The Democratic Party should join the GOP to counter MAGA. Today* I helped my family move my maternal grandparents back into their home in Altadena, from which they had been evacuated due to the Eaton Fire in LA for over 2 months. [*I wrote this last week.]

Despite all the logistics of moving two 94 year olds between houses, I managed to find the time to discuss national politics with my grandfather Moki.

I would say that politics has been the most contentious/taboo topic at Thanksgiving dinners since I became political as a college student over two decades ago (in less than 2 years I went from politically apathetic and socially vanilla to leading the Green Party at Stanford, and moving into a vegan activist co-op—mostly because I came to believe that problems like war, famine, and climate change would be surprisingly easy to solve, were it not for “political feasibility issues”).

Today I was pleasantly surprised to find myself agreeing with Moki on everything he said about economic policy and politics.

After today I would guess that he and I both agree on a handful of important things:

• Democracy needs to be strengthened against the rising threat of misinformation and populist fascism in America.

• Conservation of our natural resources, wild lands/waters, and organic ecosystems has been extremely valuable for America and we want to be doing much more of it.

• Peace and non-violence is good for Americans and all beings. Hubristic foreign policy risks instability and gratuitous fear and economic contraction. Everyone is better off as old rivals become new friends.

• Patience makes our country and world safer, especially in times of fast technological, political, social, and spiritual change.

• Free markets are unaligned superintelligent organisms. We can still align them. We can train the ‘one track mind’ markets to respect our deepest shared values.

• The 48th President will serve America and Earth better as they embrace true conservative values (moreso than the MAGA politicians of today).

Examples of how this Neo-GOParty platform will improve upon MAGAin ways that Moki will love:

• Liberty thrives when we invest in free and open elections, free speech, free public education (including optional college), and separation of powers (including with churches). Fascism, while not inherently evil, tends to consolidate power, which directly contradicts and undermines our Founding Fathers’ intention with the Constitution.

• Capital alignment to our deepest shared values is critical to a healthy modern civilization, since economy and trade are the engine of our joint creation. We will demonstrate that the invisible hand can yet be heeled. Pigouvian subsidies and fees, for example, can be balanced to have net neutral impact on taxes (if desired).

• Precaution is the heart of conservatism. We will not assume changes and technologies are safe until proven as such. We see Pareto improvements everywhere, so we have the patience to wait for super-majoritarian support before taking radical actions.

• Allies will be rewarded for their loyalty, and everyone will be treated not just with ceasefires (which are a massive improvement over hot war) but also with compassion and honesty.

• Rivals like China will be offered as many good faith opportunities to cooperate as we can find. We will not expect any institution to show more graciousness than we are ready to show ourselves. We will make it obvious what our rivals can do to earn our trust, and what we are willing to do in return. We will keep good faith regardless of others’ behavior, and we will secure our camels before helping our allies and rivals secure theirs.

• The DOGE hack job will evolve into a benevolent parasitic process: NeoGOParty-DOGE will be funded entirely by a fraction of the savings it executes in the federal bureaucracy, but it will respect the important work those bureaucrats are doing by not cutting any services unless those services were never requested by  Congress, or Congress updates its request. Similarly, if DOGE increases revenue (eg by improving the efficiency of IRS collections) it captures 5-20% of that revenue for its own discretionary budget.

• National Parks are the Crown Jewels of North America. We are lucky to have an army of rangers cultivating our most beautiful lands and waters for pennies on the dollar. NeoGOParty will reinstate all rangers purged in 2025, and double the budget for purchasing and cultivating our lands for public purposes, including paying our rangers more fairly. Think of it as a stock buyback for our public lands/waters.

Good faith concession (example)

• From my reading of national news [last week when I wrote this], Biden gets half the (American President) credit for Gazan ceasefire (where we all are still looking for a more permanent peace), and Trump already gets the other half credit for Gaza ceasefire plus full credit for Ukraine ceasefire proposal. My current best guess is that MAGA legitimately wants peace, so perhaps that is not a difference with the Neo-GOParty platform. It would be really nice if both American parties in the future are fighting for dovish credit. (What some would call a “race to the top”.) We issue a friendly challenge to the 47th president: negotiate peaces that are Pareto Improvements among those that did not choose war (including Ukraine and Ukrainians, Israelis, Gazans, and Russians).

Taken together, these observations gesture at the potential for a new American (and hopefully global) political movement—showing our opportunity to counter-balance MAGA's fascist consolidation of power before it turns America into a single party state, undermines the Supreme Court, and shreds the Constitution.

For example, even though I led protests against Hoover and Bush while I was a student, I now love the idea of building a coalition with open minded GOPers, Democrats, Greens, and Libertarians. For the first time I can easily imagine supporting someone like Condi (the Philosopher Queen) to defeat the 2028 MAGA Party candidate. The name of the party that hosts this new alliance isn’t nearly as important as whose support it recruits, but my starting proposal is that we all join the Republican Party on the condition that it stops enabling MAGA fascism. This does not require booting Trump from the party, but I’m guessing Trump would quit the GOP in frustration since he wants more control over everything.

In fact, I'm starting to believe that the best thing liberals like me can do to temper the rise of American fascism is to admit that in today's political/technological/social/spiritual climate, we are classical conservatives (if we wanted to name-call, we might say the MAGAins are “CINOs”). The GOPartiers, Democrats, Greens, and Libertarians that oppose fascism all want to protect the Constitution from MAGA and Russia. Perhaps it would behoove people like me who are not used to allying with Republicans to drop our egos and make it as easy as possible for antifascist (“true”) Republicans like Moki and Condi to stand up to MAGA—forming a new alliance based on patience, open mindedness, freedom, peace, free markets, and potty-trained politicians.

Who else feels ready to put aside their differences and come party in a big tent? What would make it even easier, more fun, or more efficient? Let's have a new grand old party 🥳

#DeepTakes

Lies, Lies, Lies. There has never been a President, or a cabinet, or an administration in the history of America who's whole political platform, value system and political action exists and thrives on toxic lying until  now.  

Has the Left changed that much? During the Obama administration ICE used the exact tactics they are using today.  There were no riots or protests.  What changed?

The Democratic Party should join the GOP to counter MAGA. Today* I helped my family move my maternal grandparents back into their home in Altadena, from which they had been evacuated due to the Eaton Fire in LA for over 2 months. [*I wrote this last week.]

Despite all the logistics of moving two 94 year olds between houses, I managed to find the time to discuss national politics with my grandfather Moki.

I would say that politics has been the most contentious/taboo topic at Thanksgiving dinners since I became political as a college student over two decades ago (in less than 2 years I went from politically apathetic and socially vanilla to leading the Green Party at Stanford, and moving into a vegan activist co-op—mostly because I came to believe that problems like war, famine, and climate change would be surprisingly easy to solve, were it not for “political feasibility issues”).

Today I was pleasantly surprised to find myself agreeing with Moki on everything he said about economic policy and politics.

After today I would guess that he and I both agree on a handful of important things:

• Democracy needs to be strengthened against the rising threat of misinformation and populist fascism in America.

• Conservation of our natural resources, wild lands/waters, and organic ecosystems has been extremely valuable for America and we want to be doing much more of it.

• Peace and non-violence is good for Americans and all beings. Hubristic foreign policy risks instability and gratuitous fear and economic contraction. Everyone is better off as old rivals become new friends.

• Patience makes our country and world safer, especially in times of fast technological, political, social, and spiritual change.

• Free markets are unaligned superintelligent organisms. We can still align them. We can train the ‘one track mind’ markets to respect our deepest shared values.

• The 48th President will serve America and Earth better as they embrace true conservative values (moreso than the MAGA politicians of today).

Examples of how this Neo-GOParty platform will improve upon MAGAin ways that Moki will love:

• Liberty thrives when we invest in free and open elections, free speech, free public education (including optional college), and separation of powers (including with churches). Fascism, while not inherently evil, tends to consolidate power, which directly contradicts and undermines our Founding Fathers’ intention with the Constitution.

• Capital alignment to our deepest shared values is critical to a healthy modern civilization, since economy and trade are the engine of our joint creation. We will demonstrate that the invisible hand can yet be heeled. Pigouvian subsidies and fees, for example, can be balanced to have net neutral impact on taxes (if desired).

• Precaution is the heart of conservatism. We will not assume changes and technologies are safe until proven as such. We see Pareto improvements everywhere, so we have the patience to wait for super-majoritarian support before taking radical actions.

• Allies will be rewarded for their loyalty, and everyone will be treated not just with ceasefires (which are a massive improvement over hot war) but also with compassion and honesty.

• Rivals like China will be offered as many good faith opportunities to cooperate as we can find. We will not expect any institution to show more graciousness than we are ready to show ourselves. We will make it obvious what our rivals can do to earn our trust, and what we are willing to do in return. We will keep good faith regardless of others’ behavior, and we will secure our camels before helping our allies and rivals secure theirs.

• The DOGE hack job will evolve into a benevolent parasitic process: NeoGOParty-DOGE will be funded entirely by a fraction of the savings it executes in the federal bureaucracy, but it will respect the important work those bureaucrats are doing by not cutting any services unless those services were never requested by  Congress, or Congress updates its request. Similarly, if DOGE increases revenue (eg by improving the efficiency of IRS collections) it captures 5-20% of that revenue for its own discretionary budget.

• National Parks are the Crown Jewels of North America. We are lucky to have an army of rangers cultivating our most beautiful lands and waters for pennies on the dollar. NeoGOParty will reinstate all rangers purged in 2025, and double the budget for purchasing and cultivating our lands for public purposes, including paying our rangers more fairly. Think of it as a stock buyback for our public lands/waters.

Good faith concession (example)

• From my reading of national news [last week when I wrote this], Biden gets half the (American President) credit for Gazan ceasefire (where we all are still looking for a more permanent peace), and Trump already gets the other half credit for Gaza ceasefire plus full credit for Ukraine ceasefire proposal. My current best guess is that MAGA legitimately wants peace, so perhaps that is not a difference with the Neo-GOParty platform. It would be really nice if both American parties in the future are fighting for dovish credit. (What some would call a “race to the top”.) We issue a friendly challenge to the 47th president: negotiate peaces that are Pareto Improvements among those that did not choose war (including Ukraine and Ukrainians, Israelis, Gazans, and Russians).

Taken together, these observations gesture at the potential for a new American (and hopefully global) political movement—showing our opportunity to counter-balance MAGA's fascist consolidation of power before it turns America into a single party state, undermines the Supreme Court, and shreds the Constitution.

For example, even though I led protests against Hoover and Bush while I was a student, I now love the idea of building a coalition with open minded GOPers, Democrats, Greens, and Libertarians. For the first time I can easily imagine supporting someone like Condi (the Philosopher Queen) to defeat the 2028 MAGA Party candidate. The name of the party that hosts this new alliance isn’t nearly as important as whose support it recruits, but my starting proposal is that we all join the Republican Party on the condition that it stops enabling MAGA fascism. This does not require booting Trump from the party, but I’m guessing Trump would quit the GOP in frustration since he wants more control over everything.

In fact, I'm starting to believe that the best thing liberals like me can do to temper the rise of American fascism is to admit that in today's political/technological/social/spiritual climate, we are classical conservatives (if we wanted to name-call, we might say the MAGAins are “CINOs”). The GOPartiers, Democrats, Greens, and Libertarians that oppose fascism all want to protect the Constitution from MAGA and Russia. Perhaps it would behoove people like me who are not used to allying with Republicans to drop our egos and make it as easy as possible for antifascist (“true”) Republicans like Moki and Condi to stand up to MAGA—forming a new alliance based on patience, open mindedness, freedom, peace, free markets, and potty-trained politicians.

Who else feels ready to put aside their differences and come party in a big tent? What would make it even easier, more fun, or more efficient? Let's have a new grand old party 🥳

#DeepTakes

Building bridges and bursting bubbles.

Anytime we address new interlocutors, we engage in a constant recalibration of our common assumptions. And, why deny it: preaching to the choir feels better than talking to a wall. Yet, we don't want to be preachy, at least not admittedly. 
This takes me back to @blake's humility and pride dialectic... My question is:

I'm all in for building bridges and bursting bubbles, and I it's almost a mantra for a lifetime project of mine. But I have to constantly remind myself: who's 'in charge' of designing the bridges? What's the most gentle way to burst someone else's bubble, if we deem it necessary?

An example: this very morning I brought up Gandhi to my 17-18 year old highschool students. No one knew who he was. For a moment I had the urge to find a scream booth somewhere near, but after discarding the possibility, I proceeded to introduce the guy and his works to a new audience.

By now you can see I am assuming you know who Gandhi was, but how can I possibly tell, this is a new audience to all of us! What common grounds are we relying on? Are we aware of them? For instance, most of you are English native speakers, while I'm not, so now I'm sort of bracketing other idiosyncratic and linguistic stuff I carry around, in my attempt to (co)build a bridge with you... Or burst a bubble in an almost gentle way...

I sincerely hope you are looking up and/or not looking up Gandhi on Wikipedia right now (yes, both at the same time, mixed feeling or what have you...) Let me know what you think and feel (which can't be separated) about this...#DeepTakes

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, probably via use of the word "optics" ;) . I've been reading the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (abridged*, of course, at least to start with!). New to the topic, and I’ve never identified as a history buff, but I’m really loving it. I wanted to write a short post about it, but couldn’t quickly figure out how to say what I wanted briefly, so here’s a long one!

It feels like a bird's-eye view of modern politics, in many ways, but especially regarding "The American Experiment." I'm sure this comparison isn't new--it's probably a huge part of what makes Decline and Fall popular today, despite being published in 1776. Since there's a whole trope about Rome buffs, I imagine many of you have hashed over all this a ton previously.

The early part of Decline and Fall starts with how amazing Rome was. Of course, it built on other civilizations and governments that came before it, but I think we these days have a hard time imagining just how surprisingly modern it would seem to us, if we were transplanted to the Roman Empire in its heyday. Of course we have tons of hard tech they didn't. But on the social level, I think a lot of it would feel spookily familiar. (I’m sure the author and I are both missing or leaving out huge ways it’s different. But I think there’s still a lot we can learn from it.)

Widespread assumption of and dedication to: rule of law, trial by peers, market-based economy. And somehow the start of the Roman Empire manifested a deep dedication among citizens and leaders to a Republic as the form of government. No nepotism, no monarchy, no might makes right. Government of the people, by the people, for the people, at least in spirit--my sense is people and government and military were all aligned in their dedication to that spirit. 

And peace! Peace, for centuries, throughout a huge swath of the known world, where that hadn’t happened before. There was a kind of national religion they inherited from the Greeks, but they seem to have been even more dedicated to religious tolerance than to their religion (prior to Constantine and the Christians taking over). Sure, there was kind of constant fighting on the edges of the empire, including always against the pesky Gauls and German barbarians, who really hated the idea of being part of the big empire. But mostly, and especially compared to times before in much of Europe, you could live safe in your home with your family, for generations even, protected by law-abiding and law-enforcing local authorities, backed up by the Roman army when needed, truly answerable to the people through the representation of the Senate, such as it was, and it was pretty great as far as I can tell. 

Now, the bird's-eye view of the modern USA comes in when, generation after generation, leader after leader, eventually monarch after monarch, the common-knowledge shared dedication to being a Republic and to all the ideas above, faded over time. First, one or two leaders came along who had enough sway over the army and enough popularity with the people that they were able to, against the grain of all Republic dedication, declare themselves effective leaders of the empire. First humbly, as first-among-many. Then with time, openly and pompously. Then with more time, it became obvious to everyone that the Republic was only a Republic in name, that it was just obviously "the way things worked" that the army effectively got to decide who became emperor, and that as soon as the army switched loyalties, you'd better be ready for a change, including probably a bunch of people getting killed for being on the wrong side. 

The thing about Decline and Fall, wrt this kind of degradation, is you get to read real human stories of this happening, again, and again, and again, and again. The same patterns, the different humans with unique circumstances playing them out. 

Why did the dedication to the original ideals degrade with time? I think the same natural processes, and lack of opposing processes, have led the US and myriad other democracies down similar paths over time. People and groups learn to subvert the system to get more of what they want in the short term, sacrificing the common-knowledge dedications and ideals that support the good things they have in the world. They pay less attention to the whole than is needed to maintain it. 

I'll name what I see today as one instance of roughly this kind of degradation, and I hope it's a little spicy. I have been part of many, many conversations in organizations where, when discussing some strategic question for the organization, the word "optics" comes up. For the uninitiated, the word "optics" in this context means: people could see what we're doing and have interpretations of it. We don't want those interpretations to have bad consequences for us. So let's be sure to include in our strategizing some component of consideration for trying to get people's impressions (the public, journalists, stakeholders, or etc) to be at least neutral. I can understand that. But I want to live in a world where we're creating the whole we want, not mostly attempting to persuade or convince or if nothing else not be noticed by parts of society that IMO we ought to relate to as peers. If we all practice distrusting our peers' sense-making processes in this way of strategizing about "optics", we'll all end up with a society with worse and less sense-making. So what do I want instead? I want us to take actions with integrity. Yes to being aware of our reputation (individually, organizationally, etc) and acting with integrity.

(*The abridged version I landed on, after some back and forth about versions with Claude, is the Womersly version. I love it. You get 100-200 pages of the above, which was just right for this first-timer.)

#DeepTakes

fact checking: fentanyl situation. how are folks receiving Vance’s claim that Kamala Harris’ border policy allowed more fentanyl into the country?

i don’t know much about this topic

fact checking: fentanyl situation. how are folks receiving Vance’s claim that Kamala Harris’ border policy allowed more fentanyl into the country?

i don’t know much about this topic