==

“that’s the same thing as having an affair”

==

The closing arguments in the presidential campaign is a contrast in a number of things, but mostly it has become a contrast between respectful and disrespectful. One campaign has unequivocally stated that no matter who you vote for you will be listened to and represented and the other has, well, referred to ‘other voters’ as the enemy within. The heinous parts are tucked within the definition of ‘enemy.’ Because in this case the enemy is grounded in some 1800’s version of what a traditional marriage should be about – women subservient to men. Yeah. Reminder. Its 2024 not 1824.

Which leads me to a Harris-Walz campaign ad voiced by actor Julia Roberts which encourages women to vote for Vice President Harris in the presidential election, even if their husbands are backing former President Trump.

“In the one place in America where women still have a right to choose, you can vote any way you want. And no one will ever know,” Roberts says in the ad as a woman on screen meets up with her husband after casting her ballot for Harris. The voter winks at a fellow female voter as her husband asks if she made the “right choice.”

Suffice it to say, MAGA world has not responded well. In fact, some have suggested that a wife lying about her vote is as bad as an affair. Yeah. Ponder that one as a closing argument.

“If I found out Emma was going to the voting booth and pulling the lever for Harris, that’s the same thing as having an affair”

Fox News host Jesse Watters

==

“I think it’s so gross. I think it’s so nauseating where this wife is wearing the American hat, she’s coming in with her sweet husband who probably works his tail off to make sure that she can go you know and have a nice life and provide to the family, and then she lies to him saying, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m gonna vote for Trump,’ and then she votes for Kamala Harris as her little secret in the voting booth”

Charlie Kirk

To be clear. They are suggesting a husband is working hard to afford his wife’s lifestyle and her action undermines him. Ponder that just a bit.

Look. I am sure there are politically split households, but in the Trump era it is just difficult for me to envision. It is quite conceivable that someone could have voted for Romney in the same household where someone voted for Obama, but Trump is so divisive, and not normal, that it seems like a bridge too far. But I believe that is something that particular couple needs to navigate, not me. Regardless. The idea that a woman, a wife or partner, simply has to do anything let alone vote some way simply because the man does is a horrible thought. Oh. And a horrible closing argument to the majority of a 2024 population.

“Listen to this twit make Donald Trump’s closing argument. Women, you know what to do. #VoteKamala.”

==

“Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if me and Trump won just the normal gay guy vote, because, again, they just wanted to be left the hell alone,”

JD Vance

==

This election cycle is nearing its end (thank god). But the closing arguments for each campaign have been, well, enlightening. Let’s just say the normal candidate has stayed the course, consistently offering polices, vision and ideas – and using words that “normal” people use. The other candidate has, well, chosen a different path. I imagine they view it as “a less traveled path but far more interesting” in their minds. That less traveled path includes not just the crazy shit and a barrage of lies, but some fairly abhorrent words and thoughts.

Which leads me to normal gay guys.

I am not gay. I do have a number of friends who are gay. All of them are normal. All of their friends are normal. They, mostly, have normal issues and normal opinions and live a normal life. And, as most normal people, they want to be left alone to live their own lives. So. Here is where it becomes non-normal. JD Vance suggested that White upper- and middle-class children are incentivized to identify as transgender to gain admission to elite colleges. Uhm. And then tied that to gay people.

“Think about the incentives, if you are a, you know, middle-class or upper middle-class White parent and the only thing that you care about is whether your child goes into Harvard or Yale, like obviously, that pathway has become a lot harder for a lot of upper middle-class kids, but the one way that those people can participate in the DEI bureaucracy in this country is to be trans, and is there a dynamic that’s going on where, if you become trans, that is the way to reject your White privilege. That’s the social signifier. The only one that’s available in the hyper-woke mindset is if you become gender nonbinary.”

JD Vance

Now. I will admit. Parts of that sound like madeup gobbledygook to me. But the net of it is absurd. Worse? The implication is that a trangender chooses whether they are transgender or a gay person chosses to be gay. And somehow within that choice is normal or non-normal. Fuck you JD. That’s what I say. You are, or you are not, it really isn’t a choice to anyone.

Beyond that.

Studies have found that because of the discrimination, harassment and lack of support they generally experience in earlier grades, students who identify as transgender would be a lot less likely to have access to higher education in general, let alone an Ivy League school that is difficult to get into, compared with those people who identify with the gender that matches the sex they were assigned at birth.

I find the overall Trump campaign closing argument uncompelling and, frankly, abhorrent for the most part.

Appealing to the “normal gay guy vote” is a weird play.

But it gets a bit weirder. Democrats, apparently, not only don’t seek the ‘normal gay guy’ vote , but they want America to be unhealthy and overweight.” Huh? Because, apparently, if you are in poor health and overweight you will become a liberal. Yeah. And its actually a play for straight male vote:

“Have you seen all these studies that basically connect testosterone levels in young men with conservative politics? Maybe that’s what’s going on. Maybe that’s why the Democrats want us all to be, you know, poor health and overweight is because that means we’re going to be – no, it means we’re going to be more liberal.”

There are no studies that ‘basically’ say this. He is just making shit up. All in all it is quite the closing argument to America.

==

“Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.”

Plato

==

“Good buildings come from good people, and all problems are solved by good design.”

Stephen Gardiner

==

This began as conversations with a number of people about technology and technology companies. But what I quickly found myself doing in conversation after conversation is shifting away from technology, specifically, and just speaking about people. What I mean by that is that we have a tendency to speak of humans in a dehumanizing way with regard to technology, i.e., some nebulous good actors and bad actors. If we strip away the word ‘actors,’ at its core we’re basically speaking of people and, therefore, discussions around technology or society or business or almost any facet of a community and civilization should revolve around what makes a person do what they do. I don’t disagree that we need some fairly heroic efforts to address our technology driven future, but maybe instead of heroic we should simply speak of behavioral values.

Which leads me to technology and the future.

That said. I do agree heroic efforts are needed to bend the arc of technology. I believe people, left to their own devices, would design a nice tech future. And while technology may be an opposing force, I would argue its business’s objectives that drive the future off course. I say that because I am less worried about ttechnology and more worried about business. Fix business and technology stuff, as well as the people stuff, will follow (in my mind). I worry a bit about bad actors, maybe a bit less than most people, because I see good actors stepping up to the plate and fighting the bad actors. If you haven’t listened to this podcast Kevin Scott  , at the end he offers up his view on this (and I have stated that view for several years so I agree). It’s a good listen in general although I find he, as do most tech people, talk about rural in a very tech-centric siloed way (and I have other views about how tech could help the rural splits). Regardless. The ‘good actors’ will be the ones who recognize:

• it is a humancentric world where the optimal future is found in technology as an augmentor
• there will be uneven distribution of benefits from technology and we should seek to mitigate that
• it should be a learning-oriented future

Which leads me to who the good actors will be.

Sometimes the problem in today’s world is that it’s not particularly easy to be identify the good actors versus the bad actors especially as there is an increasing level of self-identified rebels (all proposing they are rebels for the good of people). The rebels are rarely hesitant about specifying which things, including values, they reject. The problem is everybody feels like they are rebel these days. What that means is that every one, every citizen, will at some point have some aspects of their life ridiculed by argumentative rebels. And when everyone becomes a rebel, the entire narrative will fundamentally get mired into the mud of hypocrisy. What I mean by that is a fundamental cause of disaffection is the contradiction between what any particular community, or class of people, says it believes; and what it does. These contradictions create confusion and that confusion takes on some fairly ugly hues which ultimately contaminates our view of society. The contamination is captured n some seeming hypocrisy. We may say we believe in mobility, but not for some people. We may say we believe in a Christian ethic, but not in business. Across the country we preach morality and yet certain people don’t have to play by those rules. We support altruistic endeavors, but we vilify anyone who works for it. We proclaim ourselves to be nonviolent people driven by hope and aspirations, but we insist that each person be allowed to have his or her own gun and fear ultimately drives the fundamental desire to own a gun. We preach the virtue of loyalty and business, yet we see the people who do this often reach the age of retirement spiritually empty and economically unprepared. We view success in society grounded in a creed of accumulation, but ultimately, we discover that this brings neither happiness nor stability. This creates a constant state of contradictions and hypocrisy within which good actors and bad actors battle.

Which leads me to rebels as good and bad.

So, our rebels tend to be good and bad. But maybe we should judge the rebellious a little differently accepting that the majority of life and progress is found in between the contradictions. What I mean by that is the progress typically resides in the gray. And while responsibility demands black and white, and the solutions demand a proper assumption of responsibility in the attention to the problems requiring change, the solutions are not simple nor simplistic. The true heroic rebels and the good people are those who showcase a willingness to challenge the patterns, which is not about change in particular, for it is within navigating the patterns and challenging them which instigates the change where it is needed. I would argue the truth is the rebellious shouldn’t focus on some generic set of values, but rather an increased emphasis upon the most vital of values: responsibility. And the true test of the good rebellious resides somewhere in a future where the responsibility to affect the patterns is not exciting, but merely hard work. Yeah. Less flashy victories just simply the performance over the long haul that determines the value of the rebellion and the rebellious.

Which leads me to optimism.

In a world which encourages dystopian thinking and dystopian views, optimism is often the most ridiculed of values. I will confess that throughout my life I have generally been optimistic. I often refer to myself as a cynical optimist. That said. Part of optimism is a belief that it is not illogical to trust, at any given moment, that you will survive. I find it reasonable to think of optimism in that kind of framework. It may seem naïve and uncomfortable to many people to entertain the thought of optimism, but I would be remiss if I didn’t suggest that I am impressed by the power of optimism throughout history. Simultaneously, it is fair to suggest at any given point we will go into some kind of collapse and when we do all the dystopian thinkers can say I told you so. But. Up until the “I told you so” moment, millions of  businesses will have been started, millions of people will have hugged each other, millions of people will have economically improved, and millions of people will just simply be better today than they were the day before. It is with that thought I believe cautious optimism should be the foundation of mindsets, attitudes, and beliefs. I’m certainly not suggesting that we shouldn’t be mindful of the problems that we have, but the truth is we have been living with those problems for decades and in general they shouldn’t  terrify us – and I think a lot more people would benefit by taking a moment and recognizing this. Look. We make progress, never as fast as we want, but the truth is the integration of opportunity is always in progress even if not always recognized. On balance I think cautious optimism is not misplaced. I think we should all have reasonable hopes that not only our own personal lives will get better, but that our communities and our countries will get better also. But in the end if you’re looking for good actors versus bad actors, I remain relatively convinced that the acceptance of responsibility will not only differentiate the productive from the unproductive, but the good actor from the bad actor. The people who organize their lives well, will probably do so around the concept of responsibility. And maybe that is where I am. The good actors are responsible. Ponder.