When You Say You Are Voting Based on the Economy, What You Are Really Saying Is…

Saying you are voting on Tuesday based on your concerns about the economy is really really a way to avoid saying you are voting for other issues that you might not want to admit because voting for Republicans is not going to improve the economy. 

How could you vote for people who condone political violence? The attack on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband was an attempted political assassination. Countless Republicans have made light of it, spread absurd conspiracy theories, and even openly celebrated it. This is more than a lack of empathy, it is an acknowledgment that they approve of political violence. Since January 6th, that should not be a surprise. 

Aren’t they supposed to be the anti-crime party? They have done nothing to ensure the safety of kids in classrooms? They have prevented legislation that would stop dangerous people from getting guns and defended people who used them to kill. They protect people who kill as long as they didn’t like those who were murdered. Violence is never good for the economy. 

The real reasons for our economic issues are more complex than our current political leaders. One major driver is the continuing effect of the COVID pandemic. Did the Republicans handle COVID well while they were in office? How much of our current situation is due to their choices while in power? 

Another major economic issue is the current war in Ukraine. The war’s effects on energy and food prices are being felt all over the world – but most powerful in Ukraine itself. Republicans have made it quite clear that they think we are doing too much for Ukraine and want to reduce our support. We know that some Republicans have a crush on Putin. Would further war and bloodshed in Ukraine make everyone safer and more prosperous? 

How could people vote for candidates who are unqualified for the positions for which they are running? Candidates who can’t answer questions, recently moved into the areas they are running to represent, and have problematic and disturbing pasts will not make strong leaders. Please judge a party by the company it keeps. If these weak candidates are elected, will they have the skill to move the economy forward – or move anything forward? 

What about the hate speech, racism, Anti-Semitism, phobias of all kinds, white nationalism, and religious extremism? When asked to wear a mask to protect their neighbors, they cried, “my body, my choice,” and now they will not extend that “right” to women. A race-based theocracy will not create more jobs or reduce costs, although it might make the trains run on time. 

And will these candidates concede if they lose? What about their allies who are now running some of these elections? Many still cling to the lie that the last election was not legitimate, even though the same ballots they contest for one office, they accept for others! This kind of election denial could create dangerous chaos! 

Of course, voting based on personal (selfish) economic interests is an American tradition: “It’s the economy, stupid.” Nope, let’s rephrase that, in 2022, it is stupid to believe that people are really doing that. They are condoning and supporting a party that continues to threaten our economy, democracy, and way of life.  However you read the economic tea leaves, it is clear that those who say that the economy is their main issue are really supporting a dangerous agenda: it will worsen the economy –and it will diminish and degrade America.   

Reading for Treasure: Consider These Articles and VOTE!

Reading for Treasure is my list of articles that are worth your attention. Click here for an introduction!

Your vote is critically important. The polls are probably wrong. Here are some articles to think about as we move toward the November elections. I present them without introduction or commentary: 

Mother Jones (Video): “If Republicans Retake Congress in November, Here's What Their Agenda Will Look Like” 

NewsOne: “2022 Midterm Elections: Filibuster, Senate Control And The Importance Of Black Voters” 

Reuters: “Pro-Trump conspiracy theorists hound election officials out of office”

Financial Times: “Ukrainian officials ‘shocked’ as Republicans threaten tougher line on aid” 

The Guardian: “Republicans aim to pass national ‘don’t say gay’ law”

The Bulwark: “Attack Ads Are Darkening the Skin Tone of Black Candidates”

Atlantic:  “We need to take away children” 

New York Times: “Voters See Democracy at Risk, but Saving It Isn’t Priority” 

Wired: “The US Needs to Recognize Intimate Privacy as a Civil Right” 

The Washington Post: “Trump charged Secret Service ‘exorbitant’ rates at his hotels, records show”

CNN: “What could happen if an election denier is running elections” 

NBC: “Johnson's campaign is paying the law firm of a Trump attorney allegedly connected to Jan. 6 fake elector plot”

NPR: “Borrowers who were cut out of student loan relief describe 'a gut punch'”

CNN: “'I'm my own man': Colorado Republican Senate nominee fires back at Trump” 

Scientific American: “U.S. Lost 26 Years Worth of Progress on Life Expectancy” 

I am currently reading Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach by Kelly Robson

The Kind of Person You Are!

You are a good person. You are a person of integrity and strong beliefs. You are a person who is thoughtful and emotionally aware. Sometimes, you get angry. Sometimes, you are disappointed and feel like this country is heading down the wrong path. 

You are not racist, sexist, or any of those things. You work hard to be fair and keep an open mind. You admit that you sometimes judge people, but that is a normal human response. What counts is how you judge - not based on skin color or wealth or religion or any of those things, but on how people function as human beings. 

While you are subject to the whims and impulses that flesh is heir to, you consider yourself logical. You may not be Mr. Spock, but you are reasonable and rational. You consider a situation carefully and look closely at the details, facts, and history before rendering an opinion. 

You are not afraid to admit when you are wrong or to change your point of view when you learn new things. Like many of us, you dislike changing your opinion, but you see it as a sign of growth. 

You see disagreement as a way to discover more about other people and enhance your understanding of them and the world. Such conversations are opportunities to deepen both the relationships and your own perceptions. 

Fairness and consistency are critical. While there are rules that are wrong, for the most part, rules should be obeyed and those who do not obey them should face consequences. Although there are people who feel like they are so special that they should have the right to walk over everyone and do whatever they want, rules should apply to everyone the same way. You have worked hard to be an evenhanded person when dispensing this kind of justice and, although sometimes begrudgingly, accepted it when it was your turn to receive it. 

The only way any of us moves forward is to help one another. You believe in charity, giving, and being your brothers’ and sisters’ helper. People have reached out to you when you needed it and you do your best to pay that forward. 

You stand by your promises. You do what you say you are going to do. You have little respect for those who talk a lot and do very little. You believe that there are obligations that we must fulfill, whether it is to our family, community, nation, or the world at large. Sometimes, you have had to remind people that everything is not just about them! 

Your sense of yourself is not bound up in any one particular thing. You have strong philosophical beliefs, but you are more than that. Your family connections are very important, but that is not all there is to you. You are complex. 

You do not respect people who take advantage of the weak, old, or vulnerable. You will not be scared into decisions or let fear drive your choices. You do not like cheaters, spoiled sports, or bullies. Those who work hard should reap the fruits of their labor while the lazy, entitled, and selfish should not be allowed to profit from others’ efforts. 

You work hard to be honest with yourself. Sometimes, you excuse bad behavior of those you like or are critical of good acts of those you find objectionable, but even as you do this, you realize it is not consistent with how you see yourself. You would not want to be judged that way. 

You are practical. You rarely engage in flights of fancy, except perhaps as a mental exercise or an occasional lark. You believe that the simplest and most straightforward explanations are usually correct and when people have to twist themselves into pretzels to justify or explain something, you are suspicious. 

Sometimes you have trouble trusting people. You want to believe that people are naturally good, but that doesn’t fit with all you have experienced. You agree that most people want to be good, but don’t always make good choices for a variety of reasons. You can forgive some of them, sometimes. Forgiving is one thing, but it doesn’t mean that you allow yourself to be duped or conned. 

When you were younger, you would sometimes say and do things to get the approval of your friends or authorities, even when you did not agree with them. You recognize that this is also a normal and human thing to do, but as an adult, you do not conform with the majority when it is not authentic. You are willing to champion an unpopular view when you believe in it and you resist yielding to social pressure.

You would make a good judge. You weigh facts before making decisions. You are slow to anger. You try to see things from the other person’s point of view. The world is not just good and bad, near and far, rich and poor, but is far more complicated. 

When your heroes and leaders reveal their feet of clay, you are disappointed, but not surprised.  You feel uplifted when they make things better, and like a disheartened parent, are saddened when they behave badly. But they, like all of us, should face the consequences of our choices. You strongly believe that no one is above that. No one has the right to get away with misdeeds. No one, you insist, is above the law. That would be unfair and would cause or society to collapse. 

Of course, there are people who think the rules do not apply to them. You have encountered these people too frequently. You pity them as much as dislike them. While it isn’t usually your job to remind them that they are human, too, you have taken perhaps too much pleasure in knocking some of them down a peg or two. 

You vote. You pay your taxes. You obey the laws. You go to the courthouse when you are called for jury duty. You are a good citizen. You believe that we all should support our communities. 

You are charitable. You give to the poor, sick, and those who have had bad luck. You hope you will never be on the other side of that, but you hope that, if you were ever in need, people would help you. 

You could never support a candidate for office who you knew to be cheating, lying, or hurting people. That would not be consistent with who you are. You would never give your backing to someone who was selfish, spoiled, or hateful.  You would not turn your back to all you are and all you hold dear to follow a seductive smooth-talking charlatan! You are not a sucker or a hypocrite! You wouldn’t be able to face yourself in the mirror if you did. 

Watch Out Parents: Big Conservative is Not Just Coming After Teachers and Librarians

We need to talk about how you are interacting with your children at home. What are you teaching them? How are you modeling well? Are you making the right choices - the best choices? Would your legislators and political leaders approve of how you are raising your children? Do you talk about CRT? Are you too accepting of gender non-conforming behavior or ideas? Would you allow your child to use they/them pronouns? If so, Big Conservative might knock on your door for this kind of thought crime. 

We hear about parents’ choice. That is the rationale for a slew of censorship across more than a dozen states. However, which parents? What choices? For the most part, these book-banning (and sometimes burning) movements are aligned with a far wrong wing political agenda. They do not reflect ALL parents’ choices, just a specific conservative religious and usually white one.  

So this isn’t just about parents having a say in what their kids read in school. This is about ideologues having control over your children’s educations. Teachers and librarians were the first to experience this intense scrutiny and vitriol, but this movement will not end with them. 

You may think, what I teach my children in my own home is not anyone’s business but my own – and you would be right as long as what you were doing was aligned with Big Conservative. But if it is not, your behavior might be labeled child abuse and you as a negligent parent. 

Several states banned children who identify as a gender other than the one assigned at birth from receiving any interventions. They criminalized the act of assisting these children from even exploring anything beyond their gender at birth – even if their parents did it! 

So if you are looking at teachers and librarians and thinking, just pick less controversial texts, just make your lessons about the subject area and not about social issues, know this: that same message will be tailored for parents who don’t agree with the censors and extremists. 

Let’s go one step further: How will these wrong wing censors know you are veering away from their prescribed curriculum? Your children will tell them. The idea that children would “turn in” their parents was common in totalitarian and fascist regimes. Whether it was the Hitler Youth, the Soviet Union’s Young Pioneers, or Communist Youth reading Mao’s Little Red Book, this technique has deep roots in authoritarian governments’ control of parenting. 

So as you are confronting those who don’t want their kids to “feel uncomfortable” in school because topics deal with parts of our past that are problematic, this is just the first battle in a larger war for who decides what your child learns – in and out of school. 

As with abortion, immigration, and elections, choice just means sticking with Big Conservative’s point of view; freedom means the right to express opinions that echo specific politicians in a specific party. They are not advocating for freedom and choice, they are creating vehicles to coerce and control – and their reach will not end at the schoolhouse – if we don’t stop it, it is going to ram through the door and enter your house! 

The Tone of Gesture

Did anyone in your family watch the old PBS children’s show, Barney- the show with the purple dinosaur who said he loved you and you loved him? Whatever you thought of the costumed title character, few people fondly remember the children on the show. There is a good reason. They were horrible over-actors. Their behavior was exaggerated and overblown. If my children brought a friend home who acted like these children, I would have been extremely concerned about their wellbeing. When I taught theatre class, I used these Barney children as examples of overacting. 

However, in the past three years, we have all become overacting Barney kids. When I am on Zoom, I find that I am often moving my arms and head to complement my words. When I speak, I gesture even more than I normally do (and I am a very expressive and physical speaker). I use Zoom backgrounds to communicate as well. Similarly, when I am wearing a mask, I compensate with the rest of my body. I work hard to “smize” and use my eyes to convey my emotions. Again, I find that I am using broad and exaggerated arm and hand gestures. My entire body tries to complement my eyes and communicate more than the semantic definitions of my words but their emotional meaning. 

While the pandemic has not turned many of us into over-emoters like those kids on children’s television, it has also given us insight into their motives. I have been placed in this tiny box and all you can see is a piece of me. Half my face is covered and you don’t know if I am being sarcastic, simple, or mean. So I need to supplement my language with large gestures. 

Our tone of voice often communicates a layer of meaning that our words alone cannot express. A mask muffles and obscures this. Zoom shrinks this. Thus, we need physical gestures to make sure that the most important meanings, the ones that are more powerful than mere denotation, to make it through these COVID-created barriers. 

Has this turned us all into cheerleaders, spelling out each affirmation and encouragement? Not quite. Has this made us more aware of the limits of language and how easy it is to misinterpret and confuse? Certainly! 

I’ll bet that most of us aren’t even aware that we are compensating this way. Like players of Charades, we are acting out the words and ideas in order to leap the linguistic, technological, and safety barriers. We want to be understood – really understood – in a way we took for granted just a few years ago.  

Bring understood means clearly communicating through not only what we say, but also how we say it. We all know that people can say things that are complementary and positive if we read them, but can be brutal and cruel when spoken in a certain tone of voice. The reverse is also true. Some of us struggle to make sense of this kind of sarcasm. Gestures, facial expressions, and vocal tone are the keys to communicating it. 

Communication that is only typed text lacks this context. There is no gesture or voice to a text or email. We add emojis or initialized shortcuts to indicate that we are just kidding (JK), rolling on the floor laughing (ROFL), or shaking our head (SMH). We instinctively know that our written words inadequately communicate important parts of our message and our reader needs help to comprehend all the levels of our meaning. 

This is also why we can find emails or text messages so problematic when the sender fails to recognize their tone and context. People take offense at texts that the sender thought were merely informational. Emails make the recipient feel horrible when the sender thought they were just being factual. 

How we communicate is at the very least as important as what we communicate –probably it is more important. We cannot help but embed our emotions as we connect with each other, even if it is accidentally. 

I do not like wearing a mask. I prefer to share a room IRL (in real life) with people rather than be placed in a Brady Bunch box on the screen. However, over the past three years, COVID has forced us to be more thoughtful about our communication, hone our nonverbal skills, and heightened our awareness of the meanings behind the words: the tone created by the intersection of our words and the physical gestures that accompany them. 

Reading for Treasure: Banned, Burnt, Beautiful Books

Reading for Treasure is my list of articles that are worth your attention. Click here for an introduction!

Too many people want to control the books that are taught in classrooms or available in libraries. I saw a meme that read, “If you’re afraid that books might change someone’s thinking, you’re not afraid of books, you’re afraid of thinking.” While these challenges may also be attempts to prevent children from learning about specific issues, that is not their main objective. There is no doubt that the rise in book challenges and restrictive legislation is not about learning, protecting children, age-appropriate texts, or making kids uncomfortable. Children can find these books and ideas so easily. Banning books is political, manipulative, and a dangerous attack on our open and free society. Here are some articles about the issue, the politics, and the books. 

What do we know about banning books? Here is a list of articles from Literary Hub to help you learn about the history, purpose, and politics of trying to censor literature. “Recommended Reading for Banned Book Week.” 

In a second Literary Hub article, Deborah Applebaum explores ways that teachers can approach controversial or challenged texts in the classroom and make the questions about them part of the lesson: “Teaching Literature in the New Culture Wars: Some Alternative Approaches.” 

In this fascinating NewsOne Op-ed, Helen Kapstein compares the techniques and purposes of censorship in Aparthaid South Africa to what is happening in the United States now: “When It Comes To Book Bans America Could Learn From Apartheid South Africa.”

Clarence Page, of the Chicago Tribune, writes about his love of banned books: “Here’s why I celebrate banned books.”

Are you surprised I have a third article from Literary Hub on this topic? This spot-on article addressed a key issue: “The Purpose of Book Bans Is to Make Queer Kids Scared.” There is no doubt that challenges to books that deal with BIOPOC and LGBTQ+ topics are a form of bullying. It is designed to further marginalize these communities.

A high school student in California, Sungjoo Yoon, writes about how her liberal community banned books and why she opposed it in this New York Times Op-ed: “I’m a High School Junior. Let’s Talk About ‘Huckleberry Finn’ and ‘Mockingbird.’”

Finally, not exactly banned books, but books that explore the restrictions on woman’s reproductive rights. This article from CNN has some great titles on it, “6 books beyond 'The Handmaid's Tale' that explore the loss of reproductive rights.”

I am currently reading War for the Oaks by Emma Bull. 

Cherishing the Science Fiction Fan Community at Chicon 8: The 80th World Science Fiction Convention

Over Labor Day weekend, I attended the Eightieth Annual World Science Fiction Convention at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Chicago: Chicon 8. It was a spectacular and enormous celebration of the genres I adore. It also celebrated the community of fans who have been gathering this way for decades. While there was a world convention in D.C. last December and a virtual one the year before that, this was the first time this number of fans had gathered in person at this scale. I am so grateful to have been able to be a part of it – and it has made me even more appreciative of the people who did the real heavy lifting that made it happen. 

I have been to many fan conventions. If you want to explore the difference between a fan con and something like Comic Con, click here. However, This was my first time being closely involved in the planning of a convention like this. I was involved for more than three years supporting those who were doing the real work of setting up this convention. Then, about a year ago, I got a job working on the con.   

My role for this convention was to reach out to local people, groups, businesses, and others and help them get involved in the convention. I talked to libraries, museums, bookstores, game stores, fan groups, meet-up groups, businesses, magazines, other conventions, media, and anything other organization I could think of. I asked them to be presenters, bring exhibits, participate in our art show, place ads in our program book, or be involved in many other ways. This was a local special opportunity; it has been a decade since the World Convention has been in Chicago and no one knows when it will return.

I sent out reminders as various deadlines approached, “Only one week more to be a program participant, two weeks to sign up for a fan table” – and so on. This meant that, as the convention drew near, my workload decreased as these dates passed. 

So before the convention, I responded to an email calling for volunteer help. I ended up working in the program operations office and assisting with the masquerade. 

It was wonderful! Whether I was helping put up signs, letting panelists know they need to finish in a few minutes, answering questions, directing people to rooms, or shepherding costume contestants through the stages of being judged, there was one clear common detonator: shared joy. 

On Sunday night, I attended the Hugo Awards presentation. It is like the Academy Awards – only geeky! As I listened to the winners’ acceptance speeches, I gloried in the company of this remarkable fan community. We bond over ideas, words, concepts, and stories. We are interested in how science and the arts intersect. We are an inclusive, diverse, and welcoming community to anyone who wants to join us – for the most part. No community is without areas for growth. 

I attended many panels over the course of the convention weekend. These panels’ topics ranged from Star Trek to banning books to teaching science fiction and fantasy to racism and bias in the genre. I discovered new books, shows, and movies and learned new ideas about those I was already reading and viewing. I also connected to new people from whom I could learn. 

Thank you to this year’s con chair Helen Montgomery and the many people who played Atlas through the five days of the convention. Thank you to fans who traveled from all over the world to join the celebration. Thank you to the volunteers, speakers, artists, musicians, costumers, authors, creators, and everyone else who lent their energy, creativity, money, and time to this wonderful enterprise. (Yeah, I just did that). 

I have enjoyed these conventions and the people who attend them for years. Now that I have the time, volunteering has deepened my appreciation and commitment to them. 

Thank you to the entire community of Chicon 8, the World Science Fiction Society, and everyone who participated in any way. I’ll see you at a convention soon – where I intend to raise my hand and help! 

By the way, we have two wonderful local conventions in the Chicago area: Windycon is November 11 to 13, 2022 and Capricon is February 2 to 5, 2023!