a woman's work?

At a recent event in Iowa, Hillary Clinton said that if she becomes president, she'll employ Bill as a roaming ambassador to repair our image and friendships with the world. I have such mixed feelings about this. The nostalgic Democrat in me knows he's a great diplomat and would make good progress rebuilding bridges, but my feminist side hates the idea of our first woman president sending her husband to do her job. Does this rub anyone else the wrong way? If I were Hillary I would be doing everything I could to establish myself as my own person, but she's obviously taking the opposite approach...

Earth Day

Be sure to check out Worldchanging.com's article Make This Earth Day Your Last. I hearts their call to address larger social systems that stymie action on climate change.

I discuss it in today's post for BTYV: This Earth Day, Obama needs to step it up

Now go hug a tree, y'all.

ugh.

I understand that, to a certain extent, it's human nature to want to know why that guy shot all those people in Virginia. But why is it necessary for reporters to shove microphones in the faces of everyone even remotely connected to the killer? Do they expect to find an explanation that could fit in a sound clip? Do they expect to find blame that is anything but cumulative? This manufactured sense of urgency only fuels the crackpots who blame anything from Darwinian science education to video games for this act of violence. That linked Wired post appropriately quotes Chris Rock: "Who gives a f**k what they was watching! Whatever happened to crazy?"

The headline on cnn.com right now says LOOKING FOR ANSWERS. Well, of course the families and friends of the victims are reflexively looking for reasons as they try to make sense of what happened, but that doesn't mean such answers actually exist. When someone goes that far over the edge, there is never just one precipitating factor. Multiple systems could have failed, from social, legal, and familial to academic, motivational and neurobiological. It was probably a combination of most of those factors. Maybe not. But a reporter asking the guy's roommates which bands he liked will never unearth a revelation. It's easy to blame offensive music or violent video games; it's much more difficult to turn the lens on ourselves and the systems for which we're responsible.

The kid lost it. He slipped through the cracks and in a grisly, horrible moment, the factors aligned and he lept over that ledge that is so fascinating to us. Human beings have probably always marveled at this breaking point and tried to demystify it. When things like this happen, what terrifies us the most is the randomness, the wanton chaos implicit in acts of violence. We dissect the evidence, look into the eyes of serial killers and try to isolate the variable. But these analyses ignore a truth our gut understands - violence is chaos. And chaos is, by definition, inexplicable. A certain element of illogic runs like a current under almost every human behavior. Most of the time, this is of little consequence. But every once in a while, the chaotic side of human nature comes crashing to the surface and heads are left spinning.

It would be great if we could react to things like this with self-examination rather than witch hunts. We should look for gaps in the systems we're plugged into, and try to be more compassionate. But people are always going to be flirting with that breaking point, and some will go over the edge. We can minimize risks of violence, but we can never completely mitigate them. That's simply the nature of chaos.

Revelations about human nature, live at 11.

on youth

I've been meaning to post this quote for a few days. Seems even more appropriate after the VA shootings:

“If the fires that innately burn inside youths are not intentionally and lovingly added to the hearth of community, they will burn down the structures of culture, just to feel the warmth.” - Michael Meade

the playing field

Hillary makes me cringe, Edwards is an uninspiring white guy, Feingold's out, and Richardson is a long shot. Obama isn't perfect, but he's the closest thing to it this time around. We love him for who he is, but also because he's not Hillary:
The Alternative

"Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt"

Do you know what a Humanist is? I am honorary president of the American Humanist Association, having succeeded the late, great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in that functionless capacity. We Humanists try to behave well without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife. We serve as best we can the only abstraction with which we have any real familiarity, which is our community.

We had a memorial services for Isaac a few years back, and at one point I said, “Isaac is up in Heaven now.” It was the funniest thing I could have said to a group of Humanists. I rolled them in the aisles. It was several minutes before order could be restored. And if I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, “Kurt is up in Heaven now.” That’s my favorite joke.

"If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."

Duck President

I couldn't resist lifting this entire post from Crooks and Liars:

From Morning Edition on NPR:

This is the morning that kids were invited to the White House for the Easter egg roll. The roll for Laura Bush includes reading a children’s book. It’s called, “Duck for President.” The first lady will read the story of a duck who takes over the farm, then runs for governor, and then runs for the White House. He wins after a recount, but Duck gives it all up to go back to the farm. The duck concludes, “Running a country is no fun at all.”

According to the book’s publisher, “President Duck,” who didn’t realize being president would require a lot of “very hard work,” ends up with “a very bad headache” before passing his duties off to his Vice President.

Sometimes, the jokes write themselves.

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yes, yes they do

The Ethics of Showing Up

Out of all my weekly posts at Barack The Youth Vote, this is my favorite so far:

The Ethics of Showing Up: MyPolicy, Transparency, and Our End of the Bargain

A Public Service Announcement: Everybody is a goddamned mess

I've been thinking a lot lately about how, when it comes down to it, everybody is a little bit crazy. No matter how normal or composed someone seems, we all have secrets, desires, compulsions, fears, delusions and insecurities that, if brought to light, would reveal just how screwed up we really are.

When I worked for an agency that answered anonymous crisis and suicide calls, we had to record the callers' zip codes for grant reporting purposes. In Kalamazoo, some zip codes are so small they can be measured in single-digit numbers of city blocks. The walk from my apartment to this agency covered one of these zip codes, and each day I would look at my neighbors' houses and wonder where the hundreds of calls were coming from. Suicide attempts, financial crises, sexual perversions, crippling grief - the calls revealed the dark underside of my normal little neighborhood.

The whole world is like this neighborhood. We dance around on the surface of our daily lives, not knowing that an entirely different world lies just underneath. Some people assume they're the only one hiding something. Even worse, others deny they're hiding anything at all.

No one, no matter how successful or put-together they seem, really knows what they're doing. Everyone's just winging life, to a certain extent. We make mistakes, we move on, we try to learn and screw up anyway; every once in a while our insanities bob to the surface. Sometimes things work out for people, sometimes they don't. In this big whirling mess, the most painful thing can be thinking that you're alone in it. Some people have a worse time of it than others, but really, no one's immune.

Maybe the world would be a better place if we were all a bit more honest about our own weaknesses.

Maybe not.

But for the record, let me say that I'm just as fragile and screwed-up as the next person.

And I'm okay with that. Actually, it's humbling to realize that everyone, whatever their position or status or accomplishments, is essentially a mess. A lovely, human, goddamned mess.

the best that it could be

A lovely video Tonya made of her drive home just outside Alamosa:

And another weekly installment: Hope. Action. Change: Anatomy of a slogan