I'm tired of arguing with Republicans, I already know what they're gonna say

It's like all Republicans got together and decided to believe, at the same time, that guns do more good than harm, that capitalism doesn't need regulation, that the environment is "fine" and climate change is "cyclical", social programs are "wasteful", and conveniently, government should be small and let people be (except, of course, for closing Planned Parenthood). Seriously, every Republican I talk to believes ALL of these things like gospel. ALL of these things simultaneously. At least the smart ones have given up on opposing gay marriage, but that's kind of like complimenting someone for owning a cell phone when they've been around for two decades.

Not a Conspiracy, Just Code

That the phrase "latest shooting" exists should HORRIFY us. But we've become used to it. Which is...horrifying. #UCSB

— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) May 25, 2014

In the wake of yet another mass shooting, it becomes clear how routine this has become. I'm numb and incapable of being shocked. The pro-gun and anti-gun folks have their talking points, they'll spew them, and nothing will change. Nothing new will be said, much less anything new be done.

The Onion recognizes this. Every time there's a shooting, they post the same article with the location and death count changed to reflect the "latest shooting".

‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens https://t.co/UmEukJuv0E pic.twitter.com/zN0vDZdFf7

— The Onion (@TheOnion) December 3, 2015

I took to Googling this to see just how many times they've had to post it before. It was there that I noticed something weird...



Do you see what I see?

San Bernardino, the latest shooting, is listed is the location. The date is May 27, 2014, the date of the then "latest shooting" at UCSB Isla Vista.

Wait...multiple shootings already listed together? IS THIS PROOF OF A CONSPIRACY?

No, it's not. It's code. It's how Google indexes their pages.

A similar issue came up with the Sandy Hook conspiracy theories... "The date of pages is in the past for the news stories that just happened!" It's debunked here. Google's code can index filler pages where news stories will eventually go, and/or mix up dates. (Editor's note: Author is not a programmer)

The Onion also might be updating the same linked story with the new details - and Google generates the page preview (containing "San Bernardino") without updating the date. (Editor's note: Author is not a programmer. But I did learn to embed tweets just now.)

The old Onion article is also covered in the "news" (I call HuffPo "news" loosely) back when the UCSB shooting was the "latest shooting".

Just wanted to get this in here, if anyone is going to suggest a conspiracy to "take our guns away" ... make sure you do your research.

Like when I was Googling Sandy Hook, looking into the whole conspiracy piece, and I found the school's website archived. It had years of e-newsletters archived from the preschool for at least three years before the shooting. If Sandy Hook was a conspiracy, they had to be paying someone to make those newsletters look convincing for three years. Sure, it's possible, but Occam's Razor?

I'd also encourage people to do their research and see that Ronald Reagan, conservatives' God, supported the assault weapons ban, and see that half of gun owners support an assault weapons ban ... but that's for another day.

Halsey's Invisible Cello and My Invisible Debate Team

Lately, I’ve been getting more and more into the music of Halsey.

  

It’s the kind of pop music that people are “supposed to” like these days – electronic beats, palatable lyrics, verse-chorus-bridge song structure, pleasant melodies – and I like the music not in spite of this, but because of it. 

It would fit right in on the TouchTunes playlist at the Oak Tavern, it would fit on the stereo of the hair salon under my apartment that’s always playing Sam Smith and Hozier, it would fit as the muzak at Kenwood Towne Center, it would fit on the “sexy” playlist you’d put on Spotify if you want to make out and have it awkwardly interrupted by Spotify commericals. 

All this, and Halsey's album is something I actually enjoy listening to. That deserves a prize.

But I was kind of bummed when I read Halsey's blurb in Rolling Stone. In the midst of plenty of other interesting tidbits (she writes songs "about sex and about being sad" - what more do you need?) there was an anecdote about playing the cello as a teenager (It's in RS 1243 - Sept 10 2015 but not online, so I had to transcribe it...)

Growing up, Halsey played violin, viola and cello until she was 14 and decided "that wasn't cool anymore."

 I instantly found myself annoyed when I read that - not just as a music teacher, not just as a person who plays a stringed instrument, but as someone who, as a core principle, thinks it's categorically ridiculous to deny yourself life experiences based on whether or not they're "cool".

Has she sufficiently distanced herself from that teenange mentality? I thought about how Halsey is part of a generation that barely remembers 9/11, how she probably had an IPad in high school, how she probably never remembers a time without computers, and how nineties kids are better, and to hell with everything.

And then I remembered myself at the age of fourteen.

My freshman year of high school, I was encouraged to join the debate team. A few teachers saw that I was good at writing and arguing and told me to check it out. My parents strongly encouraged me to do so.

And I didn't do it.

I thought that the debate club carried a negative stigma as being for "nerds". (This was right before I got braces next year, which - privilege check - was probably the most devastating thing to happen to me in high school.) I thought that the deck was already stacked against me because I wore glasses and wasn't good at sports. I needed all the help I could get to avoid being labeled a "geek", because once that happened, I would be singled out for it, and there was no hope for my high school experience!

My parents badgered me several times to consider the debate team, but I refused.

To this day, I love writing and arguing, and I surround myself with people who love the same. But what if, in my formative years, I had spent even more time doing the thing that I loved, surrounded by people who loved the same? I missed out, because I was worried it wasn't cool.

It's pointless to reflect on "what might have been" and assume it would have been better. I'm writing and arguing plenty, despite my silly teenage refusal to get an early start. Halsey is making awesome music even without her cello. Would things magically be any better? Maybe the debate club would have gotten hit by a bus, and then that same bus would have taken a stop at Halsey's school so she would have gotten hit by a bus while carrying her cello.

Halsey is making fine music, I'm doing a fine job of writing and arguing. None of us are hit by a bus.

Things are what they are right now. We can't change the past, but we can learn from it. I solemnly vow not to make decisions based on how "cool" they'll seem.

Or, perhaps, I should solemnly vow not to judge an artist as "cool" or "not cool" because of their popularity, because of their presence on jukeboxes, because of what they say in interviews - but simply on the merits of the music.

On that note:

Why I Should Go Vegan But Haven't

Yet again, my mind and heart don't match- I intellectually "get" veganism but don't need to become vegan to sleep at night.

Now she can help me sleep at night...by bringing a vegetable midnight snack!

I haven't written anything on here in a while. The usual self-criticism and analysis-paralysis can always get in the way of just writing, but with my blog, simply logging in forces me to confront the hard reality - instead of just worrying that I'm shallow and pedantic, there's actual written evidence that I'm shallow and pedantic.

As usual, I'm getting my butt in gear because of a girl. A colleague, compatriot, and companion requested that I lay out my conflicted attitudes towards veganism, and speciesism - so I know at least one person will read this, so here goes.

Vegan is a relatively recently coined term for those who, in addition to being vegetarian, forgo the use of all animal products. So, in contrast to pescetarians who still eat fish, or vegetarians who still eat milk and eggs, vegans forgo all of that. No products resulting from animal suffering. Their reasons are many, and really hard to argue against - both pragmatically and ethically.

This adorable moment is just before the calf was pulled away from its mother to be used for veal.

The pragmatic objection: we get animal products through means ranging from the unsustainable to the downright nefarious. The methane from cow farts, burps, and manure is contributing to global warming more than vehicle emissions. Most of food mega-industry puts profits before provision and is unconcerned with how food processing depletes food's nutritional value.

The ethical objection: it should be a dealbreaker that we get animal products through animal suffering. Chickens are crammed into cages where they cannot move. Cows are abused and mothers and offspring are separated so the industry machine can roll on. (Google it if you want to feel terrible.) Even a humanely killed cow or chicken is still being killed so that we can eat it- when it doesn't need to die at all.

I put this cuddly calf here to emotionally manipulate you into not enjoying your next hamburger.

That is the crux of a more involved problem with "speciesism". Speciesism is a label for the belief that the rights, well-being, and non-suffering of human beings is more important than that of non-human beings. Animal liberationists call into question whether "speciesism" is really a fair justification for what we do to animals. We seek to prevent suffering for humans, but why not non-humans? Who decided that animals matter less?

If animals are capable of feeling pain in the same way that we are - does this suffering mean less just because they're a different species?

To get theological, does Baby Jesus cry more tears over a suffering human than a suffering cow, or doesn't every part of God's creation matter to God? (Well, plenty of believers talk about humans having "dominion" over the earth and God giving us animals to eat - but I'd fire back that in the Garden of Eden, people were vegetarians, and the Old Testament God only permitted people to eat meat later as a concession. Christian vegetarians would agree.) Or, taking God out of it, if all consciousness is way for the cosmos to know itself, why are humans better than chickens?

Crucial to the argument is the fact that people don't "need" to kill animals for food anymore. Early in human evolution, around the time we were bashing each other's skulls in to survive, we also had to bash in other animals' skulls to survive. But, just as we developed society to avoid bashing each other's skulls in, so have we developed agriculture and food infrastructure that means we no longer have to do things that way. We've also developed ways to make food that is delicious without using animal products.

Or we have food that's "accidentally" vegan because the artificial flavors include no dairy or eggs.

So there, intellectually, is an argument for veganism and no longer using animal products. I watched the documentary Speciesism and had lengthy conversations with my vegan companion, and I see the point to all of it.

So why am I not vegan?

Reason 1: Burger Madness at Arthur's.

It's more than just not wanting to give up hamburgers. It's more than just the force of habit, and being so accustomed to being a carnivore in a society where the majority of food is meat-based.

Deep down in my gut, giving up animal products is not the change I need to make to sleep at night. (How do I sleep at night, anyway? I'd like to think giving it my all with the stuff I'm passionate about, treating people how I'd want to be treating, seeking a meaningful life...but it ain't working.)

I think part of my reticence to embrace speciesism was driven home by some Facebook conversations today. Sometimes vegans draw comparisons between the suffering of animals being ignored under our noses, and the suffering of people in concentration camps being ignored under German society's noses. (Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies aside...)

Hitler Cat. Puns about the "Fuhrer" as Purr-rer or Fur-rer are a given.

I observed two polar opposite reactions to that statement, basically:

a) How can you compare what happens to chickens and cows to the awful hell that millions of humans went through in the concentration camps?

b) Well, why not compare them? Who decided that human beings were more important than animals? If suffering is bad, why wouldn't we want to prevent suffering on the scale of hundreds of millions of animals?

If I had to "pick" a) or b), I'd have to admit I still have a hard time equating the suffering of non-human beings to the suffering of human beings. "Guilty of speciesism!" I can't really argue with that accusation.

But I can't really "argue" emotionally with either perspective - I can just unpack the premises as if I'm describing an electrical wiring schematic. Am I going to argue with the person who is offended that the suffering of cows is compared to the murder of six million Jews? No, because I understand their premises. Am I going to argue with the person who says, well, why don't we look at all suffering equally, and why is our species so special? No, because I understand their premises.

Long ago, trying to "pick a side" would have thrown me into some kind of obsessive compulsive tailspin, but I've become a lot less emotionally attached to most arguments. Even topics where I have an unshakeable opinion: i.e. the judicial system being unfair to black Americans or the need for marriage equality and LGBTQ rights - I can usually listen to any perspective without getting too hot-headed. Especially because my opinion - apart from the ballot box or maybe, slim chance, a conversation or debate - isn't really going to change much.

John Lennon was a wife-beater, but that doesn't stop me from posting his song "How Do You Sleep".

Part of me sleeping at night is finding some kind of recognition that there's a limit to what I can do. There's a lot of awfulness in the world, but there is comparatively little we can do about it. All we can do is try to find what we need to do to sleep at night. Call that growing up?

Nick