I work with dying Trump supporters. It's...confusing

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Sunday April 07, 2024 · 5:00 PM PDT

2024/04/07 · 17:00

I’m driving down a gravel road in rural North Carolina, looking at mailbox numbers. A hospice social worker, I’m headed to meet Petey, a patient dying of metastatic cancer. When I’d called his wife Jackie to schedule our first visit, she’d told me they’d been married more than 60 years. “I can’t believe this is happening,” she’d said, her voice heavy with sadness. “I don’t know how I’m going to make it in this world when he’s gone.”

A few homes down I see a ranch style house with a Trump flag hanging limp from what looks like a homemade flagpole. Hell no, not that one, I think, before realizing the number I’m looking for is on a grey mailbox at a driveway leading to that very house.

My eyes harden with anger. A thought pops into my head that I’m not proud of. “Good, he’ll be dead by November. One less vote for that bloated orange fascist.”

As I roll down the driveway, my mind lights up with stereotypes about the people I am about to meet. Stupid. Gullible. Easily manipulated. Incapable of critical thinking. Racist. Willing to rationalize and/or cheer on violence against people they have dehumanized (Blacks, Muslims, people in the LGBTQ community). I assume they don’t give a damn about democracy and are likely to have negative judgments about progressive-minded people like me (I fail to see the irony).

I pull out one of the surgical masks my team are still wearing to protect patients from COVID and other respiratory infections. I imagine they’ll think I’m some stray sheep from the woke mob wearing my mask because I’ve been duped by the radical left agenda into throwing away my freedom or being foolish enough to believe in science rather than delusional rants by self-proclaimed experts on YouTube or hate radio.

Yeah, it’s quite a list. But it gets worse. Did I mention I’m not proud of this? I imagine Petey and his wife sitting around a massive television being programed like braindead Lemming as they’re fed emotion-laden narratives by Fox ‘News’ about the Biden crime family or ‘Illegals’ invading our Southern border with pockets full of fentanyl M&Ms intended for your child’s playground.

As my mind unspools these and other thoughts and images, and my blood pressure rises, I hear a familiar inner voice. Getting hijacked. This isn’t why I’m here today. I’m here to bring kindness and compassion to people who are suffering.

I’ve been doing this work long enough to know and trust this voice. I breathe slowly and visualize myself connecting with what I call ‘the Light’ which I believe is inside the people I’m about to meet – call it spirit, soul, life force, deep self, heart center, whatever you want.

Experience has shown me that the emotional and psychological pain of dying, or losing someone we love, is a common ground upon which we all gather, not as tribes, but as part of a larger human family. Ground upon which we can all lend each other a shoulder, regardless of which flags we fly.

When death approaches, it has ways of washing away things that are not particularly important. Deciding whether to wear one’s Trump mug shot tee-shirt or the one with a Confederate battle flag ceases to matter when a dying person is listening to grandchildren playing outside or holding a life partner’s hand.

Questions about whether Tim Scott would be a good running mate take a backseat to more serious questions – What kind of difference have I made in my life? Have I been a good parent and spouse? Did I live my deepest values? How can I let my children know that I love, have always loved, them even though I’ve had a hard time expressing this?

Who cares about Biden’s speech when your dying father is having a respiratory crisis and you need to accurately draw up the morphine dose as the hospice nurse gives you instructions over the phone? Or who gets credit or blame for the latest economic report when you’re preparing a life partner’s favorite meal, maybe for the last time, though you know she may take one bite and push it away because her dying body is no longer hungry?

Petey is sleeping as Jackie and I settle into chairs at his bedside. “He sleeps all the time,” she says. “I can’t get him to eat anything, and he has a hard time swallowing even a few drops of water. I feel like I’m letting him down by not getting more in him.”

Gently I explain how the body slows down when a person is dying. Increased sleep is normal, so is lack of appetite. As the end approaches, a person’s body no longer effectively metabolizes food, and the brain stops sending hunger signals. It’s okay that she cannot get him to eat. Pushing it would only cause discomfort and put him at risk for choking or aspiration. “He’s not dying because he's not eating,” I tell her. “He’s not eating because he’s dying.”

I’ve forgotten about the Trump flag. It’s just me, Petey and Jackie, her heart broken as she sits at the bedside of someone she loves. I notice Petey’s facial expression and respirations change when he hears her voice. I tell her that he can likely hear what we are saying. Even though the painful moment of separation is approaching, they are still, and will continue to be, connected.

I ask what he was like, where they met, what told her so many years ago that he was the guy with whom she wanted to spend her life? For the next two hours she laughs and cries, sharing memories and stories.

Their son and daughter hear the laughter and join us, encircling the bed in an impromptu story circle. A picture emerges of a man who worked hard, loved his family, and did his best to pass down values his wife describes as “living by the golden rule and being there for anyone in need.”

They tell me he always carried an extra set of mechanic’s tools in his truck. “More times than I can count,” his son Bobby smiles, “Dad would get home late from work, or what was supposed to have been a quick trip to the hardware store, covered in dirt and grease after pulling over to help someone on the side of the road whose car was out of commission.”

Later, as we walk down a hallway to the front door, Jackie pauses so I can take in dozens of framed photographs. It’s a visual autobiography of Petey, Jackie and their kids over the last 60 years. I pause to absorb images of them posing for photos or caught in the act of pulling in largemouth bass or holding pieces of homegrown corn on the cob. They look happy. They look remarkably normal.

I feel at ease in Petey and Jackie’s home. I like them. I enjoy being with them. They seem like good people. Not the kind of people who would support or make excuses for a violent insurrection during which police officers are attacked and injured. Not people who would commit or condone assault on women, Muslims, or those who are Latinx, gay or transgender.

Yet, from my perspective, they are guilty of supporting countless acts of cruelty and violence. Not to mention rejecting our nation’s commitment to an inclusive, multi-cultural democracy, in favor of an authoritarian fraud. Consciously or not, these seemingly good people support, deny, or minimize horrible acts of criminality and abuse when committed or sanctioned by tribal leaders, like Donald Trump, for whom they would likely twist themselves into pretzels making excuses.

It’s confusing. How can I enjoy the company of people who support a demagogue who defends himself from sexual assault charges by saying a woman is too ugly to rape? How can I sit here and laugh with people who are apparently just fine with a policy that rips kids from their parents’ arms and locks them away just because their family came looking for a better life?

Should I even be engaging with them? Does engagement mean I’m going along, looking the other way, rather than pushing back against lies repeated so often by right-wing politicians and media that people like Petey and Jackie actually believe them? Anchoring in my role as a social worker, these questions quickly move into the background, superseded by an imperative to bring comfort to other human beings who are suffering and afraid. In this moment, it really is that simple.

I think about the negative story I’d told myself about Petey and Jackie when I saw that flag dangling from what turned out to be a pole which Petey had shown his granddaughter, Beca, how to carve from a fallen red cedar.

I’d reduced them to a bundle of rigid, dehumanizing stereotypes before looking Jackie in the eye as she welcomed me into her home. I’d made assumptions that ruled out the possibility that she and Petey might be caring and generous human beings.

I’d felt justified in this, even a bit superior, by my anger. It’s scary how quickly this switch goes off these days, especially when the stakes seem so high. Scary how quickly anger turns into contempt.

Now, I see that my anger may have fueled a cognitive distortion or two. Or three. Cognitive distortions are patterns of thought, typically automatic and unconscious, that cause an inaccurate, negative view of situations, people, and/or events. These include things like jumping to conclusions; black-and-white thinking; negative mental filtering; overgeneralizing; mindreading (incorrectly believing we know what others are thinking, what their motives are); and emotional reasoning (believing that if we are feeling something, or if what we are thinking is associated with a strong emotion, it must be true).

After a couple hours in their home, the picture is more complex than one built upon my worst assumptions. I still believe Petey and Jackie are blinded by a dangerous trance state that allows them to support someone as vile as Trump – I’m not letting them off the hook just because they seem like nice people – but this trance state, dangerous and problematic as it is, is not the sum of who they are.

I know this not because I read an incisive analysis by experts on political polarization offering strategies for positive communication and conflict de-escalation. Or because I took a seminar on Rogerian techniques for building empathy and unconditional positive regard. I know because I knocked on the door. And I only knocked on the door because I had to.

Being a hospice social worker forces me to knock on doors whether I want to or not. To meet and better understand people, like Petey and Jackie, who challenge my stereotypes and allow me to see them as real, living human beings.

Hospice throws the doors wide open. It doesn’t matter how big or empty your bank account is, what God or gods you do or don’t believe in. It doesn’t matter who you love, who you hate, or whether you have a gold card or a green card in your pocket. It doesn’t matter if you wave a Trump flag or a rainbow flag. All are welcome.

In a nation where it feels like we are being divided into warring tribes, hospice encounters provide a place of peace where divisions momentarily dissolve within the solvent of shared emotional pain, reflections on what really matters, and bonds of love, however imperfectly expressed.

In a culture where we’ve been conditioned to stare and click rather than sit and talk, hospice provides a safe middle ground to shake ourselves from lethal obsessions with divisive social media and 24/7 news with its contrived urgency, profiteering, false equivalencies, and parade of pontificating pundits who pass opinion and bias off as analysis.

This profound human experience of coming together on common ground when someone is dying and sharing stories reaches back across the centuries. It places our lives in a larger, universal, context. Death gets our attention and shifts perspectives in ways that create a middle ground where we can connect as human beings without getting distracted by labels, at least for a time.

In the 1950s, psychologist Gordon Allport had something to say about the power of middle ground. He developed a simple hypothesis about how to heal polarization and conflict between groups holding negative views of each other. He said, basically, that when members of antagonistic groups begin to interact with each other, get to know each other as human beings rather than stereotypes, they develop meaningful relationships and have more positive views of each other.

Allport’s research focused on divisions driven by racist beliefs and negative racial biases, but his work has been shown to be relevant for reducing conflict and misunderstandings across a range of variables including differences in religious beliefs, age, socio-economic status as well as political polarization.

He believed that for interpersonal contact to foster positive change, it was necessary for these interactions to include a shared perception that the groups have equal status and a common goal. However, one meta-analysis looking at decades of research into Allport’s theory found that, although equal status and common goals can be helpful, “all that's needed for greater understanding between groups is contact, period, in all but the most hostile and threatening conditions.”

Journalist and author, John Blake points out that Allport’s insight runs counter to a widely accepted notion that what heals conflict between groups is the rational assimilation of information. Writing about racial divisions, Blake observed that “We venerate the power of facts. I assumed after George Floyd’s murder that if journalists kept presenting irrefutable evidence such as the Ahmaud Arbery video, citing history like the “Tulsa Race Massacre” and quoting authors dissecting racism’s role in forming America that a critical mass of White America would shift their racial attitudes.”

“Allport’s contact theory suggests that what reduces racial prejudice, though, is not more information. It’s sustained, intimate contact between White and Non-White people – he describes it as reaching “below the surface”— in mutual endeavors that have nothing to do with race.”

Sounds simple, right? Just get to know each other. Find common ground upon which we can interact; lower the rising temperature. But when I think about friends with whom my wife and I associate outside of work, they all identify as progressive. All of them.

Many are surprised, even incredulous, that we know people who support Trump, and that we have family members we love (and with whom we are still talking) who see the world similarly to the way Petey and Jackie do. Is feeling love for someone who supports Trump a betrayal of one’s commitment to social justice? If so, we are in very big trouble.

How did we become so polarized? Until Trump showed up, I don’t remember anything approaching our current epidemic of reflexively vilifying people with whom we disagree and slamming the doors between us. When did so-called leaders start raving like lunatics about civil war if they don’t get everything they want. Are we really that incapable of basic respect, empathy, and kindness?

I admit, part of me wants nothing to do with Petey and Jackie. Another part, the one from which that inner voice originates, knows that demonizing others only creates more division and conflict. However hard it is for me to understand, there are people who do not see racism and misogyny when they see a MAGA hat. That’s what I see, but Petey and Jackie are not consciously endorsing either.

Pete and Jackie do not consciously intend harm toward my friends who are gay or Black when they talk about going back in time to make America “great” again. But I bristle at this kind of encoded language that only sharpens the targets my friends have long had on their backs.

This lack of conscious intention is no excuse. As far as I’m concerned Jackie and Petey are guilty of going along with the vicious extremism at the heart of Maga politics if only through ignorance, apathy, or timidity. But attacking them, lecturing them, or slamming the door and labeling it: “Deplorables: Do not enter” only makes things worse. Only keeps me from seeing beneath the surface and catching unexpected glimpses of goodness inside of them and realizing there are places we agree, concerns we share.

So, how do we get out of this mess?

If I knew, this would be where I’d offer a few ‘top strategies’ for healing political polarization and pretend we are destined for a happy ending if everyone just reads and follows along. But I have no simple strategies, and a happy ending is not a slam dunk.

Blake likes to say that “facts don’t change people. Relationships do.” I think he’s right. I suspect if we are going to survive, we must talk with each other. And we must do more than talk, we must start connecting and building relationships, seeing beneath the surface, beneath our worst fears, assumptions, and anger. Even in, especially in, dangerous times like these.

We don’t need to compromise our values or accept things we find offensive. But if Allport is right, we do not serve our values by trying to shove them down people’s throats. If facts and a rational assessment of information changed people’s minds, MAGA would not exist. What matters is having the courage and curiosity to foster simple moments of connection, seeing each other as real, complex, human beings. Keeping the door open, even just a crack.

It’s easier for me as a hospice social worker. I have a built-in framework for connecting with people in the MAGA-verse. By the time I show up, the shadow of death has already cleared a path for my heart to reach theirs. No one cares about political debates. No one asks to see my MAGA membership card. They just want to know that I care.

The focus is not on what separates us, but what draws us together – caring for each other during times of loss and fear, sheltering each other, asking deep questions about what it means to be human, doing what’s right even though it scares us, whether it’s dressing a parent’s stage 2 bed sore or talking with one’s children about a horrifying new diagnosis.

Whenever I look beneath the surface, I discover that we are more alike than different. When I look at Petey’s Trump flag, I see cruelty, ignorance, and indecency. But when I look at Petey in his hospital bed surrounded by people who love him, beneath the surface, I see a decent man who did his best.

And it’s reciprocal. As I listen, express care, Jackie’s stereotypes about me begin to change. I’m no tool of the coastal elite out to take their guns or treat them disrespectfully. I’m not here to “educate” them about why their fear of certain books or critical race theory reflects ignorance and unconscious racism. I’m someone who cares about them as we share this fleeting journey of life.

But contact can stir inner tension. Tension between my commitment to the values of anti-racism, inclusion, and standing against those who support oppression, on the one hand, and practicing peace, kindness, and acceptance toward all people and animals I encounter, on the other.

This tension raises questions about my sense of identity. Am I the voice of anger when I see a Trump flag? Am I that voice of kindness at Petey’s bedside? Which voice requires more moral courage? Which will lead to a better world? Can I be both at once? If so, how do I pick my fights wisely while living by an imperative to be kind, avoiding the trap of building walls between myself and others? How do I, how do we, go beneath the surface?

Some will roll their eyes and think – “it easy for a White, cisgendered, man to sit back and say we should try connecting, his neck is not on the chopping block.” It’s true, I have a layer of insularity and protection between me and the kind of harassment, intimidation and abuse fomented and stoked by Trump and his ilk.

I can see Jackie rolling her eyes as well. “Oh, come on, man. Don’t act like your side is the only one bighearted and concerned enough to reach out to connect. I bet there have been times when it was clear that you were talking with someone on the other side of the fence, and they made a gesture of connection you didn’t see coming.”

That is true. Every time it has happened, I have been grateful and tried to respond in kind. These moments sustain me when I’m feeling especially cynical.

Of course, connecting requires that we feel safe and are treated with respect whichever side we are on. When this is not the case, connection may be a project for another day. There are plenty of MAGA extremists who promote, and seek provocation for, aggression and violence, who prey upon those susceptible to being sucked into a right-wing echo-chamber of hatred, conspiracy and paranoia.

I’ve met MAGA fans whose obsession with Trump approaches cultish levels, who seem incapable of having an opinion or Fox soundbite pop into their heads which they do not feel compelled to state as fact to everyone around, regardless of the context. I do not engage them with the intention of connecting beyond a superficial level. I’m sure it would be the same if I were to meet politicians, influencers, or media “personalities” who parrot and monetize Trump’s serial lies, and who intentionally fuel and benefit from these divisions.

But these groups are not the core of Trump’s support. It may seem they are when emotions run high, especially the way the media highlights these groups and overfocuses on conflict, emotion, simplification, and sensationalism (remember those cognitive distortions?). It’s easy for progressive-minded people to assume the whole MAGA world is full of blind reactivity and obedience to a power-mad sociopath ever playing the victim while spewing venomous lies and making threats about vengeance. From what I’ve seen, though, most are people like Jackie and Petey.

When Jackie and I reach the front porch, I tell her that Petey looks like he’s not going to be here long. His respirations are fast and shallow with period of apnea. He’s having reflexive breathing or what some people call the “death rattle” as secretions accumulate in his throat. His extremities are cool as blood no longer circulates into hands and toes. I review what to do if she needs the on-call nurse, and when he dies.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” she says. “I’m going to be all alone.”

I think about reminding her of her kids, siblings, and people at her church, but remain silent. Alone or not, that’s how she feels.

She reaches out and holds my hand, connecting. I ask what Petey would say to her right now, what would he want her to know?

She thinks for a moment then whispers, “He’d tell me to be a good person.”

“What would he mean by that?” I ask.

She smiles, “He’d mean to be there for others, and not be so hardheaded that I don’t let others be there for me when I’m hurting.”

We laugh together, then tears well up in her eyes. “You and Petey would have liked each other,” she says.

I feel a lump well up in my throat, and give her a gentle smile.

As I walk back to my car, I glance again at the lifeless Trump flag. This time it’s not anger and contempt I feel, it’s sadness.

When Men (#NotAllMen) Want to Really, Really Insult Other Men, The Strangest Thing Happens...

siab for Pie and Meta Lovers Anonymous

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday July 03, 2023 · 8:27 PM PDT

2023/07/03 · 20:27

… they compare them to women.

“He’s such a pussy.” Remember that one, with all its multitudinous variations? And the best argument I can remember so far; that pussy is just being used as a short form of pusillanimous, and is not sexist at all. Or that it simply means “sissy,” and that isn’t sexist, right? (Sorry, but no. Sissy=effeminate, [unless you’re saying it about a gurrl, when it’s just descriptive. /s])

Warning: Possible Triggers.

A couple of weeks ago several people including myself were discussing the flags we’d thrown at a prison rape “joke,” and somebody wondered, for the umpteenth time, why people kept doing them. It took me this long to come up with a title that wouldn’t immediately come up against internet filtering systems. Plus, I needed to be just that extra bit ticked off to start this.

More below the fold.

evsxrk

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Thursday August 11, 2022 · 6:23 PM PDT

2022/08/11 · 18:23

There’s been lots of talk about Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, including plenty here on Daily Kos. I have a particular interest in the matter, because I live in Taiwan and have done so since the early 1990s, prior to Taiwan’s first democratic election for president. While I have made a number of comments on other people’s stories, I thought it might be better to write something more extensive, covering a number of different points at the same time. I intended to do this a few days ago, but other things have gotten in the way. But while the news may not be fresh, the issues involved remain as important as ever.

The first point I want to cover is the claim that a few in the Western media and a couple of commenters here made that many Taiwanese people didn’t want Pelosi to come. Now I will acknowledge that I have not seen any actual polls on this question, so I can only base my response to this claim on circumstantial evidence, but what I’ve seen of that contradicts this assertion. Yes, there were a number of protesters who should up outside Pelosi’s hotel to express their opposition to her visit. There were also a number of people who went there to welcome her, and still others who were just there to see a celebrity. My wife, who was watching the live feed of the scene at the time, said that the anti-Pelosi crowd was outnumbered by the well-wishers (someone said a Western media report claimed “hundreds” protested against her; my wife said it was more like a few dozen). What’s more, the protesters were made up mainly of a well-known group of virulently pro-China individuals who always tend to appear at these sorts of events. They are not at all representative of most Taiwanese. A better way to judge the general Taiwanese view of her visit is that all the major Taiwanese political parties expressed support for her visit. This included not only the ruling DPP, but also the conservative KMT, which is well known for being more friendly to China. The only parties that opposed the visit were a few very small, extreme pro-unification parties, none of which enjoys significant support. Furthermore, to the extent that some Taiwanese may now think her visit wasn’t a good thing, they are likely to have been influenced by incessant coverage of China’s military drills. But this is conflating the visit itself (which was a good thing) and China’s unhinged reaction (which is a bad thing, but should be blamed on China, not the visit itself).

Another thing that some people may not be aware of is that Taiwan is frequently visited by congressional delegations (and also legislative groups from other countries, including many European nations), and Pelosi herself had been planning to visit in April, before covid 19 forced her to postpone. So this was not a spur of the moment trip. Perhaps even more importantly, she and the representatives who accompanied her were taking a trip in which they visited a number of the US’s key allies in the region. They went to Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea and Japan. So there was no reason for them not visit Taiwan as well — unless they did so because they were afraid of upsetting China.

This of course is the crux of the matter. I’ve been happy to see that the majority of people on this site seem to support Pelosi’s trip, but for those who have raised various objections, and anyone who isn’t clear on the underlying situation, I want to try to address the different issues that have been raised.

A very small number of people expressed support for the Chinese assertion that Taiwan is part of China, or have at least treated it as if it has equal weight to Taiwanese and American views on the subject. Yes, China does claim that Taiwan is part of China. Russia (or at least Putin) has also claimed that Ukraine is part of Russia, and hinted that they have similar views about the Baltic states and other former parts of the Soviet Union (so far they haven’t laid claim to Poland, most of which was also ruled by Russia for a long period). That doesn’t mean these claims have any validity, or that other nations have to pay heed to them. But even the way China talks about Taiwan is inherently contradictory. They say it is an “inseparable” part of China (already an absurd claim on its face, as nations and their borders are fleeting things in the context of all human history), and yet they say Taiwan must unify (they say “reunify”) with China. If it is inseparable, it shouldn’t need to “reunify”. If it needs to “reunify”, than it is currently separate, and so not inseparable.

What’s more, the historical relationship between China and Taiwan is much more tenuous than China would have everyone believe. China has a long history, but for most of it, Taiwan was not only not part of China, but was virtually unknown to Chinese people. As late as the early Ming dynasty, Chinese maps of the area off the southeast coast where Taiwan was located were as fantastic as many European maps of the Pacific in the same time period, showing imaginary places like the “Kingdom of Women”. Taiwan itself was often confused with Okinawa. It wasn’t until the late Ming that Chinese settlers began to arrive in Taiwan in substantial numbers, and the first modern governmental regimes in Taiwan were the Dutch and Spanish, followed by the Ming loyalist Zheng Chenggong (of mixed Chinese and Japanese parentage), who established an independent regime in southwest Taiwan in opposition to the Manchu Qing, who had recently conquered China. Zheng’s grandson was conquered by the Qing, putting part of Taiwan under rule from China for the first time. But only part; the Qing never ruled all of Taiwan, half of it remaining Taiwanese Indigenous territory outside of the area of Chinese settlement. What’s more, the Qing for the most part treated Taiwan like a colonial territory to be exploited, not an integral part of China. Officials sent over from China mostly tried to squeeze as much money out of the local Chinese settlers during their postings, which is why there were frequent rebellions.

Finally, in 1895, the Qing were forced to surrender their claims to Taiwan to the Japanese. The Japanese extended their control over the whole island (brutally “pacifying” the indigenous population in the process) and ruled it for a total of 50 years, which to this day is reflected in close cultural ties between Taiwan and Japan. At the end of WWII, Japan had to give up Taiwan, and the Nationalist (KMT) regime of the Republic of China, which had supplanted the Qing in 1911 (though they never actually controlled all of China), took over. Their misrule drove the Taiwanese to a major rebellion in 1947, which was bloodily put down by the KMT. In the meantime, though, the KMT were losing the Chinese civil war to the Communists, who drove out the KMT and established the People’s Republic of China in 1949. The KMT fled to Taiwan, where they maintained the ROC as an authoritarian state for decades. But over the last few decades, the country has democratized and native Taiwanese (as opposed to those who came over with the KMT) have gained political power. To all intents and purposes, Taiwan is now a self-ruled, democratic, fully independent de facto sovereign state, though it retains the ROC name, ironically because China would go absolutely nuts if Taiwan changed its name to reflect reality.

So the People’s Republic of China has never ruled Taiwan, and over the last century and a quarter, there have been only four years when China and Taiwan were under the same political regime. In fact, there has never been any political regime that has ruled all of China and all of Taiwan at the same time (as noted above, the Qing never ruled all of Taiwan, and the ROC only controlled part of China during the 1945-1949 period). So even if we are talking about historical claims, China’s claim to Taiwan is not particularly strong, no more so than Russia’s dubious claims to Ukraine. But even more importantly, today’s Taiwanese people don’t consider themselves Chinese and have no desire to be ruled by China. Polls consistently show that only a very tiny minority of people in Taiwan consider themselves “Chinese”. A larger minority consider themselves both “Chinese” and “Taiwanese”. But the majority considers themselves “Taiwanese” only.

A few people try to make an analogy with Hawaii, saying that the US supporting an independent Taiwan is like China or Russia supporting a “separatist” Hawaii against the US. To which I say, yes, if the US was taken over by an authoritarian regime (unfortunately not beyond the realm of possibility, if the MAGA crowd have their way) and Hawaii remained as a independent democratic state that didn’t accept the rule of the fascists in the former US, I would certainly hope that the world’s remaining democracies would support Hawaii.

Both the Chinese attitude toward Taiwan on the one hand and its people and some of the positions taken by those in the West who say Taiwan and its supporters are to blame for “provoking” China on the other bring to mind the analogy of domestic violence. China insists that Taiwanese are “fellow Chinese” who are part of one big “Chinese family”. And if Taiwanese don’t acknowledge this family relationship, China will come over and beat us up until we do so. This seems to me very similar to men (I know not all abusers are men, but most are) who won’t accept a partner leaving them, and will express that by stalking, harassing, and assaulting them. And how are those who blame Taiwan or its friends for China’s outbursts when Taiwan engages in behavior that is perfectly normal for a sovereign state any different who blame a domestic violence victim for “provoking” their attacker?

There have also been quite a few commentators who have said they aren’t against Pelosi showing support for Taiwan, but argue that the “timing” is wrong. Then when would be the “right” time? China would absurdly overreact no matter when Pelosi visited. By those standards, there would never be a right time. This is much like the Republicans who always say that we shouldn’t talk about addressing the gun problem in the US right after a mass shooting — which means we should never talk about it.

Some worry about aggravating China while Russia is still attacking Ukraine. In fact, the Ukraine situation just shows why it’s important for democratic nations to stand up to aggression by authoritarian states (and the way some blamed Ukraine’s talk of joining NATO for “provoking” Russia was the same sort of victim blaming we see with Taiwan as discussed above). Some talk about a two-front war, but the US is not actually at war with Russia, and despite their bluster, China is very unlikely to actually attack Taiwan now, as their chances of success are not that great and the potential harm to them would be greater than the rewards (that calculation may change in the future). Some just worry that China and Russia will be driven together. But Xi and Putin were already proclaiming their close ties before Russia invaded Ukraine. It’s doubtful that China will more openly side with Russia than they’ve already done (it’s worth noting that since the war started, China has heavily promoted the Russian view of the conflict on their domestic media and online). And again, by those standards, there would never be a “good” time for the US to express even the minimal kind of support that it gives all its allies.

An interesting parallel to the Taiwan-China situation can be seen in the recent news about the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago. No matter when the FBI conducted the raid, it was predictable that Republicans politicians and MAGA cultists would freak out, and that some would even openly threaten violence. The same will happen when Tr*mp is finally indicted for one of his many crimes. It’s even possible that some people will act on their violent threats. But both the raid and any future indictments are normal steps under the rule of law. Should the DOJ avoid taking them just because of a fear that some people might react unreasonably to them? I don’t think so, and I would imagine few others on this site think so. This is exactly like the situation with Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. A US political leader visiting an allied nation as just one stop on a trip to several countries is perfectly normal, and if China reacts unreasonably to it, that’s no reason not to do it.

A few complain about American hypocrisy, saying that the US interferes with the neighbors of rival powers but won’t brook interference by those powers in countries near the US. But it should be remembered that all Pelosi did was visit Taiwan, talk to the Taiwanese President and other key individuals, and make some speeches. She didn’t sign any major agreements or make any practical changes to US policy in the region. This is rather different from China, for instance, inking an agreement with the Solomon Islands that could result in a Chinese military presence in that country. Furthermore, the US relationship with Taiwan is long standing, going back before the US even recognized the PRC. Also, while there’s no question that there is a fair amount of hypocrisy involved in US foreign policy, most of that is on the Republican side. Their talk of Taiwanese democracy and Chinese human rights violations is undercut by their clear disregard for democracy and human rights elsewhere, including in the US. But most Democratic politicians, including Pelosi, manage to be fairly consistent on such issues. And even in the case of the Republicans, it’s a matter of them being on the right side for the wrong reasons, not that their support for Taiwan itself is wrong. In any event, I disagree with the idea that the failures and inconsistencies of US foreign policy mean that US leaders shouldn’t stand up for human rights and democracy when they have the opportunity to do so.

As many other people have observed, the situation with Putin has shown that it’s better to defy bullying by nations like Russia and China. Backing down over basic matters like who can have relations with or visit Taiwan (or others that China hates, like the Dalai Lama) just encourages China to go even further in trying to force everyone around the world to not only acknowledge but support their aggressive position. We can already see this in recent Chinese efforts to force anyone who does business in China to label Taiwan as a “province of China”. It’s apparent in Chinese domestic politics as well. It’s no longer enough for Chinese celebrities, or even non-Chinese celebrities who are active in China, to avoid doing or saying anything against China’s extreme nationalistic claims. In the past few days, many celebrities who simply failed to issue statements or add taglines supporting the Chinese position that Taiwan belongs to China have been attacked online by nationalistic Chinese (this also resembles the MAGA crowd’s reaction to any Republican leaders who don’t condemn the FBI for doing their job). This is the sort of fascistic conformity to China’s position that they are attempting to impose on everyone.

The truth is, if enough of the world’s nations and major corporations got together and agreed to stop backing down to Chinese pressure over issues like Taiwan, Tibet, the Uyghurs, the South China Sea and human rights in China itself, there’s little China could do. If, for example, the US, Japan, the nations of the EU, Canada, and so forth all agreed to recognize Taiwan as a separate state and support its membership in the UN (after all, both North and South Korea are members, even though both claim to be the rightful government of all Korea), what could China do about it? Cut off trade with everyone? That would hurt them at least as much as it would hurt everyone else. The war in Ukraine has amply demonstrated the value of a united response to aggression even by a large, relatively dangerous nation. While I know that actual recognition of Taiwan is unlikely in the near term, I am encouraged to note that more and more nations and leaders around the world seem to be responding to China’s increasingly aggressive behavior not by knuckling under, as China now doubt hoped, but with defiance and resolve. Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan is just one more instance of this, and I hope more world leaders — and progressively minded American politicians — will follow in her footsteps. If enough people around the world stand up to Chinese aggression, China will be unable to carry out its threats and we in Taiwan can continue to live in peace and freedom.

Note: Since I’m in a completely different time zone, I’m usually not online at the same times most people here are. That plus the fact that my laptop is experiencing age related issues and I am traveling to another part of Taiwan tomorrow means that my responses to any comments may be significantly delayed. I will respond when I can, but it may take some time.

Fishgrease

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Friday December 10, 2021 · 8:56 AM PST

2021/12/10 · 08:56

Hello, Boomer. I'm Fishgrease. I'm known, mostly, for my comments on any number of diaries about the recent Gulf of Mexico Oil Leak/Volcano/Apocalypse. Before that, I was known here at DKos for writing bland, confusing, useless, sometimes insulting diaries. Look at my UID number. I've been here a long fucking time and I've never had a diary on the rec list. Which is fine with me because I hate writing diaries. If this one makes the rec list, I might write another. But I doubt it. I'm a much better commenter than a diarist and I'm not that great a commenter.

"Where's Fishgrease when you need him?"

-- Janeane Garofalo

She really said that. And she meant me. Ask her.

Anyway, follow me after the bump and I'll conduct Daily Kos's first-ever Oil Spill Booming School.

TrueBlueMajority

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday November 17, 2021 · 5:26 PM PST

2021/11/17 · 17:26

"Why doesn't Obama just use the bully pulpit?"
"Single payer would have passed if Obama had used the bully pulpit."

"Obama refuses to use the bully pulpit"

Whenever comments like this appear, I post the same response:

There is no bully pulpit.

It usually gets some pushback from people who somehow imagine that President Obama has the same access to news coverage that Teddy Roosevelt had. Or that FDR had. Or that Lyndon Johnson had. How they can believe that, I have no idea.

freewayblogger

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Monday October 12, 2020 · 7:12 PM PDT

2020/10/12 · 19:12

my view — Indispensable for all hospice beds: skylight with some tree branches. I cannot emphasize this enough.

Today is the first day I only feel sick. Yesterday was better than the day before, but entirely focused on building up enough strength to get to my car and drive 2.5 miles to get tested. (Made it — but shit myself on the way back, reminding me briefly of a time when that would’ve mattered.) The week before that was spent on my back, pouring sweat and staring up through that skylight, literally delirious with fever. Normally this is what I’d have called “being really, really sick,” or “a drag.” But thanks to a battery of underlying conditions and the unique leadership style of Our President, what I was doing is called “dying” and that’s not actually something I’ve ever gotten to do before.

To be clear, I don’t get the results back for a couple of days still, so I don’t know if it was Covid. But I live in a hotspot and my closest place for supplies is probably Ground Zero (Open ‘til 2:00am!) People are mostly masked, but the ones who aren’t you don’t want to fuck with. I’ve been safe for 6 months, probably got sloppy: one of those times I was touching my face around the mask before getting home. If it wasn’t Covid, then there’s another King Hell knock-you-on-your-ass-and-hold-you-there disease out there and I’ll have to submit myself for study ‘cuz this wasn’t the goddam flu.

The major symptoms in my case: profuse sweating, paralyzing weakness and blinding headaches with just the slightest motion. The first signs were around sunset and by the next morning it was all full blown. It had a distinct taste: like caramel and tobacco. My mind was still normal: overwhelmed by all the things I thought I had to do... all nonsense by the time it was dark.

The Thing I’ve Been Most Afraid Of — knowing my life was being cut short because of Donald J. Trump...? Didn’t Mean A Thing: Nothing Did. Any conscious thoughts I might’ve had about expiring were all variations on Cat Stevens’ “Moonshadow” My life, relationships, ambitions, possessions… all just meaningless baggage I was about to leave behind. America, Free Speech, the Election… Trump… what was I even thinking? All of that was worth nothing compared to the way those branches moved in the wind, or the wisps of cloud floating beyond them, and what those things meant.

And the moon! Every night the moon would pass through my tiny little piece of the sky, slightly orange from the fire smoke, just skimming the edge of the tree, sometimes dancing in and out of clouds. I think it was the 2nd night when I woke up and saw it there. I was pouring sweat and literally too weak to move and thinking “What Luck!” I used to think these would be things I’d find unbearably sad to see, knowing I was about to leave them, but it wasn’t like that at all! There was so much to be considered in each moment even if I died tomorrow, that was centuries away! Just seeing them NOW was overwhelming.

The moon was a rock (“how far? I don’t know, Long way 200,000 miles I think”) being lit from the Sun (“Huge, Helium? Hydrogen? Gasbag CONSTANTLY EXPLODING but not, you know, exploding EVERYTHING, 92 million miles, certain) over the horizon somewhere out of sight. There’s dirt and dust on the pane but the orange of the moon is from forests to the north and east that have turned to hydrocarbons and dust in the atmosphere. Vast swaths of Ancient Redwood and Ponderosa, once infinitely complex ecosystems — now just a layer of soot floating in the sky (three miles up? five?) I vaguely recall this as having been sad, but there is no sad anymore — only various levels of amazing.

The slight orange tint to the moon starts firing off images in my head of Ponderosa and Redwood forests: high granite vistas in the Sierras and bike-touring back in my 40s. The way one or two needles always pierced the spandex when I’d sit down and just gaze out into the airspace, listening to the breeze whispering through the needles. The Redwoods had a different holiness and deeper silence and all the pictures in my mind were ferns and moss and dappled light, dripping limestone and perfect little creeks.

In the Sierras I was always alone, but the Redwoods came with a guestbook filled with the words and faces of long gone friends and lovers. all flashing through my mind all asking to be remembered, The one I picked I knew the instant I flashed on it because it was an experience I knew I’d never forget and yet hadn’t remembered for thirty years. I’m in a meadow surrounded by redwoods, eighteen and a half years old and lying on my back on a Mexican blanket, reunited against all odds with my One True Love since age fifteen and looking up at what will always be the most erotically beautiful woman in the world rocking on top of me, her eyes closed in ecstasy. When she arches her back I notice something high in the sky above us: a Monarch Butterfly, alone against the cloudless blue. It was a Perfect Moment that lasted about two seconds before a bird came from out of nowhere, snatched it out of the sky and disappeared. I spent the next minute watching with horrified fascination as this one tragic butterfly wing slowly tumbled through the still air straight towards us, knowing somehow if it hit us we were doomed.

Missed by about six feet. We had seven good years and one bad, but we were doomed in the end anyway.

I did try to write a post. It was on the fourth or fifth day and titled “You Don’t Want This” and tried to summarize about half a dozen unfinished freewayblogging essays and the last 20 years of my life.

I think it’s day 5 where I can’t move. Worst sickness I’ve ever had — insane sweating, headaches. all of it. Except breathing is ok thank god.

These are some of the 1100+ signs I made about Trump/Russia. We need to find out if this was our job.

Just before getting sick I had one of those really embarrassing moments of personal clarity where I found myself gobsmacked by the obvious: whether y’all think this is legal, illegal, frivolous, futile or gay, at least one reason there’s still only eight of us putting up signs is that literally nobody besides me is asking you to. Maybe this was clear to y’all from the start, but for some reason it was a huge goddam Eureka! moment for me. There’s something going on I just don’t understand. If I’ve been wrong about any of this 1st Amendment/Right to the Commons/Unlimited Right to Post/Duty To Warn stuff, Please do not hesitate to tell me! I’d like to get on with my life, now that apparently I’m going to continue having one.

I think it’s obvious Commander-in-Chief Fuck-You-All-And-Your-Votes intends to BushVGore his way through this with Infectious ACB so I hope our leaders have a better plan than 20 years ago.

separated at birth? — I googled “Carrie’s Mom” with nothing more than ideological snarkiness in mind, but seriously people: look at that.

I was tripping about as hard as I ever have for about five days on nothing but fever and whatever endorphin/dopamine cocktail my mind saves for the last hurrah. My physical requirements were getting to and from the bathroom (a five foot traverse that still made me feel like Sir Edmund Hillary) to keep guzzling water and taking aspirin to fight the fever, and to keep finding reasons not to have myself hospitalized. The fever was amplifying underlying fears and superstitions that the hospital would be the end of my road — the end of my freedom

JESUS CHRIST! THAT’S BLOOD!

Fuck You No it’s not.

You’re Pissing Fucking Blood!

No. It’s dehydration. Really Bad Dehydration. In case you haven’t noticed we’ve been swimming in sweat for three fucking days.

What if our kidneys are failing, or we’ve got Pancreatitus or who knows what kind of shit?

Well, we don’t. If we did it’d hurt, or something.

You don’t know that.

Okay, fair point. How about, Because Fuck You. Does “Fuck You” work?

I am a terrible doctor/patient, and these one-person conferences would always end the same way: go back to bed, go back to sleep. Deal with it later.

I probably should’ve checked in. I was delirious and had no idea or means of taking care of myself. But I’d fallen in love with my little piece of the sky and I didn’t want it replaced by Tucker Carlson. But mostly it was because the magic had started kicking in and I fiercely wanted to hold onto it. Along with the weird granular thinking of the waking hours and the half-state in between, the most psychedelic aspects of the extended fever state are the dreams, which are constant, extremely vivid, exceptionally unpredictable and grotesque. I should probably actually research the physiognomy of this, but it’s always seemed a natural result of a brain that’s slowly boiling.

Because I’ve got a suite of underlying issues that make Covid an assumed death sentence for me, the whole “constant, vivid, unpredictable and grotesque dreams” part of the onboard entertainment package could’ve gone very badly wrong, but fortunately my Entertainment Director added one simple, perfect rider to my contract.

I’m not a big believer in the supernatural, but if there’s an exception it’s the sixth sense that develops between twins and parents and children. My daughter and I were separated far too early, by distances that were too large and reasons that were too small, and so it’s always felt like we connected in some strange, borderline paranormal way to compensate. The best example would be her having no idea what my first favorite songs were, but there were two of them and they revolved around each other like a binary star in the center of my musical universe: nothing else ever came close. They were the Sound of Silence by Simon and Garfunkel and the Lacrimosa to the Mozart Requiem. By strange coincidence those were her first favorite songs as well, they always remained so and nothing else ever came close. Believe me, we’ve checked for all possible sources of cross-contamination, there aren’t any. And while I imagine those two songs probably rank pretty high in a list of early favorites, that’s only one example. There are others.

Anyway, some kind soul saw fit to make sure she was in almost all of my dreams. That’s what I meant by “the magic” and what I was most afraid of losing by going to the hospital. Because of the fever the result was an extended father/daughter road movie written and directed by Stephen King. It was always just the two of us in a variety of vehicles driving around America. Half the time it was modern day and half was this creepy nostalgic American midwest circa 1963: lots of weird little one-intersection towns with frightening diners and unfriendly strangers. Law-enforcement was never our friend and no matter how ugly something was there was always a good chance it would turn into something worse. Now I know that doesn’t sound like a lot of fun but trust me, it was a blast.

Some episodes were perfectly normal — just talking and driving — with some plot going on that never quite comes to fruition. And some were just visually spectacular, without any supernatural elements: driving through sandstone canyons in Arizona and Utah, or watching snow blowing off the top of the Wasatch catching the moonlight on some fantastically clear and starry night.

There were two or three nightmares where I’d lost her and spent the whole time searching either frantic or heartbroken. Then I‘d wake up and find it was just a dream. She was just fine and I was a half-delirious old man soaking in sweat, barely able to move and about one minute away from shitting myself on my deathbed thinking ”Thank GOD!”

The beauty of fever dreams is their vividness gives them such a sense of weight it distracts you from everything else. When I’d wake up I’d just lie there transfixed, poring over the details. I knew I was dying, but so what? That wasn’t until later. What’s important NOW is figuring out the yellow apartment dream. (It was a good one too!)

It’s taken me about three days to write this. Still no word on the COVID test but apart from the sniffles I’m feeling about 100%. The more time I’ve had to think it over, the more certain I am that my pharmacologist saw this as our Farewell Voyage and broke out the Really Good Stuff ‘cuz I have never tripped that hard for that long, and that’s coming from an old pro.

Two quick last thoughts:

1) The most useful thing you can do for someone who is dying is allow them to see the sky.

(Hospice people and skylight people should get to know each other.)

2) The most powerful political weapon you have is your vote… on election day.
On all the other days it’s the First Amendment.

http://freewayblogger.com

ER Doc 411: Insider tips to improve your visit to the ER

ERdoc in PA

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday January 13, 2019 · 9:56 PM PST

2019/01/13 · 21:56

Emergency room sign. — Hopefully you won't need this place; but you may!

Prelude: The Daily Kos community has meant a great deal to me over the past decade — and I have wanted to give back to this group of humans that I adore. This led me to one of my New Years resolutions for 2019: to finally start a monthly blog on emergency care topics. My reasoning: (1) I’m a long-time ER doc and medical school professor, and common advice to writers is “write what you know about”; and (2) all of us, sooner or later, have an emergency medical condition — so I hope some sharing of knowledge might be helpful to many of you. I meant to start this monthly blog a while back; if you want to see my first such piece (on cardiac arrest), you can find it HERE. In future, I will aim to cover specific medical conditions, but this month I will provide some orientation and pro tips to the ER experience.

The scenario: it’s 2 AM, and you feel awful

You suddenly have chest pain, or worsened difficulty breathing, or severe vomiting — and you just can’t avoid the frightening truth that you need to go to the local ER. Maybe you’ve never been to the ER before, or have only been there a few times and have found it to be a slow and unpleasant place. But here you are, it’s 2 AM, and you are scared that something serious is happening, something that needs medical care…. NOW. You hastily grab your wallet, keys and phone and head for the car, or you call 911 for an ambulance — but either way, you grimace and head to the hospital.

What an ER does well, and what is does not do well

The first and most important thing to understand is that ERs are designed to care for potentially life-threatening or serious acute conditions. Heart attacks, bowel obstructions, kidney stones, allergic reactions and the like — these conditions are what ER staff are trained for, what they generally diagnose and manage quite well. So if you have a relatively new, or a newly worsened symptom such as chest discomfort, difficulty breathing, vomiting, severe abdominal pain, or a new itchy rash all over your body, the ER is the right place for you. What ERs tend to do a lousy job with are conditions that are more chronic in nature — one month of abdominal pain, several weeks of back pain for which you have seen a specialist already, or intermittent headaches for 6 months. We just don’t have the resources, time, or ability to do a great job with such conditions, and your visit to an ER is likely to be frustrating, and result in an expensive co-pay without many answers. Sometimes you just don’t have a choice (maybe you don’t have health insurance or don’t have a regular primary care provider) — but your ER visit often won’t get you the care that you need.

The discussion above may sound obvious to you — but you’d perhaps be surprised to know that easily half of the patients that I see in my ER have conditions that are chronic or mild in nature, and would have been more efficient and more pleasant for the patients to manage in a clinic setting.

Orientation to the ER: who are these medical people and what crazy language are they using?

There are a bewildering array of staff who work in the ER setting. Knowing who they are, and the roles they play, can be a useful bit of knowledge when you visit the place. The ER also has a whole set of bizarro jargon terms, often used by staff to patients without remembering that “civilians” don’t use these words — thus adding to confusion and miscommunication.

Hard Working Medical Team Working On Patient In Emergency Room — who are these guys?

The ER is generally led by a supervising physician (known as the “attending physician” or simply the “attending”, a word I dislike because no one outside an ER actually knows what this means. I always introduce myself as the “supervising physician” to patients and families, everyone gets the meaning of that). The supervising physician makes the final decisions about “disposition”, meaning whether you stay in the hospital or go home, and what treatments you will receive. At many hospital ERs, there is a junior group of physicians who may care for you, physicians-in-training known as “residents” (much more familiar term, thanks to all the medical TV shows out there). If you are in the ER, and a physician walks in and says “Hi, I’m Dr. Jenkins” , it’s important to know if they are resident or supervising doc. It’s totally fair to pleasantly ask them, “Hi Dr. Jenkins, nice to meet you, are you the resident or attending physician?” That way, you will know if they are really calling the shots. It is absolutely your right to speak to the attending; if the resident physician says “you’re going home, everything checked out just fine” but you haven’t actually spoken to the attending (believe it or not, this happens not infrequently, but is not OK) — ask to speak to them. Ditto if the resident is telling you things that are totally confusing, it’s always fair to nicely ask “I appreciate what you are trying to say, doctor, but I’d like to ask some questions of the attending when they get a moment”.

The other crucial person on your ER team is the “primary nurse” — that means the nurse assigned to you during your stay. ER nurses are some of my favorite people in the world — generally strong-willed, sometimes blunt but deeply caring under that gruff exterior, smart and dedicated to their vocation. They can be your best ally during the ER stay — so make sure you are as courteous to them as your condition allows. Like flight attendants, they have a really tough customer service job, with most people complaining or being rude. A few kind words of appreciation towards a primary ER nurse can make a huge difference in their day, and often in the attention paid to you in the ER. You may also meet an “ER tech”, often a paramedic. These techs do a range of activities to support your care, including placing intravenous lines, preparing splints for sprains and fractures, and sometimes serving as a transporter to get you to x-rays or CT scans. Another member of the cast of characters is the “registration clerk” who will collect your information (insurance, drivers license) during your stay. “Consultants” are other physicians you may meet during your stay, called upon for specific expertise, such as surgeons or dermatologists or neurologists. They will help the ER team make decisions, but often are not ultimately responsible for your care.

ER physicians and nurses tend to work fast, and they often forget to drop their ER-speak. Here’s some common terms you may hear: “dispo” means disposition, or whether you are going to be admitted to hospital or sent home — if you hear a nurse say “let me find Dr. Jones and find out your dispo” that’s what they mean. Often abbreviations are used with patients (inappropriately) to explain test results. If a resident says “good news, your CBC was normal” — they mean your “complete

blood%20tube.png — hey, wait, that’s MY blood. Here’s a tube for a CBC.

blood count”, a lab test that measures the number of white blood cells, red blood cells and platelets in a given volume of blood. If they say “we’re going to draw a BMP” — sometimes called a “Chem-7”, that means they are going to measure blood electrolytes (such as sodium and potassium). Another common ER blood testing term is “belly labs” — this means blood tests for the liver, gallbladder and pancreas. Another term that is often thrown out there to patients: “acute abdomen” — if a resident says “Mr. Adams, we are worried you have an acute abdomen”, that means they are worried you may have a sudden process in the abdomen often requiring surgery (conditions such as appendicitis or bowel obstruction are often considered “acute abdomens”). If a nurse says “I need to stick you again, Ms. Ramirez”, that means he or she needs to draw blood for another test. They may grab a “butterfly” to “stick you”; a butterfly is a form of needle to draw blood. If you are a family member, and someone tells you that your confused loved one (the patient) is “only A and O x 2” that means alert and oriented to only two criteria (the three criteria often used are person, (“tell me your name”), place (“where are we right now?”) and time (“what is the date today? what day of the week?”). Unfortunately, there are many more jargon terms, enough to fill a book, but hopefully this list of common ones may be useful as you interact with the ER team.

Black Kos

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday January 11, 2019 · 5:10 PM PST

2019/01/11 · 17:10

Marina Silva, Green Party Candidate for President of Brazil

Through a glass darkly: A United States lens on Brazilian Politics and Race.

Commentary by Black Kos Editor Deoliver47 and Guest Commenter mpimpa

My good friend, and fellow anthropologist Maria Pimpa-Junqueira from Brazil is currently visiting me here in the States. Our conversation has of course turned to politics, both of the US and of Brazil; President Obama, one year after...and the upcoming elections in Brazil.

ZawnVillines

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday July 06, 2018 · 6:45 PM PDT

2018/07/06 · 18:45

WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 28: Protesters that marched from Freedom Plaza to the U.S. Capitol demonstrate inside the Hart Senate Office Buildking against family detentions and to demand the end of criminalizing efforts of asylum seekers and immigrants June 28, 2018 in Washington, DC. More than 1,000 women from 47 states took part in the march, with numerous arrests taking place during the sit-in at the Senate office building. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Millions of people across the county have participated in protests against Donald Trump and the oppression for which he stands. Many protesters say that Trump’s election finally shook them from their complacency, made them realize how much in this nation must change, and inspired them to take action for the first time.

Protests help energize the resistance, but they’re not enough on their own. They’re also not accessible to everyone. People with disabilities, parents with very small children, those who can’t risk arrest, and numerous other groups may not be able to participate in protests. That doesn’t mean they can’t be activists. In fact, some of the most important activism is the kind that happens behind the scenes, without media coverage and without inspiring photos that you can slap on social media.

A true resistance movement is long. It’s multi-faceted. It encourages everyone to do what they can—not waste precious resources feeling guilty about what they can’t do. No matter how old you are, how brave you are, how healthy you are, or how little time you have, there’s something you can do. So stop stewing. Stop arguing on Facebook. Stop feeling bad. It’s time to take action.

If you have additional ideas or want to share details on a worthy organization, share that information on the comments.

Activism in 10 Minutes or Less

Time is a privilege. People who work long hours, those who must hold down multiple jobs, parents to very young children, people with disabilities, and numerous other groups may be short on time to get involved. If you can commit just 5-10 minutes, though, you can still help. Try taking one of these actions daily, weekly, or even monthly. Every little bit helps.

Excise the Darkness from Your Own Heart

We live in a society that has raised us all to endorse various forms of oppression—the notion that deserving people are never poor, that people of color deserve to be disproportionately incarcerated, the idea that women can avoid violence if they just think, act, and dress correctly.

That means we all must work to eliminate the darkness in our own hearts. It’s an ongoing project that will never be done. So invest in improving yourself. Some strategies:

Focus on being actively opposed to oppression rather than just appearing that way. If someone accuses you of racism, sexism, or another form of oppression, sit with that allegation. Take it seriously. Don’t attack and attempt to silence the messenger. Each of us is capable of cruelty and oppression. Each of us is also capable of listening, learning, and changing.
Join a group that is committed to unpacking oppressive thoughts. One great starting point is Unlearning Racism on Facebook. Men Stopping Violence is another great resource.
Stop tone policing. I continually hear Democrats telling people of color that they are alienating voters. They seem to believe that marginalized people should unquestioningly check the “D” box at every election. But our party has a long history of racism. We’re the party of Andrew Jackson, the Trail of Tears, and lynching. We’re the party that did nothing to stop segregation. We’re also the party that elected the first black president. So I know we’re capable of much more than our past might indicate. We need people of color, women, and other marginalized people to tell us when we’re screwing up. That’s not divisive. It’s a gift that prevents us from going backward. Wanting people to get along won’t force them to get along. Wishing there was no racism in the Democratic party won’t make it so. The divisive forces in the Democratic party are not people calling out oppression, but those who would ignore that oppression and treat the needs of marginalized people as a trivial sideshow.

Take Direct Action

Direct action directly confronts bad actors in a way that encourages them to change. Some strategies include:

Showing up to confront your representatives. Find your representatives. Then follow their Facebook or other social media pages to learn about upcoming appearances. Show up to ask pointed questions. Film it and post on social media for increased visibility and to shame your representatives for bad behavior.
Visiting your representatives. In-person visits take a lot of effort, and so are a lot more compelling than a letter or call. Check your representatives’ social media pages to see when they’ll be in their office. Then schedule an appointment, or show up unannounced to talk to them.
Stage a sit-in outside of your representatives’ offices. If your representatives are unresponsive to you, get a group together and sit outside with signs. Call the media for more visibility. Shaming works—especially on people who are up for re-election.
Show up in person to confront problematic companies. The same formula that works with representatives often works well with companies that have engaged in racist behavior, made donations to problematic candidates, or otherwise harmed the cause of liberty.
Get inspired by this list of 198 nonviolent direct action ideas. Direct action can be fun and even celebratory. So get a group together and take action.

Use Your Skills for Good

A lot of the activism that garners the most attention—especially going to protests--requires little skill. Changing the world, however, requires a wide range of skills and talents. So if you don’t want to or can’t protest, find a way to use your talents and resources for good. Some options include:

Offer your services for free. Lawyers, doctors, social workers, therapists, accountants, and anyone else who provides a service can make life better for the least among them by offering—and advertising—free or reduced-cost services. Consider also volunteering with a local organization that needs your specific skill set.
Raise money for a cause or individual. Donate a portion of your profits, or participate in an auction of your products or services.
If you have an office space or other useful location, consider donating it to a charitable cause when you’re not using it. Your local Legal Aid, for instance, might need a place to meet with an influx of clients. A small reproductive justice organization could need a meeting space.
Offer useful information for free in a public forum. Immigration lawyers can assemble simple fact sheets. Social workers and therapists can offer information on helping someone in crisis or managing politically driven panic. If you have useful tools, make them free and readily available. It’s likewise important to correct incorrect information when you see it. Every protest lawyer has seen organizations instructing protesters that this protest is “safe,” when no protest is. Every therapist has seen inaccurate information about PTSD. Be direct, but gentle, so that organizations can do better by knowing better.
Offer your services to those providing direct care to people in need. For example, a therapist might offer free or discounted help to a lawyer suffering from the vicarious trauma of working with immigrants.

Give the Gift of Time

We all want to feel valuable to the cause. It feels good to get a public thank you or be on the news. That’s not the only way to be of use. If you know a dedicated activist—an immigration lawyer, a civil rights attorney, a social worker who specializes in trauma, a doctor offering free medical care to refugees-give them more time to do their work.

If you’re good with kids and the person trusts you, offer free childcare. Or consider paying for their childcare.
Offer to run errands, pick the kids up from school, or take the dog to the vet.
Help clean the house. When you’re working 16 hour days to save refugees, it’s easy for a home to fall into disarray. And it’s not fair for someone to be punished for their hard work by returning home to chaos.
Bring by a meal, groceries, or basic household supplies like paper towels.
Mow the lawn, weed the garden, or pick up the mail.
Offer house-sitting to activists who have traveled to the border to help.

Silence Bigots

I’ve spent—I’ve wasted—endless days arguing with racists and misogynists. I have tried everything. I’ve empathized. I’ve given evidence. I’ve insulted them and listened to them, remained calm and gotten angry. Nothing works. If a person thinks that children belong in cages, that our Constitution should be shredded, and that black lives actually do not matter, they can’t be saved with gentle goading or aggressive arguing.

Stop wasting your time. Instead, shun people who represent and espouse bigoted ideas. We might not be able to change their minds, but we can punish them. We can make them think twice before acting on those ideas. Shunning is activism.

End your relationship with racist relatives. They don’t deserve to be in your life, and they certainly don’t deserve any influence over your children.
Don’t fight with people on social media. It’s wasted energy that you could spend on something that actually matters.
Make life more difficult for bigoted people. Lose their paperwork. Drop their calls. Put them on hold. Whatever you can do to slow them down and make their goals harder to achieve, do it.
If you see a member of the Trump administration in public, make their life as miserable as possible. They must face consequences for their actions.

Volunteer

Volunteering can open up a whole new world of activism. It connects you to a community of like-minded people, offers details on events you might not know about, and helps you directly impact the lives of people in need. Look into supporting your local rape crisis center, domestic violence shelter, homeless shelter, soup kitchen, or food bank. Some excellent starting points for volunteer work include:

Volunteer From Home

You don’t have to be retired or a stay at home parent to volunteer. You don’t even have to leave your home. Volunteering with a hotline allows you to support people in crisis wherever you are. Some excellent hotlines doing meaningful work include:

Help People Vote

Voting does not always mean we get the perfect candidate—or even a great candidate. That’s no excuse not to vote. Voting is harm reduction. By continuing to vote in every election, it’s possible to slowly and steadily vote out bad candidates, vote in good ones, and use primaries to get the best possible progressive candidates into office. In a society that has disenfranchised 1 in 8 black men, those of us who can still vote have a moral obligation to lift up candidates who will push back against Trump and all that he stands for. Here are some ways to help people vote:

Donate Money

It feels good to go to protests and to volunteer. But one of the most effective ways to support the resistance is to give money to organizations that are already doing the work. Give as much as you can afford as frequently as you are able. Here are some excellent options:

Abortion clinics across the country are under attack. Republican anti-choice laws targeting abortion clinics in Indiana, Mississippi, and across the nation are designed to make it more difficult for poor women to get abortions. They require multiple clinics trips, long waits, or overnight stays. Help someone in need afford an abortion by donating to the National Network of Abortion Funds.
Reproductive justice is about far more than abortion rights. Right wingers have opposed virtually every measure to reduce maternal mortality, ensure healthy children, and support families. Give to organizations that are pushing back on multiple fronts. Some excellent options include SPARK Reproductive Justice Now, Human Rights in Childbirth, Improving Birth, and Sister Song.
Activist attorneys have long bent the arc of history toward justice. Help them keep going. Donate to Pro Bono Net, Immigration Advocates Network, Volunteer Lawyers for Justice, the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Women’s Law Center, the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES), the Disability Rights Legal Center, the Transgender Law Center, or National Advocates for Pregnant Women.
People of color, poor people, and women who don’t conform to gender stereotypes are forced to pay higher bails when they’re arrested. Most are arrested for minor offenses. Many are arrested under laws—such as drug laws—that were designed to penalize, and which disproportionately impact, poor people and people of color. The most common reason women are arrested is for bouncing checks. These nonviolent, presumed-innocent people can languish in jails for months. They may lose their jobs and their children, all because they can’t raise a few hundred dollars for bail. The effect? A minor annoyance in the life of a middle class white person may permanently destroy the life of a poor person. So help bail someone out of jail. After a major protest, go to the arraignment and offer bail money. Show up in court one day during arraignments to see who has been arrested, and help get a few people out. If direct activism is too time-consuming or intimidating, you can still help. Donate to the National Bail Out. Give to the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund. Or install the app Appolition, which uses spare change to help get people out of jail.
Don’t forget about individuals in need of help. Not all charities have the ability to help all people. Consider finding an individual in need of help and supporting them. GoFundMe is a great place to start.
Help a financially struggling person you love. The Trump administration wants wealth to flow to the top. Through its attempts to gut the Affordable Care Act, medical bills may skyrocket. Housing prices continue to soar. Wages are stagnant. You don’t need to go find a homeless person or a charity. You don’t need a tax deduction to help people. Look no further than your own family. Help your sister pay her childbirth bill. Pay off your cousin’s credit card debt. Give your niece a baby shower and help cover the basics her new child will need.
Black people are still suffering the after effects of slavery, legalized non-personhood, Jim Crow segregation, and hundreds of years of disenfranchisement. Yet when people of color ask for the reparations they were promised, Republicans act like the request is absurd. A number of reparations groups have sprung up as an antidote. Help a person of color pay their rent, get an immunization, or afford groceries. Through Facebook reparations groups, you can read stories of people in need and donate what feels right. The website Reparations also offers numerous opportunities to pay white people’s collective debt.

Take Care of Yourself (and Others)

Some analysts have suggested that, if just 3.5% of the population actively resists, it’s possible to topple a dictator. So fighting back against an authoritarian regime in a democratic society should be even easier.

The Trump administration knows this. They’re working to make the left feel demoralized. That’s why they’ve enacted laws that are doomed to fail. It’s why they show such contempt for the American people. Make people feel hopeless and they stop fighting. When the goal is to demoralize people, self-care is a revolutionary act.

That means there’s no need to feel guilty about taking a break—as long as you plan to get back to work as soon as you are able. So try the following:

Find strategies for dealing with your emotions about Trump. Therapy, support groups, deep breaths, and similar efforts may be helpful. You’re not of much use to the cause if you’re depressed.
Keep your feelings in perspective. Many groups are threatened by Trump, but some are more threatened than others. Seek inspiration from activists who face even more challenges than you do.
Take a media break. You don’t need to know about every atrocity. You simply have to take action when and where you can.
Block people on social media who post things that paralyze you—even if you like those people.
Don’t follow organizations that only post negative information. Follow organizations that inspire you to action.
Stop telling people things are hopeless. Stop posting articles designed to make people feel worse. I don’t know how things will turn out. I don’t know if they will get worse. I know that if people are demoralized, there’s no way for them to get better.

Cults, Cons and how to talk to someone in the conservative bubble

popsday

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday December 25, 2017 · 12:44 PM PST

2017/12/25 · 12:44

We have a hard time believing things we don't want to believe

“Essentially, a short con involves taking the pigeon for all the money he has on his person, while the big con sends him home to get more.”

-Luc Sante, 1940

The list of conservatives denying reality continues to grow:

* Roy Moore wasn’t a sex predator

* The Russia scandal is made up

* Trump’s accountant says the new tax plan will hurt Trump

* Football players are kneeling because they hate the military

* Obama was born in Kenya and was responsible for Hurricane Katrina

* There were WMD’s in Iraq

The list goes on and on...

Are these people idiots? Trump even boasted that he could stand in the middle of 5th avenue, shoot someone and not lose any supporters.

The good news is that they have just been conned. It’s that simple. The bad news is that it is hard to “unconn” someone. The final good news is that some proven tools exist that can help you make progress with your conservative friends and relatives. Let’s discuss:

CULTS & CON ARTISTS GET US TO DO ALMOST ANYTHING AND THANK THEM FOR IT

David Maurer in his classic 1940 book The Big Con says:

“A mark, once hooked, is often most difficult to ‘unhook.’ If operators once get his confidence completely, he is so sure of the deal in which he is involved that he will not listen to reasonable advice even if it is given to him.”

Some examples Maurer gives:

“C.H. Hubbell of McPherson, Kansas who was tied up with the Christ Kid when the officers arrested the Kid. He was being played for $50,000 and was most indignant at the interruption. Even when he learned that he was being played on the rag, he refused to believe it and insisted on posting bond for both the Christ Kid and his insiderman”

“I thought I’d knock him good so I wrote him that he’d been trimmed and that it was no use looking for us and we were going to Europe. About a year later I bumped into him on the street. He shook my hand and said, ‘Mr. MacAllister, you can’t get away with it. You can’t let me down now...Now I have dug up ten thousand more. You can’t keep me out of the deal this time.’”

Why does this happen? Ego! Ego! Ego! Marks convince themselves that they are right and they can’t fathom the idea that they are wrong. Cons prey upon the things we really want to believe are true.

Steven Hassan in his book Combatting Cult Mind Control says that cults ask for your life savings for 2 reasons:

1. To get your money

2. To leave the cult, you first need to come to grip with the painful realization that you just gave away all your money.

It is easier for the human mind to make up excuses than confront painful reality. It’s easier to deny climate change if you get all your money from oil. It’s easier to think of yourself as a “job creator” when asking for tax cuts.

Maurer writing from 1940 tells us a lot about those in charge today:

“Most marks come from the upper strata of society, which, in America, means they have made, married or inherited money. Because of this, they acquire status which in time they come to attribute to some inherent superiority, especially as regards matters of sound judgement in finance and investment. Friends and associates themselves social climbers and sycophants, help to maintain this illusion of superiority.”

A Great Story About Life on the Moon that People Wanted to Believe

We choose to believe stories we like, whether it is the story that we are “honest”, “smart” or that people live on the moon. Maria Konnikova in The Confidence Game notes the story of the Moon Hoax of 1835 that was printed in the latest technology of the times: Newspapers. Readers were treated to fantastical stories and pictures about life on the moon (see picture here). Even after the hoax was revealed, many readers still believed it was true. Many of the pre-Alex Jones readers said that it was all a government cover-up. They did this for the same reason people believe the world is flat, etc: because they wanted to believe the story!

Researcher Stephanie Hall has this to say on the Moon Hoax

blogs.loc.gov/...

“Disclaimers and attempts to disprove legends can often spread the story further. Hoaxes sometimes work in much the same way, perpetuated as much by the interest of those who disbelieve a story as those who believe it. [emphasis added]

HAVE YOU EVER BEEN CONNED? IF SO, YOU LIKELY WILL NEVER KNOW

There is only so much you can do because Konnikova notes that con artists play on who you are.

“What are you confident in? The con artist will find those things where your belief is unshakable and will build on that foundation to subtly change the world around you. But you will be so confident in the starting point that you won’t even notice what’s happened”

In an interview Konnikova was asked if she has ever been conned. She gave a great answer: “I don’t know.” If a con artist is good, you will be conned and you will never know. You might remember that you once tried to buy tickets off Craigslist but it didn’t work out, but you think it was because of an error at the gate, not because that nice Math student conned you.

TECHNOLOGY GIVES CON ARTISTS SUPER POWERS

Konnikova writes that these same con men have a new modern friend: technology. She quotes a con artist who says:

“What I did fifty years ago as a teenage boy is four thousand times easier to do today because of technology. Technology breeds crime. It always has and always will”

It used to be that a con artist had to walk up to your house in the fields of rural South Dakota to get at your life savings. Now they can just talk to you over Skype, YouTube or Trump’s favorite: Twitter.

Steven Hassan in his book Combatting Cult Mind Control says

“Mind-control organizations routinely sponsor websites and that purport to provide help, empathy

...

Because vast amounts of personal information are now available online, cult recruiters (as well as ordinary scam artists) can now go online and develop extensive profiles about future targets”

CAN’T WE JUST USE FACTS? NO

As a liberal, part of me keeps hoping that if we can just give conservative the right information their behavior will change. If we can just prove Russian collusion or show that the tax plan benefits the 0.01% mainly , things will be better. Before being a liberal, I was a borderline 9/11 conspiracy theorist and I did the same thing. I have the truth and if people will only listen to the facts about the second tower or Iraqi oil people will change their behaviors.

But that’s not how people work. We don’t care about information — at least at first. We like people and stories we trust most of all.

As smart, information- and fact-based people (“reality has a liberal bias”) how do we communicate with our co-workers, friends and loved ones? Is it all a lost cause?

It’s not a lost cause because I experienced the change. I was a Rush Limbaugh listening Republican when I was a young man and I changed. It took a lot of love and care from people to get me to change but I did. Did anyone ever sit down and give me all the answers? No. I never said “You know, You are totally right. I see it right here in the newspaper. I am a fool.” Liberals expect that outcome, but that will never happen.

In trying to understand my own conversion and the current GOP/Trump mindset, I did a bunch of reading on cults, con artists, FBI negotiators and salesmen- anyone who changes minds. Here are some proven tools that you can use this Holiday season to make some progress:

TOOLS TO USE

1. ARGUING — EVEN WITH GOOD FACTS — MAKES THINGS WORSE. DON’T DO IT.

Hassan says this about arguing with a cult member:

“Another common error is trying to argue the person out of their involvement by using a condescending, confrontational approach. This direct approach is doomed to failure. Rational argumentation is simply not effective with someone who has been indoctrinated….Add condescension or arrogance, and you are playing right into the cult recruiter’s hands.”

When us humans get into a fight, a funny thing happens, we gear up and defend our position: arguing with a conservative only solidifies their beliefs.

Hassan notes that cultists have been preparing for you and your facts. When you come at them with facts, this is the fight they have been preparing for. They have their own facts. They want to battle you on twitter or wherever. Right wingers are the same, they have been prepping in the gym of talk radio, blogs, etc. getting their (often stupid) talking points just right. Don’t fight this battle! Its the one they have been programmed to want.

In fact, even if you are going to meditate a lot first and remove all arrogance from your tone, simply presenting facts alone is still counterproductive. Research into vaccine use shows us:

www.psychologytoday.com/...

...cognitive psychology has taught us that when we are trying to debunk a myth ...the memory networks associated with the misinformation are activated and strengthened. Because it takes more cognitive effort for people to update their beliefs in light of new information, such strategies often just end up reinforcing the myth.

In other words:

2. REALIZE YOU ARE TRYING TO CONVINCE THE MORE POWERFUL ANIMAL MIND

Daniel Kaheman in Thinking Fast and Slow makes an important distinction between (1) our animal mind which is fast, instinctive and emotional and (2) our rational mind which is slow and logical. Turns out that a vast majority of our behaviors happen because of the first mental system. Focus on changing that first. To do that, first you have to

Our animal mind if more important to what we do

3. ESTABLISH RAPPORT

How do we avoid the animal mind going into fight or flight? How can we talk to the rational mind? Loving connection is the key but I need more specifics than that because I’m not so good at those things.

I’m often bad at being nice but you know who is less touchy feely than me? Old school FBI agents. These are the people that brought us botched negotiations in Waco, TX and elsewhere. Turns out the new breed FBI negotiators have learned a few touchy feely things.

Former FBI negotiator Chris Voss in his book Never Split the Difference says that the FBI needed a new playbook beyond rational arguments because “have you ever tried to devise a mutually beneficial win-win solution with a guy who thinks he’s the messiah?” Answer: you can’t

The FBI developed tools to “calm people down, establish rapport, gain trust, elicit the verbalization of needs and persuade the other guy of our empathy.” All of these are crucial and it starts by establishing rapport with these tools.

Konnikova says that any good con artist knows that a con “requires the creation of empathy and rapport...an emotional foundation must be laid before any scheme is proposed, any game set in motion. Only then does it move to logic and persuasion”

Hassan lists building rapport with cult members as the #1 key to unlocking mind control.

So use a nice calm voice and make friends first.

A. MIRROR TO ESTBALISH TRUST

Voss says “We fear what is different and are drawn to what is similar”

Dale Carnegie and Tony Robbins self-help gurus agree and have a lot to say about mirroring.

Who else does? Con artists! They see this as essential step. Bernie Madoff and others were experts at a type of fraud called “Affinity Fraud”. The SEC defines this as

www.investor.gov/…

“The fraudsters involved in affinity scams often are – or pretend to be – members of the group...These scams exploit the trust and friendship that exists in groups of people. Because of the tight-knit structure of many groups, outsiders may not know about the affinity scam.” [emphasis added]

You can see this all the time in Trump and his other con artist friends, they wear cowboy hats or hate Mexicans or do other things to signal they are on the inside of a group. They want to convince us they are one of the right (in the case of Trump, the “white”) group. I always love the moment, Trump says he “learned” how to solve crime in Chicago

www.washingtonpost.com/…

“I went to a top police officer in Chicago who is not the police chief, and he — I could see by the way he was dealing with his people, he was a rough, tough guy, they respected him greatly. I said, how do you think you do it? He said Mr. Trump, within one week we could stop much of this horror show that’s going on.”

When talking to your Trump loving neighbor you first need to convince her that you are worth their trust. You like their group and are part of it in some important ways.

FBI agent Voss and cult deprogrammer Hassan both list “mirroring” as the place to start building rapport. Things you can do to mirror

1. Similar clothing or appearance

2 . Imitate posture and other physical ways of being . Match a weak handshake with a weak handshake. Lean forward when they lean forward.

3. Listen and repeat the last 3 words (or the critical one to three words) of what someone just said.

I understand that these can seem manipulative and in the hands of con artists, they are but we can try to use these in authentic ways. For example, listening and repeating the last few words is also a nice way to actually listen to them. Which bring us to:

B. LISTEN TO THEM BEFORE THEY CAN LISTEN TO YOU. GET THEM TO SAY “THAT’S RIGHT”

Voss: “When individuals feel listened to, they tend to listen to themselves more carefully and to openly evaluate and clarify their own thoughts and feelings. In addition, they become less defensive and oppositional and more willing to other points of view”

This is very simple. Most of us have things we want to say. We won’t listen to someone else’s viewpoint until we feel that we have been heard. So it is our job to listen first.

Voss has a simple system, first label any objections using non-confrontational language:

“It seems like you are very angry”

“It seems like you think taxes are too high”

The great thing about this language is that you are state someone’s objection without agreeing. “It seems like you don’t like democrats”

The idea here is to get them talking. If you can get them talking long enough, you can find places where you can connect. “So medicare is very important to you?” “So you want the VA to be fully funded”

Once you get where they are going try to restate their language. Voss says the goal is to get to a place where your conservative friend will say “That’s right” Bingo!

Only then can they listen to you.

4. ASK “HOW” AND “WHAT” QUESTIONS TO GET THEM TO ARTICULATE THEIR THINKING

The bad news is that there is no way that I know of to tell people what to think that works in the long term. Instead what you are trying to do is develop their sense of critical reasoning. Victory can simply be planting the seeds of doubt.

After the election, I would simply ask Trump supporters questions like

“How will things get great?”

“Do you think he is going to try to get medicare and social security?”

My goal wasn’t to convince them I was right, but for them to take a stand and hopefully they will see how what they want isn’t what is happening.

Hassan says this about convincing cult members:

“I give people a toolkit for helping them make their own decisions and taking back their lives. I help people detect and remove the virus of mind control on their own. This is something they ultimately need to do themselves, for themselves, not something do to them

….

[The goal is] to empower the individual to be their own person: to think critically, to evaluate, and to reality-test and exercise their own free will. The person leans to listen to their inner voice, rather than the instructions of an authority figure”

Questions do this and also have the non threatening upside of giving the other side the illusion of control. Voss recommends that all your questions start with “How” and “What”. “How can we solve this problem?” “What is the objective?” “What about this is important to you?”

“Who”, “What” and “where” questions are simply answered with facts. No good to us here. “Why” questions sound accusatory.

Voss calls these “calibrated questions.” In other words you really need to think through the questions you are going ask and calibrate them to your audience. Questions give you the ability to frame situations, so take them seriously. Ideally you can calibrate them to...

A) GET THEM TO THINK FROM OTHER PERSPECTIVES

Hassan uses questions in cult deprogramming to get cult members to look at reality from different perspectives. For example: “How should your parents feel about you being in a cult?” We can do this also by asking questions such as “How would you feel about Trump’s rhetoric if you were black?” “What should a working single Mom do if she can’t afford healthcare?”

My favorite question is “What is a time you acted to stop racism?” This question has the upside of working within the frame of racism exists and is a problem. It allows the friend to see themselves as a hero fighting for justice. The downside of this question is if they start talking about “racism” against white people. Find a way out of that!

B) HELP THEM TO DISCOVER THEIR ACTUAL VALUES RATHER THAN RIGHT WING PROPOGANDA

The conservative answer to these questions will obviously be brutal and naïve because much of their thinking has been captured by right wing propaganda. The goal isn’t to debunk the lies but rather to let your friend come to the conclusion that these lies are as gross as they are. They know the answer, they just need help accessing their true values.

The goal is to actually have them to say out loud “The single mom should go bankrupt and die if she doesn’t have healthcare” or whatever crap has been fed to them in a non-confrontation setting. Remember that the conservative “cult” identity is talking and not your friend. It is important to try to ask them questions that would access their true thinking: “How would you have answered this question before you starting reading infowars?”

There are some great resources on how Fox News acts like a cult and creates a new identity for its “victim.” One is the movie below in which the daughter succeeded in getting her old day back by changing his news sources (amongst other things):

YouTube Video

5. KEEP BEING A SOURCE OF UNCONDITIONAL LOVE. KEEP THE LINES OF COMMUNICTION OPEN.

In cult rescues Hassan looks for the family member who maintained unconditional loving ties with the cult member. This is the person who decided to love their family member even if they join a wacky cult. This is the person who can still communicate and get the person to listen to other points of view. Don’t cut off communication.

“I found that people who were able to walk away without intervention were those who had maintained contract with people outside the destructive cult. When people could maintain communication with outsiders, valuable information that could change their life could penetrate cult-constructed mental walls”

Maybe it’s best if you cut off ties with your Nazi friend. I know I would have a hard time maintaining ties but if you cut them off, then you can’t help them anymore. Keep loving the person you knew, not the right-wing identity.

A) GIVE CRITICAL INFORMATION IN AN INDIRECT WAY

Hassan has learned not to ever give negative information about a cult member’s own cult. Instead talk about other similar groups. Hassan notes that cults install “thought-stopping” ideas into members so that when someone attacks their cult, they are triggered. In addition, they are told that their cult a) is not a cult and b) is superior to all other groups.

So mention other con men if you want to talk about Trump’s activities. Talk about ISIS to discuss religious fanaticism. Talk about how other countries can afford universal healthcare.

B) ASK BEFORE GIVING CRITICAL INFORMATION

If you are going to give a bunch of zingers on Russian collusion, don’t ambush them. Allow it to betheir choice to listen to your facts. You could be playing with fire here so be careful and try to use sources that are trusted by your friend. If WorldNetDaily has some good articles on prison reform, use it. Hassan:

“My preference is always to have someone ask the cult member if they would be willing to hear a little of the other side of the story and see what reaction this elicits. However, such a request needs to come from a sibling or a friend, rather than from a parent, so that it seems much less threatening.”

6. “CRAZY” IS JUST A SIGN POST FOR WHERE TO LOOK FOR THE THING THAT CAN HELP

Voss defines “black swans” as critical pieces of information that are unknown until you talk further and keys to negotiation. For example, maybe someone is really looking for recognition or maybe they are worried about their health care costs.

Voss sees these things most in the places we think someone is “crazy.”

“But the moment we’re most ready to throw our hands up and declare ‘They’re crazy!’ is often the best moment for discovering Black Swans that transform a negotiation. It is when we hear or see something that doesn’t make sense — something ‘crazy’ — that a crucial fork in the road is presented: push forward, even more forcefully.”

I imagine the Black Swan in many cases of conservatives is more of the White Swam of racism. This is going to be hard to listen to but it is important to get your friends to talk about their underlying assumptions and it is your job to help them see if they agree with these views.

As a former conservative guy who is white and straight, I feel like my motivation stemmed from fear, racism, sexism etc along with some legitimate grievances with how my white working class community was let down by liberals. “White guilt” is a real thing and it stinks. It is also true that it stinks to be a working person whether you are black or white. Some PC people are jerks, especially privileged rich white people. There are real truths that need to be acknowledged before a conversation can move on. Hopefully you will learn and grow as well.

My 10 year old daughter has a best friend who is anti-Muslim and homophobic because of her family. She simply asks her friend questions about why she believes this or that. While it’s important that we don’t agree with our conservative friends its also important we don’t walk away. We talk about the questions to ask her friend. It’s a process!

There is a saying in negotiations that “He who talks most loses”. Keep them talking!

7. BE THERE IN CASE THEIR IDENTIY CRASHES AND DIES

The death of a belief core to one’s identity seems to be similar to the feeling of death. (My pet theory is that a lot of the opioid crisis is a white identity death crisis)

Sports stars are great case studies in identity deaths:

theweek.com/...

“There's an oft-repeated phrase in sports, its recurrence having washed away its origin, but the premise is this: Athletes die twice, and the first death comes in retirement

….

This is an unkind and inescapable truth for athletes. The identity, the celebrity, the adoration, the money, everything they've attained is ultimately diminished, if not lost completely.” [emphasis added]

The 5 stages of grief mirror the journey one has to take to come to a new belief about the world. First we deny and along the way we may break down in tears before we can move to acceptance.

On the face of things Rhonda Rousey should be happy. Sure she just lost a big fight but she is healthy, rich, gorgeous and has nothing material to worry about.

Yet, losing her recent big fight almost destroyed her:

YouTube Video

“Honestly, my thought was like .. in the medical room and I was down in the corner and I was like ‘What am I anymore if I’m not this?’ and I was literally sitting there like thinking about killing myself and the exact second I’m like ‘I’m nothing. What do I do anymore? and no one gives a shit about me anymore without this.”’

Con men know this about our minds and stand ready to exploit our beliefs. Maurer notes that old time con men used to literally put advertisements in newspapers looking for “honest” men.

“The mark’s ego is flattered at the start, while at the same time he feels a sense of security in the deal because he is convinced that the men he deals with trust and admire him for his honesty...Often his rationalization mechanisms are so perfectly developed that he never admits, even to himself, that he is fundamentally dishonest.”

THE DEATH OF THE CONSERVATIVE IDENTITY WILL INVOLVE TEARS

Fox News is a living embodiment of the 5 stages of grief about white racism (well maybe 4 of the 5). It goes from Tucker Carlson’s denialism to more honest moments when Melissa Francis broke down in tears after being confronted with her own racism. The co-host’s response is actually pretty good. It is as loving an embrace as could be reasonably be expected.

YouTube Video

Crying Fox News host Melissa Francis after defending Charlottesville Nazi types

“I know what’s in my heart and I don’t think anyone is different better or worse based on the color of their skin but I feel like there is nothing any of us can say right now without being judged”

Cohost good response that doesn’t demonize but rather provides a loving embrace:

“You know Melissa there have been a lot of tears on this network and across the country….It’s a difficult place where we are but it’s not where we’ve been. It’s where we are. This is not 1950. We can do this.”

8. DO OTHER STUFF THAT WORKS

This is really as far as I’ve figured out. It’s enough to get you through the holidays without causing any problems and sew some seeds of doubt. If you have ideas on what to at this point, please let me know.

Here are some suggestions from my readings and experiences

1. Fact check one story together. I had a conservative co-worker go on about uranium one so we did research together rather than debate each other. He got to see that HRC had little power to approve the deal at all. I don’t know if we solved anything but at least it wasn’t a fight. I could tell he wanted to debate “facts” not have a reasonable discussion about sources of information. He knew that infowars was garbage when we actually starting looking together.

2. Humanize the pain. Give human stories showing the real impact of terrible conservative policies have also been shown to be effective. If you can talk about the real life stories of sexism, racism, etc. Better yet introduce them to people targeted by Trump’s policies so they can hear real human stories.

3. Mental health is at the core of a lot of this. Just having your father go see a therapist and working on his anger issues will likely yield results in the long term as he learns to deal with his anger instead of channeling it at the Fox News targets. Personally I had to work through a lot fear and anger before I could even think about politics. My political change was a happy result of my personal growth.

4. Encourage news from printed sources. Turn off the TV. Lots of studies have shown that TV sends scary images that trigger the fear parts of our brains and overrides rational thinking. I was an anti-war Iraq activist back in the day. What saved me was not watching TV. Whenever I would watch TV, I would find myself thinking “maybe this was is OK after all.”

5. Both sides don’t do it. Lots of great thinking at DailyKos and elsewhere has occurred on how the press creates a false “both sides are bad” narrative.

6. Organize! Vote and fight! Don’t spend all your time helping Right Wingers feel better. We need to get our voters out there so don’t get too caught up in all this.

CASE STUDY: HOW A MORMON CONVERTED

Here is a story that reflects a lot of the principals discussed and my own story of conversion. From rapport to labelling to questioning it shows how the power of helping others see rather than arguing. This is a former Mormon caller into the (very funny) Majority Report. Here are some good quotes starting 5:35 into the video

“My recommendation would be to build relationships, I know that our instincts right now are to like run away from the crazy uncle and some of those people are not going to be saved so to speak, I think people should build interpersonal relationships offline.”

“If you can get them to articulate their most crazy positions and then sort of calmly place little seeds of doubt that’s the best way to do it.”

On a disarming meeting over coffee with a liberal: “You are trained to have an automated response in Mormonism and also everything is you know oh Libtards or fake news or whatever and it becomes reflexive and he stopped me and he said ‘No I want to hear what you think about this not what you’ve been told like what you should say or what you are supposed to think’ and that was like a defining moment in my personal life cause I had to stop and look inward and say ‘Oh OK I need to do some work on this and um and so …. I think very few people are convinced online or in flame wars that sort of thing but if you can meet with these people are try to start personal relationships and dialogues I think that helps.” [emphasis added]

YouTube Video

Other cool stuff if you care to look further

There is a lot of stuff out there. I like old school George Lakoff and Drew Weston for the psychology of our politics. Check out Derrin Brown the hypnotists to get scared by how easily our mind can influenced.youtube.com/… Cognitive Dissonance is a well researched area that is worth looking into further. A good TED talk by Cortney Warren is here

YouTube Video

Good luck! It’s not easy but progress can be achieved. It’s just going to take patience time and caring!

DNC, DCCC, DSCC: How to decipher the alphabet soup of Democratic Party organizations

David Jarman for Daily Kos Elections

Monday December 25, 2017 · 11:56 AM PST

2017/12/25 · 11:56

The Democratic National Committee headquarters is seen, Tuesday, June 14, 2016 in Washington. Sophisticated hackers linked to Russian intelligence services broke into the Democratic National Committee's computer networks and gained access to confidential emails, chats and opposition research on presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, people familiar with the breach said Tuesday. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) — Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, DC

It’s not unusual to see confusion about the roles that various Democratic Party campaign committees play, though it seems to have peaked recently following Democrat James Thompson’s unexpectedly close loss in the special House election in Kansas’ dark-red 4th Congressional District, based around Wichita. What I’m talking about, more than anything, is cries of “WHY DIDN’T THE DNC DO ANYTHING ABOUT THIS RACE?!?”

That’s kind of like coming across the scene of a bus accident, and asking “WHY ISN’T THE COAST GUARD COMING TO THE RESCUE?!?” There are certainly valid reasons to critique the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the ways it does business, but the committee’s non-involvement in a House race isn’t one of them. It isn’t their jurisdiction—that’s simply something they don’t, by definition, do.

If you’re interested in having your comments about dysfunction by Democratic organizations taken seriously, it helps to at least have some knowledge of where to correctly point your finger. With that in mind, let’s take a few minutes to review the alphabet soup of organizations in Washington that raise money for, and spend money on, Democratic candidates.

The DNC (Democratic National Committee) is the presidential committee. It raises money, primarily, for the presidential race every four years. It oversees the primary/caucus process, setting rules and coordinating debates (though, of course, the state parties have large—probably too large, given the amounts of chaos that often results—amounts of leeway in terms of when they do things and what kind of format they use).

It organizes and pays for the Democratic National Convention, which in itself is a remarkably large expense. It pays for advertisements and field organization for the Democratic presidential nominee, once the convention is over. The DNC is run by a chair that, if there’s a Democrat in the White House, is picked by the president, and, if not (as we just saw), is elected by DNC members, who are picked by their state parties.

Denise Oliver Velez for Daily Kos

Community

Saturday December 02, 2017 · 8:15 PM PST

2017/12/02 · 20:15

no image description available — The Rev. Dr. William Barber is an evangelical minister.

Most readers here are aware of the statements and actions of the right-wing, Trump-loving evangelicals. They call themselves Christians, although their actions and attitudes bear little or no resemblance to the teachings of Jesus Christ in the many English versions of the Christian Bible.

But it’s important to remember that simply excoriating “evangelicals,” as if there is one unified group who classify themselves as such, is both wrong and counterproductive for those of us who embrace social justice. For Democrats to speak of people of faith with disdain or disgust is a self-defeating prophecy and belies our “big tent” umbrella. It also dismisses a large segment of our base who happen to be people of color and people of faith.

As this recent piece in The Washington Post pointed out:

In popular lingo, the word “evangelical” has often — wrongly — been used interchangeably with “white evangelical.” That is due to pollsters often lumping together white evangelicals because of their statistical similarities — their shared views, beliefs, behaviors — and also doing the same with black Protestants, who could also be seen as “evangelical” based on their theological beliefs.

The most obvious example to point out to those who may scoff is that of the Rev. Dr. William Barber II, bishop of the Repairers of the Breach, leader of the new Poor People’s Campaign, architect of the Moral Mondays Movement, and former president of the North Carolina NAACP.

His activism on behalf of all the issues many of us hold so dear cannot be questioned. Whether it is fighting against racism, white supremacy, and xenophobia or advocating for voting rights as well as economic, reproductive, and environmental justice, he is a warrior in a battle we are a part of. And yet: he is an evangelical. His church uses the Poverty and Justice Bible.

During the health care debate he wrote “An open letter to clergy who prayed with Donald Trump,” addressed to Jack Graham, Johnnie Moore, Greg Laurie, Paula White, Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell, Jr., and others, in which he said to them, as a fellow evangelical:

My brothers and sister, I do not single you out because your position is unique. You inherited a heresy, and you are not alone in perpetuating its cruel errors. But in our present crisis, you have publicly embraced a president and a party that embody the abuses of power that the Biblical prophets decried. Millions of people have been led astray by your error, and the whole world is now reaping the consequences. I single you out because the people I know and serve literally cannot afford the cost of your willful blindness.

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