This is not a Novel, I am not a Writer, and Congress is apparently not a Government

Welcome to day one.

So, for a variety of personal reasons, I have decided to participate in National Novel Writing Month this year... sort of.  First I should take a moment to explain NaNoWriMo to those who don't know (and can't be bothered to look it up).  It is, in short, an excuse to use crappy November weather as motivation to stay inside and write like mad to the tune of 50,000 words in a month, or a ballpark of 1,700 words per day and at the end of the month have something resembling a short novel (or a long novella, it appears to depend on who you ask with novelists scoffing at 50,000 word novels and everyone else agreeing that 40,000 is the barrier, but I digress).

I say "sort of" regarding my participation because while I am challenging myself to sit and write, in volume, every day for the month of November, this is not going to be a novel or anything resembling one.  I am not a fiction writer, or more accurately, I am not a dialogue writer.  I can write a nice, compelling short story, but 200+ pages without a single conversation would be painful to read, let alone write.  So, those expectations being set aside, my goal this month is to write 2000 words per day, every day on the kinds of topics that I've written about before.  Politics, current events, possibly some things about science and technology, and, if all else fails, random thoughts about life.

When I agreed to do this, it didn't seem like too big of a deal, I like to write, and I have wanted to get back to writing on here anyway so it seemed like a great idea.  After all, how hard can 2000 words be to write?  Well, for perspective, my last post was just over 1000 words and took me two days of intermittent writing to finish (a fact that disheartened me more than a little when I realized how short it was).

The other part of NaNoWriMo that I'm going to buy into is creating entirely new content.  I have at least a few posts that are half finished from the last few months that never quite got finished.  I don't plan on using any of those this month to cheat on my word count.  If any of them do get fleshed out, then I will only be counting the new content toward my total (so if you see any 3000 word posts, that's probably why).

So, now that the housekeeping is out of the way, let's move on to something lighter like... the government shutdown.  Okay, so I know it's over already, and I should have written this a month ago, but November is young and this will probably come up again soon enough.

I guess that the easiest way to break down the government shutdown is by the fundamentals; who, what, where, when, and why.

The why is actually the easiest part to understand for once so we'll start there.  The short answer is, of course, Obamacare, with some side arguments on the Debt Ceiling (again) and, in more general terms, spending.  Of all the shocking parts of the shutdown, perhaps the most shocking was the lack of depth to any of the underlying problems.  Republicans in broad, general terms oppose government spending, and that's okay.  There is nothing inherently terrible about believing in a government that can operate smaller and more efficiently than it currently is.  Unfortunately we seem to have reached a point where that is their only concern.  A large section of the Republican party (I'm look at you Tea Partiers) seem to currently believe that the only responsibility of Congress is to spend less money, slash expenditures, then slash taxes, any spending is bad spending.  That view is, and I’ll be generous, simplistic.  To that end, obviously they inherently oppose Obamacare (Spending money to help poor people? Egad!) and, less rationally, raising the debt limit.  With those forces combined (and the need to have something resembling a budget for next year) the House Republicans promptly jammed their fingers in their ears, stuck out their tongues and refuse to act like adults, let alone congressmen.  (I don't live in DC, so I'm just assuming about the fingers in the ears part.)

I can understand Republicans opposing Obamacare; it's a massive bill that involves the Government spending money to meddle in otherwise free(ish) markets.  It would be shocking if they didn't oppose it, but it passed and they've failed 46(?) times to repeal it.  That is a truly remarkable level of ineffectiveness, but in researching this, they seem to believe the next time they'll finally hit that football (just like they did after attempts 30, 41, and 45, and those were only the ones I stumbled across trying to find the most recent number.  (That analogy doesn't really work, there's no Lucy pulling away the ball, they're just a delusional Charlie Brown kicking over and over again and hoping someone feels sorry for them and puts a football in front of their foot.)  That's a reasonable, if somewhat sad principle to stand on.

That brings me back to the Debt Ceiling.  First of all, let's just establish that the Debt Ceiling is awful.  It is bad policy.  As with many things that are awful, it started as an attempt to avoid fighting in Congress; specifically, over loans required to run the country.  I'm going to let that sink in...  Before 1917 Congress approved borrowing when it was needed.  In what now appears to have been misguided optimism, Congress approved the Second Liberty Bond Act to establish that the Treasury could just go ahead and borrow whatever was needed up to a specified limit.  And, shockingly, it worked just fine; at least until 1974.  That was when congress established a new budget process through the Budget Act of 1974.  At that point Congress had managed to create a process where they required two separate and unrelated bills to pass a budget.  One to create the budget and spend the money and a separate bill to actually approve borrowing the money they just spent.  From 1979 to 1995, they bypassed this (wisely, in hindsight) with the Gephardt Rule, essentially saying 'if we pass the budget we must, obviously be willing to borrow what is needed to pay for it'.  Congressional Republicans, because apparently they were crazy before the Tea Party, decided that was too easy and split the votes back apart.  So now, just shy of 100 years later we find ourselves with a Congress that can't manage to cut spending, but can, somehow, manage to refuse to pay for their spending after the fact.  This is why the debt ceiling is not the same as a credit limit.  We're not buying things on credit cards; we're essentially buying things on our word.  Buying them with little more than a "no really, I'm totally good for that" and we get away with it because, well, we have been.  Refusing to raise the Debt Ceiling is Congress saying "thanks for that stuff you gave us; we're not going to pay you for it".  If the Republicans had a problem with the spending, they could have addressed it in a budget, but they didn't, so to come back now and claim to be fiscally responsible by refusing to pay what has already been spent is just flat out disingenuous.

So that was the easy part.  Now for the Who did What, When and Where.  (In the following paragraph, you might notice a lot of Republican names and very few Democrats, ponder that if you're trying to figure out who to blame over the fiasco.)  The only word for the lead up to the shutdown that seems appropriate is "plodding".  It wasn't sudden, it wasn't shocking, and it wasn't effective.  The buildup started over the summer with letters of commitment to de-fund Obamacare that were circulated by Senators Lee, Cruz, Rubio, and Paul, and Representative Meadows.  These letters formalized a written opposition to Obamacare, just in case anyone was confused about where they stood after the first 40-odd actual votes on repealing it.  So, come October 1st the Republicans refused to approve any budget that did not rescind funds from Obamacare.  The Democrats apparently found a spine somewhere and decided that this time they were going to stand up and say "no".

A brief aside about defunding versus repealing:  At this point, the Republicans were not trying to repeal the law, just take away the money to pay for it.  Essentially, Obamacare would have still been the law of the land, but no money would have been allocated to make it actually usable (and they're having enough problems even with the money, but more on that tomorrow).

So the Republicans said "you can't have money for Obamacare", the Democrats said "yeah... we can" and... that's basically it for 16 days.  I'm certain the negotiations were more in depth than that, but when you strip away all of the fluff, that's what is left.  Intermittent bills were introduced to fund certain things, primarily to relieve constituent pressure, which were primarily rebuffed by Senate Democrats. And so, 16 days later, they passed the bill that functionally said "we can keep paying for things the same as we are now", the same bill that some (on both sides of the aisle) had called for before the shutdown.

So, the good news, it got resolved without any major harm on a national level.  I have no doubt that those directly affected by the shutdown, the federal employees, were in a bad way through no fault of their own but it could have been much worse.  Unfortunately, there's still bad news.  It will happen again.  And again.  And again.  This isn't the last debt limit crisis, nor is it the last shutdown.  These are the new tactics of the Republican Congressmen and they'll be reelected and reinforced.  They'll be reelected because nearly all incumbents are, to the tune of 91% in the last election.  Americans, as a rule, hate Congress but love their own Congressmen.  They'll be reinforced because, even if it was a spectacularly bad plan, Cruz et al did actually DO something.  Or at least they tried to.  Even in districts where the incumbent loses, the Tea Party is likely to gain seats.  They're more likely to gain from within the Republican Party than from the Democrats, but either way we're going to end up seeing more of this unless some dire consequences finally come to pass.

There is a bright side though.  Most of the problem Republicans want to be President in 2016.  There's always the possibility that they'll take themselves out of Congress to run and tear each other apart in the primaries without leaving any room to recover.  As long as nothing goes wrong before then...

1,820/60,000

The Conversation on Race and Hanlon's Razor

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Welcome to 2013, where Americans are, once again, calling for a national, local, personal, conversation on race.  Every time this comes up I find myself rolling my eyes, sighing, and waiting for it to pass.  Unfortunately, this time it seems to be a little more persistent than the last few times, so I got past that and into the question of "what does 'a conversation on race' even mean".

First, a disclaimer.  I'm a young, white, male; I won't be claiming to understand what racial prejudice feels like.

Now that that's out of the way, let's start with something, 90% of us can agree on (I made up that statistic, but it isn't relevant to my immediate point).  Racism is bad.  I know that seems trite, but I'm afraid that if I don't say it explicitly, someone might misunderstand my point.  If we can agree on at least that point, then we have a starting point for a conversation on race, which brings be back to the question, "what does 'a conversation on race' even mean" and the follow up question of "what does 'a conversation on race' look like".

On a national level, I don't think a conversation on race can happen.  At least not right now.  And why?  Because no one at a national level actually wants to have one.  Realistically, neither side (Democrat or Republican) has anything to gain by resolving racial conflict.  The Democrats can count on racial tension to galvanize their base (regardless of race, all true Democrats hate racism and injustice with righteous fury).  Meanwhile the Republicans, with their decidedly rockier relationships with minorities in general, can count on playing the 'playing the race card' card to rile up their own base.  Since both sides benefit from the controversy, I can't see either side truly investing in actually addressing it.  If the cynicism of that offends you... well... this is called "The Cynical Hammer", what did you expect?

Okay, but if we rule it out at a national level, we can still have this conversation at a local or personal level, right?  Yes... maybe.

On a local political level, these conversations happen when they're needed, without the national call to action.  When there is a race problem in a city, the city... eventually... addresses it.  I think there's plenty of room to improve on that process, but that is going to rely on the personal conversations.  Cities develop problems of race, not because they're led by cackling hooded figures who swear their allegiance to the Klan, but because they honestly don't see the policies and practices as racist or even creating a racial bias.  If you want to have a constructive conversation about those policies, they need to be approached as well-meaning, but ignorant, not malicious.  Accusations of deliberate racism are only met with defensive posturing and denial.  Instead of bringing accusations, bring data, bring evidence that; well meaning as the policy surely was, it is clearly failing on racial lines.  I know that places the burden on the victims to prove that they are victims, but we're at a point where we're not dealing with deliberate racism (for the most part), we're dealing with institutional, incidental, and accidental racism, and it needs to be addressed as such.

That brings me to the point of the personal level of conversations.  First, we should accept that racism is never going to go away completely.  People are typically hardwired to relate better to things that are similar to themselves and there will always be a certain, subconscious level, that feels that way.  The best we can really hope for is to relegate it to the same level of importance as differences in height.  Second, we should accept that both sides are probably going to have valid opinions and that disagreeing on something is not inherently racist.  Third, and most importantly, we absolutely must accept that discussing these issues and asking questions does not make someone a racist or even intolerant.  We will not move forward until we can accept that sometimes people don't know they're being offensive.  Accusing or scorning individuals for trying to improve their attitudes only discourages them from trying.

And both sides need to take responsibility for their part in the conversation.  When a white guy reaches out and says "how can I be less offensive" someone should take the time to answer the question.  All too often the attitude seems to be "you should already know that, how dare you ask" and, you know what, yes, maybe they should, but they don't, and they're asking, so answer the damn question.  And, when they don't ask and they're way out of line, say something.  Say it politely, but firmly, and repeatedly if necessary.

In conclusion, I'm going to relate a pair of anecdotes.  I'm not going to claim that in every circumstance that racism and homophobia parallel.  I don't think they do, because there is something to be said for the fact that you can't necessarily identify a gay guy or a lesbian on sight.

First, I want to vouch for the effectiveness of honest conversations about offensive things.  In college my fraternity, spurred by drunken antics, periodically threw informal "ask a gay guy" sessions.  The questions ranged from benign to raunchy, from mechanics of how things work in bed to the social norms on who pays for dinner, and they touched on what is and isn't offensive.  And people left knowing more than when they came in.  Some took it to heart, some didn't, but they were productive enough to happen periodically.  It is always better to ask the question and get the answer, than to make an assumption and be wrong.

Second, I had a roommate who knew I was gay, that idly, and with know malice towards me, would resort to using "fag" as a synonym for "idiot".  I politely, repeatedly, and firmly reminded him that was offensive.  (OK, I hit him in the arm with a wiffle ball bat every time he did it, but it was college and that was relatively polite.)  He finally snapped that I would never change the world.  My retort, and I wish I had this much wit most of the time, was "I'm not trying to change the world, I only need to change you".  And that, ultimately, is the truth here.  Racism, and all prejudice, born out of ignorance, can't be fixed at a national level.  It can only be fixed by one person reaching out to another; by one person saying "this is something I don't know how to address appropriately" and another saying "that's okay, this is how".