Every once in awhile you learn something new. Of course, the reality is that we rarely ever learn anything truly new. It simply is that we learn something that reinforces something we already knew in a unique way. In this case, another commentator stumbled on an idea that illustrates something we all have known for most of our lives.

I peruse a number of sites every day just to keep up with the times and to check out other writers I enjoy reading. I am a regular at John Pavlovitz’s site, I am a regular reader at Heather Cox Richardson’s site. I also go over to the Bulwark. It is a center-right blog that features a group of never Trumpers that used to be establishment conservative thinkers. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Yet, reading them has given me insight into the conservative mindset. One of their writers passed along an interesting nugget about Red Bull and Elon Musk.

Last (the author) pointed out something I didn’t know. Red Bull doesn’t actually manufacture Red Bull. In fact, the company doesn’t manufacturer anything. They outsource it to someone else and just handle the marketing. Their YouTube page and other social media are revolutionary. They are highly successful and they don’t make a damn thing.

The four largest car manufacturers sold more than 25 million cars last year alone combined. Musk’s Tesla made just over 500 thousand. Who made more? If you guessed Tesla you’d guess right. It is truly the triumph of style over substance and we are seeing the same in our politics.

This really isn’t anything new. Literature experts tell us that there are really only about 100 original stories in literature. Everything else is a riff on one of those original stories. Plato described this phenomenon in his “Allegory of a cave” in the Republic. Perception is reality and no amount of facts are really going to change that.

The book “Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus” described the differences between the sexes back in 1992. I haven’t read the book admittedly, but the general idea is that men and women are wired differently. Well duh. Yet, the same notion would probably best describe Republicans and Democrats. I hate to paint people with such a broad brush, but the two groups just don’t process the same way.

Progressives and conservatives by and large think differently. I could make value judgments, but suffice it to say that when you want systemic changes your mind goes to policy initiatives. Policy initiatives require facts and specific aims. When your goal is to say no to more government you don’t need the specifics. You think in generalities.

The aforementioned book is actually pretty relevant here. We mistakenly thought that relevant facts and trusted sources of information were persuasive. They certainly are to people that speak the same language, but some people honestly distrust all of that stuff. Conservatives are great at communicating simple points in quick bursts. They frame issues quickly and convincingly. Progressives usually shoot themselves in the foot when they try to frame issues.

The long and short of it is that we cannot get through to most people by citing facts and discussing policy aims. They just aren’t wired that way. Trump never had a specific policy and never made good on virtually any of his campaign promises. That didn’t seem to matter. So, pointing those things out really won’t work. We need something else. The alternative is to continue to bang our head against the wall.

“Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning Born of the one light, Eden saw play Praise with elation, praise every morning God’s recreation of the new day.” — Cat Stevens/Eleanor Farjeon

Sometimes you need the lime wedge before you take the tequila shot. Sometimes you need it before, after, and then again a few minutes later. That happened when I stumbled upon a news story that a friend stumbled on yesterday. It seems someone in the Texas state legislature really doesn’t like transgender kids.

Of course, that’s not the way they would describe it. They would say they are looking out for children. The story in question references a bill that has been proposed before the state legislature. It seems they want to remove kids from their parents if they get a gender reassignment. They consider that tantamount to child abuse. See, I told you that you needed that lime wedge.

I can’t hardly decide where to begin on all of this. Should we take this on its merits or should we address the strategy behind it? The person (I’m not dignifying them by name) knows this has no chance in passing. So, why bother? Well, they are making a political statement and a social one as well. They also want to distract us from what is really going on in the legislature. They hope we will expend our energy defeating this monstrosity of a bill and ignore the real stuff they are trying to do.

Texas has done this for years. They take real issues like education, infrastructure, and the energy crisis and throw them on the backburner for wedge issues only a few care about deeply. Most of the time it is a bill allowing a three year old to bring a semi-automatic machine gun to daycare or having women that seek abortions drawn and quartered. You’ve seen them before. They are the type of bills that make you wonder if a majority of Texans are just stupid, mean, or if they are breathing at all.

However, this gets to the heart of what is inside the typical conservative. There isn’t much going on upstairs and what lies inside the chest is black indeed. I get the discomfort. We have a few students on campus that are transgender. It can be hard to deal with how you address them or what to talk about with them. I get discomfort on that level.

However, this is where the ignorance rolls in. Transgender people don’t go down to the local Walgreens, take a pill, and then become what they want. They don’t get cut from the basketball team, put on a dress, and then try out for the girl’s team. Yet, this is how this bill and others that have actually passed state legislatures seem to think about the process of reassigning your gender.

Parents aren’t demanding their kid change genders and they aren’t buying hormones on the street corner to get it done. This involves doctors, mental health professionals, and maybe church officials and pastors if they are religious. It involves deep reflection, soul searching, and numerous intermediate steps. Parents and children willing to go through with it deserve much more than what they are getting. It takes courage for a parent to let go of what they thought they had to allow their child to become the person they feel they need to become.

So, at the end of the day it is difficult to imagine what is more detestable in this case. Is the thought process itself the most obnoxious thing? Is the ignorance about the process of becoming transgender the most obnoxious thing? Is the hypocrisy of citing a loving and benevolent God while completely ignoring the love that he taught us to show the most obnoxious thing? It could be all of those, but it could be the simple truth that they want us talking about these things while they rob us blind behind our back.

As reported in the Texas Tribune, the Texas Senate is considering a bill that would prevent cities and counties from enacting paid sick leave ordinances. Republican politicians that run on small government and local control, as usual, have no qualms about violating that “principle” of theirs when it interferes with big business. Like when Denton county decided to ban fracking, the state quickly put a stop to that type of local control. Now that Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio require paid sick leave, big government is coming to put a stop to it.

You see, they really know what’s best for us, y’all. The Tribune article quotes a “CEO” of a company that runs Auntie Anne Pretzels and Cinnabon franchises in Texas. According to her, offering her food-service workers paid sick leave would be terrible for them, because if she had to pay sick leave, she couldn’t offer them 401K’s. Which is funny, because the stores owned by her company don’t offer 401k’s at all. Or maternity leave. Or any benefits. As usual, they’re just anti-worker and full of shit. They would rather the employees serve covid pretzels than pay a part-time employee $7.25 an hour for a four-hour shift while they rest and recover.

This is all public information based on employee reviews from Glassdoor and Indeed, by the way.

Employees of these mall stands make minimum wage. They work with food. They do not have health insurance and I imagine they’d have to work 15-20 hours to afford one cash pay doctor’s visit, not including prescriptions. These people have absolutely nothing, and their boss is fighting against offering them sick pay. I hate humanity.

In a pandemic, when we are all told to stay home if we are sick, Texas Republicans want to make sure that we are not guaranteed sick leave. It’s for our own good, really.

We usually don’t like to do these around here, but I thought I would tell a personal story as a way of getting around to my thoughts on the Minnesota police shooting. So, please bare with me as I try to be as brief as possible.

One night in January I went to pick up my daughter from the skating rink. It was the weekend right before the freeze, so I was dressed in sweat pants and a hoodie. The officer on duty asked me whether I saw anyone looking inside of cars and attempting to open them. I told him I didn’t and proceeded to go inside to pick her up.

I walked to back of the rink looking for her and did not see her. When I turned around there was the officer. He asked me why I was looking in the back of cars. I told him I was there to pick up my daughter and had not looked in the back of cars. He then grabbed me by the arm and forced me outside. On the way out I saw her and identified her. He collected my license and made me wait outside.

As we were walking out he pulled me to back of my car and gave me a field sobriety test. It was cold and windy and he had me do the rapid eye test and walk heel/toe for several feet. Needless to say I didn’t pass his little test. I offered to take a breathalyzer as I don’t drink. He couldn’t accommodate that. So, my wife had to come up and drive my daughter home. He finally returned my license and let me go.

So, what’s the point of this story? As I told the officer’s supervisor the next week, as a teacher I have gone through extensive training on student restraint. I have never had to restrain a student in 24 years of teaching. Why? I interact with them in such a way where it hasn’t become necessary to do it. The officer never had to restrain me. I posed no threat and never refused to follow any commands or evaded any questions. The situation obviously didn’t call for that and everyone would have been better off without him being heavy handed.

We can talk about qualified immunity, choke holds, and military style weapons in the hands of police. Those are all worthwhile topics, but the question here is a more basic one. Why was it necessary to taser him in the first place? That was her goal was it not? Why? Many of these instances happen because of racism and there is no denying that. They also happen because officers often have a superiority complex that causes them to escalate situations that don’t need to be escalated. Those two explanations are also not mutually exclusive.

Police reform is obviously going to be harder than passing a few laws. Yes, we should ban choke holds. Yes, we should ban no knock warrants. Yes, we should scale back qualified immunity. Yes, police shouldn’t be outfitted as if they are taking out an Afghan terror cell. More important than all of those things we have to rethink what the goal of policing is and who should be fulfilling that goal.

The blue lives matter crowd will pounce on this victim because he had a bench warrant for a misdemeanor gun charge. It’s as if the value of life is somehow altered by the presence of a criminal record. Did he have a gun in sight in the vehicle? Was he threatening the officer in any way? Is there a way this officer could have approached the situation that would have guaranteed her safety and the safety of the victim? In most cases the answer is yes.

I was a lot happier as a teacher when I discovered that I could exercise more control over my classes when I made the educational experience more collaborative. My students trust that I won’t hurt them. So, they don’t threaten to hurt me. It’s amazing how much a little cooperation helps. As long as police hope to keep a stronghold over us they will continue to get the same results as they have been getting.

Coming into yesterday I was lamenting the fact that I didn’t have much to write about. That’s always the kiss of death. There is an old Chinese proverb that says, “may you live in interesting times.” Well, there’s no denying that we live in interesting times. Two news stories intersected yesterday from different parts of the country.

 

Minnesota seems to be in the crosshairs again with another police shooting. This time, an officer says they were reaching for their taser and pulled out of their gun instead. I suppose it could happen to any of us if we were packing that much heat.

 

On the same day we had another school shooting make the national news. This leaves people like me to connect the dots. How are these events related? What if anything can be done to stop them? At the end of it all, most of us have that same powerless feeling you have when you see an accident happening in slow motion.

 

I suppose we can be thankful that there was only one victim in each case. However, I can’t help but think there is one unifying source to the problem. Guns. There are very few things that make me more angry. As a commentator, I get tired of commenting about it. We say the same things over and over again and nothing seems to change.

 

I think what’s more frustrating is the overarching attempts to be politically correct and accommodating of the gun owning population. I say I don’t want to take your guns. I say all I want is common sense gun control legislation. I say all I want are background checks and an automatic assault weapons ban. I say all of those things because I know the response I will inevitably get if I say something more. That ends today.

 

That’s not the truth though. I for one am sick and tired of hiding it. I’m tired of kowtowing to Rambo wannabes that seem to think they need to open carry their AR-15 to the florist so they safely buy flowers for their wife. I’m sick and tired of the dumb son of a bitch that thinks they need to carry their assault rifle into Wal-Mart because we need a good guy with a gun. I’m also tired of short-sighted legislatures that seem to think the answer is more open carry and fewer restrictions. I’m just sick and tired of being sick and tired.

 

I’m sick and tired of muting my own feelings because they aren’t politically popular. I hate guns. I have always hated guns and there is nothing that will change that. This isn’t assault rifles or automatic weapons. It’s not handguns. It’s not rifles and shotguns. It’s all guns. If every gun disappeared from the world I would be much happier.

 

I’ve never suggested banning guns or confiscating guns because I know it’s a non-starter. I also know plenty of people with guns that are responsible adults that wouldn’t be caught dead looking like that stupid Missouri couple. I also know that a part of this is driven on pure emotion. Sure, it worked in Australia, but I know these issues are much more complex than that.

 

I also know that situations like the Minnesota shooting are a lot more involved and a lot more needs to be said and done. I will say those things in due time. Others will too. For now, I just needed to come out and say it so I don’t have to hide it anymore. I hate guns.

This speaks for itself.