Senseless

I had literally written an entire post for today, and then ended up deleting the entire thing. Perhaps it was Facebook's Safety Check sending my 30th update of the day as my friends checked in one by one to say that it was ok. Maybe it was Donald Trump's celebratory tweet, or maybe it was the incredibly thoughtful posts that so many of my friends, both within the LGBT community and without have been spreading around. Likely it was a great combination of these things that made me feel that my thoughts were too clinical, and in some ways far too nice.

I am tired of these tragedies. This one hit closer to home for me than anything since 9/11. People are calling this attack senseless. It's a phrase thrown around a lot, and seems so full of sympathy. "This was simply senseless." This shooting was tragic, but it wasn't senseless. In fact for us to say it's senseless belies the truth of the situation. The truth in which too many people in this country have said "this is ok."

This shooting was a targeted attack. It was both an act of terror and an act of hate. This man came into a space that for so many people was one of the only places they felt free and safe to be themselves, and he deliberately attacked them. Over 100 people were attacked by this man. It wasn't a crime of passion, it wasn't in the heat of the moment. It wasn't senseless. He knew exactly what he was doing, and what he'd hoped to accomplish. And he did it well.

The main problem is that in many ways, what he did was ok to a lot of people. Look at the Lt. Governor's tweet about us reaping what we sow. Trump's call for more anti-Islam hate. Hell look a bit closer to home, where the Governor of Florida had signed into law a bill that stripped all adoption rights from LGBT individuals, because they "weren't fit to be parents."

When our elected officials are allowed to do things like this, they are being allowed to set the stage for what just happened. You can't constantly say that someone is less than someone else without also diminishing their basic humanity. I'm sure that Omar (the suspected shooter) didn't feel like he was killing real people. He'd been led to believe in his hate, that they were something else, they were "the enemy." This happened to the LGBT community. But we set the stage for it to happen to a lot of different people. Being different can't be equated with being lesser. One religion isn't right or wrong. One race isn't good or evil.

This Presidential election season has shown that we allow our hatred for things different to run deeply. So few people were able to converse about facts and issues without demonizing the opposition. Sometimes violence occurred. In terrifying instances, it was encouraged. Candidates were not called on just their issues, but who they were. Their sex, their age, their families. It's all the same thing. Anytime we allow someone to be cast as something less than equal, we open the floodgates, and I want to see them slammed shut.

I am overwhelmed at the support and emotional posts that people are spreading, and I hope to see them continue. I hope that as this news cycle ends and this terrible story starts to fade into the background, that we can continue to support ideals of hope and humanity instead of divisiveness and hate. Maybe then we can have less of these acts that we have to claim are so senseless to make ourselves feel better.

State of the... Union? Part I- Black and White

Obama addressed this in his most humble moment in the speech saying that, “It’s one of the few regrets of my presidency – that the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better. There’s no doubt a President with the gifts of Lincoln or Roosevelt might have better bridged the divide, and I guarantee I’ll keep trying to be better so long as I hold this office.” It's important to note that he rightfully doesn't call out the Republicans. He calls out himself, and the nation as a whole. This is important, because it shows the truth of the situation. 

Last night we saw President Obama make his eighth and last State of the Union address. As promised, it was different than most, particularly being notably shorter and focusing more on the big picture than individual policy mandates. This was a strong choice in many ways, especially given that this kind of speech is what got America on board with Obama back in 2004. Now there's been a lot of commentary on the speech, and I have little desire to add my voice to that great ocean. What I'd rather discuss is the issue lightly brought up, but profoundly impacting the night: our political parties.

Before the speech even began, news commentators spent a lot of time talking about the nature of the room: it's potential hostility given the decrease in Democrats over the last several years, and Paul Ryan's role in the night. In his first year as Speaker, he received a lot of critique on his responsibilities. He joked beforehand that he'd worked on his poker face. As the speech began, the room did almost exactly what you expected. The Democrats looked engaged, the Republicans bored. Like most of his fellows, Ryan clapped a total of 4 times that I noticed, all on issues that had nothing to do with actual policy. When the speech wrapped up, the commentators said that these days you pretty much only get applause from the President's party, and that despite the nature of the speech, not much changed in that regard. They also said that questioning and polling showed that if you were an Obama supporter, this was lauded as an incredible speech, and if not it was a complete failure. No real middle ground was found.


The last few years have been some of the least productive congressionally. The reason is simple: our party-line voting has gone off the charts. Whatever divisiveness we worked hard to build up against each other during Bush has become finely honed over the last decade. Compromise is a thing mostly only mentioned as an afterthought when something fails. "Well, they wouldn't compromise...," etc. Reading Facebook political posts show that voters are no different. Lay down almost any issue, and the reactions are always split by party affiliation.

What's most terrifying to me is that even the truth can be changed via party lines. Hilary has great examples of this. She either broke the laws with emails, and lied about Benghazi, or both were hyped up farces. Which you believe will almost exclusively be based upon party lines. The problem is that only one is true. Now I can't claim to be in the field enough to know what actually happened in those scenarios. What I do know is that only one can possibly be true. When political arguments try to change the nature of facts, everyone loses.

Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton were some of the most politically divided individuals in our nations history. And yet, during their time, they were still able to build a nation. The reason wasn't because they could agree on everything- or much of anything for that matter- but because they were able to ultimately find common ground, and compromise. As Obama stated, "...democracy does require basic bonds of trust between its citizens. It doesn’t work if we think the people who disagree with us are all motivated by malice, or that our political opponents are unpatriotic. Democracy grinds to a halt without a willingness to compromise, or when even basic facts are contested, and we listen only to those who agree with us."

Hamilton and Jefferson didn't have Fox News and MSNBC to closet themselves in. They didn't have thousands of sites for them to re-read their own opinions back to them over and over. They had to look at their own sides, and then LOOK AT THEIR OPPONENT'S and see if and when the common ground could be met. Where there could be give and take. It allowed for there to be voices, but for the country to still be... united. They helped build a union that doesn't look much like one today. We have created two separate realities for ourselves. We're all black and white. It's all one way or all the other.

We can't do the hard work of fixing this nation unless we first are able to look at each other's worlds, and realize that they're actually one in the same. There isn't just black and white. There's AT LEAST shades of gray. In all reality there's a whole lot of colors. As they say, the first step is simply recognizing that we've got a problem. Then, maybe we can get about to fixing it.

New Year, New Beginnings?

It's that time of year again. The time when people celebrate the successes and lament over the failures they've had over the last year. Most of us take a moment to think about the year ahead, and all the brightness we hope it will bring.

One general theme that is present as the year ends is summed up by a catch-phrase that Nate has started to use: "New Year, New Beginnings." This is a great one for us, given that the year is ending with much of our lives in upheaval, and the prospect of starting fresh is incredibly appealing. Having many friends in the same position, I feel this gloom-to-optimism sentimentality all around. One has to wonder though, is this actually true? Is the New Year actually a New Beginning?

I am a big fan of retrospective technology these days. Using Timehop, Facebook, and Google, I am regularly reminded of what has come before. For the first time, as I looked back upon this year, I also looked back on this day- December 31st- for the last several years. Given my passion for startups it may be not entirely surprising that out of the last 10 New Year's Eves, I have been unemployed 5 of them. I was single for 7 of them. Each year, no matter what, I made a blog, status, or the like indicating how excited I was for the upcoming year. Each year- like so many others- I started out the year with a bang. New health, more passion, more action. Each year I moved leaps and bounds over where I was just a few days before. Despite this, so many of those years I ended up back in the same position. Looking back, the same thing has happened to so many others.

So back to the question. Are new years, actually new beginnings? If the patterns keep repeating, are we actually starting fresh? Moreover, is it helpful that we fall into the same cycle? Perhaps strangely, I think the answer is "yes."

I strongly believe the slightly annoying truth of the universe is that it proves what you need, not what you want. Humans are inherently creatures of habit, and often it takes times of darkness to move us from the grey our lives have become to the light that they truly can be. I think that we are inherently led towards change and upheaval towards the end of the year. Whether it is our sub-conscious, or a greater power taking a hand, the simple fact of the matter is that we need renewal, and so we get it- the kicking and screaming that may follow be damned.

Like nature- which must go through the winter and cycle of seeming lifelessness- so too must some aspects of our life wither or die in order for us to renew them or another aspect of ourselves. Ended relationships often create a renewed focus on ourselves. We're normally driven to be more healthier and look after ourselves. Many times we also renew the relationships with our friends that we may have neglected. Lost jobs force us to focus on our life and many times we see moments where we may have given up our passions in favor of our paychecks. These traumatic events can't- and shouldn't- happen all the time, but the renewal should.

New Year's Eve falls at a perfect time to create these feelings in us, even when things seem to be going well. We have just come off the holidays, which seem to almost always be an insane mix of happiness/nostalgia, and pain/angst. We get closer to our families and friends, while also realizing everything about them that drives us insane. It's a time of high stress, putting our relationships on a thin line, and our jobs more easily prove how much or little they seem to care about the people running their day-to-day. Is it any wonder that we always end the year looking for something better?

In short, New Year's Eve is a needed reset. It's incredibly valuable to take the time to reset ourselves. Even knowing that we'll likely do the exact same thing next year, and that we'll probably not do all the great things we set out to do starting tomorrow, its value is still absolute. Take the time to look back and see what you want to add to your life. See what you want to throw away. Become excited about the things that will change, but also work to ensure that what was amazing about the year isn't lost. Enjoy the roller coaster you rode in 2015, then be excited for 2016 and the roller coaster you know it will certainly be, new beginnings and all.