Category: Government

I wonder how much of the lack of empathy in the US is a result of the “all men are created equal” line from the Declaration of Independence. When I was younger, I always felt that this was a positive, uplifting message, but as I’ve grown older, I feel that perhaps while the intent was good, I’m no longer sure that it has a positive impact on society.

Disregarding the obvious (most likely incorrect) assumption about being “created”, I don’t like this line because I think buried in the phrasing is a notion that we all have the same capabilities to overcome setbacks, even those that are unfairly placed on some people and not others. And this makes it easier to blame people for their positions in life, regardless of if it’s truly anything that they have any control over. From the position of many, I get the sense that “I had my setbacks, and since we’re all created equally, you should also be able to meet whatever challenges you face.”

This of course ignores the fact that we aren’t really all equal in terms of ability (whether intellectual, athletic, or any of the other million characteristics that make us all unique), or that we all have to deal with the same level of setbacks in life, or even have the same opportunities. And that’s a pretty dangerous thing. If we recognized that we all have different challenges, and that we aren’t all equipped to handle things equally, perhaps we would be better at helping each other out, and do our best to make life fairer, even though it’s inherently unfair.

People a long time ago had the right idea with the notion of “no taxation without representation, ” but they didn’t quite get it fully where it needed to be.

We’re currently in the situation where those who provide most of the funding to the US (primarily those terrible liberal cities, and successful blue states) have less and less say in how the country is run, along with how those funds are spent, and where it gets directed (generally red states). And as conservatives continue to gerrymander the nation to hell, the ratio of taxes sent to Washington vs our voice in the direction of the country continues to skew.

Our new rallying cry should be: “no taxation without EQUAL representation”. Until we all have an equal say in how our tax money is spent, we should do whatever we can to correct the imbalance. In reality, the amount I pay in taxes should factor in the amount of representation that I get.

I like the phrase since it has a bit of a conservative ring to it. I would like to think there are a few sane republicans out there who do value fairness, and perhaps it can appeal to them as well to push our cause forward. Yeah, I’m probably not fully living in reality.

I see comments online that we should all stop paying federal taxes (in response to the new military presence in our nation’s cities, a masked and un-uniformed police force rounding people up off the streets, withholding funds to blue states for green energy programs, using the powers of government to go after political enemies, etc..). This isn’t really feasible, since we all have to pay taxes individually, and since there are severe penalties involved, the likelihood of us all acting together on this are pretty slim.

Perhaps it was brilliant design, to limit the power of states (or other jurisdictions) in this way, but I wonder if there are some exploits that could be made to make it possible. (And I’ll admit here that there are probably many problems with this next idea, but a central idea of this blog is to push further into these thoughts that are potentially dead-ends).

A Unified Release of Tax Returns

States could potentially create a mechanism for releasing everyone’s individual tax returns at once. For instance, here in California we could enact a “State Office of Federal Tax Fulfillment”. That office’s responsibility is to basically do your federal taxes for you . This could be outsourced to existing tax professionals, or perhaps we would do taxes as we do now, they just get routed through this office for final release to the federal government. The central idea is just that the taxes are still coming from you, they’re just finally “released” by the state organization, but they are released together at the direction of the state government.

This would give states more power to withhold those funds collectively if residents aren’t feeling as though their money is being used well.

Of course, there are plenty of problems with this — the federal government could still go after individual tax payers, so I’m not sure what protections could be put in place (or loopholes to be exploited) to mitigate that danger, other than for a state like California, there would be 39 million of them. And you’re right, this very well could spell the end of America if all states did this (which they would). And for the record, I’m all for paying taxes, and we (those who make more than most), should probably be paying more, but perhaps taxes could be a larger leveraging tool for making the nation better.

Before I had to think about such things, I always just assumed that there was a line — you’re either living in Authoritarianism, or you’re not. But there of course a range of conditions that move you either to the left or right along that line, and we have definitely moved towards the authoritarianism end, especially during (but not limited to) Trump’s second term. And we’ve been doing it with remarkable speed. I keep hearing that “we’re on the road to authoritarianism”, which I guess just also assumes that there is a magic line, or perhaps it’s just how we all tend to think — that there is a point where one thing becomes another. And that line exists at a different point for some all of us. For me, I feel as though we’ve definitely ticked enough checkboxes to land us in that authoritarian zone. There may be plenty of more room on the spectrum to lead us more fully into authoritarianism, but we’ve definitely moved quite a bit further away from the “ideal democracy” side of things.

I had never really thought about democracy as something that exists along a spectrum (but the more I think about various topics in general, it seems that nothing is ever really an either/or as we generally think of them). I had always assumed that here in the US we live in a democracy, but I’m not really sure at one point along that spectrum you go from “no democracy”, where citizens have zero say in how things are run, to an “ideal democracy”, where everyone’s vote counts, and counts equally. We’ve never had an “ideal democracy” in the US — as a Californian, my vote has always counted less than the votes of people in some other states. But as we gerrymander state representatives to favor some groups of people more than others, we’re moving even further away from that “ideal democracy.” How far can you move before it really isn’t democracy any more?

I keep thinking on pride — it’s interesting that as the nation circles the drain into populism/nationalism/tribalism, and where those on the right are more proud of whatever the hell this country has become, that my pride has started to become more broadly applied. I’m more interested in what scientific advancements and technological breakthroughs are happening here, but also now more from beyond our borders. I’m taking more pride in the best of what humanity provides, no matter where it’s found. I have a feeling that there is much more of it out there than what I have previously assumed.

I believe our current (dreadful) situation as a nation is heavily brought about by the lack of thinking ability for a large swath of the country. It’s not really their fault of course, no one gets to choose their natural abilities or upbringing. But it is a serious issue that we really need to face as a species I feel like we can combat much of our issues by just having better education, and easier access to it, and honestly, this seems like the easiest approach. But we can also come at it from the other end — finding ways to limit power (things like Trump, Fox News, Joe Rogan), and find better ways to communicate, or break through these bubbles that exist, that are currently very difficult to break into. Education in comparison seems easy, but perhaps the needed, more robust approach is to hit the issue from both sides.

Pride in my nation seems to be running a little slim these days, but I want to be hopeful about the future, and I guess to find my “community” in some respect. Every so often I think about throwing together a website (or an app of some sort) that pulls content in from various places, and compiles them all into a single place. So for instance, I’ll check out my Alma Mater’s news section on research and discoveries, and I’m happy that I was a part of that — I like to see the advancement of human knowledge. In a broader sense, just being part of the university system in general is a community that I’m proud to have been a part of, so also pulling in those same types of news articles from other universities would help to compile all of that news from my community. These are my peeps!

I’m also an urbanite, and generally interested in the culture and challenges (and opportunities and solutions) that are a part of city life, so compiling news about great urbanism from cities would be a great addition to my news feed.

It’s still important to monitor the rest of the news, but I want to focus more on hopeful futures, and feel more connected to the community that I want to be a part of — the one that is continuing to push humanity forward.

In the US currently, it seems as though there are three segments of the population: a group who is pretty much opposed to the current direction that the US is headed, a group that doesn’t care (or is indifferent, or grudgingly going along with one of the other groups), and a final third of the population that is actively cheering this all on.

Of course, the lines between each group are blurry — there aren’t really hard lines defining where one group ends and the next begins. And yes, it does seem a little tribalistic to view things in this way, but perhaps that is a necessary step to realize the issue at hand.

I have started to refer to that final third of the population as the “Bottom Third,” since on a variety of attributes, they seem to rank at the bottom of the list. A few common traits:

• A willingness (and in many cases, a celebration) of believing things without evidence.
• A nebulous love of their country — an unchallenged view that their clan is the best.
• A fear and dislike of people who are different, or not of their same group.
• Lesser importance on education. In some cases, an outright rejection of education.
• A lack of critical thinking and reasoning ability.
• More fearful, but also a greater acceptance and appreciation of violence.

And it would seem as though this same group of people has existed throughout history. While most people in this group aren’t really evil themselves (although perhaps a higher percentage in this group are), the real danger of this group is that they make it possible for the bad (and evil) people to gain power. Because of this, this group is responsible for most of the bad things that have occurred in human history — from Nazi Germany, to [something else].

I’m of course not the first to recognize this group of people throughout history, but as a species, we seem ill-equipped to deal with it. Our systems of government don’t account for it, and in some cases are tailored in ways that allow leaders to fully utilize this Bottom Third (like the current US system of government, where the disproportionate representative system gives individuals in some states a larger voice than their counterparts in other states).

Perhaps it will take a few more cycles of human atrocity before systems are put in place to mitigate the damage of this group. But that should be a foundational goal of the species — a recognition that this group exists, an understanding of the damage it is capable of, and the development of strategies needed to combat the negative impacts of this group.