Reunification

You may have noticed a change in this blog’s appearance. I’ve adopted the design of my other blog, Mickey’s Adventures Through Time and Space. I prefer this design, and I’ve decided to stop posting on that blog. (If anyone knows how to transfer those posts to this blog, I’m all ears.)

After a 4-year experiment (and a 5-year mission) of keeping separate personal and political blogs, I’ve decided to go back to my old, messy, one-blog approach. The distinction between personal and political is essentially arbitrary anyway. I mean, where do you draw the line?

Our society has tried to separate the personal from the political. But I think it’s an attempt to mystify politics, to convince people that the business of running things is best left to the Experts. Of course, the Experts tend to agree with Big Business, but that’s just because Big Biz is usually right. It has nothing to do with the fact that the Experts are paid by the Mainstream Media, which are owned by Big Biz. That is merely a coincidence.

As a result of this arrangement, we’re deluged with official statistics that bear no resemblance to our personal experience. But who are you gonna believe? All these numbers that carry the Establishment’s Seal of Approval or your own lying eyes?

If you buy into the mainstream narrative (like I did), you feel like a freak and a failure for having a seemingly abnormal life. I was vulnerable to this because I felt abandoned by my friends and alienated from my family. I was socially isolated, economically insecure and angry.

Despite going to a good (expensive) college, I have yet to land a job that is both spiritually and financially rewarding. Because of my shame about this failure, I swallowed whole the mainstream narrative that I failed entirely due to my inadequacy and the only way to ease my pain was through material consumption and accumulation.

Consciously, I’d always rejected this philosophy, but unconsciously I believed it. I had no one (whom I believed) to tell me I wasn’t a failure or a freak. I was afraid to even ask the question, to ask for that reassurance. I was a Man, after all, and Men don’t do that. We aren’t supposed to need that.

Needing that kind of support is a sign of weakness, we’re taught. Asking for support is going public with your weakness, an even bigger no-no. I resented anyone I saw, man or woman, who showed vulnerability. They were breaking the Rules, the Rules that I fought so hard to uphold.

But enough about me. Let’s get back to the politics. Or have I been talking about politics all along? (Mind blown!) All these things fed my politics, consciously or not. I became intent on fighting the H-1B visa program that had brought Indians (the kind from India) to work alongside the rest of us at my last steady corporate job.

I think this was a good, smart response to my anger. But if I hadn’t been raised in the upper-middle class, gone to a small, liberal-arts college and been exposed to radical Leftist politics, I might not have even thought of that as a decent, humane option.

Instead, I might’ve given into my racist hatred of Indians and become a white nationalist. It’s not like the Democrats had anything better to offer. Say what you want about Trump, but his anti-“free trade” rhetoric was far more resonant than Hillary’s “stay the course” message.

Thus did the GOP reap the harvest of what its policies had sown. They (with the Dems’ near-lockstep support) undermined public education, economic security and the social safety net, thereby creating the ignorant, scared and angry voters who elected Trump.

But U.S. politics had become too sanitized. The professional politicians were making “adult” decisions that were ruining Americans’ lives. It was OK when those decisions ruined (or ended) Iraqi or Afghan lives, but once the “carnage” came home, something had to change. People could care less about civility in politics when they can’t pay the bills. They just want someone who’ll fix things.

Besides, our idea of political “civility” and “norms” is pretty fucked-up. We mock other countries when their parliamentarians get into fistfights, but we’re the real savages. We pat ourselves on the back because we can coolly and calmly debate the merits of murdering thousands, or millions, of people via “humanitarian intervention.” We should be horrified by the casual manner in which we discuss such things.

The separation of the Personal and the Political seems to enable this cold, bloodless, detached rhetoric about other people’s lives. I’ve fallen into the trap too. My essays often trade in airy abstractions. I’ve been trying to keep my political points nice and clean and “objective.” But no one’s objective. We all have our biases.

Hopefully, with this reunification of my personal life and my politics, I’ll stop worrying about revealing my biases and personal shames. I think I hide them to hide the fact that I’m just as flawed as most people. But I have to let go of that arrogance. It would certainly make me more willing to leave my Ivory Tower every now and then and join my comrades (Yeah, I said it!) in the streets.