Thoughts on Lack of Empathy

Empathy. It feels like we're really missing it these days. In politics, in society, in civil discourse, and just in the world in general. We're so caught up trying to be "right," or dividing ourselves into "us vs. them," that we rarely see the nuance in things. The grey that's filled in-between the black and white of all issues. I say all of this because this lack of empathy hit me like a punch to the gut last week. And nothing feels worse when you're made to feel less than just because people don't want to walk in your shoes. Or that, even when you say that you're struggling, people still lay unreasonable expectations upon you.

And to be honest, I flounder in these situations normally. Ten years ago I would have been in an absolute panic, contacting everyone I knew and venting and rambling at them as a way of trying to obtain some kind of comfort, or earning some kind of justification. Luckily time and experience have granted me a more mature perspective, and I've been trying to maintain a positive outlook while telling myself that change is usually for the best (though I do thank the several people I did talk to for being an understanding ear for me when I needed them). Which, which my history of anxiety, hasn't been perfect. There have been times where I've felt literally dizzy and confused the past few days, and other moments where I've needed to go in a room and deep breathe. But I keep telling myself that these handful of days will, in the long run, be better than what I've been feeling for the past 3-4 months.

The past week has also confirmed a personal belief of my: a degree of separation in most things in life is key. What I mean is, unless something is wholly your thing, your baby, it's important to keep a healthy distance between you and your work, personal or otherwise. Because if it suddenly ends, then you lose a good chunk of your identity with it. And let's face it, even if you start a passion project or something that is 100% your own, putting so much time in it that it becomes all-consuming, while not enjoying life around you, can also be unhealthy, even more so. All that to say, I definitely wasn't treating myself as healthy as I could have been. And in that sense, the short term anxieties I'm feeling now will be worth it in the end. And honestly, looking back on it all, there’s only one thing, even when pondering everything that’s happened the past few months, that I truly regret. But maybe I’ll be able to write about that another day.

What I Promise Will Be the Only Thing I Post on the Internet Regarding Politics This Year, I Swear

So I normally don't like posting political stuff (at least about elections, anyway) on Facebook, mostly because I like to use social media to maintain friendships, not alienate people. However, for reasons I'll discuss below, I thought I'd post some of my feelings regarding what has been a pretty intense election cycle. Now I have no interest in starting a comment war, as I believe people are allowed to have their own opinions, and I'm not going to force people to agree with my view of things. All I ask is, if you do read it, to consider it and absorb what you will of it.

So let me start this by saying I’m not anti-third party. In fact, I do hope that one day we can have more realistic, viable options to choose from in future Presidential elections. But let’s go back, for a second, to the year 2000. A year when only 537 votes separated Bush from Gore in Florida, thus giving the state to Bush and (with additional help from the Supreme Court) the presidency. Now in this same state, Ralph Nader received a little over 97,000 votes. Had Al Gore received even half a percent of those votes, he would have won the state and, thus, the Presidency. Which means we wouldn’t of had a Bush administration. Which means that a lot of his economic policies wouldn’t have taken effect. Which means that major companies wouldn’t have given tax breaks (or greatly reduced tax rates) for companies that shipped jobs overseas. Which means that my dad’s employer wouldn’t have shipped his work to China, leaving my dad jobless. This also means that there wouldn’t have been the deregulations in the banking industry that lead to our financial collapse. Which also would have meant that the sub-prime mortgage crisis (as depicted in The Big Short) would most likely not have happened. Which also means that Countrywide Home Loans wouldn’t have lied and tricked my parents into signing a sub-prime mortgage while trying to start my own business, thus a year and a half struggle for us to keep our home from foreclosure wouldn’t have happened (though luckily we were able to keep it thanks to Obama’s Making Home Affordable Program). So yes, normally I am not anti-third party by any stretch; but if you can’t tell, this election is pretty personal to me. And we don’t have someone like a Kasich on the other side, someone who we can get by with four years with until the next election: we have the potential to elect someone in Trump that’s somehow even worse than Bush by at least a hundred times over, if not a thousand. We can’t take that risk. And in a time where I know a lot of people are saying that “my vote doesn’t matter,” or “elections don’t matter,” my family is textbook proof that one election can, in fact, change everything. Eight years of Bush nearly drove my parents to bankruptcy and financial ruin. I do not want the risk of that happening to me or my family, or anyone else, ever again (this is also why, while I’m sure Gary Johnson is a nice guy, and he seems like one to me, his support of deregulations and minimal government interference in business means that there’s no way in good conscience I can vote for him..especially with my family’s history).

Now let’s contrast that to the Clinton years. From 1992-2000, my dad worked for an automotive company in Michigan and was getting promotions yearly. We had two nice jeeps and a gorgeous ranch house that sat on a half acre of land. I had a wonderful childhood with everything one could possibly want. And when my family wanted to move out to Arizona (for nicer weather and my allergies), we had the resources to be able to do so, and my dad started an engineering business that later received a contract from Allied Signal. A contract that was lost, as I said earlier, a few years into the next administration. Now the ‘90s weren’t perfect; I recognize not everyone was fortunate to have a childhood like mine, that there were injustices (as there are in every decade), and that there was a “tough on crime” culture that spawned some well-intentioned but incredibly misguided in hindsight laws that everyone from the Clintons to Biden to Bernie supported. But I’ll tell you one thing we didn’t have: an economy that was in complete shambles like it was in 2008. And the reason why most of us can reflect fondly on our childhood and share Buzzfeed listicles of our favorite toys of the ‘90s is because of the budget surplus economy that was formed under Bill Clinton’s leadership. So yes, I get the disappointment and disenfranchisement a lot of people are having with this primary right now. I was disappointed when my first candidate of choice, Wesley Clark, lost to John Kerry. And I was even more heartbroken and devastated when he lost to Bush when I thought there was no way on God’s green Earth would vote for him after those first four years (but then again, I was watching Keith Olbermann and Fahrenheit 9/11 at the time, so I was getting a very one-sided view, no matter how correct it was or may have been). But when you’ve had to, at two separate times in your life, comfort a parent as they sob uncontrollably on your shoulder, worried sick about what the future will bring and depressed of what was taken from them, you realize that life is more important than just one election cycle or one candidate. The fight goes beyond that.

Now Bernie Sanders was a great candidate. There’s no doubt about that. But one of the things I liked best about him, other than his in-depth knowledge of economics, was that he always focused on the issues. He rarely, if ever, gave into distractions. He was the guy that said, back in October, that he didn’t “give a damn about any e-mails.” He didn’t talk about things like Benghazi because, on top of these issues being used by Republicans for years as a distraction (http://mm4a.org/1KbqMbU), those debates took away from the real issues we needed to care about. Sure, he talked about the Goldman Sachs speeches (which was worth bringing up), and of course he was going to bring about differences (what’s the point of even having a primary if you only have candidates that agree on everything?). But even then he said during debates that, on their absolute worst days, they were still 100% better than anything the GOP had to offer. Now I don’t know if some people think he was joking when he said all of this, or if they didn’t take it seriously at the time, or maybe they weren’t paying attention, but I always thought that he was serious when he said those things. Again, that’s why I liked him. Having said that, he wasn’t a perfect candidate for me (his knowledge of foreign policy wasn’t as in-depth as his knowledge of economics, he wasn’t as strong on gun control as other Dems, and he’s as old as Reagan was in the second year of his second term), so it was a close vote for me until the very end. But I will say that, while I absolutely sympathize with those of the “Bernie or Bust” movement, I would be lying if I said that it didn’t wear me down as the campaign went on, as well. Mostly because a part of me thought that a lot of people were not only ignoring those things that Bernie said, but were also falling prey to the same thing that I thought he did such a good job avoiding: distractions.

I know there are some people that will disagree with me on what I said above, and that’s fine. And I know quite a few people are still feeling strong emotions about this primary election, particularly with the DNC (which is why I’m avoiding talking about that). But the one thing I’ll say is this: if you can make progress, go for it. Always go for it. But you can’t always fling a boulder over a mountain every time. Sometimes you have to grind at it, slowly push the boulder up the hill, pause to take a breath and rethink, recalibrate and re-strategize, then keep pushing on. Eventually, if you work at it, you will achieve what you set out to do, even if it isn’t instant, even if it takes decades or centuries. But giving up or being cynical or pessimistic because of one election cycle isn’t the solution to anything. And come January of next year, refusing to work with those who are in office because you disagree with them isn’t the solution to solving problems, either. Being the liberal version of the Tea Party, shouting in an echo chamber while refusing to work with those of different viewpoints, will get nothing done. Just as the Tea Party has done nothing but bring the Republican Party farther down than it already was. And again, this is where Bernie Sanders gets it. He knows that the changes his campaign brought to the Democratic Party platform, one of the most progressive platforms in recent election years, is progress that’s worth celebrating. He understands the importance of working with others to get things done, hence the announcement of an education plan with the Clinton campaign to help those who can’t afford to go to college (and I’m sure he’ll continue to fight for this plan in the Senate, as well). And he knows that this country can’t afford even one year of a Trump presidency, let alone four, and we can’t afford to undo what Obama has spent eight years doing.* And on behalf of not just Bernie, but what my family went through, I hope that you feel the same way.

* On a side-note: has Obama’s presidency been perfect? No. But no presidency will ever be perfect: presidents will fail, they will make mistakes, they will fail to get things passed (like Guantanamo [thanks, Congress]), and sometimes they’ll pass laws that have unforeseen ramifications. But a presidency that has taken us out of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, ended (or, at the very least, greatly reduced our efforts) in two wars, passed an Affordable Care Act that can hopefully pave the way for universal health care in the future (and helped people in my own family), and put in place two Supreme Court judges that helped gay marriage become the law of the land, is a presidency worth celebrating. And who knows what would have happened if he had a Congress that was willing to work with him, like Newt Gingrich was willing to do with Clinton in the mid-90s.

To Dorian

So I spent quite a bit of time last night reflecting on this whole group, and since no one has really wrote anything in response to it since yesterday, I figured that I should at least say something before I leave this group. 

When I was added to this group on Friday, it became clear very quickly, after reading all of the different messages and posts and comments, that a lot of people seem hate you, Dorian. Despise you, in fact. Maybe even loathe you with every fiber of their being. Yet I’m not one of those people. I’ve known you since I moved out here from Michigan all the way back in 1997, have known a lot of the shit that you went through in those middle/high school days and have felt nothing but sympathy for you for a long time. And in a lot of ways, I still do. And while I may not agree with a majority of your beliefs and theories, and think you can get way too extreme with it at times, I’ve always taken an “agree to disagree” approach to it all, as I don’t like differences to get in the way of friendship. Plus I used to be very political myself in my college days, so I get it: but while I still care about the issues, I've now come to a point where I’ve decided it’s more important to maintain friendships and than argue over issues and try to convince people come Hell or high water into your way of thinking…no matter how right it may be. So while I don’t agree with you a lot of the time, it’s never bothered me. 

My main problem right now, Dorian, has been your treatment of women. There have been rumblings about it through the music community for years now, and I would hear stories like Chelsea’s and be absolutely appalled. And then as time wore on I’d hear more of them from more people, and friends would start showing me texts and Facebook messages that they’d receive, and people like Derek would tell me that they’d try to take you to task for your actions to no avail. And all of it puts me in a horrible position as a friend and someone who’s known you for as long as I have. Because I’d like to think that the person I know wouldn’t stoop to that kind of condescending language and atrocious behavior, but yet other friends were presenting clear evidence of it to my face that proved the contrary. Now I haven’t seen evidence of every single accusation first-hand, and I don’t blame your sister at all for sticking up for you against this, and I can’t really tell you what to do in terms of how to respond to it or seek help for it. But these are vile, disgusting and reprehensible things that I’ve seen, Dorian. And even if they all aren’t true, I do think you need to reconcile some of this behavior, if not with other people, then at the very least with yourself. 

But at this point I think everyone has been divided into “teams” at this point. One team will stick up and defend you no matter the accusations, and the other will always say “fuck Dorian” no matter what. And sadly I think there’s no going back from that at this point. And I personally hate that, as I’m someone who by nature hates conflict and would rather see everyone get along. But the thing is is that none of this helps you, because none of this has addressed the real issue here: how do you become a better person? And while no one deserves a hate group, and some comments went too far, and you have a right to be angry and upset about it, the one thing that’s clear is that it seems that you’ve burnt a lot of bridges, and a lot of people flat out do not like you, whether justly or not. And the question you should ask yourself is “why?” 

As for me, the bridge hasn’t been burnt yet. Damaged, yes, but not burnt. I’ve always been someone who believes in both redemption and second chances as well as forgiveness, and that while it doesn’t condone or excuse any past actions or behavior at all, someone can learn from their mistakes and become a better person. I’ve most certainly made mistakes in my lifetime and have gotten help for issues that I’ve had myself (like anxiety attacks that I’ve had since a high school car accident, for example). So while it may be very easy for you to dismiss everything that’s been said out of anger (and I wouldn’t necessarily blame you for it), this could also be a moment in your life where you reflect, do some inner soul searching, and hopefully come out of the other end a better person because of it. 

If this group makes you never want to talk to me again, Dorian, then that’s fine. But In the end, though, I just want to see you become a better person. And honestly, I wouldn’t have written any of this if I didn’t think there was some chance that you can be.