Why I'm (Mostly) Going to be Keeping Mute on Political Events

Well, it's been an interesting 2 weeks since Donald Trump got inaugurated.  Another new constitutional crisis every day.  The American way of life is seemingly on the brink of collapse.  Most people I know are posting about it constantly on Facebook or Twitter.  And I'm going to do my best to keep out of it, this time around.  You'll have to look elsewhere for your daily anti-Trump rhetoric.  This blog is going to stay mostly silent on the political issues.

The reasons are same as they are when I wrote 4 years ago:

I waste SO much time on the Internet, and I'd like to cut down on that and try to focus more on what's really important in life--my wife and daughter, and (as much as is possible in this field), creating a stable career with which to support them.

So no more political posts.  It's a waste of time.  First of all, the reach that this blog has doesn't justify spending a lot of time on it.  (I think there are 3 people and a dog who read this blog regularly.)  But secondly it's apparent that political divisions these days are more about tribalism and emotions than they are about ideas and rational arguments.  (Granted a lot of my political posts have always been more emotive than reasonable anyways, but then that's part of the problem.)

That, plus it's now apparent that everyone knows how awful Trump is, and either they are already convinced, or they don't care.  In fact, the right-wing loves the fact that he's so awful and provokes such emotive responses from liberals.  So what's the point of writing long political posts complaining about how awful Trump is?

And after Trump, there will be another demagogue who is equally bad.  (It's apparent that this problem is all throughout the right wing.)

I'm not saying there's not important political work to be done down at the grass roots organizing level.  I'm just saying that keyboard warriors are ineffective.  So I'm retiring my keyboard warrior badge.

In addition to what I mentioned 4 years ago, there are some additional reasons.

1). I don't trust myself not to engage in tribalism.  I am firmly on the left, and have all the cognitive biases that come with being a partisan.  I trust news sources which share my political viewpoint, and distrust sources that have opposing viewpoints.  I will sometimes link to or tweet out articles that support my point of view, without having researched the issue myself. I believe the worst about people with opposing political beliefs.  Etc

...and related to the above point is point number 2, which is

2). I know nothing, and I am an Idiot  If I look back at a lot of the stuff I've written over the past 20 years, it's clear that I am an idiot.  (Case in point: my youthful obsession with Abbie Hoffman)

I suppose this is a common sentiment in middle-age, but when I was young, I thought I knew everything.  The older I get, the more I realize I know nothing.  I am not an expert in foreign affairs.  I am not an expert on the economy.  I am not an expert on poverty.  Etc.  So best just to shut up about stuff I don't know anything about.

You've probably seen the new meme: "Normalize not having an opinion on things you aren't properly informed on".  That meme is my new motto.

3). I don't understand what is happening.

Ever since 2016, I've felt like Mr. Jones from Dylan's Ballad of a Thin Man:  I know something is happening, but I don't know what it is.  I clearly know that we are living in unprecedented times, when the old rules of political engagement don't apply.  But I don't know what the new rules are.  And I'm not sure how we got here.  And I don't understand what the solution is for fixing this problem.  

The only political commentary I could offer at this point in time would be to raise my hands up to the sky and say, "I don't like this.  Why is this happening?"

I guess the other political commentary I could do is just to point out that bad things as bad.  I could point out that Trump and the MAGA movement are cruel, and racist, and stupid, and dangerous, etc, but what is the value of that?  Everyone to the left already agrees with me, and everyone on the right is unreachable.

And finally, related to the above point:

4) Trump's Reelection Broke Me

At lot of unbelievable things have happened over the past 8 years.  

At first, I didn't believe Trump would ever get the Republican nomination.

Then, I didn't believe that Trump would win the presidency.

And then, once he won, I thought he would get pressured into resigning the presidency.  

For the first few  years of the Trump presidency, every week I kept thinking, "This will be the scandal that finally undoes him.  This will end his career.  This will cause the Republican Party to finally put their country first, and reject Trump."  But it never happened.

Finally Trump lost in 2020, and I thought we had seen the last of him.

Surely the country couldn't re-elect Donald Trump, could it?  I mean, okay, 2016 I kind of get. In the 2016 election Trump was an unknown quantity, and the country was ready for some sort of change, and no one knew how bad he would be.

But after we survived the first Trump Presidency, and everyone knows exactly who this guy is, and how bad he can be, after all that, America re-elected him?  And not only that, but he actually won the popular vote in 2024?

I mean, in 2016, at least he didn't win the popular vote.  In 2016, he won just because of a quirk in the electoral college, and the majority of people voted against him.

But in 2024, the majority of people actually voted for him. Despite having seen everything he did in his first term.

And the majority of women voted for him, despite his stances on women's issues. 

And the majority of Latino men voted for him, despite all his racist rhetoric.

It just made me want to throw up my hands and say, "That's it.  I'm done caring.  If this is what America wants, then I guess this is what America is getting."

I don't understand how the majority of Americans could vote for Trump again in 2024 after they had already experienced how awful he was in his first time.  And that's the point.  I don't understand anything anymore.  So I don't have anything intelligent to say about it.

So now, every morning when I listen to the news, and I hear something about how Trump is doing something awful, or destroying another part of the constitution, I just think to myself, "Well, this is what the American people want."

And ultimately, if this is what the majority of the American people want, well, that's how democracy works.

***************************************

While I'm here, I guess I might as well talk about why I stopped doing global warming vlogs.  

I continue to worry a lot about global warming.  (I've got kids, after all.)  But the more I got into it, the more I got confused about what the solutions were.  

I was at one time following a number of climate scientists and advocates on Twitter.  Many of them were saying that we are at a point where we could completely get rid of fossil fuels immediately, and convert all of our energy to renewable.  And I wanted to believe them.  But elsewhere, I would read articles about the problems of getting sustained energy from renewable sources.  (I expressed this confusion in this Tweet here from 2021).

Some of the climate scientists I followed believed that nuclear power would be the answer to climate change, and that we couldn't get rid of fossil fuels without help from nuclear power .  Others believed that embracing nuclear power would be a disaster, and that we could make the conversion to renewables without nuclear.

Some of them believed carbon capture technology was worth investing in.  Others believed carbon capture was a scam.

In the end, I decided that I didn't know anything, and there was no point in me trying to get involved in these debates.

I really hope that knowledgeable scientists continue working on these problems, and discussing it among themselves.  But there is no value in having me join the discussion.

***************************************

Now, granted, in the previous blog post I did actually write about political events.  This was because I thought I had noticed an angle that no one else was commenting on--the fact that the Christian Right, by their own logic, now needs to step up and fill the gap in poor relief that is left by the end of USAID.  (I'm sure someone somewhere has probably written the same thing, but I couldn't find it anywhere).  And so I couldn't resist chiming in with that.  And maybe, in the future, if I think I notice something else that no one else is saying, I might drop in with my two cents.

But if I have nothing to offer other than stating the obvious (i.e. "this obviously really bad thing is obviously really bad"), then I'm just going to stay quiet.

**************************************

Update: February 8: Okay, obviously defeatism is not a long term solution.  If you want to get inspiration from someone who's actually doing something, check out Phil Christman: here and here.