially in the Rust Belt, its passage nonetheless cemented the Democrat party as the party of urban, wealthy professionals, what some working people and all the right-wing dog whistlers call “the elites” to this day.  And it wasn’t just NAFTA; Democrats passed a slew of deregulation and tax reforms that exacerbated the trickle-up economics that Reagan and George HW Bush started.  Even though the 1990s were a time of significant economic expansion and a revolution in workforce structure and productivity, it was also a time of disorienting change in a rapidly globalizing economy, and many workers felt left behind.  The party in charge would get the blame for that.

By the time Al Gore ran for President in 2000, Democrats were clueless about their massive loss of working-class support. Though they only “lost” the election by 537 votes in Florida thanks to the Supreme Court, they were on track to lose the next election to George W Bush in a landslide in 2004.

2. Obama didn’t save them.   

When Obama won the White House in 2008, he did it with a lot of independent voter support. A lot of white people, including white men, voted for Obama, hoping that he would deliver on his rousing agenda of Hope and Change.  I know this firsthand, as several of my Trump-voting friends voted for Obama twice back then.  People were not only in the thick of the Great Recession; they turned against the disastrous war we chose to wage in Iraq and were hungry for a new start.

When Obama proved to be less a “change President” than a technocratic one, Democrats lost much of the goodwill these voters gave them. Of course, no President operates in a vacuum, and most of Obama’s two terms were purposefully paralyzed by an obstructionist Legislative branch.  Americans could see this happening, and he won reelection in a landslide in 2012.  Despite reelection, Obama didn’t, and in many ways couldn’t, given the necessity of generating support in a deeply divided Congress, address systematic problems that continued to worsen, especially in small cities and towns. By the end of his term, wealth inequality was at an all-time high, and the opioid crisis was raging. At the same time, it seemed like wealthy and well-off people in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and D.C. continued to reap and even revel in the benefits of our globalized economy.

By the time the 2016 election rolled around, Washington seemed to be more broken than ever, especially in the wake of seeing the big banks get bailed out of the 2008 economic crisis while millions of homeowners lost everything.   Couple this with a coastal culture and, by default, Democrats, who seemed to be solely focused on addressing ongoing, systematic discrimination, gender equality, and other essential but non-economic issues, all while many people were still reeling from the fallout from the Great Recession, and its no wonder so many people saw a party disinterested in their troubles.  The final nail in the coffin was offering up a Presidential candidate who helped helm the economic betrayal in the first place 20 years before: Hillary Clinton.  Many also felt that the Party gamed the primary against Sen. Bernie Sanders. Bring it all together, and it sure as hell felt like the Democratic party was doubling down, again, on being the party of wealthy, urban elites.

3. Trump is a Flamethrower

Enter Donald Trump. When Donald Trump came on the political scene in 2015, many people didn’t view him as a Republican in the traditional sense. Not only did he spend decades living in New York City and supporting Democratic candidates, but he was also able to speak to corruption and the backroom dealings of both parties. He talked about how lobbyists controlled lawmakers and how rigged our tax system was for the wealthy. In this way, Trump captured the mantle of an authentic outsider to many. He was incredibly potent to many working-class voters who felt abandoned by the Democrats and betrayed by Republican policies that only helped the wealthy.  This was Trump’s appeal, and that same appeal remains among people who feel that Washington is a corrupt cesspool of career politicians and educated elites who do not understand what “the rest of America, real America, is going through.”

Harris’s challenge with this group is that, to this day, Democrats feel like the party of well-off, urban professionals, while establishment Republicans have done little to nothing to help working people. They have no one else they feel is in their corner or who shares their rage.  Trump, despite his apparent mental decline, overt racism, and stunning ignorance as to how many of our economic, health, and democratic systems even work, is still the candidate who will ‘burn it all down’ to make it better.  They think he’s the only one who can clean out Washington.  Many even write off his behavior as a gimmick and have nothing to do with how he’ll govern once in office.  

None of this is true to any rational, thinking viewer. Trump is in it for Trump, full stop.  He tried to remain in office by force and frivolous lawfare on January 6, 2021, and he’ll do anything to stay in power should he get there again.  But to many, rational thinking and “rational” voting haven’t served working people as much as it has served the rich for the last 50 years.  Not only have the wealthiest 1% of Americans left the stratosphere in terms of relative wealth to 99% of us. For many of us, they seem to have their own healthcare and justice systems, too. Meanwhile, our infrastructure is falling apart, our health systems are straining, and education, the one proven path out of the working class, is more expensive and out of reach than ever, all while our cultural institutions seem more fragmented than ever.

Of course, Americans are furious and frustrated with Washington D.C. The question is, can Kamala Harris convince enough of them to take one more chance on a Democrat?  And if she wins, will she deliver the kind of change so many are hungry for?  The more people feel she can, the more they will turn away from Trump's cynical promise and toward Harris's practical hope.

We’ll see in November. And if she does win, I just pray she and her team shoot for the fences, tell the story of their efforts well and often, and have a House and Senate willing to work together.

In the late 1980s, when I 15 years old, I spent days writing personalized letters to every one of my representatives in the US House and Senate. Thankfully, I had an electronic typewriter to help expedite the task, but most of the words were not my own.  They came from pages of talking points mailed to me by the National Rifle Association.

At the time, I was a member of the NRA because I learned to shoot in the Boy Scouts and had a natural aptitude for it.  I grew up shorter than average for my age, and in middle school I was often picked last because of my size, despite being relatively agile, coordinated, and fast.  That reality created a doom loop of disinterest and dislike of sports for me.  Then, when I was 12 years old, attending my first year of summer camp as a Boy Scout at Crossett Lake, NY, I was given a .22 caliber rifle and taught to point it at a paper target 25 yards away.  The first shots of my young life formed a cluster near the bullseye. That feeling of being good at something larger than myself thrilled me at the time and I was hooked. By the end of that 2-week camp I would go home with 1^st place in the scout shooting competition, earn a Sharpshooter certification, and a free 1-year membership in the NRA. Talk about a recruitment funnel!  

I would remain a member of the NRA until my late 20s, and to this day I enjoy shooting targets with both rifles and handguns, and I’m still quite good at it.  But back to me as a 15-year-old kid, in my bedroom in Maplewood, NJ, asking my elected representatives to vote against a bill that would have, in my letter then, “taken away my constitutional right to bear arms.”

For the life of me I can’t tell you what bill I was so adamantly trying to stop at the time, (I’d bet that it was relatively benign overall) but I can tell you that every month, for years, the NRA would mail me 10 page letters of dense copy loaded with desperate warnings that the government was on the verge of voting for X bill that would inevitably take away all guns, from everyone. Further, they claimed that only I could stop those wannabe dictators by writing letters to my elected officials, and mailing donations to the NRA.  While I didn’t have any money at the time, I was damn sure I could write letters, and you can be damn sure that I did.

This, even though I didn’t own any firearms at the time and raised by parents who grew up in the thick of WWII Europe and passionately opposed to all forms of violence. (Being held against a wall by Nazis wielding machine guns, as my mother was with her family, can do that to a person.)

I’m sharing this story because I understand the allure of gun culture, the fun and excitement of shooting (especially if you’re good at it), while also acknowledging the obvious need to do something, ANYTHING, about mass shootings that seem to happen weekly in America and yet, strangely, nowhere else on earth.  It’s especially insane when we have 14-year-old kids being able to walk into school like they are cosplaying a scene from John Wick.  And yet, and yet, I have friends who have honestly been convinced that “there’s nothing we can do”. Even the current candidate for Vice President, JD Vance, is resigned to living in a society where mass shootings are “a fact of life” and “the reality we live in.”  Well, I think I can honestly speak for most people when I say, “fuck that.”

This casual acceptance of mass murder and death by and of children is madness, and anyone not drinking the right-wing Kool Aid can see that. No one actually wants to live in a hyper-secure dystopia where we’re surrounded by metal detectors, armed guards, CCTV cameras, and fear, especially where we send our children to learn. And yet this is exactly the “only” solution Republican leaders are offering instead of dealing with a culture that allows and empowers the worst few to force the peaceful many into living in a prison of our own making. Meanwhile, Democrats don’t seem to know how to identify different types of firearms, let alone speak about ways to curb gun violence without triggering a wave of forceful and effective opposition from a sliver of the population (<3%) that is obsessed with gun and gun culture.

But what can be done?

While other countries have figured this out, America is unique in that we have fetishized guns and gun culture for generations.  The problem also feels at an intractable impasse because our society, including our media, presents the argument in an us vs. them paradigm. It’s urban, out of touch lefties trying to kill the culture and freedom of people they don’t know and don’t understand. It’s either all guns or no guns, and it’s all bullshit. Worse, these paradigms only reinforce the paralysis and prevent the more rational and sane of our society – majorities from both parties – from finally tackling this problem.  In the meantime, organizations use this issue to fire up both sides of a donor base that has us shouting at and fearing one another, all the while consultants and media outlets get richer on the problem while politicians get famous performing about it, while no one does anything about solutions.  

For gun enthusiasts, the feeling of being ‘under siege’ by “lefties who are scared of guns, don’t understand or use them, and hate us” creates a cultural environment that entrenches and hardens oppositions against all regulations. Even the most meek or reasonable reforms are argued to be the beginning down the slippery slope of a total ban on owning any guns.  

I understand the feeling of confidence and strength and thus “freedom” that guns can empower. I remember how it felt as a teenager, being able to control such power with precision. Guns are empowering and instill a sense of confidence. Couple that with a mindset that may be inclined to be fearful of others, especially outsiders, and assume civil society is a fragile concept with only inertia temporarily holding chaos at bay at best, and you have the perfect conditions for a subculture inclined to distrust any laws and especially urban politicians that may take away any semblance of being able to “protect” themselves and their loved ones.

For those horrified by the ongoing slaughter, especially of children, they can’t understand the need to own what looks like an arsenal meant for war, not hunting or home defense. Nor can they understand why there is so much resistance to reasonable gun laws in the first place.  The left looks at gun lovers as crazy because all they see are the crazies, when the vast majority of gun owners simply aren’t.

All the while, a billion-dollar firearm industry is happy to continue selling the 5^th, 6^th, and even 20^th thousand-dollar firearm to the same few people, and all the accessories that go with it.  The business side of this cultural identification with firearms cannot be stressed enough as a source of our problem. But it’s not just gun manufacturers, their marketing budgets and the NRA that are the problem.  America loves guns and violence, and that obsession begins in the most liberal place of all: Hollywood.

And Hollywood’s fetishization of guns and violence isn’t new.  In the 1980s I didn’t grow up with posters of cars or women on my walls, but Sylvester Stallone holding an M-60 machine gun.

Once Stallone and Schwarzenegger made killing cool, it really went mainstream into the late 1990s, when we watched Keanu Reeves shooting up an entire army of faceless men in super sexy, super slow motion to the swelling sounds of uplifting music matched to the mesmerizing, plodding “pop….pop….pop…” of bullets tearing the bad guys apart. In the modern era we have generations of young men and women raised playing first person shooter games since grade school and, again, Keanu Reeves making death and violence look awesome as John Wick.

Culturally, we freak the fuck out over a woman’s nipple and yet allow all sorts of wild graphic violence to a degree that’s just… weird if you aren’t already drinking the Kool Aid.  And I’m not a pearl clutcher; I don’t think a top-down content ban on violence is going to be a pragmatic or even possible answer amid the culture we’re living in today. But you are kidding yourself if you think that all this social conditioning to extreme violence, coupled with a society that allows and encourages easy access to all guns, all the time, isn’t a big contributor to creating the very reality we are living in today.

Hollywood is selling movies and TV shows glorifying violence, all while gun makers reap billions selling the tools of violence to the same people.  On our TV and social media feeds we are bombarded with anchors and pundits telling us that our cities and communities are war zones, when they aren’t, all while making a fortune keep us scared of each other and the future. Is it any wonder that some people feel anxious and powerless to do anything but arm themselves so that they can defend ourselves?  

Our real fight isn’t right vs left, but the big business of an elite few and their vocal minorities vs. our shared safety and sanity.

Subculture Club

But before we can begin to pass sensible gun laws, the biggest hurdle that we must overcome, by far, is the fact that our culture of guns has become so meshed with the subcultural identity of a vocal few. This is not an issue that people think rationally about; it’s cultural.  Cultural identity is a powerful force and becoming more so across the political spectrum.  So long as people see gun laws as an attack on culture and not access or safety, it will remain all but impossible to tackle this relatively simple problem.

I was a member of the NRA for years, and to this day still shoot as a hobby. What didn’t stick with me was this weird gun fetishization that I see all over the country.  Families send out Christmas cards holding enough firepower to take down a police station, and it’s been reported that the Georgia shooter’s dad gave him an AR-15 for Christmas. This isn’t normal – it’s a form of obsession bordering on mental illness. Gun ownership has become not just a hobby, but a core tenant of many people’s life and identity. Looking at it from the outside, in, it’s… again… weird. 

Democrats also do themselves a disservice focusing on “assault weapons” when so many weapons look intimidating but are no more powerful than your average hunting rifle with a magazine. Many hunting rifles, in fact, are far more powerful than an AR-15.  By focusing on “scary looking” weapons instead of structural access, safety, and culture, Democrats lose legitimacy among the very people they need to reach.  

My hope is that we just get over this really idiotic era of American culture, because a cultural rejection of America’s firearm fetish while rejecting, at the box office, graphic gun violence as entertainment, will be much more effective than a top-down approach in the law.  But laws are needed, and the national conversation can break the deadly paralysis of gun safety if we break free from the false choice of either “all guns” or “no guns” as a narrative set by the same vocal minority obsessed with guns.

While we wait for this delusional firearm fever to break, what can we do practically to slow the killing and stop the bloodshed? 

1. In the short term, one practical approach, at a minimum, is requiring that anyone who wants to purchase anything more powerful than a normal hunting rifle, shotgun, or handgun with a limited capacity magazine (buy all the ammo and magazines that you want, but you gotta reload often) – any of which are suitable for hunting, home, and self-defense, should be required to go through some type of comprehensive background check, training, and certification process.  We already do this, to a degree, for specialized firearm equipment like suppressors, short rifle barrels, and other niche firearm equipment.  In the least, we can require the type of training I did for my concealed carry permit in Arizona.

   The certification process for a concealed weapons permit (CWP) wasn’t intense, maybe 6 hours of online instruction and some testing at the end of it, but it cost a few hundred dollars for what was, (at the time) a mandatory process.  To me, the most impactful aspect of the training was that so much of the course was focused on the many, many legal risks you expose yourself to when even just carrying a gun, never mind all the liability that comes with drawing or worse, pointing a firearm at anyone.  This information alone gives me great pause in even considering carrying a weapon unless I’m on the way to the range.  The course covers safety and storage and again, legal liabilities for transport, theft, etc., as well as how to deescalate before drawing a weapon at all, with “walk away” being the #1 rule. The course is a vital well of information for anyone owning a firearm, never mind deciding that wearing one in their day-to-day lives is necessary.  You would think something like this would be standard, mandatory information for handling such an easy to use, deadly weapon – or any object that can kill so easily at all.  We don’t hand out driver licenses – why we hand out firearms like candy is insane.

2. We should also make it illegal for anyone under 18 to own or have access to firearms outside of the direct supervision of an authorized adult, be that a parent, instructor, or family member, and that person MUST have the up-to-date certifications necessary to allow an underage child to handle and operate said equipment under direct and constant supervision.  And we must back that law up with severe punishments for those that willfully violate those laws or ignore those requirements. We don’t give kids cars until they are trained, tested, and licensed, all under the supervision of a structured system of laws, requirements, and documentation.  Stores can’t sell kids cigarettes and beer.  This can easily be the same for deadly weapons that can fit in your pocket or backpack.

   Penalties for violating these laws must be severe and enforced.  No parent wants their kids to die or to kill and creating the legal framework to first actively train and prepare parents to handle deadly firearms in their homes before they can purchase one, while also punishing those that aren’t smart or engaged enough to care what happens to them once they have them shouldn’t be controversial.  Of course some will scream about “slippery slopes”, and we should create checks and balances, as this system must apply strict criteria for denying licensing, but the slippery slope we’ve slid down already is a culture of fear, death and bloodshed where kids are shooting kids. We should let the paranoid have their say and then do the commonsense thing with or without their support.

3. Red flag laws need to be more robust, and interstate connected in the same way that driver records and arrest warrants are across most states. Gun shops and gun shows should be forced to fund a national system that can comprehensively and accurately cancel or clear someone for purchase in minutes. This can be done in a way that protects privacy: a simple yes or no may be all the gun seller sees. We have the technology, all we need is the will, because someone who beats their spouse to within an inch of their life in Montana shouldn’t be able to drive to Idaho to buy the gun that finishes the job.

4. Normal, everyday gun owners need to stand up and speak up against these delusional few, while our culture needs to start calling extreme gun subcultures what they are, out of touch enablers of the murder and death of our fellow Americans and our kids.

5. People need to reject extreme, graphic violence as empty entertainment and Hollywood will stop producing so much of the garbage.

6. The mainstream media must host rational voices on the national stage as part of a sane debate and call out those carrying the water for a radical agenda benefiting the few at the expense of the rest of us.

From my experience talking with good, normal people who hunt and shoot as a hobby, I believe most gun-owners will see required firearm training and safety certification as a modest, practical, and reasonable start. Because the NRA is right about one thing: most gun owners are responsible, sensible citizens. They don’t want to live in a gun-crazed, prison-like dystopia any more than the rest of us do. We just need to start ignoring a much smaller minority of loud, gun-fetish crazies who punch way above their relative weight when it comes to influencing the national discourse on guns.  If we don’t, we’ll remain at an impasse and nothing will change, the carnage will continue, and the fear, suspicion, and hate that both sides have for the other will only continue to fester until it’s too late for rational dialogue.  

Do I think we can do even more? Of course, this pragmatic start acknowledges that most gun owners aren’t nuts, but also that more gun laws aren’t all terrible ideas that will lead to us living in a dictatorship.  Because make no mistake, we currently live in a country that is ok treating our schools like warzones and our kids like collateral damage in service of a radical agenda and extreme ideas that only a few Americans believe. This is its own kind of dictatorship. Living in fear is not freedom.

If you ask most Americans, they will agree with this sentiment.  But when they vote, they often seem to elect leaders who will do anything but compromise.  Why is that?  And why, in today’s hyperpolarized era, do centrists seem to be as hard to find as a jaguar roaming the mountains of southern Arizona?

I’ve heard a lot of opinions on why centrism as an ideal has fallen out of favor: One is that it has no backbone, that it doesn’t take a side for “justice” or “truth”, or that it’s social media’s fault for curating content using algorithms designed to keep us liking and swiping, and thus serving up the same type of content it thinks we’ll like vs content that challenges our assumptions. Or maybe it’s the media’s fault, especially 24-hour cable news networks that cosplay as “news” while really offering up a form of entertainment that is also designed first and foremost to keep us watching, because ratings mean profits and people love to hear what they already know or assume.

I think all these things inform this discussion and our skewed reality today. I also think that gerrymandering is one of the biggest cancers poisoning American democracy in our time.  But the main reason that centrism has fallen out of favor is simply because it cannot be trusted to fight for regular people.

Centrism’s original sin goes back to the Triangulation days of Bill Clinton in the 1990s.  Briefly, triangulation refers to Clinton’s “move to the middle” after losing badly to Republicans in the 1994 midterm elections.  The problem is that this ‘move to the middle’ didn’t so much try to compromise with both sides as it adopted a lot of destructive policy ideas left over from Reagan. Many of these ideas have greatly harmed working people across the political spectrum, especially workers in manufacturing.  The policy ideas that came out of the 1990s overwhelmingly benefited the educated and professional classes, Wall St. and the top 2% of the wealthiest Americans, all while ignoring those without a college degree, especially in rural areas. An excellent read on this is Michael J. Sanel’s The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? that I will be posting more about in the future.

For this post, it’s important to know that the working class began losing faith in Democrats once they started pushing policies that benefited rich, urban, educated professionals at the expense of everyone else.

Today that cynicism and distrust pushes more and more people deeper into the political margins. It’s also true that, when so much in America feels so broken, the people offering measured tweaks to the status quo come off as wanting to keep as much of the status quo the same for their own benefit.

People don’t trust Centrists because most Centrists are well-off, urban professionals who are doing fine under the status quo. They benefit from centrist tax policies that reward wealth and punish the poor. They know how to navigate byzantine healthcare systems and know right people who can open doors when they occasionally get lost in the maze.  They work in an environment that rewards an expensive education while sending their own kids to private schools, helped by expensive tutors who can help them get many steps ahead of working class kids, who are on their own, competing for the same few seats in higher education.

Centrism can work, but today it is populated by the people who benefit from the broken status quo.  Groups like The Third Way should rightfully fail because all they are rebranded versions of political and professional elites who have spent the last 40 years rigging the system in their favor at the expense of everyone else.  

So how do we rid ourselves of today’s toxic centrism and start electing leaders again who know the art of compromise?

First and foremost, we must get rid of gerrymandering. I know this isn’t a novel take, but I would argue that fixing a ton of what’s broken in America isn’t as hard or intractable as many “elites” make it out to be.  Gerrymandering distorts the political process by drawing district lines that all but ensure the majority party will win in the general election. Primary elections bring out highly engaged, motivated and more partisan voters, meaning that the extremes of either party decide who will move on to the general election.

Due to gerrymandering, the voter-advantaged candidate that wins the primary is almost assured a victory in the general election. But primaries, on average, rarely turn out more than 20% of a local electorate across both major parties. Think about that. If less than 20% of the electorate is voting for the eventual winner, and each party shares that 20% equally, it stands to reason that only about 9 or 10% of voters are deciding the legislative rulers of an entire district.  This is not what a healthy democracy looks like. 

In reality, gerrymandering rewards the most extreme members of a party and rewards elected officials to ONLY work for this narrow slice of voters if they want to be re-elected. In fact, if elected leaders in highly gerrymandered districts do compromise and reach for Bismarck’s “art of the next best”, they are all but assured to be out of a job when it comes time for reelection. Gerrymandering creates a direct incentive to not compromise. Perhaps worst of all, gerrymandering also creates the very noxious, media-hungry politicians we’re all so tired of seeing on the news alongside their latest stupid stunt or crazy take. These politicians are performing only for their 9% of voters. Is it any wonder why the rest of us can’t believe they keep getting reelected despite being such obvious idiots?

Second, we need more non-partisan elections, coupled with more equally mixed legislative districts.  Take my neighborhood in central Phoenix. We are a competitive district where both Democrats and Republicans win. It’s not unusual to see political signs of both parties equally scattered on lawns on my small street, sometimes with both Rs and Ds represented on the same lawn. On my small street (33 houses) live almost every race and match up you can imagine in America: there is an orthodox Jewish family, a Muslim family, a few secular Jewish families, evangelical Christian families, mixed race families, Hispanic families, a married lesbian couple, white families, married couples with kids, some without kids, single women in a few homes, a single mother raising her kids, and a divorced dad. We have Republican precinct leader living here as well as activist Progressives.  And you know what? We all get along. We have street parties and house parties, we help each other out when needed, and everyone knows everyone else and especially our dogs.

This is the America I love, and I bet the one most people want to live in.  This is an America that believes in each other, and our ideals, even if we don’t agree on our politics.  My wife and I are another example. She’s a lifelong Republican while I’m much more Progressive. But while we may not always agree on the path to get there, we always agree on the outcomes: more prosperity for more people, a justice system that is as fair to the poorest among us as it is to the most rich and famous, a healthcare system that is accessible to everyone, and an education system that creates smart citizens who can contribute to our economy, our community, and our civic society by being informed, critical thinkers with minds of their own.

Centrism can be all of this, but to get there we have to first stop ceding this space to a professional elite that prefers to protect a system built in their own interests, undo an electoral map that empowers the crazy few at the expense of the rational many, and start electing people who want to work for all of their constituents, not just their most vocal minority.

And no, I’m not delusional and thinking that I alone can change the sweep or course of history.  It’s much simpler than that; I care about America, freedom, and the earth as a living, amazing place full of love, life, and jaw dropping nature.  Silently standing by, while a few elites, wannabe intellectuals, and downright crazies keep the reins of power, will only lead me to an old age regret that I should have said something more, using the talents I have to say it.

I should be clear, however, that I have not spent my entire life on the sidelines. While I was raised in a conservative environment, and was really conservative until my late teens, I’ve been an activist as well as a messaging and campaign consultant for mostly liberal causes. I co-founded a non-profit called Vote 18. Vote 18 was a non-partisan voter education and registration organization that brought a uniquely engaging civics lesson to high school seniors around the country between 2006 and 2012. Vote 18 was an interactive teaching method based on role-play, discovery, deduction and self-interest (what your vote actually means) to connect young people to the power and relevance of their vote as a part of their voice in their community.  Our goal wasn’t merely to register young people to vote but create active citizens and life-long voters. When we were active we traveled to high schools around the country, often in partnership with the League of Women Voters, and reached thousands of young people. Our program was eventually adopted by Rock the Vote for their Democracy Class program and we disbanded the non-profit in about 2011. You can see my TedX talk about our program here: (Not my best freeze frame but whachagonnado?)

Before that, in the early aughts, I cut my teeth as a billionaire, or, rather, a “Billionaire” (more on that in a future post) and I’ve used my skills as an advertising and messaging maestro to advise policy campaigns over the years. I’ve never worked for a candidate, choosing issues over individuals, because the truth is, so few candidates have impressed me.  I’m also not a believer in “The One True Candidate” fallacy that some elected, no matter how impressive, is going to be “The Solution” to our many problems.

I’m also one of the founders of a movement called The Other 98%. My history with the group, which we founded as The Other 95%, is too long for this post, but I haven’t been involved since it went from an organizing platform that speaks to the vast majority of Americans (the other 95%) who are neither hard left or hard right, care about politics, but mostly just want to live their lives in peace and prosperity to more of vehicle for lefty content. I may do a longer post on my experience with the Other 98% one day, but for now, suffice it to that I quit my involvement with the group because I wanted to put my time into reaching people who weren’t already singing in the choir.  While I know that connecting with and inspiring believers is important often vital work, I feel that my highest and best use is trying to approach politics from a more unique frame of reference. My goal with this blog is to stand outside of predictable takes and positions on politics. So yes, since leaving home and traveling the world at 18, I’ve become more liberal and progressive in many ways, but I am an optimistic realist and fervent pragmatist when it comes to policy.

I’m also not writing this to some day run for office. God no. While I may sometimes talk about candidates and even support or denounce them, I don’t plan to use this page on behalf of any political party, candidate, or cause. I’m also not writing in the hopes of becoming another talking boob on any 24 hour news channel.

I am writing this in the hopes that there are people out there, like me, who care deeply about this country, know in their gut that it’s slipping away from what it can truly be. The goals is to engage those that feel left out by all the elitists and talking heads, politicos and parties who seem only to want to perpetuate the problem, or fire up the base for their own fundraising, power, and profiles.

What I hope to achieve with these posts

I am starting this blog without many fixed goals or objectives. For now, I’m writing with the following topics and types in mind:

• To write about experiences from my life and apply those life lessons (and some fun stories) to how they may inform age-old, entrenched debates.

• To describe and decipher various political and media techniques elites use to keep us angry, afraid, and against each other instead of united against the problems we face.

• To write about the many problems America is struggling with, and explore how some are interconnected to larger issues, share insights that may inform how we might tackle these in new and practical ways free from the “fixes” already prescribed by ideological structures and institutions.  The caveat here is that some institutions may already have very good, practical, most-likely-to-be impactful ideas to solve certain problems. I’m not going to cast off ideas just because they may come from a “right” or “left” source. I’ll do my best to either find and write about them or remain open to learning more about their strengths and debate their weaknesses and blind spots.

• To selectively respond to the news cycles if my experience, background, frame of reference and ideas can either inform the debate or call out the debate or talking heads when necessary.

• Highlight the many ways we can make our democracy stronger, our government more responsive, more effective, our quality of life better, and our judicial system more just. I want to cast a light on the ways that politics, elections, and lesser-known institutional structures and organization play an outsized role in everyone’s life, even if most people have never heard of them. I’ll use many examples from my current home state of Arizona to make the case that we need more, active, engaged voters, show readers why, and then describe ways we can make voting safer AND more accessible to everyone.

• Keep these short! Definitely shorter than these first two posts.

• Keep these fun, or at least interesting. These first few posts are sort of primers for the project, stay tuned for more stories, laughs, and the like.

I hope this blog can find an audience that, though may not agree with every word, enjoys the journey and perspective.  And, in time, I do hope that this may ultimately serve as a useful resource for policy makers and politicos who share my frustration and fears about the direction of this great country, and maybe take away a few crumbs from time to time to inform their own approaches and assumptions about audiences, voters, issues, and solutions. 

I hope that my unique experience in the world: as a first generation, patriotic American, business owner, independent thinker, cynical optimist, can inform the conversation, engage more people that aren’t politically obsessed or off the deep end of the ideological spectrum, so that more of us can speak up, inform the debate and ultimately policy, not just for the good of the new, but the common good of the country, and not just for the next news and election cycle, but for generations to come.

My goal for this project, through a series of essays, questions, analysis, memoir, and interviews over time, is to better understand the social, structural, and psychological reasons that America seems to be at its own throat, and in that understanding proposal new ways to tackling entrenched problems.  My goal is also to keep these posts relatively short (following this longer introduction!)

I suspect that this project may evolve over time, but what I know for sure is that it will not become another political site aping the talking points of an ideological side, even if that will probably limit my audience. The last thing we need is another mouthpiece for someone else’s movement, or yet another, repetitive corner of a deafening, ideological echo chamber. The last thing I need to be is someone else’s puppet because life is far too short for me to spend my time cheerleading politicians or activists desperate to break into the news cycle.

Who is this blog for?

This blog is partly for me, to help me better understand how and why America has gotten into the knots we’re currently wrapped up in, as well as contribute ideas and ways to untangle those knots with reason, fairness, fair play, but also realism, pragmatism, and patriotism.

I’m also writing this with a group of guys that I’ve known since childhood in mind. These are friends that I care about deeply and have for decades, even if we often disagree on politics. Like me, they are angry and fed up with so much that feels fundamentally broken in America.  Some of these guys would consider themselves conservative, others liberal, a few ‘none of the above’ and at times some are either/or.  I think our friendship represents an ideal; that we can strongly disagree about issues and solutions while remaining connected because of a shared bond that is larger than the politics of the day. We’ve been through life’s major milestones together be they happiness, loss, major life changes, and day-to-day wins and losses. I’m writing because I think, though we don’t at all agree on what the solutions look like, or even many of the causes, we all want what we think is best for our country.  I want to create a place where old assumptions and conclusions can crash against the shores of news ideas. 

I think most Americans are like my friends and I: people who span the ideological spectrum and still care about each other outside of our opinions. I call this blog “politics for the rest of us” because I think the national discourse and media environment have been captured by small, loud, and very organized political minorities on the Right and Left. I believe that this 5% of the population drives narratives, priorities, and ultimately laws that 100% of the country must follow. I believe this structure leaves out a vast majority who share the same goals, if not always the same methods: peace, prosperity, and to live in a place free of persecution, fair play, under a government that “gets shit done” that helps those who can’t help themselves, while providing recourse for those who have been harmed. And that these systems should be applied equally to the poorest among as to most privileged and powerful.   By most objective measures, we do not have that system now.

Finally, I’m writing in the hopes of connecting with people who, like me, are exhausted by the status quo, and turned off and tuned out by the idea of fighting for an ideological “team”, be it the Left or the Right, “Conservatives” or “Liberals”.  

What I hope to achieve

This blog is for everyone else who may identify with some political label some of the time but are Americans all the time. This site is for people who don’t live and breathe politics, but know that it’s necessary, powerful, that it impacts their day to day lives, but are so fucking tired of the talking heads and professional pundits who only make money on continuing the problems. 

This blog is a place to talk first about what’s wrong, and approach the solutions from a place of curiosity, exploration, and a healthy dose of suspect cynicism.  I will do my best to approach the world through a lens of optimistic cynicism, so to speak, and be ready to call out ideas based on ideological assumptions that may not hold up to the cold reality of daylight.

This blog is for people tired of choosing sides while extremist politicians and their followers continue to game a political system that rewards the active few while leaving the working middle out in the cold. It’s for people who love America but hate what our politics have become. It’s for people who want to live in a better America tomorrow but know that our current state of democracy and discourse will only keep us mired in the past.

I hope this blog finds an audience that, though may not agree with every word, enjoys the journey and perspective, or at least a few great stories along the way.  I hope that my unique experience in the world: as a first generation, patriotic American, business owner, independent, cynical optimist, can inform the conversation, engage more people that aren’t politically obsessed or off the deep end of the ideological spectrum, so that more of us can speak up, inform the debate and ultimately policy, not just for the good of the new, but the common good of the country, and not just for the next news and election cycle, but for generations to come.

So uh, why me? Who da fuck cares what I have to say?

That is a good question! Future posts will go into more detail about how my background and upbringing as a working class, first generation American growing up in a relatively wealthy, liberal town in New Jersey informs by unique perspective and approach to politics, but for now, part of what defines who I am is who I am not:

• I am not some ivory tower academic who approaches politics far removed from its everyday impact.

• I am not an ideologue who believes that any side, any candidate, or any existing governing style or philosophy is The Answer to all our many problems.

• I am not a handwringer. Meaning: While I’m concerned about the direction of our great country, and want to work for a better world, I’m not someone who assumes the worst in people or outcomes based on the day-to-day news.

• I am not a consumer of 24-hour or cable news: I haven’t watched more than 3 minutes of either CNN, FOX News, or MSNBC in over a decade.

• I am also not a consumer of pundit content. I look at television pundits, cable news programs and especially hosts as entertainers, and just like I don’t look to George Clooney or Kid Rock for my news, I don’t spend any of my short time on this planet listening to whatever outrage or opinion professional cable news entertainers have to say at any moment on anything. This goes as much for Rachel Maddow as much as it does for Tucker Carlson.

• I am not a believer in any single elected official as an agent to change much of anything, especially on their own, and I’m especially leery of politicians who either claim that they can solve all our problems, or, perhaps worse, spend most of their time in office in front of a news camera.

• A wise old cowboy in a bar once told me the following: “Anyone that tells you they have all the answers is either lying or a fool. Ignore them, either way.” This is the exact attitude I bring to politicians, pundits, and cable news hosts.

• I don’t believe that any candidate has all the answers, or can single-handedly solve all our problems, but I do know that elected officials can have the power to pull policy toward the light or into the darkness. Our job, as citizens, is to be able to cut through the bullshit, see through the political fog, and keep our eyes on what’s good for the whole, not just for the moment, and not just for the loudest few.

As for who I am personally, right here, right now, I’m a middle-aged, free thinker who left a working class home at 18 on what would become a journey that would last, at that time in my life, for 4 years “on the road” in one way or another; far from home, on my own, making my own way in a country I felt was rigged for the rich on the backs of the poor. At the time I didn’t think there was a damned thing I could do about anything. I left home with no plans, no destination, and no idea what would happen. All I knew was that I wasn’t going to play a game I could never win, so I simply checked out.

I hitchhiked around the world, traveled anywhere my thumb, limited cash, or passport would take me. I’ve met people from every walk of life, I’ve become close friends with people on every dot of the political spectrum, I’ve met four Presidents and have lived in states on both coasts a few in between, as well as overseas. I’ve been dirt poor and homeless, I’ve lived paycheck to paycheck and I’ve experiences what it’s like to be well-off by most standards. I’ve been a biker, a cowboy, an executive, a bartender, an activist, and an artist. I’ve been in business with right wing evangelicals and have lived with anarchists. I’ve been in love with women from all races and walks of life, and today am a happy husband to the world’s most enlightened, empathetic, and brilliant life-long Republican I’m sure the world has ever known. All these experiences have helped shape and inform my views and the way I’ve seen the world.

So, that’s’ me in a tiny nutshell, why I’m writing, who I’m writing for, and my hopes for what my writing might bring to the conversation. I hope you’ll stick around – if not for nothing else – I have some fun stories to tell with few fucks to give.

So here we go. I hope you’ll stick around and subscribe.

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