Unlike my "Big Six" post where I discussed some issues I just thought were big social questions, these are some of the more topical questions where either a) I've been asked my opinion already or b) everyone else is putting in their two cents, so I thought I ought to put mine in too. You might call them the "Current Five."
Today's topics are: Transgender Issues, Gang Violence, Syrian Refugees, 2016 Presidential Election, and Celebrity Deaths.
1) Transgender Issues This is a very muddy topic for me, and I'd like to state at the outset that I don't have a clear opinion on it. It's known to some of my close friends and family (cat's out of the bag for everyone else) that I went through a little crossdressing phase myself after college. Between the severe mental illness, heavy drinking, and deep sexual confusion I was struggling with at the time, it seemed like there for a while I was willing to try a little bit of everything except for dating other guys. But there's a phase and there's deciding that's just who you are. I can't understand that idea at all, so I pretty much just leave it alone as far as moral judgment goes. Some people would say I am/was transgender for wearing lipstick and putting on eye shadow (the wrong way, as it turns out - eye shadow goes on the upper eyelids, not on the cheekbones) back when I was confused.
There is one thing I want to at least call out on logical grounds: when we were talking about gay people choosing to follow their biological programming, the cry was that biology was insurmountable. Gay people had no choice because they had to do what was natural for them, no matter how distasteful straight people found it. Now we're faced with a group that says the way they were born was wrong, and they have to overcome that biology. I'm not saying either group is right or wrong, and Lord knows I'm a walking paradox myself, but it's worth pointing out that there is one here that nobody seems to acknowledge.
Now the practical issue that's been politicized and blown way out of proportion is which bathroom transgender people are supposed to use. I wish I had written a book on that 10 years ago, because I called it. I knew that was going to be the big one, and I was right. We had to deal with this one at work last year because we had a transgender employee for about 9 months, and while everyone felt a little weird about having to change our thinking, nobody really gave her a hard time about it. We had hired more female employees than we usually had anyway, so my boss just picked one of the two bathrooms and stuck a "Women" sign on it. Since we were long used to just using whichever one was empty, it didn't feel like there was a real gender assignation involved, so nobody felt all that weird about our trans employee using it anyway, and so that was that, as far as we were concerned.
Now, as a manager, even though I wasn't her boss, I was dreading some sort of confrontation about "refusing to accept her" or something like that, and I tried to reason out a good parallel: Since I'm a pretty religious man, as you know if you've read any of my other posts, I asked myself, "What if I became a monk?" Suppose I changed my life in front of my coworkers and, particularly, started demanding everyone else call me "Brother" instead of the name they were used to, and started wearing slightly different clothes with my tonsured scalp and wearing a friar's rope through my belt loops in place of my leather belt. Nobody could really argue that I had done anything wrong; that wouldn't violate dress code for example, and my company is pretty open about putting 'faith and family first' and work second, within reason. But it would still be a little unreasonable of me to expect that nobody would find the change a little shocking, not to mention forgetting to call me Brother for a while until they got used to it. These were some of the arguments I'd prepared to explain to our trans employee that just because people forgot to call her by her new name or gave her some funny looks didn't mean we didn't accept her, or disapproved; it was just a little jarring when we'd hired and trained "Jack" and now we had to get used to "Jill."
As far as what everyone else thinks about the bathroom issue, I don't have a good answer. I'd be inclined to let them use whichever one they want, or just to have more single-occupancy bathrooms and everyone just use the same one. I understand a lot of people disapprove, but I don't know if there's more to it than just the general rejection of things changing. To that, I always want to say: get over it. Things change. If you don't have a good reason for it, you can't expect the rest of us to cling to the world you remember just because you don't like the new one. We're coming up on a year since gay marriage was legalized and the country hasn't been smitten with any plagues that I've noticed. Let people do what they want, whether it's something you would do or not. That sums up my attitude to almost every choice, in fact.
2) Gang Violence This one has come up a lot recently because of what almost amounts to a gang war in my hometown. Luckily this one's easy for me, because I've had a plan for this one for years: treat gang wars like wars. When there's a gang war, declare the place a war zone. Deploy the national guard (or even the army) for general order purposes, an let the gangs fight it out. For gang members killing other gang members, they're enemy combatants, so don't count them as murders or in the area's crime figures. Civilians and the military presence wouldn't interfere as long as it sticks to gang-to-gang violence. When civilians (non-combatants) get killed, bang! you're looking at war crime charges. When government forces are harmed, if it's accidental, that's a war crime, and if it's intentional, it's terrorism. The only gray area is with people who might have been gang members or not, or in a recent example whether a gang member's girlfriend counts as a valid target. In those cases you need a little investigation into whether they should or should not be considered a combatant. The military already has that sort of procedure so it shouldn't be too hard to adapt. Then I'd say you can kill the opposing gang all you want, but aim better. If you don't, you'll be tried for crimes against humanity, and we'll have troops on every corner to make sure you don't get away with it. Suddenly there's no need to stop the violence; just let it shoot itself out.
3) Syrian Refugees If you don't already know, my immigration policy is on the left of the most liberal view you've ever heard. I'd let everyone in, including known criminals, and just keep tabs on them to see if they're looking for a new start or just staking out new territory. Of course, I'd have a zero tolerance policy on immigrant crime: first offense, out you go. Even (reasonable) suspicion ought to be enough to get a non-citizen deported, green card marriage, anchor babies, or not. But that little fascist streak aside, I'd have a totally open border. This same policy fits perfectly with the Syrian refugee trouble. Take them all in, and make it clear: you screw up, you're out. There are definitely criminals and terrorists hiding in with them, but I don't want to let one affect the other. Let everyone in, then throw out the guilty. That'll solve everything. And if a few Americans get hurt or killed before we catch them, those are our martyrs. Those are the people we lose to stand up for our principles, and we'll memorialize them as heroes of the Republic, who died so that we need not live in fear or oppression. I'm tired of having to choose. And before you bring it up, that's how I'd feel even if it was my mother, brother, or friend. If you compromise your principles when they become inconvenient, they're not really principles.
4) 2016 Election That last sentence transitions nicely into this topic. You see, I am against all four of the main candidates. I'm neither a Democrat nor a Republican, and as Andy Rooney remarked back when I was just a toddler, that usually makes me hated by both. My problem with all four (except Hillary) is that they're waving the anti-establishment flag to get elected. We've got two Senators and a billionaire talking about taking on The Man, and I just can't swallow it. They are The Man. None of that means I like Hillary any better; she's The Man too, just a little more honest about it. I can't support any of them. I've seen this too many times. In 2004 (the first election I was old enough to vote in) I voted for Bush. In 2008, I voted for Obama. That was enough to convince me it doesn't matter which side you support; they both suck. In 2012, I voted for the Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, and that's the only one so far I don't regret. If we all did that, the real establishment would fall, even the ones pretending they're not the establishment.
The only person I can think of I might really support (if she would run) is Elizabeth Warren. She's a lot like Bernie Sanders without the socialism, but more importantly she didn't just start saying the right things when it became fashionable; she's been saying "outsider" things even when it cost her. That at least suggests she really believes it. Although, let's face it, she's in office, so she knows how to play the game, and it might all be a long-con political ploy. But at the risk of seeming a smidgen optimistic I think she really might do what she says she will. I don't trust ANY of the others to do ANY of the stuff they're promising. Can you name a single campaign promise that any president has ever kept?
That said, my prediction is a victory for Hillary, possibly with Sanders as her running mate. The reason for this is the same reason Obama won in 2008 and Bush in 2004: the other side is too divided, and she at least has the support of the core of her own party, something none of the others can say. That means she'll have the lion's share of the money and big name endorsements behind her, and like it or not those sort of things sway public opinion a lot more than Trump-like promises or Warren-like principles.
5) Celebrity Deaths Compared to the others, this topic is more of a footnote. Prince died the other day (as did a wrestler and an actress I was superficially aware of), and I'm learning a lot of my friends held Prince on the same level of talent and accomplishment as Aretha Franklin or Chuck Berry. As the sort of music fan who would put him on the same level as Duran Duran or Britney Spears - in that I've heard about 5 songs and like one, sort-of - this was a bit of a surprise to me. Now the thing that happens with pretty much any celebrity death, from Robin Williams last time to Michael Jackson a few years back and on and on, is that a lot of their fans are really upset while those of us who didn't really know much about them don't consider it much of an event. What I'd like to say is that I respect everyone's grief and I don't want to trod on it, but I don't share your sense of loss. In fact I'm a little hopeful that now that he's dead his record company might be able to upload his music to YouTube where I can finally hear it. So, if I seem insensitive to your feelings, it's not that. It's that we're in the paradigm where you've lost a dear, close friend; one who I've only met twice and I just can't be as upset as you are about it.
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