We live, simultaneously, in two different worlds. Ultimately, we live in the World of Nature, a world that we did not create and the world upon which all life depends. Most immediately, we inhabit a "human world" that we create ourselves. Because our human world is the result of our own choices and actions, we can say, quite properly, that we live, most immediately, in a “political world.” In this blog, I hope to explore the interaction of these two worlds that we call home.
Gary A. Patton
I was an elected official in Santa Cruz County, California for twenty years, from 1975 to 1995. Now, I am an environmental attorney, practicing law in Santa Cruz County. If you would like to contact me, send me an email at gapatton@mac.com.
That is Megan McArdle, pictured above. She writes for The Washington Post, mostly about economics, finance, and governmental policy. Her column published on January 3, 2025, was headlined as follows: "On the brink of an unimaginable AI future."
McArdle's final comment, in that January 3rd column, reads like this:
I wish I had helpful hints for coping, a tidy message to carry into the new year. But all I have is a haunting question: Is humanity nimble enough to adapt to a technology that might deliver a millennium’s worth of change in the space of a few decades?
The premise of McArdle's "haunting question" is that it is our job to "adapt to technology," as though "technology" were the master, and we the servants of our own creations. In fact, lots of people act that way, so you can see why that has become a premise of McArdle's musings. For me, McArdle's most "haunting" statement in the column is actually this one:
Today, it’s no longer clear how much of ordinary life will survive the next 25 years.
Here is how McArdle follows up on the statement I have just quoted:
I’m talking about AI, of course — but even more, the entire digital world in which we spend an increasing share of our lives. People are struggling with the basic human practice of making friends: In 1990, only 3 percent of Americans reported having no close friends, while 33 percent said they had 10 or more. By 2021, those numbers were about equal: 12 percent said they had no close friends, and 13 percent claimed 10 or more. Now, all kinds of social activities are declining: dating, marriage, having kids, volunteer work, attendance at religious services and, of course, working in an office. I’m not sure what human life looks like if we’re all locked in our homes looking at our phones — and I’m not sure I want to (emphasis added).
The topics that McArdle is highlighting in her column are topics that I have been hitting upon in my blog postings over the past several years. We are, as McArdle notes, moving our entire existence "online." This is, whether we realize it or not, part of an effort to escape the truth that we are, ultimately, born into and responsible to the "World of Nature," or the "World That God Made," as I sometimes call it.
We do inhabit "Two Worlds," and we live most immediately in a world we make ourselves. Only recently, though, has our "technology" given us the impression that we can dispense with the constraints of Nature, and live entirely within a world of our own making. This is simply not true - we are utterly dependent on the World of Nature, a world that we did not create, and that we cannot replace. The sooner we realize that, the better off we'll be, the better our chances will be to provide an opportunity for our children, and theirs, to live at all.
One thing will help - and McArdle put her finger right on it. We all need to "find some friends."
The nature of overdevelopment is that you always find someone else who wants to get out of the tough winters and come to Florida and is willing to take the risk until one storm, two storm, three storms hit, and then they bail.” ... “But there will be someone else that’s willing to buy that piece of property that’s under six feet of water tonight. There will be someone else willing to fall for that dream.
The quote, above, is from an article in the October 10, 2024, edition of The New York Times. The article is titled, "What will happen to the Florida dream?" Gelles is quoting Carl Hiaasen, a best-selling author, whom Gelles identifies as "a Florida legend and longtime chronicler of the state’s grifters and glories."
Let me make an observation. Just because Carl Hiaasen says that there will always be someone else willing to "fall for that dream," that doesn't make it so.
If we can set aside our "dreams" at this point, in the face of the facts, I believe that we will find that the "reality" is that we, collectively, are going to have to figure out how to make sure that our resources are not wasted in fruitless efforts to recapture a dream now past, but are mobilized, instead, to preserve and protect human life, and to preserve our communities, and to safeguard the people.
Given that climatic conditions are now dramatically different from the conditions that pertained at the start of the 21st Century, my suggestion is that we start figuring out how to live in the world that actually exists. "Dreaming" is only good when you're asleep, and haven't we all woken up, by now?
Continuing to expend scarce resources to rebuild communities that will, given the "realities," be wiped out again (one time, two times, three times and more) is not a winning formula.
I do not, personally, like to talk about "Global Warming" under the rubric of "Climate," or "Climate Change." Human-caused "Global Warming," or "Global Heating," is what is actually going on, and what is causing all the climate-related issues we have come to consider as "normal." Nonetheless, and despite my personal linguistic preferences, the illustration above does come from a website that references "Climate." I am using it becauae I think that the image conveys an important message, which can be grasped even by those who do not, actually, read what I am writing about today. My title, therefore, reflects the source of the image which heads up this blog posting. It also references the statement I have included, below, which also uses "Climate" to describe the challenges now facing us.
Today's blog posting is, essentially, to pass on the statement that I have included below. The statement is one that I received by way of an email from an instructor at Cabrillo Community College, addressed to those who are part of a "Sunrise Santa Cruz" listserve, which focuses on the Global Warming challenge to human civilization. The photo, taken in our Nation's Capital, includes two members of Sunrise Santa Cruz, proudly present to argue for dramatic changes in national policy.
What do you think about the idea put forward by that Cabrillo College Instructor (see below)? Do you think that we would be willing to occupy our nation's capital until our elected representatives actually start taking action on our Global Warming Crisis?
I would like to think that we could muster the kind of action described below. See what you think. Next step would be to do some planning for such a direct action - what would be an ongoing "occupation" of the nation's capital until our elected officials start taking actions that they have avoided taking so far. Maybe the occupation could begin on the first day of Summer (June 20, 2025), as things start really heating up - as forests burn and heat deaths grow. How about that?
oooOOOooo
THE PROPOSAL:
A strong presence in DC is key to getting momentum in a good direction. For 14 years of teaching Climate Science now, I've had as my primary recommended action, to launch an occupation of DC 'Occupy DC for Climate" with a rotating army of ~1/2 million people who will serve a ~1 week "tour of duty" with their backpack and total self-containment, before rotating home and another take their place. A large enough group they cannot be jailed, cannot be "disappeared", cannot be hauled off without a half million iPhones capturing the actions of the police or National Guard against its own citizens. Citizens scrupulously obeying non-violence of course. Not a weekend march, but an occupation, with clear specific legislative demands to be enacted before the Occupation disbands. In contraast, One-on-one with your congressperson is NOT effective. Not when Party Unity is the insistence, and so no individual Republican or Democrat will dare break ranks, poke head above fox-hole, with their party, for fear of being "primaried" out next time, or worse. But if ALL are in the Capitol, looking out over a mob of insistent citizens - it has a very different effect, and the threat to their domination over the People is felt as real. They may begin to take more seriously that nagging guilt inside them, of being a coward towards defending the best of Democracy and honorable welfare (emphasis added).
I found about this video from an email sent to members of "Sunrise Santa Cruz," a group based on the UCSC Campus. Sunrise Santa Cruz is concerned about Global Warming - or "Global HEATING," which is the language used in the Sunrise Santa Cruz bulletin that I am providing to you, below:
The spiral temperature graph comes from NASA. This graph only goes to 2022, but 2023 and 2024 have been even more abnormally high, as this chart from the EU agency Copernicus shows (Copernicus may be a vital link, if Trump gets his way and defunds our own National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, NOAA). Scientists -- and those of your professors who keep abreast of the scientific literature -- say they are afraid.
Folks, I've avoided posting too much dark stuff on this site, but -- global heating is the greatest crisis the world has ever faced, and it's going to make worse every other crisis: economic inequality. Resource shortages. Strains on national, local, and family budgets. Infrastructure damage. Immigration pressures. Racism. Xenophobia. Political tensions generally. YOUR LIVES, YOUR FUTURES, and those of folks you love will be -- in many ways already are -- affected by this crisis. As the years pass, if action continues to be deferred, the inequities and the constraints on your futures will only worsen. "Justice delayed is justice denied," MLK Jr famously said, and this is as true for the climate crisis as it is for colonialism, structural racism, land theft, etc.
Meantime, UCSC drags its feet, continuing with business-as-usual. Shifting our energy to renewables? That can wait. Climate education? That can wait. Staffing a long-promised faculty-admin committee to address climate action and environmental justice in operations, teaching, and research? Not at all urgent. Has taken YEARS.
THAT is too often the function of a university: preserve the status quo. Keep a lid on problems. Keep power where power has always been. Tell students they are the change... and then keep change from happening, or dramatically incrementalize it. Don't take my word for it: peer-reviewed research supports this.
If YOU are outraged -- I am, and I daresay you should be -- with this university's postponing climate action, ignoring the impacts of global heating on the most vulnerable populations in this country and far beyond, and continuing to partner with fossil fuel companies (through banking, accepting research money, and letting fossil fuel executives/attorneys onto university boards) -- then come to our meeting....
So far as the climate crisis is concerned, silence is complicity, and our university is complicit -- however well-intentioned and "green" it claims to be (emphasis added).
The message here is pretty clear, and I believe that it is "spot on" with respect to the advice it is giving to students who are attending the University of California, Santa Cruz. Let's all pay attention! This message is also addressed to those of us who are not students, even to those of us old enough to have been born in 1943, when Global Heating was already well underway.
If we would like actually to have a "Happy New Year" this time around - and that New Year has now arrived, of course, almost three whole months ago - we are all going to have to reorient our lives. We are going to have to change our lives to meet the challenges of "Global Heating." These will not be "minor" changes.
How does significant change happen? According to the anthropologist Margaret Mead - and I think she can be cited as an authority - it happens when small groups of concerned people get together and decide to take action to make the changes that need to be made. They stop "observing," and "judging," and start "acting."
Let's keep that in mind, and start acting accordingly!
The person pictured above is Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman. Wikipedia tells us that Kahneman was an Israeli-American psychologist best known for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making. Kahneman died in March 2024, having turned 90 only a couple of weeks earlier.
On March 15, 2025, The Wall Street Journal published an extensive article on Kahneman, authored by Jason Zweig, who was a friend. Zweig's article was titled, "The Last Decision by the World's Leading Thinker on Decisions." Unfortunately, I think that non-subscribers who click the link I have just provided may well find a paywall foiling their efforts to read the article. My apologies if that turns out to be the case. If you can read the article, I think you will find it worthwhile.
Zweig's article is about Kahneman's decision to terminate his own life, at a time when Kahneman was in "reasonably good physical and mental health," and when he had no specific "problems" of any kind. One of Kahneman's principles of good decision-making, apparently, was that a person should always know when to quit. One of his close friends, as a matter of fact, wrote a book called, Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away. That book was really directed to business-related decision-making, but Kahneman applied the principles to his continued existence. The Zweig article postulates that it was an application of Kahneman's "peak-end" rule that onvinced him to terminate his life when he did. In an email sent to various friends, prior to terminating his life, Kahneman said this:
Not surprisingly, some of those who love me would have preferred for me to wait until it is obvious that my life is not worth extending. But I made my decision precisely because I wanted to avoid that state, so it had to appear premature. I am grateful to the few with whom I shared early, who all reluctantly came round to support me.
Zweig's article "makes the case" for the kind of deliberative, rational decision-making process that led Kahneman to terminate his life when he did. As I thought about it, the decision made all kinds of "good sense," but there was a presumption, not mentioned, that was essential in the decision-making process that ultimately led Kahneman to end his life.
To my way of thinking, Kahneman simply assumed that he "owned" his life, outright, and that it belonged to him, and that it therefore made sense for him to deal with his life the same way that he might make a decision about whether or not to buy or sell an important asset.
But what if that assumption is not correct, as we consider our own, personal lives? This is, it seems to me, a profoundly "religious" question. If my life is, in fact, not something that I either "made," or "own" - if my life is a kind of gift to me, a gift that has been given to me "in trust" - then the decision to terminate my life looks quite a bit different to me from the way that Kahneman saw his own life.
I have a close friend who absolutely does see her life in the way that Kahneman saw his, and she applauded the article, which I did give to her to read. As I have already said, I encourage anyone reading this blog posting to find a way to read the article. Think, though, after reading Kahneman's story, whether or not you believe that your life is really "yours," to do with as you wish, or whether you have received this mysterious gift of life "in trust," and that terminating the trust is not a decision that you are, in fact, properly authorized to make.
The news is now in. The Senate has cleared the way for the Continuing Resolution passed by the Republican-dominated House of Representatives, and President Trump is, reportedly, "takihg a victory lap." When I began writing this blog posting, yesterday, the Senate had not yet taken action on the Continuing Resolution. Despite the fact that the Senate has now acted, there may still be some importance in going through this blog posting, despite the finality of what the Senate has done. There is undoubtedly some importance in thinking about "the next three months."
Congress Member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (pictured) went on television to urge Democrats in the Senate to refuse to vote for a Continuing Resolution sent to the Senate by the Republican majority in the House. The Continuing Resolution (CR) would fund governmental operations through September. Procedurally, the Democrats in the Senate had the ability to deny approval, even though the Republicans have a majority in the Senate. A Senate "filibuster" could have killed the Continuing Resolution in the Senate. The "upside" of killing the Continuing Resolution would have been a chance to mitigate or avoid the damage that could be done by the Trump Administration, using the funding and related authority provided by the CR. The "downside" of killing the Continuing Resolution is that such an action by the Democrats might have triggered a full-on government shutdown, with both real and political bad effects.
Various Democrats in the Senate, including Senator Chuck Schumer, who heads the Senate Democratic Caucus, were not willing to shut down the government, and voted for the Continuing Resolution.
A blog I follow, Empty Wheel, discussing this division within the Democratic Party, published the following comment yesterday. This comment, posted before the Senate vote, says that the decision, whichever way it goes, should not be made by way of trying to achieve some sort of partisan political "win." Note, particularly, how this comment begins:
Democracy will be preserved or lost in the next three months. And democracy will be won or lost via a nonpartisan political fight over whether enough Americans want to preserve their way of life to fight back, in a coalition that includes far more than Democrats. You win this fight by treating Trump and Elon as the villain, not by making any one Democrat a hero (or worse still, squandering week after week targeting Democratic leaders while letting Elon go ignored).
And Democrats, on both sides of this fight, are not fighting that fight. I’ve seen none of the most powerful voices — not AOC, not Bernie, not Jasmine Crockett, not Tim Walz, not Pete Buttigieg — put out a video talking about the fight over impoundment, about the stakes of having elected representatives of both parties fight for funding for their own constituents.
Democrats who want a shutdown have done none of the messaging to those already hurt by Trump’s power grab work to make it a short term political win, to explain the tie between right wing capitulation to Trump and services shutting down. Instead, they’ve been fighting among themselves, mobilizing politically active Democrats.
I get the anger with Schumer — though I do think his concerns about the courts need to be taken very seriously.
But until Democrats stop thinking in terms of their own leadership in Congress but instead think exclusively about winning the political fight with people being hurt, not as Democrats, but as people opposed to fascism, they’re going to be looking for power in the wrong places.
Three months? That's what we've got?
We ("the people") - as in "We, the people" - cannot stand by and let our dysfunctional politics result in the sacrifice of our democratic system of self-government. And we can't rely on our political parties to stand in for us. We are going to have to make clear - all of us, Republicans and Democrats alike - that our national commitment to democratic self-government is not a "partisan" affair, and that neither "party" can be trusted to preserve democratic self-government, as a commitment by that "party."
If that three-month prediction is anywhere near true, our personal engagement in how our government operates, and what it does, must come soon. It must come clearly, and it must come soon!
The title on my blog posting today duplicates the title given to a column by Bret Stephens, who writes for The New York Times. Stephens is pictured above.
Stephens' column, his "Democracy Dies In Dumbness" discussion, appeared in The Times on March 12, 2025. Stephens' point? Trump's commitment to the use of tariffs is bad economics, bad politics, and is all wrong.
Trump's commitment to the (sometimes seemingly random) imposition of tariffs is obviously an issue of concern for those who do not quail from being called "conservative." Stephens is definitely on the "conservative" side of the political spectrum, as I have noted before, but he writes for what is thought to be a "liberal" newspaper, The New York Times. Of course, The Wall Strteet Journal (another one of the papers I read daily), is proud of its "conservative" slant on news and comment, and The Journal has lots of "conservative" columnists.
The conservative columnists who write for The Wall Street Journal basically agree with Stephens. Trump's use of tarrifs, as a mainstay of his approach to economics, national politics, and international relations, is an idea whose time came, and then went, back in the 1930s. Again, this is a perspective that is coming from "conservative" columnists. Here's a listing from the March 12, 2025, edition of The Wall Street Journal:
I completely concur with the various statements I have just mentioned, and have linked to. Let me say, though, that I do not believe that our current president's use of tariffs as a tool of policy is based on any genuine belief that "tariffs are "beautiful."
Trump likes tariffs because they are a tool that he can be used to "bully" others.
Trump's a bully, first and foremost. That is Trump's modus operandi, and let's not forget it. Trump's not "brilliant." He's just a bully!
As of the time I am posting this, the United States Government has a website that is intended to help those who are being subjected to the kind of bullying tactics that the president has elevated into governmental policy. Query how long that site will still stay up on the internet. Click the following link to see if it's still there: StopBullying.gov.
That website (an official government website), says we can stop bullying by being an "Upstander."
We should all try that out, don't you think? All of us! And I DO include members of Congress!
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s Department of Government Efficiency is flying higher than a meme stock. Like the SpaceX platform catching a Falcon rocket on re-entry, the two men have captured a weary country’s imagination with a vision for an institution that could do the seemingly impossible: hold federal agencies accountable for failure, reduce profligate spending and promote productive reform.
In theory, such an institution already exists. It’s called the U.S. Congress, and the founders envisioned it as the dominant branch of government. In practice, however, many Americans don’t recognize this role for Congress because the legislative branch has systematically surrendered its constitutional authority to the executive and judiciary, especially when it comes to spending.
Understanding that Ramaswamy is no longer part of the team, what do I think about The Journal's assertion? Well, my response to what The Journal says is both "Yes," and "No."
With respect to the "Yes," I completely agree with The Journal's observation about the power of the Congress, and about the leading role that the Congress is supposed to play in our government. I also agree that the Congress has systematically surrendered its powers. This is not a "news flash" if you understand what the United States Constitution provides.
It is no accident that Article I of the Constitution, outlining the role and responsibilities of the Congress, comes first. It is no accident that the Constitution assigns its directives to the President in Article II. Congress comes first, in our system of government. Congress MAKES the laws (the rules that determine what our government is authorized and directed to do, and the rules that state what the government is not permitted to do). The President's role, according to the Constitution, is to "execute" the laws made by the Congress, and, in fact, this is, essentially, the basic and main role of the President. The President is to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed" [Article II, Section 3].
So, definitely "Yes," as to the statement about how our government is supposed to work. "No" is the response, however, to any suggestion that Musk (Ramaswamy having now dropped out) is trying to advance this proposition. Musk's agenda, the agenda of the so-called "DOGE" (Department of Governmental Efficiency), which is not really a "department" of the government at all, is to do the very opposite of what the Constitution provides. In fact, Trump's DOGE dodge is a completely unauthorized effort initiated by the president, without Congressional approval, to eliminate the power of the Congress, placing virtually all powers in the hands of the president, and turning our democratic self-government into an autocracy.
That this is the objective that Musk is pursuing was evident even before our president actually became the president. As you may or may not remember, shortly after the 2024 election, before Trump took office, Elon Musk started telling the Congress what to do. His idea, in case you have forgotten, was that the Congress should stop paying the nation's bills, and that government employees should simply go home and wait (without pay) for January 20th, after which, of course, he and Ramaswamy, with help from the incoming president, would then initiate the actions needed to fire almost all of them.
If we would like to reinvigorate the United States government - on the basis of what the Constitution provides, which The Journal article seems to indicate is what it thinks would be a good idea - we will have to take action both "short-term," and "long-term."
Hopefully, the "long-term" could come promptly, but in the "long-term" Congress will have to begin asserting itself, when the president seeks to capture sole control over essential governmental powers that the Constitution entrusts to Congress. Our current president is fond of the expression, "I alone can fix it." This is a prescription for autocracy (and "oligarchy," too, since the role now being played by Musk indicates that president Trump is willing to empower the billionaires of his acquaintance by allowing them to share - or perhaps even usurp - his claimed, "I alone can do it" powers).
So, how do we try to sustain our democratic self-government in the "short term"? Again, Congress must assert itself, and insist upon its own powers. That is the basic prescription - and that is exactly what happened when Musk started giving orders, prior to Trump actually taking office. Those were orders that the Congress just flat out ignored. Given the current composition of Congress, controlled by the Republican Party, that means that the suggestions of Congress Member Tom Suozzi should be taken seriously.
Suozzi is a "conservative" Congress Member, from New York State, but he is a Democrat. Suozzi says that the Congress needs to "try something different to deal with Trump." His suggestion is that the Democrats should work positively with the Republicans in Congress, to insure that Congress does not abandon its powers to the president. That is what Suozzi means when he calls for "trying something different" with respect to Trump - not obdurate, total opposition to everything, but efforts to work with colleagues in the Congress to accomplish something that reflects the kind of compromise that can accommodate at least some of which Republican Party Members of Congress are trying to achieve.
That is what happened when the Congress stymied Musk's assertion that he could tell Congress what to do. We need the Congress to be functional, and insist upon its primacy in our governmental system. It is simply not true that by electing Donald Trump, the voters were telling Congress to do whatever Trump, as president, commands. If Congress can't be made to work, given its current composition, Trump, as president usurps its powers. So, in the "short-term," Democrats in Congress, working as best they can with the Republicans in Congress, needs to insure that what a majority of the Congress wants to do takes primacy over deference to the president.
But what about a possible "long-term" solution? In the "long-term," the people of the United States (you and me) need to start controlling Congress. To do that, ordinary citizens are going to have to reallocate their time, and spend a lot of the time that they now use watching Netflix, or posting on social media, or otherwise ignoring the responsibilities of self-government, and must work, instead, with their friends and neighbors at the local level, so that each Member of Congress is working under the threat of that Member's removal from Congress at the next election, should that Congress Member not do what the majority of the voters in that Congress Member's district wants that Congress Member to do.
In other words, "democratic" government means "representative" government, a government in which our elected officials truly do "represent" what the people who voted for them want. If you don't believe that is possible then you can just forget about what is currently called "democracy." I do not take a despairing view. My personal experience is that representative government does work, but only when those being represented (all of us) are willing to put the time in to make sure that our representatives actually do vote the way we want them to. If we are not willing or able to take responsibility for making sure that's true, then say "goodbye" to democratic self-government.
Running our government is exciting work. It's fun! Take it from me, I know. I have personal experience.
If we have slacked off in recent years (and we have), we can reassert ourselves - and we should. To give you a musical reference, click on the video link, below, and listen to Waxahatchee (formerly known as Katie Crutchfield) sing "right back to it." Where self-government is at issue, getting "Right Back To It" is exactly the prescription that we actually need.
All I am asking is that we reignite our love affair with democratic self-government.
Love our government? Yeah!
Love our government so much that we just can't keep our hands off it? Yeah! Really!
Lately, political writers have called attention to the tendency of billionaire Elon Musk to refer to his political opponents as “NPCs.” This term comes from the gaming world and refers to a nonplayer character, a character that follows a scripted path and cannot think or act on its own, and is there only to populate the world of the game for the actual players. Amanda Marcotte of Salon notes that Musk calls anyone with whom he disagrees an NPC, but that construction comes from the larger environment of the online right wing, whose members refer to anyone who opposes Donald Trump’s agenda as an NPC.
In The Cross Section, Paul Waldman notes that the point of the right wing’s dehumanization of political opponents is to dismiss the pain they are inflicting. If the majority of Americans are not really human, toying with their lives isn’t important—maybe it’s even LOL funny to pretend to take a chainsaw to the programs on which people depend. “We are ants, or even less,” Waldman writes, “bits of programming to be moved around at Elon’s whim. Only he and the people who aspire to be like him are actors, decision-makers, molding the world to conform to their bold interplanetary vision (links added to original).”
Here is my thought.
What is most important is not what Elon Musk, or any other spokesperson for the "right wing," says about you. That's just name-calling. What is most important is what you, yourself, think about your power, competence, and "agency."
Is there anyone reading this blog posting who might say that there is "some truth" in the idea that we are, actually, all NPCs? In fact, we might well argue, our government has gotten beyond our control. We might not like to admit it, but when it comes to governmental decision-making, many of us might well conclude that there are very few individuals, indeed, who are "Players." We tend to be "observers," not "actors." There might be quite a few reading this blog posting who would "hate to admit it," but who would stipulate to the fact that what they do, or think, or care about individually, just isn't all that important or impactful, in terms of insuring that things go the way they think they should, or the way they want them to, in the larger world that we all inhabit together.
RGPs, those "Real Game Players," are quite the opposite. Their actions make a difference. Even their thoughts make a difference; what they say makes a difference.
What is sometimes called the "American experiment" in self-government is premised on the idea that "we, the people," are in charge of the government, that we are all, in fact, real "Players," and that our actions can and will determine the future.
Abraham Lincoln urged us all, in his Gettysburg Address, to ensure that a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people" would not perish from the earth. It is the "by the people" part of that statement that is the most important, as we think about whether we should be classified as NPCs or RGPs.
Of course, you can't be a RGP unless you actually spend some slice of your time actually working on impacting the government, and the government decisions that affect us all. There isn't any "self-government" if we are not involved in government ourselves.
You probably know the sonnet by Emma Lazarus, "The New Colossus." If you don't know that poem in its entirety, you may, at least, recall the following and famous lines, which are inscribed on a bronze plaque, which was placed at the base of the Statue of Liberty in 1903:
Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
It has been our experience, for more than one hundred years (and actually quite a bit more, I think), that the United States, as "a nation of immigrants," has benefitted immensely from immigration. This is, really, what The Statue of Liberty, that enduring emblem of our nation, symbolizes.
"When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. […] They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” This quote from Donald Trump has become emblematic of the President’s attitude towards immigrants. Since the 2016 campaign trail, Trump has spread harmful narratives about Latinx immigrants, and his words have tangible impacts on local communities.... President Trump characterizes Latinx immigrants as a dangerous out-group to gain political power.
The president's words - "They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists..." - have not, at least not yet, been inscribed anywhere, but the president's denunciation of immigration is restated frequently, and it's hard to escape the memory of the message about immigrants with which he began his 2016 campaign, and which are featured in the quotation that I have included above.
In the Emma Lazarus sonnet (meant to reflect the realities that the nation has actually experienced), America has invited immigrants to come. The nation has opened its "golden door" to them, welcoming them here, with the result being that our nation has become greater - and richer - because of those formerly homeless, and "tempest-tost," and impoverished immigrants. Those "wretched" immigrants, welcomed here, have ended up contributing greatly to American wealth and success.
On February 28th, the president outlined a new approach to immigration. He has proposed a "Gold Card" visa, an invitation to those immigrants who are able and willing to pay $5,000,000 for the privilege of gaining entry to the United States.
Whom should we invite? To whom should we send an invitation to come to America? Should we continue to follow the advice of Emma Lazarus? Or, is Donald Trump, perhaps, the wiser head? Should only the already wealthy be welcomed here?
This question is now placed before us. Should we repudiate those who come here with nothing, hoping not only to enrich themselves, but to enrich this nation, too?
We have been asked to repudiate our historic welcome. Our current president says, "We Welcome The Rich! And only them!"
Back in October of last year, The Wall Street Journal reviewed "Three Books About Life on Earth and Elsewhere." Click that link to read The Journal's book review (The Journal's paywall permitting, of course).
It may be perfectly alright to contemplate the possibility that life will be found elsewhere in the universe. However, until demonstrated otherwise, there actually isn't any doubt that Earth is "exceptional."
Last year, I had a life-changing experience at 90 years old. I went to space, after decades of playing an iconic science-fiction character who was exploring the universe. I thought I would experience a deep connection with the immensity around us, a deep call for endless exploration.
I was absolutely wrong. The strongest feeling, that dominated everything else by far, was the deepest grief that I had ever experienced.
I understood, in the clearest possible way, that we were living on a tiny oasis of life, surrounded by an immensity of death. I didn’t see infinite possibilities of worlds to explore, of adventures to have, or living creatures to connect with. I saw the deepest darkness I could have ever imagined, contrasting so starkly with the welcoming warmth of our nurturing home planet.
This was an immensely powerful awakening for me. It filled me with sadness. I realized that we had spent decades, if not centuries, being obsessed with looking away, with looking outside. I did my share in popularizing the idea that space was the final frontier. But I had to get to space to understand that Earth is and will stay our only home. And that we have been ravaging it, relentlessly, making it uninhabitable (emphasis added).
William Shatner, Actor
We are getting ever deeper into what was, only a couple of months ago, a brand New Year. Can we make the year that is now upon us a year in which we will turn all of our attention, and all of our energies, to preserving and protecting the world that has preserved and protected us, and upon which all of our lives depend?
As I have revealed before, I have amalgamated a listing of what I have been calling, "Memorial Songs." These songs remind me, as I listen, of how wonderful it has been to have been alive. That's a good kind of reminder to have on a Sunday, when our minds might turn, even just briefly, to matters celestial. Please feel free to click the link I have provided, and listen to those "Memorial Songs" yourself.
One of my favorite songs on the list - they are almost all by Bob Dylan - is "Shooting Star," written in 1989. You can click this link to listen. "Shooting Star" is a nice song for a Sunday, since it does raise those "memorial" kind of questions, the kind of questions, I think, that we all ask ourselves from time to time - or that we should ask ourselves, anyway:
The rather "heroic" image, above, pictures Andy Kessler, who writes opinion columns for The Wall Street Journal. Kessler's Wikipedia write-up tells us that Kessler is "an American businessman, investor, and author," who has "worked for about 20 years as a research analyst, investment banker, venture capitalist, and hedge fund manager."
Kessler's "Inside View" column, published in the December 23, 2024, edition of The Journal, was titled, "Division Isn't So Bad." In fact, according to Kessler, "this country is strong precisely because we don't all think the same way."
In general, I am not much of a fan of what I read on The Wall Street Journal's editorial pages. However, I agree with Kessler's comment that our political divisions are "not so bad." I will even go so far as to say that divided opinion within the body politic is a "feature not a bug."
If we are willing to admit that no one, actually, is consistently, and always "right," and if we agree that none of us can, always, know the true dimensions of the challenges we face, nor the right way to react to them, then we should, as Kessler suggests, applaud division. "Division" gives us a reason to debate and discuss the issues - and then, at least sometimes - to find a satisfactory resolution to our differences.
Hannah Arendt, my favorite political thinker, celebrates "plurality." If you'll click this link, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy will provide you with a brief summary of her thinking on that topic. Arendt is using different language, but her celebration of "plurality" is another argument that "division is not so bad."
Both Voltaire and those who drew up our United States Constitution also seem to agree with the proposition that "division is not so bad." While its provenance is contested, Voltaire is generally given credit for the following statement: "While I wholly disapprove of what you say, I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Hopefully, our own First Amendment is so well-known that there is actually no need to elaborate upon its absolute defense of the right to free speech - in other words, the right to disagree about virtually everything.
If it is true that "division is not so bad," then what is bad?
What is bad is how easily our politics can slip into a denunciation of those with whom we disagree, and how quickly we can then come to believe that there aren't "two sides" to the issues (or even more) and that the only side we need to recognize is our own side!
Our ability to believe that division is "not so bad" depends upon our sense that we, individually, are just as powerful as those on the other side of the division. If we don't have that sense, I am suggesting that we need to do something to restore ourselves to a position in which we do not doubt our power to advance our position against those with a different one. Once we are in such a position, and once we can reliably assume that our positions have a reasonable chance of prevailing, through public debate and discussion - through our "politics" - then we can really be confident in applauding Kessler's contention: "Division is not so bad."
