politics

Transgender Transference…and Why You Should Know Better

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Several aspects of the anti-trans stance are deeply upsetting and demonstrably harmful, while being based on a misunderstanding of biology, psychology, and sociology. I take exception with many of them, but perhaps what bothers me most in anti-trans arguments is when people bring up the fear of predatory men taking advantage of transgender access to their gender-appropriate restrooms. What they’re talking about in these scenarios isn’t even a transgender issue.

None of what they’re expressing a fear of is at all the responsibility of the transgender people in question. The people they’re talking about are predatory men taking advantage of social and legal systems to prey on the vulnerable. How do the people expressing these fears not recognize that they’re not describing a fear of trans-feminine people, but of cis-male rapists? It’s a poorly constructed argument in the first place, but it becomes even more so when we take a moment to think about what’s actually being protested.

But for a moment, let’s take the argument at face value and pretend that it is transgender people who are the basis for this fear. We’re going to make believe that they’re describing actual transgender people, because I would love to know why they aren’t equally vocal about protesting several other things that are certainly more common.

Do these same people want to bar individuals from becoming clergy, or to keep their children from attending church services, because there are so many documented members of the clergy who similarly take advantage of the social and legal structures in place to prey on vulnerable people? It’s a well-documented problem in the Catholic Church, where billions of dollars have been paid out in settlements to thousands of victims, in America alone. They might respond by telling us that they’re not Catholic, so it’s not relevant to them. Well, there were hundreds of Southern Baptist clergy, church leaders, and volunteers who faced accusations of sexual misconduct in just the last few decades. Tens of millions of dollars have been paid out to victims of sexual abuse within the Lutheran Church as well. Tens of thousands of victims all around the globe have come forward within the Jehovah’s Witnesses as well, though most get ignored within the church because of the “Two Witness Rule” in place. The same is true for essentially every other religious organization in the world. Yet I don’t hear the same vocal anti-clergy arguments to protect children who might venture into a church. Even as the Department of Justice insists that Priests can’t be compelled to violate the sanctity of confession to report people who are abusing children, there’s no swell of populist cries of injustice.

Where are the people demanding that no one be allowed to become a Scout Master? All the way back in 1994, nearly 2,000 child molesters were documented within the Boy Scouts. These were retrieved from files maintained by the organization itself. Why are these individuals who have used that organization’s hierarchy to prey on children not considered a threat? Is it perhaps because these are all boys who are being molested? If that’s the case, I sincerely question the morality of anyone taking that stance. But, that’s okay, there are documented instances of Girl Scouts being sexually assaulted as well.

What about all of the documented instances of law enforcement being caught up in child pornography and sexual assault cases? Where’s the outrage concerning those predators? There’s a fairly horrific study from 2022, delving into 669 cases of police sexual violence. Of course, being that it’s law enforcement perpetrating these crimes, it’s unlikely that we’ll ever have a suitable estimate of just how frequent those infractions are. Where are the demands that people be barred from pursuing careers in law enforcement because some people have taken advantage of those positions of authority?

According to the National Institutes of Health, transgender people are no more likely than the general population to commit acts of sexual violence; they may actually be less likely to do so. However, they are more likely than cisgender people to be VICTIMS of sexual assault.

So, if any of this is about protecting children, there should be far more coherent arguments leveled against those aforementioned occupational transgressions than against transgender people. Being allowed to live their lives and exist in the spaces that are comfortable and appropriate for them isn’t hurting anyone, and there has never been a shred of evidence that it has. But, again, the men sneaking into women’s restrooms aren’t transgender in the first place. They’re, as usual, cis-male predators who are exploiting whatever structures they can to prey on those they choose to prey on.

By that standard, should we be persecuting police because a man dressed as a police officer committed political assassinations in Minnesota just a short while ago? It’s precisely the same logic, and just as flawed.

But, assuming the worst, let’s say that transfeminine predators are hoping to use public restrooms as hunting grounds. They are a small fraction of a percentage of an already small percentage of the population. Even the most liberal estimates indicate a maximum of about 1% of the U.S. population identifies as transgender, and not all of them are transfemme. So, we’d be looking at a fraction of a single percent of the U.S. population that identifies as transfeminine, and then a fraction of that fraction that might also be inclined to perform acts of sexual violence. Statistically, you’re far more likely to have a cis-female predator in the same restroom.

Seriously, all one needs to do is think for a second before they let their biases and prejudices make them sound like more of a fool than they already do. Transgender men and women are not inherently predatory, violent, or perverse. We need to stop marginalizing them further.

Eating the Rich…and Other Survival Strategies

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It should come as no surprise that a rallying cry with its origins in the French Revolution is seeing a resurgence in modern-day America. “When the poor have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich,” often attributed to Jean-Jacques Rousseau of Geneva, retains a certain resonance today thanks to parallels in the social conditions present in pre-revolutionary France. Much of what we consider modern political and economic thought derives from Rousseau and his Age of Enlightenment contemporaries. Income and Social Inequality aren’t unfamiliar to us today.

Almost all of us, whether we recognize it (or choose to acknowledge it) or not, live in a state of perpetual, low-grade fear. We know–at least deep inside–that everything we have can be taken from us. That we can lose everything, including the false sense of security we shelter ourselves with in our day-to-day lives, is something few of us can afford to ignore. And no, I’m not talking about a natural disaster, a freak accident, or a random act of violence. This isn’t one of those things about which we go through every day thinking, “It can’t happen to me,” while being mostly correct in our assumption.

I’m talking about a layoff, an extended or severe illness, a kidnapping (because it isn’t deportation when you’re an American citizen), or an arrest by a federal agency with no respect for your rights or the concept of Due Process. That last one becomes an even greater fear if you happen to be part of one or more marginalized/vulnerable groups. And the root causes for those fears are only becoming worse and more pronounced.

I’m tempted to argue that the biggest problem is that there’s a whole class of people who have forgotten what it is to be afraid. Over the centuries, they’ve forgotten the lessons of the French and Bolshevik Revolutions. They’ve spent so long believing they’re untouchable that they don’t recognize they’re only untouchable because of a shared reality (and morality) among the rest of us, thinking that they are. We believe the lie, and they perpetuate it.

This isn’t a Republican or Democrat thing, nor is it really a wealthy or poor issue, though wealth is one of the components that enables certain people to begin feeling as if they’re untouchable.

It is possible to be ethical and to accumulate wealth. That’s one thing most of us sincerely agree on, and an issue I have with a small minority of people on the fringes of the left. The assumption that wealth equals predation, cruelty, and exploitation is erroneous. Certain people hear the phrase “eat the rich,” and assume it applies to anyone with wealth above a certain quantity, but that’s not the case.

Professional athletes (by and large) don’t accumulate their wealth through unethical means. They dedicate their lives to the pursuit of goals, often placing themselves at significant risk of injury in the process. For the small minority who can find success in that arena, they can hardly be considered predatory or exploitative in achieving it. Whether we agree that they deserve what they earn for these pursuits is irrelevant. If people are willing to pay to see them display their athletic prowess, then that’s not our place to condemn it.

Musicians, filmmakers, and actors/performers who have managed to overcome the predatory behavior of record labels, film/TV/streaming studios, producers, and large venues to accumulate wealth haven’t done so through any unethical means. They, like all of us, may behave unethically in their personal lives, but their success is not derived from that questionable behavior.

Successful medical specialists, surgeons, and research scientists may accumulate wealth without ever displaying any unethical behavior. It’s not greedy doctors who are increasing the costs of medical care in the United States. Those rising costs can be laid almost squarely on the shoulders of insurance providers who receive as much as 70% of their profit through government subsidies, while raising the operating costs of hospitals by requiring additional layers of bureaucracy for submitting claims and fighting the denial of them.

People have started successful and thriving businesses that provide value or fill a need, while still taking care of their employees and without benefiting from child labor, overseas slave labor, exploitative practices, or price gouging. Some of those business owners manage to become wealthy in the process, depending on how you define “wealthy.”

People can (and do) make wise investments with the finances they have access to, and are consciously involved in where their money is going. Several of these individuals are careful to avoid supporting unethical corporations or ventures, and some of them manage to become wealthy along the way as well.

There is even a small minority of wealthy authors and artists out there in the world, many of whom haven’t behaved in any way that could be considered unethical. I may not be one of them, but they most certainly exist. What they do with the money they’ve earned can certainly be unethical and cruel, but there’s nothing inherently unethical in how they’ve obtained their wealth. Unless they’re stealing from others in the process, whether through direct theft or through the consumption derived from Generative AI, they are simply creating things that other people find beautiful or otherwise worthwhile.

So, it’s wrong to simply assume that “the rich” are the enemy or that they’re somehow morally compromised because they’ve met with success. Many of those people also dedicate resources to charitable organizations, causes important to them, and improving the lives of people who haven’t experienced their good fortune. I’ve known several people who are quick to condemn anyone with wealth and success, but who have done proportionally far less to help other people than some of those wealthy individuals they malign.

This, of course, isn’t to say that people who obtained their wealth through ethical means aren’t subsequently putting that money to use in unethical ways, but it’s disingenuous and reductive to assume most people are like that. Successful people are not a monolith any more than unsuccessful people are.

I fully agree that those who accumulate their wealth through unethical means or use their wealth for unethical purposes should be held accountable. They should be treated as enemies. Simply having wealth, however, does not make someone an enemy, despite what a small number of people will tell you, and despite what fear-mongers who oppose social and economic justice will claim is meant by the people who say, “eat the rich.”

“Eat the rich” is a great slogan. But like all slogans, it’s simple and lacking in nuance. We have to trust the people reciting slogans to understand that they are not comprehensive philosophies, and we need to trust the people hearing and seeing them to comprehend that a call to action needs to be pithy, for it to catch on. The same was true with the rallying cry of “defund the police.” For most people, it wasn’t about dismantling the justice system and getting rid of police, and most people recognized that. It was about bloated police budgets, militarization of law enforcement, and a lack of accountability for those hiding behind the thin blue line.

Adding Some Identity To Identity Politics

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I would like people to dedicate some time and energy to self-reflection and evaluation of what they sincerely believe, as opposed to what they’ve been conditioned to accept. It would be unfair of me to ask that without sharing some things I’ve managed to discover in my own extensive intervals of self-assessment, if only because I suspect more people see things similarly to how I see them than I’ve typically assumed to be the case. I’ve spent a fair amount of time discussing diverse aspects of Politics and the shortcomings of various Political Figures as well. In doing all of that, I’ve still provided little regarding my own Political Ideology. Some elements of it, of course, are clear through inference, but to engage in any kind of authentic and intellectually honest discourse, I need to provide something more than I have already.

When I turned 18 and registered to vote, I did so as a Communist. I thought it was amusing, considering the lingering stigma still prevalent in America during the late 1990s. I registered as a Communist despite not being a Communist. I’d read the works of Marx and Engels; I was even familiar with the philosophies of Antonio Gramsci and Vladimir Lenin. I had read the work of Noam Chomsky and thoroughly agreed with much of it. But still, I was not a Communist when I turned 18 and registered to vote as one. I agreed with the underlying philosophy, but I considered it to be hopelessly naive. I was raised Catholic, and was familiar with many of the major writers from Church history, and Communism, to me, resembled Sir Thomas More’s Utopia in many respects. Much like More’s Utopia, a Communist Society struck me as being a fanciful thing that could exist only in fiction. Capitalism, after all, is not going anywhere.

Years later, I changed my voter registration to Independent.

Yet again, years after that, I switched my registration to Democrat, which is where it remains. Much like when I was registered as a Communist, I’m not really a Democrat either. Of the two major parties in American Politics, I feel that the Democratic Party more closely aligns with my personal politics, but it also ranges far afield in several ways.

I’ve cast my ballots for Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Green Party Candidates, and Independents over the years. I rarely based my decisions on Party Affiliation, but on the individual and what I could discern of their platform and previous voting record (if available). This is to say that I’ve never been one to assume that one’s Political Party is the best metric by which to judge them.

Personally, I think that (as a whole) we need to stop thinking of everything in terms of Left or Right, Republican or Democrat, Conservative or Liberal. Breaking away from the illusory binary system of partisan politics would benefit us all. We could focus on the issues that matter to us individually. and the individuals who align with us on those issues, as opposed to the Party that we believe will align with and uphold our personal political ideals. Partisan Politics forces people to adhere to monolithic thinking as opposed to independent thinking. Partisan Politics encourages groupthink and “in vs. out group” mentalities that are ultimately more harmful than they ever could be beneficial. That way of thinking erases Cognitive Processing from the voting process. It nurtures the laziness required to simply look for a candidate conveniently marked with a D or an R, and to put no further thought into the consequences that might be tied up in blindly endorsing someone based on Party Affiliation.

In my ideal version of the American political system, individuals seeking office would need to provide a detailed checklist: indicating where they stand on the most salient issues, how they intend to act on behalf of the interests of those who support them, and what their priorities are. They would have to actively think about the issues, arrive at solutions, and propose those solutions as a platform. You see, it’s not simply the voters who have checked their brains at the door when it comes to American Politics; the people we’re voting for are guilty of doing the same thing. Politicians assume (often rightly so) that their Party Affiliation will guarantee the votes of a particular cross-section of the voting demographic.

This, I must admit, is one of the reasons I’ve remained registered as a Democrat for the last few years. The Democratic Party, more so than the Republican Party, is a large tent. There’s none of the blind obedience to Party Affiliation that we see on the Republican side of the American Political Spectrum. That’s why “Vote Blue, No Matter Who” became a rallying call from the establishment Democrats, because they knew it wouldn’t happen. The problem with having a large tent is that there’s more diversity in not only cultural and ethnic backgrounds, but also in political ideologies. There are Democrats who are barely distinguishable from Republicans, and, at the opposite end of the spectrum, there are Social Democrats (or Justice Dems). This leads to a dichotomy within the one party that is actually greater than the dichotomy between the two major parties. Republicans, of course, should be thrilled by this. It gives them an advantage that they otherwise don’t have. As far as voter registrations are concerned, there are roughly ten million more registered Democrats than Republicans. If Democratic voters and politicians were as willing to conform to the will of party leadership, there would quite possibly never be any Republicans in the White House. The same would be true if the Electoral College didn’t exist, which gives voters in Wyoming more individual weight in their votes than those in California. If we’re being honest, it’s the equivalent of DEI Policies (as Republicans have misunderstood them) applied to rural voters.

I don’t believe either Major Party in America is anywhere near upholding the basic standards I expect from a Democratic Government, and the smaller parties are ultimately non-entities (with ineffectual leadership) that have no chance of overcoming the chokehold the Republicans and Democrats have in place. So, while I am most assuredly not a Democrat, it just so happens that Democrats more closely align with my principles and acknowledgement of our shared reality. The importance of a shared reality is something you’ll see again.

In an ideal America, it wouldn’t just be the Political Parties that disappear. There would be no more campaigns and no advertisements. We could host public debates wherein the contenders could challenge their opponents, and they would be forced to defend their premises. They would be moderated and fact-checked, and intellectual dishonesty (as well as the more traditional dishonesty) would not be tolerated.

When it came time for the election, the voting public would be provided with a list of candidates and their platforms, and they would use ranked choice ballots to cast their votes. There would be no Electoral College to manipulate the outcome in favor of land over people. The people who express concerns over the Tyranny of the Majority never seem to have those concerns if/when they are in the majority, so what’s good for the goose is what’s good for the gander, as they say.

The Elected Officials would then be expected to act according to the platform they proclaimed, or they could be removed by a vote of no confidence. No more towing a party line and no more threats of being primaried, and less impact from gerrymandering bullshit. I’m sure it would be harder on all of us. We might have to become informed voters, and politicians might have to work for the votes they receive and display a little bit of integrity. But we would be a better and more functional society for it. For purely personal reasons, I would take delight in the fact that much of the perceived and actual bias in the Media would disappear because there would be no explicit party lines to adhere to, and we could expect the Fourth Estate to fulfill its purpose of holding those in power accountable.

My perspective on politics may seem complicated (even convoluted), but that’s a byproduct of navigating the needlessly problematic nature of our modern political environment and the dialogue surrounding it. Were we not forced to maneuver our way through a quagmire of obfuscation, double-think, manipulation, and outright fabrications, I suspect many of us would have substantially pared-down stances on most matters.

What I mean to say is that, in all reality, my politics are simple and straightforward.

My ideology boils down to one single principle: that the role (and purpose) of the Government in any Democratic Society is to provide for the Common Good and Common Defense of the People. I’m essentially a believer in Utilitarianism, in that I believe the Guiding Moral Principle of any Democratic Government should be, “The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number.” Hand-in-hand with that, I believe in minimizing harm at the societal level, with a focus on justice and human rights.

That’s it.

That is the basis of my underlying political identity.

How it manifests is just as simple. The Rights and Liberties of each Individual should be respected and protected, and it is the responsibility of the Government to guarantee that they are. And where Conflict arises between one or more individuals, it’s the purpose of the Government to ensure that the negative impact on the individuals and on society as a whole is minimized.

I recall a conversation with my oldest two children around the time Barack Obama was elected President in 2008. I told them that if they encounter a scenario in which one group is forcing others (not part of their group) to live as if they are part of that group, then there is a clear indication that they are wrong. Whether certain people want to accept it, that’s the most common method by which one group inflicts harm on others. I’ll return to the topic of inflicting harm again shortly.

If I do not believe what you believe, you do not have the right to tell me that I must behave as if I accept your beliefs in place of my own. I also do not have the right to impose my beliefs upon you. That seems simple enough, and one would think we could all agree with that as a solid substrate upon which to build a social structure. Unfortunately, there are large groups of people who believe they should have the right to dictate to others what they are entitled to think and how they’re allowed to behave, based on their beliefs.

This applies to many things in our current political climate, in which everything from science to math has been transformed into a political football. Belief in scientific and professional consensus is not a political stance, but a practical one based on centuries of methodology and increased understanding of the world around us.

When Law Enforcement Statistics, collected and collated from all parts of the Nation, indicate that Immigrant Communities (including those with large numbers of Undocumented Immigrants) are less likely to be plagued with violent crime, it’s not subject to interpretation. This is especially true when one considers just how entrenched White Supremacy happens to be. Systemic Racism is a thing, and decades of data back that up. So, even with an implicit bias against Ethnic Minorities, the numbers supplied by Law Enforcement Agencies across the board show that crime and criminality are not correlated with Immigration or the presence of Immigrants. You don’t get to say otherwise without supplying equally valid and unassailable facts to reinforce your statements.

How you feel about a topic doesn’t impact the reality of a thing. If you claim that reality is other than what has been well-documented and proven, you are either misinformed or lying. What you are not entitled to is a difference of opinion, because we’re not talking about opinions.

When the overwhelming consensus of well-educated and established biologists, doctors, and psychologists explains that biological sex is not binary and that it is not the same thing as gender identity, you don’t get to come back with what you learned in Elementary School as an equally valid viewpoint. You should know by adulthood that the deeper you look into a thing, and the more research and study you perform, the more detailed and complicated the picture of that thing becomes. That is true for every field of science and life in general. Whether it upsets your rudimentary comprehension of something is irrelevant.

Now, I suppose I am operating under the assumption that people have learned something throughout their lives, whether that was a foreign language or something relating to their career fields, but in everything, we begin with the simplest, surface-level knowledge, and then we drill down and expand on those things. People dedicate years of their lives to studying these topics for a reason, because the better we understand them, the better equipped we are to navigate the universe in which we live.

We inhabit a shared reality, and whether you like it or not, we are subject to all of the same natural laws and principles. The sooner everyone chooses to get back on board, the sooner we can begin moving forward instead of standing still and wasting time attempting to negotiate on things where there’s no negotiation to be done. It’s not elitist for an expert to state that they know more about a subject than you do. They’re an expert for a reason.

One’s inability to understand something doesn’t make it fictional.

It’s well past time for us to stop entertaining lies, willful ignorance, and outright stupidity as a valid point of view. All perspectives are not equal, and do not share equal footing.

A trained pilot is going to do a better job of flying a plane than someone who played Microsoft Flight Simulator a couple of times.

A trained surgeon is safer to have in the operating theater than someone who played Operation a lot when they were growing up.

A chemist is better suited to break down what a substance is made of than someone who spent a few years cooking meth in their kitchen.

A physicist can tell you more about the universe than a self-help guru who overheard some people talking about quantum mechanics one afternoon in a restaurant.

Teams of scientists from diverse fields studying the data are better suited to tell us whether climate change is happening, if it is accelerating, how much impact human beings have on it, and whether it is dangerous and potentially deadly than someone who watches The Weather Channel a lot.

The consensus of medical doctors and researchers, psychologists, and pediatric specialists is better suited to determine what’s in the best interests of your child’s health and well-being than you are. This is true, no matter how much you love your child. And that absolutely includes vaccinations.

I know a fair amount about a good many things. I’ve been an avid reader since early childhood, and that included college textbooks while my mother was studying to become an English teacher, with a minor in psychology. I read a lot, and I frequently go down research rabbit holes in the process. My career as a Journalist (and Author) requires that I dedicate time to researching even topics that aren’t of any particular interest to me. And yet, even with all I know, I’m inclined to defer to the experts on matters for which they happen to have expertise. I’m going to briefly dismiss some of my false humility and the tendency to second-guess and doubt myself for long enough to say that I’m probably smarter than several of the people who might read this. I’m not being arrogant or self-aggrandizing, and it makes me feel a little bit dirty saying what I just did, but it needed to be said, that (as smart as I might be) I still choose to trust the consensus opinions of experts unless what they’re saying literally makes no sense (and that is seldom the case).

It may hurt your feelings to hear that you aren’t some brilliant and special savant who knows more about everything than the actual experts, but there’s only room for one Donald J. Trump in this world. And he’s already certain that he knows more about every subject under the sun than anyone else ever has. And, unfortunately, like Mr. Trump, you aren’t Will Hunting, because he was a fictional character. Neither you nor Mr. Trump will be impressing the MacArthur Foundation.

And while your feelings and ego might be hurt by that, it’s nothing compared to the actual harm you cause when you refuse to accept reality and grow the fuck up. This is where the second part of my political philosophy comes into play. We must ask who is being harmed by opposing sides of any discourse that’s taking place.

Who is harmed by the respectful acceptance and freedom for LGBTQ+ people to be who they are or to love who they love?

I can’t think of anyone being harmed by those things, and especially not when compared to the harm that is done by ostracizing and taking rights away from them. Does it, in some way, hurt non-LGBTQ+ people that those people exist? Is their very existence somehow threatening to people who are not part of the LGBTQ+ Community?

Is it hurting children to allow books into our schools and libraries that provide representation that reflects lived experiences that are familiar to them? As a child, would you not want to see reflections of yourself or those you love in the media made available to you?

Does it harm our children to expose them to the reality that a world of experiences, both cultural and individual, exists outside of their limited–but expanding–worlds? I would argue that it’s far more harmful to insulate them and raise them in a way that they’re subjected to discomfort or cognitive dissonance when they are later exposed to people and cultures unlike their own. That primes them to cause conflict, intentional or not. And I have to ask, who does that conflict benefit?

Does permitting abortions hurt the people who oppose the medical practice?

I fail to see any way in which it’s harmful to anti-abortion proponents when a woman and her doctor (and sometimes her partner) make the decision to go through with the procedure. I do see a great deal of harm inflicted upon the women (and girls) who are forced to go through with pregnancies that are either unwanted or unviable. In this case, it seems like a clear-cut answer, that only one side is actively choosing to harm other people and infringe upon their rights. Using bumper sticker simplicity, if you oppose abortion, don’t fucking have one.

This same thinking can be applied to virtually every topic we think of as being Political, and the reality is that only one end of the albeit limited spectrum of American Politics is invested in harming other people. Mostly, that harm is focused on marginalized groups: women, the LGBTQ+ community, ethnic minorities, cultural minorities, religious minorities, and so on. So, while I don’t believe that either Major Party has our best interests at heart, I will say that only one of them is actively opposing our Freedom and the Rights we’re presumably granted by the Constitution, which is intended to enshrine them.

The Sins of the Media Are To Be Laid On the Masses

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I believe in the Fourth Estate. I’m passionate about that belief, and I’m passionate about the role the Press is intended to play in a Free Society. Journalists have to hold those in power accountable and provide for an informed electorate. My colleagues have heard my rant often enough that they probably want to slap me whenever they know it’s coming. I occasionally find myself struggling to remind the people I work with that our responsibility is to elevate the level of discourse. It doesn’t matter whether we’re reporting on Congressional Legislation, new medical procedures, or anything else. Our role isn’t dissimilar from that of educators. We have to inform the people who rely on us, whether they like or agree with the information we provide.

Somewhere along the line, we’ve forgotten how important we are in keeping corruption, abuse of power, and malfeasance at bay. Some of us have become puppets of the very figures we’re meant to guard against, some have grown complacent, and still others have pivoted from providing information to providing entertainment. I’m not saying that education can’t be entertaining, because I’m a fan of John Oliver, John Stewart, Samantha Bee, Michelle Wolf, Cody Johnston, and others like them. But it’s a fine line to walk, and few do it well.

I won’t place the blame squarely on the Journalists who have lost their way. It’s the audience that craves drama, conflict, turmoil, and childish or boorish behavior. It’s the audience that drives engagement. It’s the audience that ultimately determines where advertising dollars are spent.

But we do bear some of the blame.

I first started working in Broadcast Television (and specifically News) back in mid-2000, when I was 21 years old. I began with the basics of operating studio cameras, controlling the teleprompter, floor directing, designing/assembling graphics, and so on. I left the industry in 2010, not entirely of my own volition. Eleven years later, in 2021, I was back again, and here I am today. I’ve spent approximately one-third of my 46 years working in that industry, and roughly half of my adult life. I’ve witnessed several changes over the last 25 years, and not all of them have been positive. I’ve seen faith in the News Media eroded, sometimes with good cause and other times because the average person doesn’t understand what goes on behind the scenes and beneath the surface.

When I left the industry in 2010, it was close on the heels of the Station Manager passing along a mandate from himself and the ownership of the station (several wealthy and influential families in the region) that, if a story had a political angle to it, we were to lean right in our reporting. I wasn’t part of the Newsroom at that station, but I didn’t think that was at all acceptable. I admit my morale and overall attitude toward station operations deteriorated after that. Unfortunately, that trend of rightward deviation has only persisted. But if you ask people on the street, a substantial number of them will claim that the News Media are biased and promoting a Leftist Agenda.

Perhaps it’s the fault of American audiences that they’re unable to recognize that there’s no such thing as left-leaning Media in the United States unless we’re looking at publications like Mother Jones and The Nation. Since most people don’t know that those outlets even exist, it’s a fair bet that most Americans have no idea what they’re talking about when they insist on a Leftist Bias in the Media. At best, what they’re referring to is a Liberal Bias from Media Organizations like MSNBC or CNN. Of course, those same people are likely to refer to the Associated Press, Reuters, NPR, and other politically unbiased Media Organizations as being left-leaning. Ultimately, it comes down to either accepting Propaganda over Reality or having a deep misunderstanding of Political Theory.

At best, it can be argued that there are Democratic (Liberal) and Republican (Conservative) Media Outlets. But even the Liberal ones tend to dismiss and disparage any Leftist or Progressive policies proposed by Democratic Party members. They do as much harm to actual Progressive Ideals as the Conservative Media does. The Liberals and Conservatives have far more in common than they don’t, in that they’re both invested in maintaining the Status Quo and shutting down any attempts to question it. The problem is that the Politicians and the Media are controlled by the same interests, because they control the money.

Of course, money has always been the worst influence on the Media. The earliest Newspaper in America had an advertisement in the first issue. And Advertisements have followed News from periodicals to radio, and from radio to television. And now, advertisements have jumped from television to social media platforms and websites.

The first advertisement on TV was way back in 1941, and they’ve become increasingly prevalent since then. The growth of television as an industry, and Television News as a result, led to the Federal Communications Commission enforcing the Fairness Doctrine, starting in 1949. It was intended to keep the burgeoning Media Outlets from misusing their power and promoting biased agendas. The Fairness Doctrine required that Media Outlets examine controversial public issues and provide airtime to opposing viewpoints.

As with several major errors made in the United States, it was brought to an end with a poor decision made under President Ronald Reagan (and his FCC Chairman), who dissolved the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. Of course, the Fairness Doctrine wasn’t perfect, and it wasn’t perfectly implemented. But there’s no denying that the purpose was noble and good, to hold off the prevalence of echo chambers and purely partisan News coverage. Abolishing the Fairness Doctrine is seen by many experts as the biggest contributor to the fractured, partisan environment we have today.

Naturally, one of the other major contributors to the decline in quality of News coverage was the advent of the 24-Hour News Cycle, after Ted Turner founded CNN in 1980. Much like the Internet today, it fed a desire for immediate updates and instant gratification. People didn’t want to wait until scheduled times to learn what was happening, especially when major events were transpiring. This need to cater to an audience’s obsession with instant gratification promotes mistakes, the sharing of bad information, and a lack of proper vetting. The need to be “first on the scene” because the audience will tune in elsewhere has done so much harm.

We in the Media are at fault for much of the misunderstanding and misapprehension we witness in the world around us right now. As an industry, we need to both acknowledge that reality and actively work to compensate for the damage we’ve caused. Now, I’m not talking about the explicit Partisan Propaganda of organizations like Fox News and Newsmax or Huffpost and MSNBC, but the otherwise unbiased news sources that do their best to provide balanced coverage. It’s not entirely on our shoulders, but we do bear a substantial portion of the blame, if only because we’ve been too uncritical for altogether too long, and that willingness to avoid being openly critical of various subjects and stances has allowed us to be backed into a corner that we seem to be ill-equipped to escape.

Of course, the lion’s share of the blame falls on the increasing tendency of politicians to turn every social, medical, and cultural issue into a political one. The people who watch it happening, without questioning how or why these things are suddenly “political” topics when they never had been before, are also at fault. It has left even the most legitimate media outlets with no simple way to address any of these topics. Instead, we dance around the issues, struggling to find opposing sides and lending them credence by providing them with a platform that they don’t merit. We hold off on sharing critical information because we haven’t been able to obtain a statement from someone with a viewpoint opposing whatever it is we’re trying to share. If we neglect to do so, we get called out for being biased.

We risk losing advertisers.

We risk litigation.

But in failing to inform, we risk losing the credibility we have left.

Fringe perspectives should NOT be provided the same degree of coverage. That’s the simple truth of it. But when a topic becomes heavily politicized, it becomes more challenging to navigate what should otherwise be a straightforward assessment of data, statistics, and known facts. When people refuse to accept that what they already believe to be true is not, we have no easy way to address that flaw. The political figures who insist on turning everything into a political battlefield know precisely what they’re doing, and we know WHY they’re doing it.

They force a dialogue that shouldn’t be a dialogue at all.

We saw it repeatedly during the COVID-19 Pandemic. It wasn’t exclusively the News Media at fault, because Social Media was a major source of much of the misinformation that was spread, and attempts to provide Fact Checks were perceived to be biased.

There are still people today who believe that the medical field was pretty evenly split on the topics of Vaccine Safety and Vaccine Effectiveness. Globally, based on a study of more than 40,000 nurses across 36 nations, fewer than 21% of nurses rejected the COVID-19 Vaccine. The most pronounced interval was between March and December of 2020, when Pharmaceutical Companies were initially testing the vaccines.
As early as June of 2021, according to the American Medical Association, 96% of practicing physicians were fully vaccinated against COVID-19, and an additional 1.8% of them were actively planning to receive vaccinations.

Unfortunately, the way the media reported on the topic gave people the sense that a large number of Medical Professionals were speaking out in opposition to the vaccine. This is a negative side-effect of the overcompensation involved in attempting to provide multiple sides of an argument with equal coverage. If we intended to provide balanced coverage, we should have given the anti-vaccine proponents roughly 5% of the coverage, compared to 95% of the coverage focusing on the medical consensus.

This is something we need to address.

It’s something we need to atone for.

What would previously have been simply a matter of focusing on medical consensus became a partisan issue, requiring more even-handed coverage of opposing sides when there are not equivalent claims made by both sides.

This is, of course, not isolated to the COVID-19 Vaccine. We’ve seen this happen with topics from Abortion to Gender Identity, none of which are inherently political topics. And they should not be.

These are subjects best left in the hands of the relevant professionals and experts, not politicians.

Abortion didn’t become a political issue until the 1970s, and Gender Identity started down that path in the UK in the 1970s as well. But didn’t become a major political issue in America until roughly a decade ago. Vaccination (as a whole) was a largely apolitical topic until more than 15 years ago. But, as these topics went from being personal and medical decisions to political ones, the News Media was forced to adjust how it covered them. The number of lies, discredited studies, and hate-based propaganda talking points we allowed to slip through has been disorientingly massive. We were supposed to be maintaining the public trust.

I’m sorry to say that we failed.

But we don’t have to continue failing.

Immigrants Are NOT the Problem, and They Never Were

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There is never a bad time to remind people that being Undocumented in the U.S. is a Civil Offense, not a criminal one. Unless someone has been previously Deported and has returned to the U.S. (which is a Felony) or is caught in the process of (or found Guilty of) Illegal Border Crossing (which is a Misdemeanor), they are not criminals. This should make it obvious that the habit of simply accusing anyone who is here without legal documentation of being a criminal is both legally & factually incorrect.

Unless they’ve committed other crimes while on U.S. soil, they are not criminals and should not be treated as such. And Due Process is required to assert Guilt, which requires honoring the writ of Habeas Corpus.

Of course, none of that matters when the DHS and ICE are allowed to just make up whatever criminal activities, questionable tattoo correlations, supposed gang affiliations, and whatever else they want to claim about any individuals they’ve targeted to pick up off the street, from their homes, from churches, from the classrooms, or in front of the courthouses as they wait for their Immigration Hearings. Because, without Due Process, no one has an opportunity to defend themselves or to prove the lie for what it is.

We currently have more than 46 Million Immigrants living in America, with more than half of that number being Naturalized Citizens. Note that I did not say they were Documented Immigrants, these are Citizens who came here as Immigrants. And that is no simple process. As of last year, it took the average Immigrant seven and a half years as a Permanent Resident to become Naturalized. They undergo a lengthy application process and are tested on their knowledge of the English language as well as their knowledge of U.S. History and Government.

In the 27 years leading up to the moment when President Trump first took office in 2017, a grand total of 305 Denaturalization cases were pursued. It was an exceptionally rare legal process, something reserved for people like War Criminals, Child Predators, and those who Sponsored Terrorists. Obviously, it wasn’t common.

However, one of the first things President Trump did upon taking office in 2017 was to explore options to loosen the standards in place regarding what qualified as a cause for Denaturalization. His Administration’s goal was to expand the rationale and justification required to strip an individual of American Citizenship. There were hurdles he needed to overcome, of course, and questions of constitutionality were involved.

Nevertheless, during Trump’s first year in the White House, 20 Denaturalization cases were filed with the Department Of Justice. By the time he’d been in office for three years, that number had reached 94. The number of Denaturalization cases was only 20 for 2020, but this was largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic having a massive impact on our courts. But, during the four-year interval, the first Trump Administration had filed 104 Denaturalization cases, compared to 305 in the 27 years leading up to that point. You’re reading that correctly: 25% of all Denaturalization cases in 31 years happened in just the four years President Trump was in the White House (or 12% of the time frame).

The beginning of President Biden’s Administration was also impacted by pandemic conditions, but during his four-year term, only 24 Denaturalization cases were filed. So, that still leaves the first Trump Administration responsible for 24% of all Denaturalization cases in a 35-year interval. So far, the President is off to a slow start, with only five Denaturalization cases, but it’s just getting started.

Since he returned to the White House, President Trump’s Administration has (in addition to renewing efforts to lower the standards required to justify Denaturalization) also started pushing to strip Citizenship via Civil Litigation.

This may not mean much to most of us, since we aren’t lawyers. But it’s a truly horrific prospect. It’s important to understand that this means a U.S. Citizen could face losing their Citizenship without being entitled to an attorney and with a diminished Burden of Proof involved in the decision. Sure, they can pay for an Attorney (assuming they can afford it) or they can hope for someone to take on their case pro bono, but they’re not afforded legal counsel as they should.

You see, it’s not just the violation of Due Process regarding Undocumented Immigrants that’s an issue (which Obama was guilty of doing as well). Also, why the hell would any Trump supporter point to Obama as a benchmark? That’s just nonsense. The problem now is the clear intent to strip Due Process from U.S. Citizens on top of violating Due Process for Undocumented and Documented Immigrants.

Even if someone wants to argue the 14th Amendment doesn’t apply to Undocumented Immigrants (which it does), it absolutely applies to Citizens. This policy also flies in the face of the Supreme Court Decision that brought an end to McCarthy era bullshit, of using Denaturalization as a political bludgeon, creating “…two levels of citizenship.”

There is a clear and present trend in the objectives put forth by President Trump and his appointees. The Trump Administration has made attempts to rescind Birthright Citizenship, revoke the Legal Status of various groups of Documented Immigrants, increase the number of Undocumented Immigrants removed without Due Process, and strip Citizenship from Naturalized Citizens at an increased rate and without Due Process. All of this is combined with efforts to make it harder to become a Citizen, more difficult to obtain Documented (Legal) Status, and to refuse Asylum Status for more Asylum Seekers.

By April, we had already Deported three children between the ages of two and seven who were U.S. Citizens. This was done even though family members here were prepared to take them in when their Undocumented mothers were being Deported, and made several legal requests to do so. Attorneys were denied access to the women–as were the family members–and they were provided with no alternatives but to take their children with them as they were Deported.

We’re only six months into this Presidency, and he is attempting to reshape the landscape regarding Immigration to make it inhospitable for anyone but those he thinks should be here, and that seems to exclusively consist of White South African “refugees” and people who can pay $5 Million for the privilege.

Of course, to Deport someone is to return them to their Country Of Origin, or to a country with which the individual has strong ties. That is the definition of Deportation. You can imagine this does not mean we get to send them to wherever we see fit. But, less than a month ago, the Supreme Court decided the Trump Administration could continue sending Immigrants to countries that are not their Country Of Origin.

Sending them somewhere they’ve never been, and where they have no social or familial ties, that’s more akin to Human Trafficking. Of course, this is a violation of both International Law and Human Rights, but no one involved with the Trump Administration is concerned with any of that. This should serve as a suitable reminder that what is Legal does not define what is Moral.

It’s wrong to refer to that activity as Deportation. Thankfully, we already have a term that mostly fits with what we’re doing with those Immigrants, it’s called Extraordinary Rendition. Sure, we can’t be certain that there’s a substantial risk of these individuals being tortured when they arrive at this third-party destination, but it doesn’t seem particularly unlikely. Again, no one involved in making these decisions is concerned. They’re similarly unconcerned with the fact that Extraordinary Rendition is illegal in both the U.S. and internationally. The United Nations Convention Against Torture, which was ratified by the U.S. Senate back in 1998, explicitly prohibits Extraordinary Rendition.

Anyone who wants to claim any of this is right or acceptable should take a deep breath and spend some time reflecting on how and why they have so much contempt in their hearts for people who (like their own ancestors) came here for a chance at a better life. I also feel that they should take some time to consider the strong likelihood that these people probably had to go through a hell of a lot more trouble to achieve the American Dream than their families did. I know the various branches of my family tree had it a whole lot easier becoming American citizens.

As an amusing little adendum, I have some useful information to share with the pearl-clutching Anti-Immigration folks who are worried about the criminals and gangs that are coming across our borders. The Mexican Mafia originated in California’s prison system in the 1950s & spread to Mexico via deportation. More recently, MS-13 started on the streets of LA in the 1980s, before members were deported to El Salvador, where they became more powerful & dangerous.

Maybe deportation isn’t the solution people think it is. It might be a good time to stop complaining that these Central and South American nations are sending gangs across the border into the U.S., because it seems to me that we’ve been sending the gangs there more than the other way around. And, of course, that doesn’t even factor in the cartels we supplied, funded, and endorsed as rebels and insurgents.

Not Only CAN We Pay for It, We SHOULD.

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There’s always a lot of talk about how we can’t afford Single-Payer Healthcare here in America, and how much our taxes would increase if we were to implement a Universal Healthcare System. I got tired of listening to people who probably haven’t performed any mathematical operations more involved than basic addition or subtraction since they reached adulthood. I decided it was worthwhile to examine three countries that do provide for their citizens: Denmark, Canada, and the UK, to see how they compare to us here.

For the sake of simplicity, despite it making the whole process far more complicated for me, I’ve taken the liberty of converting all currencies to USD based on the conversion rates as they were today.

In Denmark, there is no Federal Tax on the first $8,080 an individual earns. From $8,080 to $94,224, there is a 12% Federal Tax rate. Anything above $94,224 is taxed at a rate of 15%.

If someone were to earn a hypothetical annual income of $150,000, they would face a total Federal Tax burden of $18,673.68, leaving them with $131,326.32 of their income.

There’s also a Municipal Tax rate that falls between 22 and 27% on all income. At the highest rate, it would decrease the remaining amount to $95.858.49. This means they pay a total of $54,141.51 in taxes on an annual income of $150,000. At the lower rate of 22%, it amounts to a grand total of $51,673.68 they’d pay.

In America, an individual is looking at a tax rate of 10% on the first $11,925. They pay 12% on everything earned between $11,925 and $48,475, 22% from that amount to $103,350, and 24% up to $197,300. So, the same person earning $150,000 in the United States would have a Federal Tax burden of $28,847, which is substantially higher than the federal taxes paid in Denmark.

To factor in municipal taxes, the closest comparison is to consider state income taxes, where applicable.

In the eight states where there is no State Income Tax, that $28,847 is all the individual pays, based on their annual wage. Most of us, of course, live in the 42 states where there’s an income tax levied on an individual’s wages.

Fourteen of those states have a single rate applied to all income, as opposed to a progressive system like we have at the federal level. Arizona is 2.5%, Colorado and Mississippi are 4.4%, Georgia is 5.39%, Idaho is 5.695%, Illinois is 4.95%, Indiana and Louisiana are 3%, Iowa is 3.8%, Kentucky is 4%, Michigan and North Carolina are 4.25%, and Pennsylvania is 3.07%.

In Arizona, the individual would pay an additional $3,750, and in Idaho, they would pay $8,542.50 in addition to the $28,847 they’re paying in Federal Income Tax. The larger amount is $38,389.50, so an individual living in Idaho would pay only $15,752.01 less in state and federal taxes than someone living in Denmark, on the same $150,000.

For states with progressive tax rates, you could be facing a maximum rate of 5% in Alabama and Massachusetts, 3.9% in Arkansas, 9.3% in California, 6% in Connecticut, 6.6% in Delaware, 7.9% in Hawaii, 5.58% in Kansas, 7.15% in Maine, 5.25% in Maryland, 7.85% in Minnesota, 4.7% in Missouri, 5.9% in Montana, 5.2% in Nebraska, 6.37% in New Jersey, 4.9% in New Mexico, 6% in New York, 1.95% in North Dakota, 3.5% in Ohio, 4.75% in Oklahoma and Rhode Island, 9.9% in Oregon, 6.2% in South Carolina, 7.6% in Vermont, 5.75% in Virginia, 4.82% in West Virginia, 5.3% in Wisconsin, and 8.5% in the District of Columbia.

For someone in North Dakota, that would translate into a total State Income Tax of $2,925, while in Oregon, it would come to $12,894.50 above the federal taxes collected, or a total tax burden of $41,741.50. This is only $12,400.01 below the maximum federal and municipal tax burden on the same income in Denmark.

We already know that taxes are higher in Denmark than in the U.S.. That comes as no surprise. But now we understand what the difference is, instead of imagining some abstract higher dollar value. So, let’s take a look at two other nations with universal healthcare.

Canadian federal taxes are 15% up to $41,883.75, 20.5% from there to $83,767.50, 26% up to $129,853.86 and 29% up to $184,992.22. The same $150,000 annual salary would lead to a total of $32,693.57 in federal taxes.

The individual provinces have their own tax rates, of course. The highest rate you’d experience at that salary would be in Nova Scotia, which is 21% on anything over $112,894.50. The lowest would be Nunavut, which has a rate of 11.5% on any income above $129,853.13. Looking at the highest rate, you’d be looking at an additional $24,829.79 beyond the $32,693.57 in federal tax, for a total of $57,523.36, which is moderately higher than the highest burden you’d encounter in Denmark.

In the UK, there is no tax burden up to the first $17,220.90. We’re looking at 20% from there until $68,869.90, and 40% up to $171,441.80. So for the same income of $150,000, you’d pay a total of $42,781.84 in federal taxes. You’d also be responsible for National Insurance Tax of 8% on earnings from $17,220.90 to $68,869.90, and 2% on earnings above that. Thus, you’d be paying an additional $5,754.52 on top of the $42,781.84, for a grand total of $48,536.36, which is lower than in both Canada and Denmark, but still slightly higher than the previous examples of Idaho or Oregon.

Of course, in Denmark, Canada, and the UK, you benefit from Single-Payer Healthcare along with those higher tax burdens; burdens that may not be quite as comparatively high as people in the U.S. often imagine them to be. Those increased taxes are largely offset by what we pay for our Insurance Premiums, even with employer-provided insurance.

The cost of individual Health Insurance Premiums in the U.S. can average anywhere from as little as $1,368 to as much as $8,951 per year, and family coverage is often dramatically higher. None of that even factors in the Out-Of-Pocket expenses for care and medication or multi-thousand-dollar deductibles we’re responsible for, before Health Insurance provides any assistance at all. For example, I have comparably fantastic Health Insurance through my employer. The Deductible for my Family Coverage is $3,300 annually, with an Out-Of-Pocket Maximum of $7,500. God forbid we have to find help Out-Of-Network, though, because the Deductible there is $10,000. Halfway through July, my Insurance Premium has cost me $1,491. It’s worth noting that this is entirely separate from Dental and Vision Insurance. To put all of that in perspective, that means that, in addition to the $1,491 I’ve paid just for the privilege of having Health Insurance, I also have to pay $3,300 Out-Of-Pocket before Insurance begins contributing to further Medical Care or Mental Health expenses. Until I’ve paid $7,500 Out-Of-Pocket, all my Health Insurance will contribute is a percentage toward those costs. I want to remind you that I have exceptionally affordable Health Insurance compared to many people I know.

All of this is brokered through Insurance Companies that receive massive Subsidies from the tax dollars we’re already paying. Companies that actually increase the cost of healthcare in the process. UnitedHealth Group, made famous by Luigi Mangioni, is a perfect example of this.

UnitedHealth Group raked in $372 Billion in 2023, $281 Billion of that revenue from the insurance division headed by Brian Thompson, the man killed on a New York City street by Mangioni. Only two years earlier, UnitedHealth’s insurance division obtained 72% of its revenue from Federal Subsidies, and it can only be assumed that the percentage increased by 2023. In 2024, the Federal Government spent between $1.7 and $1.9 Trillion on Healthcare Subsidies. All of this is money paid out to an industry of middlemen who have inserted themselves between people and their healthcare providers, while making massive profits in the process. In contrast, the UK spent approximately $353.5 Billion on healthcare in 2024. That is less than 19% of U.S. spending. Of course, the population of the UK is just shy of 70 Million, roughly 20% of the U.S. population of nearly 350 Million. What that means is that the Per Capita spending is virtually the same, though actually lower for the UK…but the majority of U.S. taxpayers see none of the benefits associated with that health spending. Looking at those numbers, it makes me wonder why there would even be a need to increase Income Tax rates if we weren’t propping up a parasitic and unnecessary industry in the process.

Or is it simply that the UK and other nations are better equipped to efficiently provide for their citizens than the U.S. happens to be? I’m willing to admit that we’re just not very good at doing things efficiently or effectively. I think there’s more than sufficient evidence to reinforce that perspective.

Beyond purely financial considerations, Single-Payer systems are far less likely to deny service, and when it does happen, it is typically an administrative error. Whereas, here in America, it’s a cost-saving measure on the part of the provider to maintain its profit margins.

And, the real kicker, if you don’t receive at least your premium costs in coverage from your insurer (and most people don’t), that money gets spread around to everyone else covered by the same insurance provider and to the people working there, leading to massive profits for the corporations in question and CEO salaries that can reach as high as $23 Million in total compensation. For example, even though I have reached my Deductible of $3,300 for the year, my Insurance Company is highly unlikely to pay out even the $1,491 I’ve paid so far in Premiums for their percentage of the payments before the new annual cycle begins.

Of course, none of this even takes into consideration the portion of my Premium that’s paid by my employer, which has reached almost $8,000 so far this year. So, even if my Insurance Company somehow ends up paying out $5,000 for their part of my Healthcare expenses, they’ve already got $4,419 lining their pockets without either me or my employer paying another dime toward the Premiums. I don’t get that money back. My employer certainly doesn’t receive the excess back at the end of the year either. Have you ever looked at your paychecks and calculated how much free money you and your employer are handing over to an Insurance Company that (as a policy) does whatever it can to avoid helping you? Now, take a moment to consider that all of the money coming in from people like you adds up to maybe a quarter of what the Insurance Company has for revenue.

But, of course, it’s “Socialism” if your Tax Dollars provide Single-Payer Health Coverage for every Citizen in the U.S.. But if your money is distributed between the thousands of people with the same insurer (while lining the pockets of the obscenely wealthy), then it’s an entirely different sort of thing. It’s “Socialism” even though it’s a Public Service provided by the Capitalist Governments of essentially every other Civilized Nation in the world, as well as several that we consider less than “First World” countries.

One additional benefit worth noting is that public universities cap most tuition at less than $13,000 per year in the UK. Canadians can expect an average annual tuition of under $4,800, and college tuition is not charged at all in Denmark. Whereas in the U.S., In-State tuition averages roughly $11,000 per year (ranging from less than $7k in Florida or Wyoming to more than $20k in Connecticut or Pennsylvania), and Out-Of-State tuition explodes to an average of around $30,000 (from less than $13k in South Dakota to more than $60k in Michigan).

Which is to say that you can be both healthier and better well-educated at substantially less cost in those nations, even when you factor in the increased tax burdens. Of course, as I pointed out already, there’s no reason to raise the taxes individuals pay in the U.S. if we were more efficiently utilizing the slightly higher amount the U.S. already pays Per Capita for Healthcare Subsidies than the government of the UK.

Don’t let idiots and fear-mongers influence you. None of the nations discussed are “Socialist” countries. They just take the role of government more seriously, providing for the public good.

It might also be worth noting that, in 2023, UnitedHealth Group donated $792,500 via PAC contributions to federal political campaigns. Roughly 54% of those PAC contributions went to Republican candidates and 45% went to Democrats.

It also spent an even more substantial amount of PAC funds on In-State campaigns all across the U.S.. This was divided up between individual candidates, party contributions, and ballot measures.

And, in 2024, UnitedHealth Group (according to its filing with the U.S. Senate) dedicated $6.85 Million toward lobbying efforts, above and beyond Millions in PAC spending. Think about that for just a moment. This Corporation receives most of its revenue from Federal Subsidies. And then it spends a small portion of that revenue to support the campaigns and political parties that ensure it keeps getting that money.

It’s easy to spend that kind of money when a company brings in a net income of $14.4 Billion (which was UnitedHealth’s lowest profit margin since 2019), a number heavily impacted by the Billions they spent recovering from a cyberattack on one of their claims processing subsidiaries. With everything adjusted accordingly, they proudly claimed a record high profit of $25.7 Billion for last year.

Spending $6.85 Million through lobbyists and millions more through PAC contributions isn’t a challenge when you have that kind of profit involved. The amount spent on corporate lobbying was, after all, only 0.048% of the net profit.

Of course, UnitedHealth Group has already dedicated $3.37 Million toward lobbying efforts so far in 2025, so they’re hardly skimping on graft despite it not being an election year.

While the industry rakes in massive profits, it’s happy to return the favor by lining the pockets of politicians and political parties across the political spectrum, all to ensure it has its interests taken care of.

If you can look at this and think it’s fine, while Single-Payer Healthcare would be too costly, you’re not only missing the point, but you’re being intellectually dishonest.

The Truth About Medicaid, Medicare, & Other Fraud: It’s Not What You Think

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It has always seemed obvious to me that if people want to know where Medicare and Medicaid Fraud come from, they need to stop looking for illegal recipients. It isn’t as simple as some might think to defraud programs like SNAP, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid by filling out an application with false information.

I don’t know why it bears mentioning, but neither Medicaid nor Medicare provides Beneficiaries with cash. They operate as a substitute for Health Insurance. That might come as a surprise for those of you who have never needed to use one of these programs. So, even if someone successfully applies via Fraud, they aren’t lining their pockets at the expense of Taxpayers.

Even if someone manages to obtain Medicare or Medicaid coverage through fraudulent means, what happens then? In the worst-case scenario, they would obtain medical treatment that they otherwise could not have received. Let’s assume it’s the most expensive surgical procedure from 2024, which is a Heart Transplant. At the most expensive rate, that would cost Medicare or Medicaid $1.3 Million, assuming it would cover the surgery in the first place. It would require more than 38,000 people receiving fraudulently obtained Heart Transplants to equal the $50 Billion House Speaker Mike Johnson claimed was lost to Fraud, Waste, and Abuse of Medicaid each year. If that seems absurd to you, you’re absolutely correct.

Just last week, CVS Health’s Omnicare (pharmacy services for long-term care & senior living communities) was found guilty of fraudulently billing the U.S. Government for invalid Medicare, Medicaid, and Tricare Prescriptions and ordered to pay $948.8 Million in penalties & damages. A massive $406.8 Million of that was for Damages, which were tripled as per the False Claims Act.

All of this came about because a Whistleblower brought attention to more than three million false claims between 2010 and 2018.

In 2021, the average Medicare Spending per Beneficiary was only a little over $15,000. To put that in perspective, it means the Fraud committed by CVS translated into the equivalent of the total annual spending for just under 9,000 Beneficiaries, or just under 1,000 Beneficiaries each year for which CVS was found Guilty of the illegal billing.

And this is just the Fraud from one Corporation. I can assure you that they are not alone.

One thing that people need to understand is that Improper Medicaid payments are not the same as Fraud. It’s a challenge for some people to wrap their heads around that distinction because certain individuals have played fast and loose with conflating the two things…because it suits their agenda.

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Improper Payments made up only 5.09% of the total payments made by Medicaid in 2024. Of that 5.09%, roughly 80% (or 4.07% of the Total) were caused by missing documentation that would determine whether a payment was correct or incorrect, and payments that went to the right Providers in the right amounts, but that may not have complied with some regulations or statutes. In all of those cases, if the paperwork had been correct, they wouldn’t even factor into these numbers, because the payments wouldn’t have been classified as Improper or because they wouldn’t have been issued in the first place.

It’s the remaining 20% of that 5.09% where we find people who weren’t eligible for Medicaid. But it is also where we locate the individuals who were eligible but received a service that wasn’t covered.

So, while all of these 5.09% of Improper Payments count as Monetary Loss, they do not constitute Fraud. All of the Fraud falls into the minuscule 1.02% of the Total Payments.

Yes, we should be combating Fraud, but it’s not the Beneficiaries of Medicaid and Medicare who are the criminals, guilty of committing the vast majority of Fraud; it’s Ambulance Services, Pharmacies, Nursing Homes, and other Providers who have utilized creative bookkeeping and manipulation of the system. The victims are the Beneficiaries, Legitimate Providers, and Taxpayers alike.

Fighting Fraud doesn’t involve cutting funding for Medicaid, and it won’t have any impact on the rate of Improper Payments, because the Beneficiaries were never the primary Source of them.

What I hate more than anything is that this is ultimately yet another dog whistle for anti-immigration proponents. I’m not going to use Undocumented as a descriptor here, because we’ve all heard the plan, shared far and wide wherever cameras are rolling, that the Trump Administration intends to strip Documented Status from Immigrants, including those who are Citizens. It was never about doing it the right way; it was about being the right ethnic makeup, which is why there was so much support from people who believe in “The Great Replacement” myth.

Across the years 2021, 2022, and 2023, Wyoming and South Carolina were the two states with the highest rates of Improper Medicaid Payments (at 20.7 and 20.5% respectively), with Delaware, Connecticut, and Idaho following close behind. As you might notice, none of these five states are among the most populated, and none of them are near the top of the list of states with the largest immigrant populations.

California, New York, New Jersey, Florida, and Nevada are the states with the largest immigrant populations, yet they all fell below a rate of 9% during those three years.

So, people need to stop pretending this is even remotely connected with our Border Policy or Immigration Statistics, because there isn’t even a Correlation to mistake for Causality.

House and Senate Republicans upheld their promise not to tamper with Medicare as far as work and age Eligibility Requirements were concerned when drafting the 2025 Congressional Budget Bill. However, Eligibility for certain Immigrant groups will be impacted, as some Non-Citizens who were previously Eligible as Permanent Residents of the U.S. for at least five consecutive years will lose coverage 18 months after the Legislation is passed.

Medicaid, however, was far from off-limits to Congressional Republicans…and where they have tampered with Medicaid and other health coverage through the ACA, it could have dramatic and widespread impacts on healthcare systems across the nation.

Medicaid is funded through a combination of Federal and State Taxes, with roughly 70% of that funding coming from the Federal Budget. States often derive a significant amount of their funding through Provider Taxes, which are taxes paid by Health Care Providers (hospitals, nursing homes, and the like). The House version of the Congressional Budget Bill would have prohibited States from creating new Provider Taxes or increasing the current percentages paid by Providers, which are capped at 6%. The Senate version, however, gradually decreases that percentage to 3.5% by 2031, but only for the 40 States (and the District of Columbia) that employed Medicaid Expansion under the Affordable Care Act, leaving exceptions in place for nursing homes and intermediate care facilities.

This will dramatically decrease the amount of matching funds paid by Federal Taxes, creating a bit of a double-whammy on States that are being penalized for adopting Medicaid Expansion.

The concern here is that States will almost certainly have to make dramatic cuts to Medicaid as a result of the lost revenue, further cutting the number of people covered or the amount paid to Providers.

Of course, there’s also the addition of out-of-pocket expenses for Medicaid enrollees, as a $35 co-pay will be required for some services (again, only in States with expanded Medicaid) for individuals with an annual income of more than $15,650 (Federal Poverty Level). The Senate did add allowances for States to charge an even greater co-pay for Emergency Room visits for Non-Emergencies. The silver lining is that the co-pay policy doesn’t apply to primary care, mental health, or substance abuse services.

Access to insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act marketplace is about to become more challenging as well. It will also be more expensive as enhanced subsidies are scheduled to expire at the end of 2025, which could result in some costs for ACA insurance coverage increasing by an average of 75%. I don’t know how many people can afford to see their Insurance Premiums go up by 75%, but I would be irate if it were happening to me.

Hundreds of thousands of Lawfully Present Immigrants are likely to lose insurance coverage through the ACA, because additional subsidies that keep those costs down will also be expiring.

All of this is devastating at a time when hospitals and medical facilities across the country are already facing massive budget shortfalls. Part of that comes from Medicaid and Medicare payments not being sufficient to keep pace with rising operating costs. Those skyrocketing operating costs are partially derived from administrative expenses produced by Insurance Companies, due to prior authorizations and the appeals associated with denials.

According to a report from the American Hospital Association last September, administrative costs alone accounted for more than 40% of the average hospital’s total expenses. Not only does the Commercial Insurance Industry delay and often deny necessary care for patients, but it also dramatically increases the costs for Providers to operate in the first place, which leads to increased costs for the rest of us. Of course, the Industry is thriving as a whole, with many Insurance Companies seeing record profits year after year.

You may notice some disdain for Insurance Providers, and that’s something I’m entirely conscious of. I’ve experienced frustration regarding the predatory practices of the for-profit Insurance Industry while researching their standards, profit margins, and actions.

What we’re likely to see if the House and Senate Republicans have their way, in addition to fewer people being covered by Medicaid (and health insurance in general), is staffing cuts at Providers or (in the worst case) closures. This is most likely to happen in areas where the population is lowest, impacting rural Providers more than those in urban areas…though the impacts would still be massive there as well.

Because of this, Senators added a $50 Billion fund ($10 Billion annually) to the Congressional Budget Bill, insulating rural hospitals from some of the worst impacts. The House version of the bill would have allowed rural hospitals that closed between 2014 and 2021 to reopen under the Rural Emergency Hospital designation, which allows Medicare to provide them with a potential lifeline. This could have been good, since 146 hospitals in rural counties closed between 2005 and 2023. The Senate, unfortunately, included no provision to reopen those hospitals under the retroactive designation.

So, there are some small bits of good mixed in with the bad aspects of that portion of the new budget, but none of those “good” things would be quite as necessary if it weren’t for all of the “bad” aspects of the Congressional Budget Bill. And altogether too much of that “bad” is tied up in transparent bigotry directed toward Immigrants, and the false claims that they are responsible for Fraud in the Medicaid and Medicare systems, along with the other things people often refer to as “entitlements.” Of course, while focusing on Legislation to further disenfranchise already disenfranchised people, the same Lawmakers are providing additional handouts to Corporations, the actual sources of Fraud, Waste, and Corruption.

America Is a Democracy, and You Don’t Know What That Word Means

/ MeltdownMessiah / 2 Comments

I hadn’t seen anyone attempt to make this fatuous argument in quite some time, but a politically illiterate individual on Threads pulled out the old, “America is not a Democracy, it is a Constitutional Republic,” nonsense just the other day.

If that dumbshit statement isn’t one of the surest pieces of evidence that education is important (and that our educational system is failing), I don’t know what is. Not to point fingers or anything, but I’ve only ever seen former Tea Party and current MAGA folks tossing this gem out there. You’re free to interpret that as you will. I know what I suspect is behind that particularly ignorant claim arising from one specific cross-section of the American Political Spectrum.

I know the people who say things like that like to believe it makes them sound intellectual in some capacity. I know they think it’s some sort of “Get Out of Argument Free” card that they can toss into a discussion when things aren’t going the way they want. Sadly (for them), all it does is clearly display that the person making the statement understands nothing about either a Republic or a Democracy…and probably shouldn’t be trusted as an authority on any matters of government.

This is why it sounds so stupid to anyone with a passing familiarity with political theory. It’s the equivalent of saying, “Brutus isn’t a dog, he’s a German Shepherd.”

A Republic is a subset of the Democratic form of Government, a Representative Democracy as opposed to a Direct Democracy (where everyone would be free and encouraged to weigh in on every matter and every piece of legislation), which would be tedious as Hell! Instead, a Democratic process determines Representatives who then act on behalf of the bloc that voted for them.

I’m tempted to ask if the person making that statement is stupid or simply ill-informed…but they’re not mutually exclusive…sort of like a Democracy and a Republic.

I suppose one might say, “He’s not ill-informed, he’s stupid,” because while not all ill-informed people are stupid, all stupid people are certainly ill-informed.

How the American Political Parties Shifted Platforms

/ MeltdownMessiah / 1 Comment

It amazes me that so many people still love to trot out the old–and I believed, sufficiently dismantled–argument that Democrats started the KKK, so they are truly the party of Racists and Segregationists…while Republicans are the party of Lincoln, and therefore must be the good guys who believe in Equality and Liberty.

I never can tell whether these people are making intentionally bad faith arguments based on disingenuous, and manipulative cherry-picked snapshots of party standards from a century and a half earlier…or if they’re sincerely so historically illiterate that they just accept this argument at face value from other people who presented the bad faith argument for them. It’s sad either way, because they either aren’t capable of thinking for themselves or they aren’t capable of intellectual honesty…and neither of those traits should be praised or rewarded.

I want to get one big fucking fact out of the way before I address the falsehood there. This one is going to be hard for some people to hear, especially some of us White People…but it’s something that needs to be dealt with before I even begin digging into the process by which the Democratic and Republican Platforms became what they are today.

First of all, America as a nation is absolutely built on a foundation of White Supremacy, and that corrupt substrate still exists at the core of our society (regardless of party affiliation). It’s like a poison in the bedrock that finds its way into our spiritual and cultural soil and groundwater, tainting everything we do…and until we actively work together to leech that shit out of there, we’ll never be clean of it. The fact of the matter is that neither major party (nor the vast majority of smaller political parties) has been particularly interested in putting in that work, because the bulk of American politicians still benefit too much from their (conscious or unconscious) privileged status. That is a truth we need to remain aware of and vigilant to acknowledge and address whenever and wherever we see it manifesting.

Now, onto the claims made by people who insist on tossing 19th-Century Party Affiliations around as if they’re relevant to the platforms we see today. Those people are fixating on the titles while intentionally ignoring the most salient detail, which is to address which group was “Liberal” and which was “Conservative” at the time of Lincoln.

Just answering that single question turns the argument on its head. But I don’t mind going further into how the party demographics transitioned from what they were in the mid-to-late 19th Century to what they have been during my whole lifetime, and I’m currently 46 years old.

It started to take hold way back in the 1890s, in large part thanks to a Nebraska politician, William Jennings Bryan, who became the Democratic National Committee’s nominee for President, in response to backlash against President Grover Cleveland and the Conservative Democrats that dominated the party at the time. Unfortunately for Bryan, he lost to McKinley…twice.

After taking a brief hiatus from Presidential Campaigns, Bryan lost the Presidential Election for a third time, this time to Taft. But his influence didn’t fade, and he became Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson (until he ultimately resigned from the position).

During his life, Bryan made huge tectonic shifts in the Democratic Party. He drew in people from the political left (progressives) while fighting against American Imperialism, the influence of men like J. P. Morgan and other members of the privileged class who sought to manipulate American Politics for their gain through Crony Capitalism, and many traditionally Conservative ideals. All of this, while also supporting Women’s Suffrage and the League of Nations, and being the first Presidential Candidate to receive endorsement of the American Federation of Labor for his unflinching support of Labor Unions.

He did oppose American involvement in WWI, supported Prohibition, and actively fought against the teaching of Evolution and Darwinism in the Scopes Trial. So, on several matters, he and I would not have been in agreement. He also refused to attack the KKK directly, though not because he supported it, but because he expected it to fall apart on its own. He had more faith in the spirit of the American People than he perhaps should have, in that regard…but that was who he was to the core. He was a man of faith, which largely influenced his decision to take on the role he played in the Scopes Trial.

He was far from perfect, but he was emblematic of what the Democratic Party was gradually becoming.

William Jennings Bryan was arguably the figure one can most easily point to as the origin of the shift in party alignments. But he was only the first set of symbolic supports in creating the bridge that spanned that gulf.

While the transition may have started a few decades earlier, it wasn’t until FDR and the “New Deal” era that we started to really see Liberals as the Democrats we see today and Conservatives as the Republicans we recognize. FDR was, in many ways, the apex of that shift in party dynamics and platform. I would love to see a single Republican today adopt a platform as progressive as FDR’s. Unlike William Jennings Bryan, we all know at least a little bit about FDR and the “New Deal.”

It started as mostly a series of Economic Reforms: offering relief for the poor and unemployed, reforming the financial systems to avoid future economic collapse, and building the economy back up from the dismal lows following the crash of 1929. Major changes to the Federal Reserve, combined with the establishment of the FDIC and the Securities Exchange Commission, along with other Financial Regulatory Bodies, were engineered under FDR’s guidance to restore consumer confidence and bring the U.S. back from the brink of full financial failure. And it worked.

Though ostensibly a response to the Great Depression, there was much of FDR’s “New Deal” that cemented the new bedrock for the Democratic Party, outside of the purely economic considerations.

While modern Libertarians like to pretend that Corporations should be free to act outside of Regulatory Space and that the Free Market will force them to behave ethically, there is no historical precedent for that being the case. It was, in fact, Federal Regulations (and the emergence of Regulatory Agencies) under FDR that brought an end to some of the most egregious examples of Corporate predation. The National Labor Relations, Social Security, and Fair Labor Standards Acts protected workers, ensured protection for the elderly, disabled, and unemployed, fought against Child Labor, supported the development of Labor Unions, provided the 40-Hour Work Week, established a Federal Minimum Wage, and otherwise made it safer and less oppressive to be a worker in the U.S.

It was Conservative control of Congress (including the presence of many Conservative Democrats) that kept FDR from going even further with his “New Deal” Policies. But, during that era, the Democratic Party was reshaped further into being the Party of workers, racial and ethnic minorities, intellectuals, and others who had previously been traditionally aligned with the Republican Party.

Then we come to the Civil Rights Era, where the party transition reaches the Third Act, and the Southern Strategy (that only those invested in a fictional version of history will claim is a lie).

While men like Bryan and FDR reshaped much of the Democratic Party, there was, unfortunately, still a great deal of the previous century’s delineation present in the American South. The Civil Rights Era brought this to a head, as was always going to happen. The Democratic Party and, to a lesser extent, the Republican Party suffered from a sort of Identity Crisis, wherein members of the respective parties were closer in alignment with their opposition depending on where they happened to be located geographically.

Unlike the previous two Acts of the Three-Act transition of party platforms and demographics, the Southern Strategy was the work of Republicans. It was their effort to obtain support from White Southerners who were still Democrats (though they had little in common with Democrats outside of the dozen or so states involved).

There’s a strange symmetry involved in seeing this from a remove, decades afterward. Where Bryan started the process of pushing the Democratic Party to the Left, it was the Southern Strategy implemented by Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater that shifted the Republican Party to the Right.

One could argue (and I think, accurately so) that this started with the Republican Party taking on the banner of “States’ Rights,” which was previously a Democratic stance dating back to the time before the Civil War. This was in direct opposition to the platform of Abraham Lincoln, whom Republicans still want to claim, while defying virtually every aspect of Lincoln’s stated beliefs. This was part of Barry Goldwater’s “Southern Strategy” which focused on courting Southern Whites and dismissing further efforts to appeal to Black Voters, which included open opposition to the Civil Rights Movement as well as to Kennedy’s platform promoting expanded Unemployment Benefits, increased Social Security and Minimum Wage, sending aid to Economically Distressed regions of the country (including cities with larger minority populations), increasing Housing Availability, and so on. But it was the opposition to Kennedy’s Civil Rights policies that was most important here.

Kennedy fought for Voter Education and the removal of the Poll Tax (in addition to further increasing access to Voting Rights for Blacks). He used Executive Orders to promote Equal Opportunity and Anti-Discrimination for Employment, Housing, and Federal Contracts…becoming a champion of Affirmative Action within the Federal Workforce and beyond. Kennedy also struck a massive blow against Jim Crow by making it illegal, as it concerned Interstate Commerce.

These were all policies that Barry Goldwater and Conservative Republicans opposed. One need look no further than the conflict between Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller and Barry Goldwater leading up to the 1964 Presidential Election to see the massive fissure growing in the Republican Party under Goldwater’s influence.

It’s no wonder he lost to Lyndon B. Johnson, with his Regressive, Pro-Segregationist, and Anti-Civil Rights stances even revolting significant portions of the Republican Party at the time (the remaining Liberal and Progressive elements at least).

It was around that time when Strom Thurmond left the Democratic Party and joined the GOP, where he helped to manage Nixon’s campaign in the South. He was far from the last to do so, followed by notable figures like Jesse Helms and countless numbers of formerly Democratic voters. Many Republicans remained with their Party, believing they could rehabilitate it or that this shift toward Racist and Conservative Values would be temporary…but it was no longer recognizable as the Party of Lincoln by that point.

I’d like to make note of one funny aside. As counterintuitive as it may seem, George Wallace famously refused to leave the Democratic Party like many of his like-minded peers (despite repeatedly being repudiated at the national level by the majority). He did gradually soften his perspectives regarding Segregation and White Supremacy. Whether that was sincere or a performative shift to better continue surviving as he had up to that point is anyone’s guess.

Richard Nixon took Goldwater’s playbook and ran with it far more successfully, and I don’t mean that solely in that he actually won a Presidential Election. He focused his platform on the Coded Language of “States’ Rights” and “Law and Order,” which might sound familiar to voters who have been paying attention since 2015 or so.

The Third Act really doesn’t conclude until Reagan’s campaign in 1980 (and the subsequent eight years he led the Nation down the toilet), where Lee Atwater’s assistance helped to shift the overt Racism to more Dogwhistle-Coded language, focused on Economic Policies that would transparently benefit Whites more than any other group.

And it’s not difficult to discern how I feel about Ronald Reagan and the absolute disaster he was for America and the U.S. Economy, creating devastation from which we’re still picking through the rubble today.

So yes, the Southern Strategy is a real thing, and one that was discussed openly by the Candidates and Political Advisers involved in both its development and implementation. It’s on record, and trying to pretend it’s some Conspiracy Theory is ludicrous, at best, and entirely reliant on people never fact-checking what they want to believe is true. This isn’t like PizzaGate or any of the subsequent QAnon nonsense paraded around by the least credible people on the Political Right in America. There’s actually clear, concise data and historical records that don’t need to be twisted and distorted into the most bizarre shapes, explaining the Southern Strategy and how it was done.

Finally, to the people who want to make these bad faith arguments, all I can say is that you should read a book or two, and take some time to learn about American History…because even our High School Textbooks would have provided sufficient evidence to counter most of these ignorant claims. It leads me to believe that you didn’t retain much during your education, and that’s all the proof we need that the Department of Education should be more involved (rather than less) in establishing nationwide standards that aren’t associated with Standardized Tests, but on different methods of teaching and diverse styles of learning, to ensure that our Natural Born Citizens know at least as much as Naturalized Citizens have to.

I know I could pass a Citizenship Exam, do you? When taking that test, there is no Participation Trophy (and no points awarded) for waving a flag and displaying performative (though ultimately false) patriotism based on revisionist understandings that you didn’t even come up with for yourself.

My Assurance To You

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The current political climate in the United States has forced me to address far more political misinformation than I naively expected. I should have known better, having made it through not only the first Trump Administration, but also the year leading up to that and the interval of relative sanity that followed. The difference now is that I’m working as a journalist and don’t have the luxury of stepping away from the constant barrage of false claims, bad faith arguments, cherry-picked data, and data being tossed around without either context or nuance. On the positive side of things, I happen to enjoy doing research, and I’m good at it.

I’ve recently found myself sharing long, detailed posts on social media (Facebook, in particular, due to the lack of character limits being imposed), and someone suggested that they’d subscribe to it if I had a blog. I suddenly remembered that I do indeed have a website available where I can post these things. I’d been primarily focusing on using this space for reviews of books and audiobooks that I’ve completed, but I haven’t been doing that lately. Since I pay for the privilege of having this space, I might as well use it.

So, here we go.

I don’t expect you to take any of the things I post here at face value. You have no particular reason to trust me over any other entity sharing their political opinions online, and I don’t expect you to place that kind of faith in me. I want you to question what I say, especially if it doesn’t make sense to you. But I will make an assurance to you that I will not be posting something unless I’ve done my due diligence. I have dedicated time and energy to researching whatever the topic might be, using sources that are nonpartisan and unbiased. This is not to say that I am impartial, because (like everyone) I most certainly have my own set of biases in place. In my career as a News Producer, I have to exercise great caution to keep any of my opinions from influencing the news I’m assembling for the gradually diminishing audience for local television newscasts. But I do lean heavily on facts over feelings, even when they’re my own. If the facts and data don’t support something, it won’t be in my newscast unless I’m also supplying the facts and data that counter whatever that thing happens to be.

You’re always encouraged to research these things yourself; the resources are all readily available, and I’ll even happily provide links if they’re requested. I know not everyone has the time available to do so, and most people don’t enjoy research and collating data…at least not as much as I do.

I may mistype something here and there, double up or miss a word altogether, and even have an error in my math (though I typically double and triple check all the numbers). I apologize for any of those errors that may slip through. I’m not a fan of AI, but simple spelling and grammar checking algorithms are in play…however, they are occasionally more incorrect than I am.

As I said, I don’t expect you to trust me implicitly. What I do expect is that you know I care a great deal about being right, even when it doesn’t make me particularly nice. I don’t like being wrong, so I prefer to keep my mouth shut unless I know I’m not.

I’ll gladly admit when I’m wrong about a thing, but I go to great lengths to verify my sources and check my work before I share anything. Not only do I enjoy it, but I’m good at researching things, which is why I’m good at my job (and somewhat okay at my far less lucrative career as a writer).

Sure, I’ll tell someone an opinion is wrong, but that’s just me being an asshole, and we all know that. Of course, some opinions are informed by bad/false data, and I will try to address that…but opinions are subjective, whereas facts are not.

Five of a thing is always more than two of the same thing.

The sky appears mostly blue because molecules in the atmosphere scatter the light from our star in such a way (based on wavelength) that it looks that way.

The Earth is not flat.

We have been to the Moon, and astronauts left things behind on the surface even during the earliest missions.

And so on.

Some things are simply not a matter of opinion, and about which there are not equally valid arguments in opposition.

One thing I ask, beyond your belief that I care too much about being right to waste my time on the long posts without knowing I am, is that you do not use Google’s AI or ChatGPT as a resource. I can’t tell you how many times I happened to glance at what Google AI provided as a response to a search inquiry and felt like it either did not have the slightest capacity to recognize what was being searched for, or that it hallucinated a response that fell far out of line with any legitimate sources. That being said, I will acknowledge that it was closer to accurate more often than it wasn’t…but this is neither horseshoes nor hand grenades.