The Queen's Gambit

 A true story about me that made watching The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix a mix of nostalgia, stress, and regret. 

When I moved to Fort Lewis, Washington--after a dismal year in Shelton, a tiny logging town on the Puget sound Peninsula that I absolutely loathed--I spent the first few weeks of my sophomore year of high school avoiding other people by taking lunch in the library. The main perk of the library was that it offered a lot of single-seat tables. These allowed me to avoid the embarrassing task of searching the lunchroom for the communal table least populated with people, none of whom did I know, nor did I look forward to putting in the required work to know them. Plus, I assumed, there would be very few people in the library to potentially see me hiding behind the three-sided privacy desks other students generally used for studying or goofing off. But I did neither of those things. Instead, I ate and read a Dungeons and Dragons book in a perfect little introvert haven. However, much to my surprise, the library was full of activity, and there was always the faint clicking of plastic against plastic during the lunch hour. Eventually my curiosity was piqued enough that I peeked over the wall of my security desk to investigate the source of the daily commotion.

With my eyes hovering just over the edge of the desk’s front privacy wall, I saw four long tables situated near the front of the library where on any given day eight to sixteen kids sat with chess boards and clocks between them. They had gone unnoticed by me prior to that moment because on my way into the library I usually unconsciously filtered these tables out of existence owing to the fact that they suffered from the same curse as those outside of the library: multiple people sat at them. It took a few days for me to gather up the gumption to stand next to a game and watch as a silent spectator after having finished my lunch. I understood the basics: how the pieces moved, that white goes first, the relative value of pieces, and what check and checkmate were. But this was when I first became acquainted with the clock, speed chess, and the almost hypnotic sounds made by a player using one piece to take another and then firmly pressing the clock before placing the freshly taken piece on the wooden table: click-tap-clack. That last clack a subtle assertion of power--I’ve taken your piece, and with it, a part of your dignity.

There were still other things I would learn later, after hundreds of games. I had no sense of strategy, or even tactics, I couldn’t tell you if a move was good or bad unless it was a lesser valued piece taking a greater valued piece (which isn’t always a good metric, but I couldn’t have told you that either) or resulted in mate. I had no idea what tempo was, or that there were openings and end-games or forks, skewers, and pins. And I certainly didn’t know I would obsess over the game for the next three years. I didn’t know that I would spend my time alone thinking about moves and games I had played. I didn’t know I would learn to love the tactile feel of the chipped plastic pieces in my hand. Nor did I know about the joy of mindlessly spinning a pawn between my fingers while contemplating my next move or two. But I get ahead of myself here, pushing all my pawns before I’ve moved any major pieces out.

After a few days watching games, the losing player at the table I was hovering over stood up and left. No one else was around so the winner asked if I wanted to play. I said, “Sure.” I put my backpack on the floor and sat down and expertly arranged the chess pieces. I played black and thought I was smart enough to have a good go at the game. At the time I didn’t know the chess club/team at Lakes High School was a fairly close knit set of people. The boy sitting across from me was a senior and played second board on the team (which made him the second best player at the school). He knew I was not on the team and he probably knew I’d never played a game in the library; his intuition likely told him I was easy pickings. Four moves later he proved the proposition with what we learned from The Queen's Gambit is the scholar’s mate. I felt simultaneously like an idiot--all of the other games I’d watched had taken twenty plus moves to complete--and amazed that such a thing could be achieved. But I didn’t understand at all how it was achieved. Or that it could be replicated. And avoided. A point proven by our second game in which we played out the exact same set of moves, like I was a ghost whose first task is reenacting its own death. After that he walked me through the sequence of moves and explained how to avoid the end result and how you would probably never see the white queen come out like that in a tournament game. I never played another game against him. Such games would not have been fun for either of us. 

I went home with two choices before me: I could either take the day’s whippings as a sign that I wasn’t cut out for the game of chess or I could practice and maybe get a little better. I opted for the latter and asked my dad to play with me that night. He beat me, too, but at least it was a more traditionally lengthed game. After the game I showed him the scholar’s mate; he thought it was pretty cool. Then I went to my bedroom and sat down at my desk and started up a circa 1994 Windows machine. I examined its games to see if it came pre-installed with chess; it did not. I bought one the first opportunity I had. I started with Battle Chess, where the pieces fight whenever any piece is captured. But those games ended up taking too long because of the animation, so I then acquired a more basic chess game without any fancy graphics. At the same time I started playing diligently during school lunch. I ended up playing a lot of chess, multiple hours a day between lunch and the program I had at home. I slowly worked my way up the challenge levels on the computer, and apparently at the lunch tables as well. One day the librarian came over to one of the games I was playing and he asked, “Would you like to join the chess team?” 

Just before chess season started the librarian--who was ostensibly the chess coach as well, but who taught us nothing about chess; he was basically just a chaperone at our tournaments--put together an in-school chess tournament for anyone who wanted to be on the team. The results of the tournament would determine who would sit where on the team. In Washington state high school chess, a team consists of five players and generally the first board is your best player and the fifth board is your fifth best player. Strategy might dictate otherwise but that was how our team was always run. The good news, if you liked playing chess, was that even if you didn’t make it in the top five, you could still participate in the solo tournaments where you faced other players one-on-one. 

I learned a handful of new things during this tournament. I learned that every player has a rating that indicates the relative strength of a player; it goes up as you win and down as you lose during tournament play. People record their games on paper using notations. Lakes High School at the time was home to the number one ranked high school player in Washington state. And, I wasn’t good enough to play board one through five. This last point was not terribly shocking. I had a good sense that the kids older than me had played a lot, and I had been beat by most of them during some lunch or another. But luckily the coach thought a sufficient number of us played well enough that we could field two teams. He selected me to play board three on the Junior Varsity chess team. He assured me it was a good spot for an unrated player and that I should be proud of my progress. 

From there once a month our team would play a single set of games against another team in our district. For these games each player received one and half hours on the clock. Intermixed with these were proper solo tournaments where we played five 60 minute solo games where whomever finished with one of the best three records would win a trophy. Unrated players, and players with less than 1200 rating, were plugged into a reserved section; all others were put into the unreserved section. I started in the lower tier, but worked my way out of it after two tournaments.

The highlights from that year were that in my first reserved tournament I went undefeated, but so did the kid who played board two on my team. Normally three games of speed chess were used to break such ties, however our coach didn’t like that idea of two of his players competing so directly; instead, the first place trophy was offered to my teammate because he had the higher rating. I don’t recall being bummed about that; maybe because based on games we had played at lunch, I was certain I was the better player.

The next tournament I placed first and then I graduated out of the reserved section and had to get used to not even sniffing the top 20 for the remainder of the year. But my game was improving at a respectable pace--I was moved to the first board of our JV team by the time the school year ended. Our varsity team took first in state and three of those players were graduating seniors. Odds were good that I could play on the varsity team my Junior year.

We had a similar in-school tournament for placing again the next year. I played enough with the other kids at that point that I knew I would be board three of the varsity team, the two seniors on the team were boards one and two, though they were unequivocally worse at the game than the prior year’s top two players. Our team did not even place in the top 10 that year; though again at the end of the year I was regularly beating the two players above me during our practice games at lunch and placing higher than them at solo tournaments where I consistently finished in the top 10 to 20.

But the best and, in ways, worst year of my chess life was my senior year. I started the year at board one of our varsity team--making me captain of our chess team--and stayed there for the year. It felt good. We performed well in our monthly team matches. I consistently finished in the top five at solo tournaments; even picking up a few more trophies. Let me regale you with the highlights of the year.

I learned a new opening--The Queen’s Gambit. I made it my opening of choice when I played white. I wasn’t the type of player to read books about the game. It pains me to think about how good I could have been with some book learning or a chess tutor. I picked up the opening playing against the computer and I memorized a sufficient number of moves for the opening that I could play it well enough to win against the computer as frequently as I did when I played the more traditional king's-pawn openings. But it had a distinct advantage in high school tournaments: the players didn’t have a database of moves behind them. Which to say, 98% of the humans I played against were encountering Queen's Gambit for the first time when they sat across the table from me and thus didn’t know how to play against it. I couldn’t analyze the opening and tell you what its strengths and weaknesses actually were, but I knew I won games when I played it. It flummoxed anyone who wasn’t a top ten player. I played hundreds of practice games with Queen’s Gambit so that I could gain a quick positional advantage in most games in which I played white and watch my opponent squirm after my first two moves.

Not all students in the state showed up to all of the solo tournaments. This meant that sometimes I was the top rated player at a tournament, and by the end of the year I was always near the top, and so rarely did my opponents have any experience playing against the Queen’s Gambit. That year I only played in one solo tournament with one of the top three kids in the state. In round four of five we had the same 3-0 record and I sat across from him. I was kind of star struck. He came in with purple hair and a leather jacket; he didn’t say a word to me before we shook hands and started playing. He oozed cool in a way I prior would have thought impossible for a high school kid playing chess to pull off. I was a little unnerved, his rating was 200 points higher than mine, but I played a respectable game; at one point late in the game I probably could have requested a draw and he might have given it to me. But I blundered in the end game and he beat me before going on to take the top prize for the day. Still, I walked away feeling confident in my game and ability. Playing against the Queen’s Gambit was dicey for even a player of his caliber, but my early advantage only lasted so long before his overall skill overcame it.

However, I did get a little taste of what it felt like to sit on his side of the board because I was the highest rated player in my school district; which meant in our monthly team play I was feared by opponents. I had a reputation in that little corner of the world! It’s the closest I’ve ever come to being famous. There were few enough teams that we eventually played every team in the district twice before the top two teams were sent to the state tournament. I recall playing one young lad the first time and beating him in about 12 moves. It was a very quick and decisive game for tournament play. I assume his team was their JV team given the low quality of his play at first board. The quick win felt good, but what felt better was later that year when our teams matched up again he came up to the table where I was already seated, and when he saw me he sighed and said, “Oh man, not you again.” This was a major highlight of my short lived chess career. I only lost one game in team play that year. It was late in the year when my game play was dipping in quality. I was playing considerably worse at the three hour team games than I was at the hour long games at the solo tournaments. I was having a hard time focusing on games that lasted that long.   

The second high point of my chess career came at the state tournament that year. Playing board one I went two and three against the best players in the state, including a game against the number one ranked player, Andy Van Dyke. His rating was a full 300 points higher than mine. The other members of my team all did better than I did and we took second in state, Andy’s team didn’t finish in the top five. The team accomplishment was nice, but my game against Andy was what I remember most about that day, and year; it was an emotional roller coaster.

When the round was posted and I saw I would be playing him I knew there was no chance of me winning. It had already been a rough day eeking out a couple wins and losing to some of the best players in the state. Everyone on the team knew I wouldn’t have a great record at the end of the day; it’s the fate of a board one player who isn’t a top five player. But it was still kind of a gut punch. And then to sit across from Andy, where you know people will be coming by to see how the game’s progress--I just couldn’t imagine it going well. But it did. It went surprisingly well. I went up a piece for a pawn in the mid-game and had an aggressive line on his king with my two rooks. The tournament hall was buzzing with whispers that someone was beating Andy Van Dyke--no one ever beat Andy Van Dyke. I could see in his body language that my assessment of the game matched his: he was losing on pieces and position. But here is where experience reigned supreme. He stayed calm. My nerves and adrenaline worked against me, and I blundered, dropping one of my rooks only a few moves later. The hall went back to quiet, the crowd around our board dissipated. And before long I resigned. I congratulated him on the win and he said I should have won, that I played too defensive after going up. I almost beat Andy Van Dyke and he fucking knew it. 

I was certain on that day that had I not intuited my way through chess the past three years, but rather spent the time in a more formal study of the game, like Andy likely did, I could have beat him on that fateful day, and that in another timeline I was easily the top one or two players in the state my senior year. This point was later further confirmed to me in college.

I played a little in college, very informal with other students in the dining hall, no tournaments. Then I met this Russian guy named Mike who was also a computer science major like myself. Mike was diligent and hard working, but the topic didn’t come to him as easily as it did to me. I loved working with him; his hard work was inspirational and humbling. One day we were talking about chess and how I played and he said, “I would definitely beat you.” He too had played in high school. But not thousands of games like I did, but with a tutor and study, going at it like he did his school work. And, as promised, he wrecked me even though he said he hadn’t played in four years. He walked the game back and showed me all the things I did wrong and explained how he controlled the board with his pieces and how my pieces were doing absolutely no good for me where I put them. He came at it like a science rather than an art, which was the opposite of how I felt I played.

Watching The Queen’s Gambit reminded me much of my failure at chess. Not that I was ever destined to be a grand master or even a master. But I could have been really good at it, but I let it slip away because sitting down with a book seemed boring, and frankly, hard (though at the time I probably didn’t recognize that latter hurdle). Unfortunately this is not a singular occurrence. I feel I’ve based much of my life around doing what is easy and avoiding what is challenging, this to my own detriment. Math has always been easy for me, and so every educational and professional choice I’ve made has hinged on that fact. Math is easy -> computer science is easy -> getting a job is easier than grad school -> staying where I am is easier than changing jobs or moving -> computer science is easier than writing -> writing is hard -> avoid writing -> write so little that it all ends up being trash. The corollary is also true around my fear of public speaking. Public speaking is hard for me -> avoid anything in school that would require it -> avoid applying for any job that would require it -> avoid promotions or job changes that would require more of it. 

These are things I thought about while watching the ups and downs of The Queen’s Gambit (in addition to re-experiencing some of the mental exhaustion of playing a long set of games). I feel like I never made that second move in life; I never put anything at risk; I’ve stayed safe. At forty-two I’m doing the type of engineering work that most leave behind in their thirties to move into management roles in order to make the big bucks. I could have been better at a lot of things. I could have shined. Which isn’t to say I haven’t accomplished anything in my life. But I wrestle with a lot of what-could-have-beens when it comes to career choices I’ve made because of either fear or to avoid doing hard things. Sometimes I feel like I keep letting life scholar’s mate me over and over. Or that I never pushed that second pawn and gave life the opportunity to accept my gambit. Thanks Netflix. I loved the series.

Jury Duty

Prior to this month I had been called a few times, but I never served.

I found the experience highly interesting, and it required that I think about some aspects of the criminal justice system I'd never really given a lot of consideration to. Here are the highlights:

1) The lawyers seemed mostly interested in selecting people who have as few opinions as possible about anything important. Their optimal jurist would be a lump of clay. I don't know what this says about me since I was selected. I did make an effort to get kicked off by talking about how the war on drugs has disproportionately effected black men and done super crazy things to our incarceration rates. Given the defendant was black I thought maybe I'd get dropped for the comment.
2) I'm pretty certain had I not been on the jury the defendant would have been convicted of at least one felony. I felt a little bit like a superhero afterward.
3) Three or four other jurists were pretty hardcore about the defendant being guilty at the beginning of our deliberations. The fact that they were able to change their minds and eventually, with out anger, come around to a not guilty verdict restored some of my faith in humanity.
4) Practically everyone I saw at the courthouse on trial was black.
5) The law and/or judge asks you to put your conscience and morals on hold to perform this duty. In as much as they'll admit this is what they're asking you for, they stress its only temporary. But this is one of the few times in your life when your morals/conscience have a chance to have a direct and profound impact on a person. It's a strange dichotomy. In particular they ask that you pass judgement on someone without any consideration of the punishment (which is decided by the judge).
6) The "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" business is a really high bar. I'm glad it is in place.

Bonus items:
7) More than once while walking to the courthouse I heard two homeless people arguing about the importance of Edward Snowden. This felt uniquely San Francisco to me.
8) If you don't want to sound like a complete crazy person do not, under any circumstance, dictate long angry texts to Siri. At best she'll make you look nuts; at worst she'll make you sound like you're threatening to kill someone.

A Perfect World:

A Work of Fiction

Let me tell you about a perfect world. Let me tell you what I can. First and foremost when they said, "get up, everyone rise," then everyone would stand.

When I was six years old my daddy said to me, "you'll love school. They'll take good care of you. They'll teach you numbers and words and how to be kind to one another." I had visions of Harry Potter lunch boxes, and the number eight decorated like snowmen. My dad, he wore a tie my first day of school. He dropped me off in wing-tipped shoes and a suit. Then he went home and changed into the plain pants and shirt of a self taught electrician before heading to work. That's a perfect world.

More than anything, Charlotte loved Hello Kitty.  She had a Hello Kitty binder, a Hello Kitty backpack, Hello Kitty shoes and pencils. She had it all. That was a perfect world.

The thing is, my dad probably had the words and the fear to tell me what I really needed to hear. He doesn't talk about it now so who can say for sure. All things being equal he'd prefer to never talk about it again. But all things aren't equal. I know that much now; school taught me something.

Can you imagine--no you can't, you shouldn't--but can you imagine, sitting down with your child and saying, "well son, this is a big step in your life. You're going to learn to read and write, and you'll be safe, but just in case, let me tell you what to do, just in case."

You know he has to pause here. You can't tell a six year old what he’s about to tell his child without second guesses. So he pauses and then breaks the news, that maybe the world isn't always quite so safe. Imagine the dryness of his lips, how his bowels might feel, the tears he fights back because this is the conversation he has to have with the human being he might love most and whose most complicated thought up to this point has been whether Superman is stronger than the Hulk.

"It's just that sometimes bad things happen when we least expect them," he'd say. "So if, God forbid, something bad happens, listen to your teachers. But also know that if you hear gunshots get down and pretend to be dead." Then he'd lay on the ground and put his arms and legs at awkward angles. "Look at me son, this is how you do it. Do you see me?"

But you can't see him down there. Your brain literally can't comprehend what he's doing, you're too young. What is he talking about guns for? The prospect of school excited you a few minutes ago but what is this? Everything is mildly sinister now. Maybe you'd better stay home.

Eventually, months later you would have thanked him, but all you can see now are nines and sixes with a bullet hole in each and an eight with two, the class turtle wandering across broken glass and a bloody floor. Why's your dad got to be so weird? Why'd he put these images in your head?

"And if all else fails, run. Run fast and in a zigzag line. Run away. Don't worry about where to. You run and run and run until you're lost and then I'll find you." He mimics a zigzag run, too. You'd watch this dumbfounded. He might as well be an alien. And you’d giggle, because you’re only six years old.

But that’s no way to start a new school year. Instead we pack lunches and take pictures in our new sneakers and Ninjago t-shirts. Everything is normal in a perfect world.

Olivia had the best smile. And her shirts always had some uplifting message on them: love, joy, and happiness. She wore her hair back and never had a harsh word for anyone. In a perfect world everyone would experience her smile.

I use to believe in a perfect world. But then one day a stranger walked into my class. In his hands he held dark and angry steel. I thought it had to be a toy but then it spoke. It’s voice never to be surpassed in vile and ugliness. TAT! TAT! TAT! All I could do was scream. I was six years old. I didn't know what was happening. My dad hadn't prepared me for this. All the sharpened pencils and virginal notebooks in the world were rendered useless. The world was nothing. Nada. The world was the concussions. TAT! TAT! TAT! You could feel it in your ears and in your teeth. The TAT! TAT! TAT! was everything. It was I who was nothing.

Something primal arrived, something ancient, something that desires life more than all. Something drug me to the ground, like some great beast separating the Earth; it put its clawed hands over my mouth and pulled me to the floor. Then he left, the great wrecker. I'd never see him again. I've never not see him again.

There were echoes of it still. Somewhere off in the distance, Tat! Tat! Tat! Then there were sirens.

In times of great stress people talk of boulders and elephants on their chests, but it was more than that that held me down, that stole my breath. It was a mountain. No, it was an entire range. I saw my mother and father come from the west, the Appalachians cradled in their arms. They placed them there on my chest and whispered, "be still." Even my shaking stopped.

Then there was silence, or something like silence. It went on and on, long like the time we drove to Kansas to visit my Aunt and I faded in and out of sleep in the back seat of the minivan, listening to thunder and the hum of the engine. Until at last, one more Tat and then the sobs of little children. Mine and there’s all bundled together, like sticks to a fire. The singular sound of the world put to tears and lives put ruin.

Eventually there were footsteps and people speaking and someone said, "get up, everyone rise." But only half of us could stand. And so now, I’ve given up on a perfect world.

Some mornings when I wake I don't think about that day first thing. Some days the memory isn't there like a kid drowning under a frozen lake, beating at the surface of everything. Those are good days, days as close to perfect as I'll ever see. But even on those days I can still stumble upon the remnants. There's always another shooting. There is always Syria, and pictures of boys barely alive in the back of ambulances or washed up dead on beaches they never called home. There is always someone on the internet telling the world, telling me, telling my dead friends' parents, that it never even happened, that it was just an elaborate hoax to get guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens. But all I can see is that man. That boy--my Mama tells me he was just a boy. And his TAT! TAT! TAT!  

If only none of it were real; if only we lived in a perfect world.

Three

It all started with a trip. A short trip across the city. And a meal I was transporting for a struggling family. I had their address on my phone. I was parked a few houses away. But I couldn't get out. I was stuck in the car. Their food getting cold next to me; my family waiting to start dinner when I returned home. But I couldn't move. My hands shook. I took a deep breath, gathered up the food, and exited the car.

What's the big deal? I want to be the type of person who helps other people. And yet when faced with others' tragedies and struggles I most often find myself wordless, worthless--a stone statue. Beyond that, after Berkeley was born I could no longer handle the imagery, even made up imagery of movies, of little children being hurt. It sinks me. I flinch at the thought. And this house? This house had the real deal inside. Inside was a little girl struggling to keep her life. Inside was a family struggling to make sense of it. And outside was me standing at their door with a bunch of plastic containers filled with food and stuffed into a brown paper bag.

After I knocked and they answered I stepped into their entryway. The mother and father were there. They expressed their gratitude. I managed to explain the intricacies of the meal, what was to be mixed with what and what was to be reheated and what was to be eaten at room temperature. It was a normal home by all appearances; even though the closed curtains made me feel somber, nothing was actually out of the ordinary. Then the two boys showed up. They chased each other around and stopped for a second to say hi. It was nothing; just another person bringing them dinner. Except had I seen her I would have had to sit down on their steps. I would have had to collect myself. I would have had to cry in front of near strangers. This is how I would have helped them? Bring them food and cry on their stoop, accepting their comfort?

She never made an appearance and I left. I sat in my car again. This time I cried. I cried for their pain. I cried for their resilience. I cried for hope. On the drive back I knew what I had to do when I got home. There is so much unrequested and unmitigated pain in this world. Why even add the smallest amounts? Why not let people be happy and get the things they want? The exact thing they want? Especially when she is the most important person in the world to you? All these thoughts fell into a funnel and that funnel lead to one place. I couldn't tell you why this was the place, why at the bottom of this funnel was a hole that lead straight to a decision I'd barely thought about since Wren's birth.

So I opened my front door, went to Robyn, and when she asked how the drop off went I told her if she still wanted a third child then we should have a third child. This was maybe eight months ago. Fast forward to a few days ago and we acquired this picture I affectionately call "The Shrimp":

Some version of this story is what I try to tell people when they ask how I went from only wanting one child to Robyn being pregnant with our third. I don't know if it makes any sense. But somehow it feels like something in my heart has been healed even though it never felt exactly broken. I hope we can do right by this one along with the other two.

Due Date: 2/12/2017

Gender: Unknown

If Hillary is so terrible then why would I vote for her?

We could discuss the minutiae of all the supposed scandals Hillary has had. But I don't think it would be a very productive discussion at this point. At the end of the day there are people who believe many of the negative claims about her have veracity; I don't. But let's pretend for a minute that I did; that I believed some important subset of the claims are true. Let's say that in general I think she has poor character, is greedy, power hungry, and a liar. I would still have to make the decision at the end of the day if I'm placing a vote that has affect. Here's my thinking behind what I would do if I were in that position.

Even if I believe Hillary is as bad as I've been told, then at the end of her four year term here's what I'll likely get that I won't get if Trump is President (and these things matter to me, though I recognize they have different weights for you):

1. Liberal Supreme Court Justices, at least one, probably 2, maybe 3. (frankly this list could end here and it would be enough for me and this would be less an issue if the Senate would do their job and let Obama have his pick.)
2. No regression on same-sex rights
3. No regression on racism
4. People with disabilities won't have to feel shame every time they see the person we elected to run the country because he basically thinks they're useless and only worthy of ridicule.
5. We wouldn't ignore NATO treaties.
6. We wouldn't even discuss building a useless and racists wall across our southern border
7. We wouldn't have a database of people based on their religion
8. The likelihood of a very serious war will be smaller with Clinton. Trump is too bombastic and too thin skinned to not make something somewhere go wrong. I agree that Clinton is a hawk, but her interventions will be small and strategic as opposed to knee-jerk. We can survive another Syria, I'll pass on a second cold war or a World War or a nuclear war or any sort of war with China.
9. There is value in having a female president.
10. We won't have a commander-in-chief that wants to bomb the families of our enemies.
11. We won't have a commander-in-chief who thinks waterboarding is ok.
12. We won't have a commander-in-chief who has now made fun of a POW and a Gold Star family (fuck that).
13. My daughters won't be talked about like they are pieces of rubbish by their President.

On the flip side, the negative of having Hillary if she's as bad as you say she is:

1. She likely leaves office after 4 years with a lot of money and becomes a footnote of history.

The economy is a tricky beast but I'm confident Trump can't fix it. I don't know if Hillary can. There is definitely a set of people who have not seen the benefit of the recovery. It needs to be worked on but there is no benefit to Hillary to not at least try to fix it. She gains nothing by it being broke even if she is as corrupt as you say she is. But one thing we know is she works harder and is smarter than most anyone. I'd rather her on the project than Trump who is at best a scam artist who likely will treat our economy the same way he's treated his businesses and the people who depended on his businesses.

So I look at my vote and I ask, "even if Hillary is as bad as I'm told, is it worth throwing all those things away just so she doesn't get some personal benefit from being the President? Do I spit in the face of America and what I want it to be because my uncle forwards me emails insisting she's the devil?" At the end of the day, if I'm being honest with myself, even in that case, where my uncle's emails are 100% correct about her, she gets my vote because Donald Trump is that bad. He's an existential crisis to America, our way of life, what we stand for, and possibly for the entire world. So there is no gain for me to consider greatly the small details, the what abouts, and coincidences, and the might have beens of her political career. For now I'll trust the multitudes of Republican lead Benghazi meetings that have found nothing, and a Republican appointed FBI direct who says there is nothing to indite on and move forward against the worst candidate the country has ever put forth for serious consideration. In addition when I look at the world, at the people I respect the most, public figures and friends and colleague--intellectual and moral giants--they almost all line up behind Hillary. So please forgive me if I can't even make it to the "she's as bad as Donald" side of the argument. The best minds I know disagree with that statement. And more important than that, the best hearts I know disagree with that statement.

With all that in mind, there is no way in hell I'd give either Jill Stein or Johnson my vote. Such a vote buys me nothing. It buys the least among us nothing. Even if the naysayers are right about Hillary, it wouldn't even help me sleep at night because I'd know that I made such a vote to condemn the least among us so that I could have some sense of useless purity. My heart couldn't take that. If there were some realistic odds of a third party candidate winning, and I believed Hillary to be the devil, I would cast my lot with the person most likely to defeat Trump, though I would be pained to vote for either of the two most likely usurpers because I don't align well with their professed values, but I'd still do it.

You can judge me as a sheep. Or blind. Or stupid. Or willfully ignorant. But those labels won't change any of the above nor the amount of thought and heart I've put into this decision.

Imagine

Imagine if you will, a modern post-Nazi Germany where a disproportionately large number of Jews were killed by German policy and where a disproportionately large number of Jews were imprisoned and sentenced to death, strapped to tables and chairs and killed by the German government. Imagine how the general German population might feel about this. Imagine how the international community might feel about this. Imagine how absurd it would sound when a blond haired blue eyed German said, "Jews sure have come a long way since Hitler" or "If Jews don't want to get killed by the police then they should give up all of their rights when they encounter any policy office, just in case." Imagine a Jewish man, let's name him Anton Sterk. Imagine him standing around, selling some CDs out of the back of his car in Germany. Imagine that he might even be illegally selling those CDs. Now imagine the post-Nazi German police tackling Anton--a father, a husband, a human being, Jewish--and eventually shooting him to death. You'd look at this and you'd wonder, how could Germany of all places let this happen after all it did to the Jewish people? How?

But then do you turn your gaze to our own examples, Alton Sterling, and the thousands like him in American Prisons, hundreds like him legally executed by the U.S. government, and hundreds like him getting executed by white police in America, and do you not wonder, after our history with slavery, after the legal and overt brutalization and dehumanization of human beings of a very specific demographic, do you now not flinch (if not retch) every time you see one of these tragedies played across our T.V. screens? We're sick America. We're sick in big and important ways. Even if you're related to a good cop; even if you are a good cop; or perhaps especially because you are one of those things, you should absolutely be disgusted with our history of violence toward black people. It's abhorrent. It was abhorrent in the 1800s. And it's abhorrent today, in 2016.

And please please please, all you second amendment advocates, don't shirk now. Now's your time to do your duty. There are a group of people being oppressed by our government, and they aren't white farmers or white kids in the suburbs. They more than anyone, if we are to believe second amendment advocates, need to be armed. So don't now tell them if they don't want bad interactions with the police they should never be armed. Don't tell them to lay down and be trampled at the first sign of the police. This is there country. Their freedoms. Their rights. They deserve better. We should be better. At some point white America has to recognize how terribly wrong slavery was and how important it is for our humanity to avoid even the near appearance of ever going there again. We have to openly discuss it. Feel shame and remorse about it. Recognize the privilege it still provides us today. Tackle it head on. We can look to Germany for hints on how to do this. They turned Auschwitz into a history museum while we bury all hints of slavery in the past. They make the death penalty illegal while we eagerly kill those we perceive as having sinned against us. We still have young black men shot and killed by police on a seemingly monthly basis. They looked in the mirror; we broke ours. Rather than say, "black people have come a long way since slavery" we need to stand up and say, "white people still have a ways to go since slavery."

R.I.P. Alton Sterling. I weep for you. Your children. Your wife. Your family. Your friends. Your community. Black America. And the tragedy that is white denial.

Guns, Guns, and Guns

Due to vacation, grad school, work, parenting, sleeping, and frankly being rather lazy, I've avoided talking about this topic since Orlando. Which makes me part of the problem no matter how great my excuses. But today I finally made it out of the house for a run and my mind couldn't leave it alone. So if I may have a "few" words on the topic.

If you know me, you know I swing left. I'm not the most liberal person on your friends list (if I am that says more about you than me, but I digress), as such you might have a sense of where I'll go with this and if you have that sense and you think you'll disagree with me you probably (and I fully understand this inclination) will stop reading sometime soon and think, "yeah, I've heard all of this before." Maybe you have, but for that set of friends and family I'll start where you might least expect me to, by agreeing with you. You can decide from there if you want to hear out the rest of it, or if like me on most days, you feel you have better things to do with your time.

There was another reason why I've been more silent than I normally am after these sorts of tragedies: I have misgivings about one of the two main solution offered up. Here are things I'm willing to concede: the 2nd amendment grants U.S. citizens the right to bear arms. Making laws that infringe upon rights is not a long term solution. Even if you get such a law passed it will only be a matter of time before the Supreme Court overrules your law in favor of the constitution. So the banning suspected terrorist from buying guns is a non-starter for me. Not because I own guns (I certainly don't, they're more likely to up the odds of one of my kids killing themselves or someone else with one than protecting my family so I have no desire to own one) and not because I think people have a God given right to own guns, but because I believe in the rule of law. And in order for that rule of law to have meaning we can't yank serious rights from Americans for being suspected of something, especially when that something is maintained in secrecy where a suspect has little means to know why they are on the list or how to get off it. I'm generally not fond of slippery slope arguments (I bet I'll belittle one later in this post if I know me), but we have to put a serious eye toward what the future looks like when we allow the government to curtail a right based on suspicion. I care for all the other rights in the constitution more than the 2nd amendment, and so I have to ask myself, not only is the country broke enough to suspend that one right, but is it broke enough to suspend any of the others as well? More on this "solution" later, but my other big problem with it is probably more liberal based and I just want to agree with my friends on the right for now.

I agree with you that a gun is no more dangerous than a pebble of sand when it's left to its own devices. Nor does it need any blame in any death. It's a brainless, careless, thoughtless, useless tool without the hands of humanity. I also agree that there are a handful of different things in our lives that kill and maim people, that on the whole do more harm than guns do. I concede it can be fantastic, fulfilling, and compelling to feel safe in your home, or when you're out and about. The desire to protect yourself, your family, and even your inanimate objects is to degrees natural (less so with our stuff, but more so with our people), and that desire for protection and for protecting is no sin. We find peace in many different ways, even in ways that don't always make sense to other people. We have these things in common. With these things I hope there is a middle point, some place that feels more sane and safe to everyone, a place that feels more human.

Those are the similarities between me and those most different from myself. I hope they amount to something; if not a bridge, at least a blue print of a bridge. And if not a blueprint, then at least an acknowledgement that a bridge sure would be nice for reaching the other side of that canyon.

Now for the typical rant. Back to the suspected terrorist solution, let me first say of course no one wants terrorists to have weapons of mass destruction. But more importantly, hiding this Orlando incident behind a discussion about ISIS and terrorists is a red herring. The coward who shot up that club (I won't be using any of the shooters names, they can find glory somewhere other than my blog) was messed up in the head, but he didn't know ISIS from Hamas from Al Qaeda, and his target wasn't America, his target was the gay community. Rather than deal with that, rather than look at ourselves and see how our own rhetorical violence against the LGBT community might some how incite this sort of madness from a broken person, we deflect and talk about terrorists. It's unethical to ignore how the worst of us have been physically violent to these people and a near majority of us at best hide behind semantics to try to curb their happiness and then shrug our shoulders and wonder, "I don't know why that guy would target a gay club." If you want to make a list to keep people from owning guns based on this incident, it should be a list of suspected homophobic ass hats (but "suspected" lists are bad, so kill the list idea, but also stop hiding behind Islamic terrorism here).

The other major solution being discussed is the legality of assault rifles. This wave of violence brought the rhetoric to a new low, IMO. Now we'er suppose to believe there is no such thing as assault rifles, that because fully automatic weapons are already outlawed there is nothing further to be done. It's a fun game of semantics but not all that convincing. You know an assault rifle when you see one, but more importantly these cowards know one when they see one. They aren't bringing your dad's 30 ought 6 to these killing sprees because they know those guns make shitty assault rifles, they hunt deer well but they aren't effective at killing as many people as possible as fast as possible. I get it, 100%, it's fun to go to a shooting range and to pull the trigger a bunch of times as fast as possible and put holes in a target (sometimes even some that look like people), but otherwise there isn't any good coming from assault rifles being so readily and easily available. So available that a nearly mentally retarded boy could get one and shoot up a school full of elementary school kids. I won't be convinced that that barely functional human being would have been able to acquire the money nor know how to navigate the black-market to purchase such a weapon had they been illegal. So sorry, not buying the "gun laws wouldn't have saved one life." I'm 100% certain there would be 10 or more elementary aged children still alive with that one little change in our laws; if that means nothing to you then our bridge has a much broader gap to span (and I honestly worry about you owning guns).

I know, I know, but cars kill people, and water (gasp!) kills people and we don't outlaw those things! Those things have other uses, some are essential to life (so just stop, please), and we as a society have to weigh their value vs their risk. And when the risk of car ownership went up we created safer cars, more laws, insurance, and mandatory driving tests and that saved lives. Guns have a value too, more to other people than me, none-the-less they have a value, but assault rifles other than "they are fun to shoot" aren't needed to realize the value of guns. So maybe only .00001 percent (I made that number up, don't quote it) percent of Americans are killed by guns, and maybe the ban would have only saved 10 little kids lives, but damn it if those ten lives aren't worth more than the joy we collectively get from pulling the trigger on a lifeless metal object and have it shoot more lifeless little nuggets of brass at targets and cans. I challenge anyone to show me when an assault rifle has helped a private citizen do something they couldn't have done with a less powerful gun. The only thing they are better at is killing lots of people really fast. Private citizens don't need to do that (generally, nor do our police). But! What about keeping a tyrannical government in check? Two things, this line of thinking insults the morality of our men and women in the military and even if our military is as base as you must think they are (or could be), your stupid assault rifle is going to be melted down into little pools of even more useless liquid metal after the army drops a bomb on your bunker from a drone a thousand feet above or from a tank shell shot from a mile away. Let's just get real about how effective your toys are at fighting the U.S. modern military. And let's not buy into the hype that ISIS doesn't invade America because they know we all have guns. They don't invade us because we're a continent and ocean away and they don't have a navy and they actually know how powerful U.S. drones and Tomahawk missiles are from firsthand experience. The cowboy hero fantasy is fun, but it's not based in any sort of reality.

But what about my second amendment right? I have a right to bear arms! You certainly do, but we've already placed restrictions on that right. You can't have a tank. You can't have a nuke. You can't have a rocket launcher. You can't have a fully automatic gun. And why is that? Because those things sole purpose is killing a lot of people as fast as possible (even though we all recognize it would be hella fun to drive a tank all over the place and to shoot 50 caliber machine guns at the side of hills). And arguably, since the introduction of these limitations that second amendment has been interpreted more favorably for gun enthusiasts than not (http://www.powells.com/book/second-amendment-a-biography-9781476747446), so whatever slippery slope you're worried about it's going the opposite direction. See?! I told you I'd eventually get belligerent with a slippery slope argument.

Then there is a matter of gun culture. You're right, as I said earlier, guns don't kill people in a vacuum. For a gun to be effective it requires fingers, brain cells, eyes, and either rage or a mistake. But there is still a sickness in this country, a sickness where the first and best answer to so many of our problems is to squash the other. To kill, to blame. A story from a friend:

My mother used to teach 4th grade. She made the students write short fiction stories. She stressed that the key to a story is a problem that the hero must solve. Her only rule was that the hero could not use a gun to solve that problem. This stumped a surprising number of her boys. This is the problem our country is having.

This story has been haunting me since I read it. We've got to show our children that the first solution to almost EVERY problem is something other than to pull out a gun and kill it. If someone breaks into your home, what is the solution? Someone cuts you off in traffic, what is the solution? When we teach that all we need is good guys with guns to stop bad guys with guns, what are we really saying? We're saying, that with all of our God given talents this giant mass of humanity we call the United States of America can't come up with solutions to its difficult problems other than force and more violence. And then we wonder, why when chicken shit assholes think the gays are the problem, or the other students at their school are the problem, or their coworkers are the problem, we wonder why do they pick up a gun and solve their problems thusly? Take a look around folks; it's how we solve problems here (both the good guys and the bad guys and the guys who have a hard time telling who is who in that equation). As a so called Christian country we need more Sermon on the Mount and less Dirty Harry.

I know, you think I'm a coward. You think you're better off dying surrounded by a cartridge's worth of brass shells and a smoking barrel in hand than to let the worst of society run over you and your family, and that only a liberal, weak, cowardly man wouldn't protect his family so. To many eyes I imagine I'm a loathsome and fearful creature, something that will deserve to be trampled under the boot of some terrible example of a human being one day. You imagine my fear and trembling; but I see your fear too. You hide behind the ability to pull a trigger as if such an act makes you a man. You fear so much you can't help but cower in your home surrounded by weapons to keep humanity at bay, or the only way you'll leave your house is with that same feeling of safety, with a little piece of death obscurely tucked away in your pants. That my friends is fear. And in the end maybe my home and family will be ransacked, but if guns were in my home more likely my friends or family would be maimed or killed by the tool meant to defend them. So I'll play the odds, because those odds also allow me to live a life that assumes better of mankind. Every stranger and every person that doesn't look like me doesn't have to be a threat, and I won't live my life as if they were. I don't want the fear gun advocates are embracing. It's not only dangerous to others but to the gun owner and their family as well. But if I'm not scared then why do I want to take your guns away? First, go back and read everything I said if you can't answer this yourself. I'm only talking about assault rifles here. You keep your other guns. Second, it isn't fear for myself that makes me want to act. It's fear for all the innocent people dying for no reason; it's because I can look at my children and know the heartbreak those other parents must feel, and I want no one to suffer like that. And regardless, fear is healthy. I fear things. It's an important human emotion; just don't delude yourself into believing that you lack fear because of you're willing to shoot someone who breaks into your house without asking questions. Therein lies fear, too.

So am I pissed about Democrats doing a sit in to get a vote on the suspected terrorist list stuff? No. It's politics, but more importantly it's action. It might be the wrong direction. (And it's infintely better than another Benghazi subcommittee or 300th vote on Obamacare). It might never pass. It might be a lot of things, but what it isn't is more of the same. We have a problem to solve. I like to see my representatives at least trying to solve it. I wouldn't vote for the particular measure and I wouldn't encourage my representatives to either, but I spur them on to action, even if it's just an action of voting, it says we're ready for little children and otherwise peaceful citizens to stop being killed like this.

And lastly, I don't know what the solution is. But I know what the solution isn't: do nothing. Democracy and self governance is an experiment, even 200+ years later. We have the intellect, the curiosity, and the goodness in us to fix this problem. We just need the will. That sit-in is a symbol of the will, and thus it is also a symbol of my hope, my hope for a future where psychopaths exist in smaller numbers and have less access to do harm. End rant.