Andre's Executive Order

On 9/11, Americans remember the tragedy that redefined our understanding of modern conflict. We remember the people who died in the twin towers. We remember the passengers on the planes and the brave men and women who brought down one of them before it hit the Pentagon. We remember the firefighters and first responders and brave citizens of New York City who stepped into all that chaos and death to try to find anyone who had survived and help someone. Anyone. Those who were not close to ground zero wrestled with our shock, our grief, our disbelief and the rising swell of empathy and compassion that drove us to want to contribute, to donate, to even travel if necessary and be a part of the national effort to handle this unprecedented event. As someone who spends much of his time saturated in politics and current events, 9/11 marks another turning point that would have almost as dark implications as the attack, itself. The attacks on the World Trade Center cast the first stone in w...

If you're white, you're racist. If you're like me and you read that or hear it, what's the first thing that goes through your mind? Anger? 'Oh fuck you...'  Is it surprise? "Whoa... what the hell man?" How about defensiveness. "Not if I can help it. Not that I know of." Or maybe dismissively vague. "Well everyone is a little, right?" There's an article in the Atlantic concerning the role of race and the current Administration. It's a long article to listen to or read (you have both options), but it's engaging and beautifully written. It's the first article in a long time that I've really felt left me understanding the deeper framework under which we're struggling in our politics and social battles today. Let me digress... One of the hardest things in my life has been coming to terms with how much of who I am and how I am that has nothing to do with my conscious choices. Sure, I made conscious choices...

No matter how much lipstick you see on a collar, or strange perfume you catch on a shirt, there is part of us that always holds out hope that the evidence we see hinting towards something awful is wrong; A hope that despite the signs, the underlying message is different. But when you walk in on the cheating couple, that hope is removed and even though you might have strongly suspected infidelity the whole time, something about getting absolute knowledge still hits like a hammer. Yesterday, we got that absolute confirmation: Our president is an unapologetic and soul-deep racist who believes his inner circle is above the law. Joe Arpaio - The Tyrant of Arizona Sheriff Arpaio has a long and sordid history in Arizona, the kind of history you would think would horrify any reasonable person including unconstitutional jail living conditions, failure to investigate sexual assault cases, misuse of funds, abuse of power, election law violations, and even a staged...

The tricky part about critiquing late stage capitalist consumerism isn't thinking about it, it's talking about it. We live in a world that can no longer afford it's costs, consequences, and horrific toll on most participants but people have been living with this particular cancer for so long that they can't see any suggestion to the contrary as anything but communism. So we recoil from the conversation. Yet here we stand, sinking up to our throats in a thick slime of uncontrolled income disparity, poverty, diminishing opportunity capped with climate change placing an impending need on us to pull together if we're going to survive as a species. But like a pretty flame, we paw at the false promise of unrestricted wealth heedless of the burns it inflicts on almost everyone who touches it. It lures millions into impoverished complacency; men and woman spending meager incomes month to month in hopes that eventually their 'temporary' fina...

David Harsayni is a senior editor at The Federalist, a conservative blog that gets a great deal of attention nationally. I regularly keep tabs on Real Clear Politics for articles about the election and current events. This shoddy piece of pseudo politics caught my attention and immediately hit a land mine with me. At the risk of making him more popular, a few things need to be said. The article itself: The Fedralist: 10 Abortion Questions Hillary Clinton Won't Answer A good political thinker starts by getting fired up about something. They let their emotions flow about an issue and let those emotions fuel investigation and debate. They explore the ideas with the choir of voices like them then pit those ideas against their opponents and fight it out. But the good political thinker is debating and battling to test the limits and contours of the issue. Like a old grave rubbing, you run the crayon back and forth over the whole area and the outline of the message on the stone gets ...

What's the structural difference between religion and science? Religion is a matter of belief. It's stories and ideas that encapsulate an emotional state, values, traditions, and cultural outlook of believers. When a group of people share the same beliefs about how to live life and what is sacred, their celebration of those things is what we call 'religion'. So with religion, the expression may change and the methods of understanding will almost certainly change, but the underlying conclusions and fundamental ideas never do. Your religion can't be wrong, you can just deviate from it's rightness. With religion, your method may be wrong, but your desired outcome never is. Science is about the process, itself. With science there is no conclusion that is above challenge or question. Science requires consistency above all else - the ability to repeat discovered results. It requires consistent application of discovered rule sets and methods between various trial...

I promised this one a while ago. With luck, today starts another string of my actual daily entries instead of good intentions separated by silences. Back to gun control. Let's be clear, gun control is popular. It is also politically toxic. What's the difference? Well if you actually ask most people if they want gun control, a vast and staggering majority will answer yes. People generally understand that guns are dangerous equipment and should be handled the same way as any other similarly dangerous hardware. We're not just talking progressives here, we're talking about a good majority of Republicans, NRA members, and the whole kit and kaboodle. But there are two elements embedded in this popular idea that usually bring any legislation to a screeching halt. The first reason gun control is politically toxic is that while almost everyone wants gun control, the same people are highly suspicious of that control being determined by anyone other than themselves. The reason for...