Iowa in particular is an anomaly. They use an old caucus system that seems a lot more exclusive than newer primary systems. As others have pointed out, about ten percent of the voting public participated in the caucus. So, if Donald Trump got about 50 percent of the Republican vote then he really got somewhere between two and three percent of the state. So, we should hold off before we write off the state of some kind of group of backwards hicks.

To be perfect fair, every state has those folks and it isn’t limited to just two or three percent of the population. Life would be a whole lot better if it was. As teachers, we see this on the front lines. We have a lot of students that are interested in the world around them and finding out more about it works. We also have students that just couldn’t care less.

However, there is a phenomenon that is beginning to cripple our politics. Iowa and New Hampshire are perfect examples. Ask them the issues that are most important to them and they will immediately point out immigration. Why? Is there a flood of immigrants moving into Iowa from anywhere? It’s in the middle of the damn country.  New Hampshire is closer to Canada, so I suppose it is possible they will literally have a higher percentage of immigrants move there, but I am reasonably sure those aren’t the immigrants we are fighting over.

The concept of concentric circles is a pretty easy one. The center circle represents the portion of the population that is directly affected by an issue. They themselves are immigrants. So, immigration policy definitely matters to them. As we keep drawing circles we keep moving further and further away in effect. So, the second circle might by a close family member and close friends. Then, we move further and further away from those directly effected.

You will notice that almost universally the people that complain the loudest are the people in that last circle. That also happens to be the majority of the population. On some level it makes sense. If I don’t care about anyone in that population then I also don’t care if we take care of them. I could be convinced that they are a drain on society and if I can’t put a human face on it then it is more difficult for me to push back against that negativity. Yet, there is a logical breakdown. If I live in Iowa or New Hampshire that what immigrant to sucking up my resources or taking my job?

We’ve had hysterical periods where this has reared its ugly head. We use hysterical in both versions of the word. There is a hysteria here that doesn’t make sense and it is certainly more than hysterical to the rest of us. Towns in Montana and other northern states banned refugees. How many refugees are traipsing up to Montana or Wyoming anyway?

We could certainly find other issues with this phenomenon. The LGTBQ+ community certainly faces this issue front and center. People that don’t have any LGTBQ+ amongst their close family or friends suddenly care deeply about the subject and make all kinds of assumptions about how many it represents. It is spreading like wildfire and yet they still don’t know anyone personally effected. It’s a breakdown of logic and reason.

The key is thinking of politics in terms of concentric circles. I need to vote for those issues where I or someone I care about is in the center circle. If I don’t know anyone impacted by that particular issue then why I am basing my vote on it. The secret is in letting go of the hysteria and using our brain. Am I impacted by this? Even if a politician did everything they promised would it make a positive impact on my life?

“Girls will be boys and boys will be girls
It’s a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world, except for Lola.” — Ray Davies

The line above came from Lola by the Kinks. You could say that Ray Davies was ahead of his time, but he really wasn’t. Others had blazed that ground before. In this tale, a young narrator (we can presume Davies) is in a bar when he meets up with a transvestite named “Lola”. It seems simple enough right? It wasn’t the Kinks best hit, but it might be the most recognizable song they did when you ask fans of music today.

Of course, the irony is that the fossils in Washington and in the state houses were probably coming of age when that song was popular. Some of them may have even enjoyed it as a kid. Oh how soon we forget. I suppose that happens to all of us on some level. We often conveniently forget the things when we did when we were younger and that is especially true when it comes to our own children.

All of the talk of Democrats being pedophiles, groomers, and what not is based on two very cynical calculations. It is something they want you and I to think about and argue about. If we are arguing about this then we won’t necessarily see real opportunities for lasting change slip out of our grasp. It’s a parlor trick. The trouble is that grooming and pedophilia are loaded terms with very specific definitions. Q would have us believe that the entire Democratic party and half of Hollywood are pedophiles. We can’t seem to define these things anymore. Suddenly, someone that shows tolerance is a groomer or a pedophile. Yet, the man that literally said he wanted to have sex with his daughter is the guy that will free us from this pedophilia ring.

However, there is a more serious implication from these charges and one that some people honestly believe. There is a belief that this notion of transgender, transvestites, homosexual, bisexual, and general experimentation is somehow more prevalent now than at any time in history. If you ask people at the Trump rallies what percentage of people are transgender you will get some ludicrous responses. One gentlemen said it was 20 percent. If being gay, lesbian, bisexual, a transvestite, or transgender were all 100 percent choices then the fact that there are more of them would be proof of grooming. It would have to be that way right?

Except it is all a lie. Anyone that knows anyone on the LGTBQ+ spectrum knows it is a natural phenomenon and not really a choice. So, simply demonstrating tolerance and acknowledgement of who someone is is not grooming behavior. Furthermore, pedophilia is a specific thing. Gay people are not pedophiles as a general rule anymore than priests are. Again, it is a specific thing and needs to be treated as such.

The sinister thing about it all is that these poor people become targets. Suddenly, you realize there are all kinds of people to hate and absolutely none of them have anything to do with why we may be struggling. It truly is a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world, but it sure as hell isn’t Lola’s fault. She’s just a girl trying to have a good time.

Messaging is about repeating the same message in a number of ways until something sticks. So, I’ve said many of these things before. So, let’s consider this a public service announcement. If you are tired of reading this message I invite you to move onto the next piece. One of the struggles that those left of center have is in the arena of issue framing, The right just does a better job.

I have mentioned this before, but a lot of this comes down to a grievance vs. gratitutde mindset. Keep in mind that I haven’t even taken a single stand or offered any judgement on whether people should be in a grievance state. Some have every right to be. Someone or something has screwed them over. The job of the populist is to find someone or something to pin it on.

People who are happy don’t respond to scapegoating. People who are unhappy do. Part of the problem with scapegoating is that some people have no right to be in a grievance state. Populists don’t care. They are willing to stoke anger even if it is dangerous. The other part of the problem is that no matter what direction people are coming from, the target of the populists is never the only geniune target. That’s true whether they are billionaires, undocumented immigrants, women, African-Americans, LGTBQ+, or whoever else they could possibly blame.

This is why anti-woke exists. This is why Antifa is so vilified. This is why CRT has been stretched and expanded beyond any recognition. It is why all of these things seem like they are speaking in code. It’s because they are. Woke can mean whatever we want it to mean. It obviously sounds better than hating African-Americans, ethnic minorities, women, or people with alternative identifies and lifestyles.

The difference in populists is that some honestly believe they have foubd the bogeyman. Bernie Sanders certainly did but his tune hasn’t changed in over 40 years in politics. Others obviously do not. They know they are pointing the finger at the wrong folks and they don’t care. They are all too willing at taking people’s anger and frustration and pointing it at a direction away from where it might otherwise logically go.

People in a grievance state are governed by anger. People governed by anger don’t listen to facts or reason. They just want a direction to aim their anger. So, your choice is either to give them one or find a way to transform them from grievance to gratitude. It’s obviously easier said and done. Yet, when arguing in logic, reason, or facts is like screaming into the void. It doesn’t accomplish anything.

Populism isn’t tethered to ideology on either side. Gratitude allows people to consider others. It allows them to buy into a cogent ideology that forms a worldview that makes sense. The world would be a better place if we adopt THESE individual strategies that are all connected and all are consistent with that world view. Progressives, leftists, and liberals are treating the national debate like an ideological one. It isn’t. The right has been taken over by a populist. Populism is never tethered completely to ideology. So, continuing an ideological debate is like screaming into the void. No one will be there to hear the message unless they already believe.

Two types of people typically read these. Both groups could be labeled somewhere on the liberal to progressive spectrum. Occasionally, someone else might stumble in here and this is really more meant for them than the regular readers. I honestly don’t know what to call myself. Some people might say liberal. Others might say progressive. There might be others that go with leftist. The rest would say none of those things. Simply put, none of us quite fit the orthodoxy completely for any of those terms. We might be out of lockstep with the base on an isolated issue or two. Then again, the whole point is that labels have ruined our politics.

At the heart of it all is a battle over the term “woke”. Wikipedia says it means “an adjective from African-American vernacular English meaning alert to racial prejudice and discrimination.” However, it is probably the expansion of this to women, other ethnic minorities, and the LGTBQ+ community that has flummoxed people on every side of the ideological divide. In short, it is one thing to support and dignify individuals born into groups that they can’t control. It is another to support and bolster individuals that may or may not choose a group they were not necessarily born into.

When I was coming of age back in the 1980s, it was explained to me back then what it meant to be gay or lesbian. We also had bisexuals at the time, but transgender was not really a thing. Crossdressing certainly was. Obviously it was all a thing but some people were still forced to live in the closet. The debate back then was whether it was an inherited trait or whether it was a learned trait. It seems we have not quite gotten past this point.

Half Empty’s piece got me thinking. In particular, the part where the government official asks why they wanted to celebrate a pedophile. The official was speaking of Harvey Milk. Who or what someone is attracted to really isn’t a choice. The decision to act on said attraction is a choice. Gay and lesbian people are attracted to men and women. Pedophiles are attracted to children. Most pedophiles publicly identify as heterosexual. Certainly, if we look to our politics we will notice that the rates of sexual abusers is higher in the Republican party than in the Democratic party.

Ultimately, we can argue about whether any of these conditions are learned or natural. On top of that, one can choose to accept or not accept someone’s lifestyle choice if it is indeed a choice. A Wikipedia study showed that 7.1 percent of the population identify somewhere on the LGTBQ+ spectrum. An estimated 0.6% identify as transgender. Naturally, that jives with everything I have said. What is interesting is that when MAGA people have been polled on this point they seem to think that 20 percent of the population is transgender. Thus, we get to the heart of the matter. It is ignorance. If I believe that one in five people are transgender when that wasn’t true before then I also believe that something must be causing people to become transgender (or gay, lesbian, or bisexual).

Yet, when we look at the obvious facts on the demographics, we see the demographics absolutely have not changed. Two things immediately become true. First, no one is trying to convert people to be something they are not and even if there were, no one could convert you to be something that you are not. Secondly, this is yet another situation where proportionality gets the best of us. We are told about all of these people doing this or that and they are mere phantoms. They are figments of our imagination. So, we can choose to accept the seven percent or not. What we can’t do is treat them as any less of a human being than what anyone else is. One can tolerate anyone and still not agree with their choices. That has not changed and never should change. So, I say let them fight over pronouns, skunky beer, and chicken sandwiches all they want. The rest of us can live our lives and be the best humans we can possibly be.

It happened innocently enough. I was chaperoning my daughter’s choir trip to Disney World. We were there in the Magic Kingdom and her director had allowed the children to disperse on their own. So, we could also disperse on our own. It was mostly a fantastic day. Waiting times were shorter for one person and I was able to ride almost everything. Unfortunately, shorter wait times did not mean no wait times. I had to wait 40 minutes at the Haunted House and it was the worst 40 minutes of the day.

A little boy and his family walked by. No one knew them. He and his sister were wearing princess dresses. He and his attire dominated the conversation for the next ten to 15 minutes. Was he trans? Was he gay? Was he a bisexual? Was he a metrosexual? Or, was he simply a four year old buy wearing a dress. Moreover, why should I, these people, or anyone else really care all that much? Out of thousands of kids in the park that day, he was one little boy wearing a dress.

Of course, they went on to extoll Ron DeSantis and his culture wars with Disney. One of them was diabetic like me. She was testing her blood sugar using the old-fashioned prick method and complained about it. I thought about telling her about my Freestyle Libre. I decided not to get involved. The Freestyle Libre can be expensive without good insurance. Yet. here was a perfect microcosm of what the outrage machine has wrought. People back a party that explicitly aims to keep them subservient with inferior care and torches them economically at every turn. Yet, they hate the LGTBQ+ community. They hate the trans kids. They hate woke.

Somehow we have succumbed to the politics of scale. The outrage machine draws us in too. They want us to react. They need us to react. So, they can use that reaction to further rile up the base. Listen, do you hear these libtards defending drag queens and transkids? The ultimate answer is that we have to care less. That statement is very intentional. We should continue to care, but we have to focus our energies on things that directly impact us. There are people here that are directly impacted by these things. We have to be an ally for them, but we also cannot forget the politics of scale.

I explain this by drawing three circles. The inside circle is about us and us alone. Does the particular issue at hand have an effect on me personally? If the answer is no then I move to the second circle. Does it impact someone I love and care about (be it family or friends)? In some cases this will literally be true. Obviously, we should continue to fight in that circumstance. What I imagine though is that most people (at least the ones rabidly for or against something) may have someone they know that this particular issue impacts. Worse, some people may not know anyone personally impacted.

We cannot allow the outrage machine to draw us into unnecessary conflict. If I casually know someone impacted or know no one impacted then why I am fighting on this issue? Shouldn’t my time be better spent on issues that directly impact me or my family? It doesn’t mean we stop fighting for the rights of the disenfranchised. It doesn’t mean we give up hope on a more inclusive society. What it does mean that if we focus on meat and potato issues where we have near universal agreement across political spectrums then the so-called bigots and homophobes will lose. Outrage and bigotry is all they have. If you take that away from them by ignoring the incendiary rhetoric then you can get them out of office and ultimately out of our lives.

There can be no greater separation between whatever we call progressives and whatever we call conservatives than the feelings about billion dollar corporations. Conservatives fought to give those corporations rights to free speech where progressives normally view those corporations with some level of skepticism or scorn. At the very least, there is a constant battle to get those corporations to pay their fair share in taxes.

This is why the battle over Disney is such a unique battle. No single quote has had a greater impact on the past forty years of politics than Ronald Reagan’s quote from his first inaugural address. “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” No other line quite captures the sentiment of conservatism. That quote gets magnified when we deal with corporations the size of Disney.

Disney has been given all kinds of perks and favors over the years. The idea is that Disney creates more for the economy and stimulates more growth than the government ever could. So, the best thing a government can do is take a back seat and let Disney do their thing. Naturally, we will ignore that while Disney is a fine place to visit (our family has been there three times in the past six years) and they have stimulated the economy in general, as an employer their spoils aren’t exactly distributed equitably.

Such is the nature of these things. A good progressive will take the Reagan quote and insert the word corporations for the word government. It’s not that we don’t want them to exist. It’s that we want them to be tempered and regulated so that their excesses can be reined in. We want workers treated fairly. We want consumers to be protected. We want the effects of the greed that happens naturally to be limited.

What gets lost for the current crop of conservatives is that corporations have no moral compass. They can’t. As much as Citizens United wants us to believe that they are people we know they are not. They are about pure profit motive. They want to sell my daughter a “pride donut” while also seemingly catering to “family values.” They want all of our money.

So, I’m not sure what Desantis and the other movement conservatives were thinking when they came out against LGTBQ+ individuals. When they passed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill what exactly did they think would happen? Did they think Disney would purposely cut off a sizable portion of it’s customer base? Disney has made its billions by being all things to all people. It can appear to be wholesome and family friendly and also friendly to people of all lifestyle choices. They’ve made their way through that mine field. They are incredibly successful because they have done this.

So, now conservatives are going against their core beliefs. They are punishing a corporation for taking a stand. It puts progressives into the uncomfortable position of supporting a corporation like Disney. In the end, corporations are the same. They are all things to all people. They are signs of the ultimate greed and avarice driving a wedge through our society and environment. They are welcoming to all people because all currency spends the same no matter who it comes from. Corporations can and will be both. They can because they can’t afford not to be. At least the successful ones like Disney can’t.