Author: Jason

Be Welcoming Vs Welcomed

At its core, by seeking large groups to be identified with and by, we as individuals have stopped looking for ways to be more welcoming and instead sought more ways to be welcomed.

People love their choirs. We tend to find our people, our tribes, the folks that align with what we identify ourselves by the most, and we hold on to it tight. Those tribes lead to an us vs. them mentality that the drives too many aspects in someone’s life: where to shop, where to consume news, who to call a friend, who to date, who to marry.

This is nothing new. “Identity politics” has been a part of the human fabric since the dawn of man. Sometimes the identity is self-embraced by how one defines themself and all the virtues they determine that contains — I am Catholic, I am vegetarian, I am pro-life. Other times the identity is how one defines others and the negative perception one accounts to those identities — you are foreign, you are Republican, you are anti-choice. Often they go hand in hand. If you’re not with us, you’re against us.

Kenney the Elder defines the problem directly:

Yet if the end state is really a condition between us and them? Who are us?

Shaun’s entire piece is worth a read with a cup of a beverage of your choosing. In a lot of ways I share his concerns, it’s a reflection of conversations we’ve shared time and again. The public sphere has shifted and as someone who’s engaged in often spirited but well respected debate for most of my life, it’s disappointing to see what used to be robust conversations on matters of importance distilled into mocks, memes, or “owning” one side or the other. Again, from Shaun:

In short, we have become a vulgar, boring people… and you can see it every day on social media, legacy media, commercials, entertainment, sports, etc. Our loneliness isn’t the problem — we’re just not interesting anymore (neither to ourselves or to one another).

So we have to manufacture virtue rather than work on becoming better, more interesting people. Turns out, virtue can’t be purchased. So we opt for wit, humor, condescension and the like rather than insight, relevance, and dialogue.

What’s worse, the manufacturing occurs when we stop letting our ideas and our virtues define our groups and instead allow our groups to define our ideas and virtues. Especially when those ideas and virtues are dictated by personalities more than actual intellectual ideas.

In another way, it’s a matter of values over labels. For example, believing in and engaging in Christian values is different than saying you’re a Christian.

As Bryan Caplan says:

The best way to guard against this laxity is to define your large, selective groups in purely intellectual terms. Identify with liberalism or conservatism, not liberals or conservatives. This is the kernel of truth behind the “No True Scotsman” fallacy. Once you insist that “No true libertarian believes in immigration restrictions,” you’ll feel little temptation to ignore, minimize, or justify libertarians who believe in immigration restrictions. And this is precisely how you should feel.

At its core, by seeking large groups to be identified with and by, we as individuals have stopped looking for ways to be more welcoming and instead sought more ways to be welcomed.

It’s a distinction with a difference. You don’t win hearts and minds by “owning the Libs” or seek to understand someone by responding to reasonable discourse with an animated gif of a disappointed Picard. You do get high fives from your tribe, though.

We seek out and embrace large, unselective group identities to be part of something that reinforces what we want to believe about ourselves. In turn, we narrowly define ourselves not just by who we believe we are, but we also define those who are not us and prove unwelcoming to their ideas and experiences, even if they’re unrelated to our group identity.

We start to see the world in black and white terms. Us versus them. We become narrow, in turn, becoming boring.

We need to resist allowing the halo effect to limit how we experience the world and the fantastic people in it. We need to welcome different ideas and disagreement as an opportunity to learn, not just about the values but about the person who holds them.

This doesn’t mean don’t stand for anything. Absolutely have a take. And, yes, there are going to be bad people out there who are not worth your time.

But start from a place of understanding that often we disagree not because of some moral lacking but because of life experiences that have helped shape who we are. And those experiences can be fascinating.

Why Does RPV Hate Religious Liberty (and Jason Kenney)?

“DUDE!”

“Dude?”

“Check this out!”

“Hey, that’s the guy from TV*! Who helped beat up Commies!”

“Yeah, he’s running for Senate!”

“Why?”

“Here’s why!” *Explains*

“Sign me up!”

And that’s how teenager Jason Kenney decided to help Ollie North for Senate in 1994.

*”guy from TV” because we were glued to the Iran Contra hearings at a young age

Shaun: “Hey, Jason, did you lose your razor?”
Jason: “Hey, Shaun, did you lose YOUR FACE?!?!!”  (Working a precinct for Dole/Kemp in 1996.)

Nearly 25 years later and after working with and bleeding for countless campaigns and causes I’ve been blocked by the Republican Party of Virginia Twitter account.

“What did you do, Jason?” you may be asking and I’m offended. I’m a perfect gentleman at all times. You must be thinking of that other Kenney.

This starts with an asinine tweet by the Republican Party of Virginia:

Whoever is behind RPV’s Twitter account and their bosses (because the buck stops at the top, folks) have decided that the rights granted by God and protected by the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights should not apply to a religious private school.

I guess my attending a Catholic school as a child with the mandated uniform of navy blue pants, light blue shirt, and black loafers while the poor girls were in long wool skirts year ’round offends the pearl clutchers on Grace Street. Because as of this morning:

Whoops.

“But it’s only Twitter,” you may be saying.

Let’s talk about this for a second.

1) RPV has decided Religious Liberty doesn’t apply to Muslims and that makes attacking political candidates who happen to teach at associated schools or foundations persona non grata.

2) By attacking a school in Herndon, Virginia, RPV is attacking the families of the 1200+ children who attend that school. Those are voters in the 11th and 10th Congressional districts where Jeff Dove and Barbara Comstock are fighting for every vote they can get.

3) RPV has decided that pointing this out is grounds for a Twitter ban, thus deciding that I, as a Republican volunteer, voter, supporter, and more, shouldn’t see the rest of their messages, pushing me further away from my Party.

This. Is. Not. O. K.

The role of the Republican Party of Virginia is to uphold the Party Creed and to get Republicans elected in Virginia.

The Virginia Republican Creed is as follows:

WE BELIEVE

That the free enterprise system is the most productive supplier of human needs and economic justice,

That all individuals are entitled to equal rights, justice, and opportunities and should assume their responsibilities as citizens in a free society,

That fiscal responsibility and budgetary restraints must be exercised at all levels of government,

That the Federal Government must preserve individual liberty by observing Constitutional limitations,

That peace is best preserved through a strong national defense,

That faith in God, as recognized by our Founding Fathers is essential to the moral fiber of the Nation.

Equal rights. Individual liberty. Faith in God.

Unless it’s a dress code in your Muslim private school.

That doesn’t help get Republicans elected in Virginia. Nor does blocking Republicans who point out how you’re screwing up your job 280 characters at a time.

Now I can already see the counter attacks that’ll come from certain figures still operating out of Grace Street. “You’re a Never Trumper.” “You’re just sore because a family member got booted from MY JOB!” “When’s the last time your guy won!” “Suck it up!” “RINO! Go vote for Tim Kaine!”

And that’s all nonsense. Not because I’ve got a resume that speaks to my work on behalf of a range of Republican candidates and causes across the Commonwealth, but because at the end of the day I am a Republican because I believe in our Creed. I believe in the existence of God-given rights and that power rests best in the hands of the people. And I don’t appreciate people coming into my Party and trashing the place.

Because there’s an additional job requirement to whoever is running things at the Republican Party of Virginia:

DON’T SCREW IT UP.

RPV will be there long after whoever is now running the show is gone. The Party should represent values far beyond the faces and names in its halls today. And whoever is there should be mindful of that weighty legacy because what they do today will resonate.

These Twitter rants and attacks and blockings and general douchebaggery? This isn’t to elect Republicans. This isn’t to fight for the Creed. This is saying, “If I can’t have it, NO ONE WILL!”

Someone is calling the shots at RPV today. And someone has to be holding them accountable. Whether it’s our current elected officials, State Central, or we the people, someone has to stop RPV from doing more harm for our cause because we can’t wait until a new Chairman comes on board.

Because this? This is not how you win this November. Or next. Or any other in my lifetime.

Writing In The Age Of Silos

It’s no longer a matter of tailoring a message, it’s often a matter of manually having to dive into the site to feed it.

Dave Winer has an interesting take on how Facebook and Twitter are not only contrary to an open web, but building silos that demand unique content and keep people in:

Writing in the age of silos. After their August 1 change, I can’t cross-post to Facebook. So if I want to speak to people I know on Facebook, I have to write on Facebook. Today if I want to even post a link, I have to do it by hand. And Twitter, new forms of writing have developed there to work around the 280-char limit. Again, if I want to write for people I know there, I have to write it there. This is what always happens with corporate platforms, they become silos. Maybe they start with good intentions, on FB, the open graph, with Twitter their API, but over time, they evolve to become their own completely self-contained very unweblike worlds. You can see that evolution in action today, at a super-high pace. For me this is the Nth time around this loop, so I have an idea what to expect next.

On some level the silos have existed as long as the platforms: Twitter’s then-140 but now-280 character limit and how they deliver their feed has always been distinct from Facebook’s multimedia method of delivery backed by an evolving algorithm that changed what you saw based on how folks interacted with content. You’ve had to keep the two different methods in mind when crafting any message because cut and pasting a headline and a link from one to the other was hardly best practice.

But now they’re breaking the tools that allowed you to easily tap into each platform from the outside. It’s no longer a matter of tailoring a message, it’s often a matter of manually having to dive into the site to feed it.

This makes sense from a business perspective. Twitter and Facebook are in the business of making money and that money comes from advertisements and you don’t see those ads if all you do is write a blog post and hit a button to push the new content to other platforms. In fact, that costs them money. But that violates the spirit of the open web.

Facebook in particular has shown a strong interest in keeping you in their environment. The way they prioritize content in the algorithm (Live vs. embedded video vs. picture vs. link vs. text) to how they present external content (downgrading YouTube links from being able to play in FB to having to be external links), it’s all efforts to force content creators to simply embrace Facebook as their home and ignore any other outlet for fear of being left out.*

But Twitter and Facebook breaking themselves off from the rest of the web — the more they pull away the more they isolate their users — that’s good for them and bad for everyone else. And not just other content production platforms like Twitter or medium and the like, but for content producers themselves. Businesses, organizations, non-profits, people who have their own hubs outside of Facebook, they’re the ones ultimately sucked into the silos and anyone with limited resources is going to make some decisions on how much effort they’re able to put into each platform and for what kind of reward.

Or maybe they just walk away.

*This isn’t even considering how the Facebook silo gets worse when you consider how the algorithm works, feeding you more of what you’re already interested in, hiding anything that wouldn’t fit your analyzed tastes, singing to the choir of existing beliefs (See: Facebook Is A Terrible Gatekeeper).

Seventeen Years Of (Not) Blogging

Seventeen years is a long time.

August 7, 2001 J’s Notes was born with a post that set the tone for mindless updates of random links for the first however many months of its existence. Then a lot of on again and off again restarts through the years. But here it stands.

Seventeen years is a long time. 22 is way different than 39. A month before September 11th compared to now is not the same world in so many ways.

By and large the old content is gone, long since removed because twenty-something Jason is someone today’s Jason would be yelling at to get off his lawn. Also most of the cool links are long dead. But I’m going to filter through the old stuff and dig up a few gems to bring back as interesting snapshots of not just my thoughts through time but of what seems to be so important back in the day.

So to celebrate 17 years, here are a few posts from the archives represented in amazing JASON-O-VISION (which is a lot like any other vision:

2002-09-27: Speak Loudly and Watch For That Big Stick – The IMF came to town, I had to get to work, and there were protesters in the way. So I took some pictures.

2005-04-30: Times-Dispatch on Blogging – “The audience just has to realize that a blog is more akin to the op-ed page of their newspaper as opposed to the front page,” I said.

2009-03-02: Newspapers: Adapt or Die – I should take a critical look at posts like this nearly a decade later and see if any of the thoughts hold up…

2010-06-04: Virtually Farming For Public Relations or How Not To Game The System – Remember when “gamification” was all the rage? Remember the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? Remember when the two almost met? Yeah…

2014-07-25: Email Fundraising and the Fine Art of Shaming – “Join us” is infinitely more positive than “Don’t abandon us.”

UPDATE: Speaking of how the world’s changed, there’s this tweet from today showing the difference in how we watch things from 2002 to 2018:

There Is Humor In Grief

Humor in grief or when facing a serious situation isn’t uncommon or out of place – it’s how people cope, it’s how people face what may normally be absurd, but it’s also just how the world works. Emotions don’t live in a silo. We don’t live in a silo.

Over at Karigee is an interesting highlight from a Q&A of Sarah Anne Johnson interviewing Amy Bloom in Conversations with American Women Writers (how’s that for old school blogging link credit!):

Q: You often use humor to diffuse an emotionally intense situation, and at the same time to create pathos, or a sense of the real sadness underlying the attempt at humor and the need for humor in a given situation. For instance, in “Silver Water,” the scenes with the therapists, especially Big Nut, are funny in spite of the gravity of the situation. Are you aware of this as you work, or does it just come out at certain times? How does humor work in your fiction?

A: I don’t see that much as diffusing the sadness of the situation. There is humor in grief. Funny things happen in hospitals. That’s just how it is. I don’t think that life is composed of sad moments, which are sad, in which bad things have happened to good people, and happy moments, in which good things have happened to good people. So for me, there being humor in the midst of difficulty and pain is not an attempt to either lighten the pain, or change the focus, or make a comment on it. It’s the way it is. To me it’s no different than the idea that there are both flowers and weeds in the garden. I don’t feel like if I see weeds in the garden, I think, That’s an interesting comment on the flowers. I think, That’d be because it’s a garden.

I appreciate this take from both a storytelling and real world perspective.

Humor in grief or when facing a serious situation isn’t uncommon or out of place – it’s how people cope, it’s how people face what may normally be absurd, but it’s also just how the world works. Emotions don’t live in a silo. We don’t live in a silo.

Somewhat related (apologies to Amy Bloom if she’s offended I’m about to compare her statement on her literary work to superhero films) is a debate among people who need to lighten up about the major differences or flaws between the Marvel and DC Cinematic Universes. Marvel uses humor to drive the plot, develop a character, or just to lighten up a scene. DC, in the other hand, fills in the gaps with grunts and punches.

There are some who argue that Marvel’s approach is unrealistic and that may be true to its degree, but the DC approach isn’t how human nature works either. As serious as the world is around us, there’s something absurd, someone to say something out of place, someone to ease the tension.

When I see people argue against any humor in a tense situation, I’m reminded of a bit in Mark Bowden’s Black Hawk Down which chronicles the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu after the downing of two US Black Hawk helicopters.

Fire was coming from all directions, but mostly straight up and down the alley. They were still expecting the arrival of the ground convoy at any moment. They had no way of knowing that the convoy was lost and taking heavy casualties.

Fales was too busy shooting from his position out by the tail to take notice of the placement of the floor panels. He had a pressure dressing on his calf and an IV tube in his arm.

“Scott, why don’t you get behind the Kevlar [floor panels]?” Wilkinson asked. Fales looked startled. Only now did he notice the barricade.

“Good idea,” he said.

Crouched down behind the panels, Wilkinson and Fales watched as the intense gunfire ripped first one hole through the tail boom, then another. Then another.

Wilkinson was reminded of the Steve Martin movie The Jerk, where Martin’s moronic character, unaware that villains are shooting at him, watches with surprise as bullet holes begin popping open a row of oil cans. Wilkinson shouted Martin’s line from the movie.

“They hate the cans! Stay away from the cans!”

Both men laughed.

The world going to hell around them and they laughed. It doesn’t belittle or negate the chaos they’re in. It’s just the way it is.

I Think I Thought I Saw You Try

I was twelve when the musical world expanded for me. It came during a day at a friend’s house that involved destroying cans with a BB gun, riding a bike into a tree, and listening to music I’d never heard before.

There is a time in each of our lives when we finally realize there is good music beyond the tastes of our parents. Or that our parents’ taste in music isn’t much to our liking.

I was twelve when the musical world expanded for me. It came during a day at a friend’s house that involved destroying cans with a BB gun, riding a bike into a tree, and listening to music I’d never heard before on three tapes:

1. Dr. Demento’s 20th Anniversary Collection – It was absurd and stupid and crazy and exactly what a 12-year-old boy would enjoy. Some of it I’d heard before, Weird Al’s “Eat It”, Steve Martin’s “King Tut”, but songs/skits like “Star Trekkin'” and “Ti Kwan Leap/Boot To The Head” (now “Nah nahhhh” is ringing in my head) were brilliant comedy to a young Jason.

2. They Might Be Giants Flood – I mean, c’mon. This album was written for the young and the young at heart. By this time TMBG weren’t entirely new to me – the Tiny Tunes Music Television episode featuring “Particle Man” and “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” had aired earlier that year – but to hear the entire album, start to finish, was an eye opening experience. Flood continues to be one of my top 20 albums and is something I’m excited to play for my boys.

3. REM Out Of Time – It’s not REM’s best album, but at the time and in my world it was their only album and it was amazing. “Losing My Religion” was a song Casey Casem talked about every weekend as it worked its way around the Top 40 but wasn’t something I’d given a serious listen to before being able to hear it again and again. This was my first favorite song independent of the tastes of my mom or my brothers. This was when I fully realized there was a whole world of music out there beyond light hits of the 70s and 80s and Michael Jackson.

The thing about “Losing My Religion” is the song didn’t have much meaning for me for many years. The music video was to me a work of art full of religious iconography. Michael Stipe’s jerky motions were about how I imagine I looked dancing (to this day). The song was sad. And not in a George Jones country music kinda sad, but in a way that didn’t directly tell a story that a 12 year old fully got. But I knew it was sad.

It was one of the first songs I tried learning on the guitar when I first picked one up at 16 (that and Oasis’s “Wonderwall” which has always been one of my go-tos when playing the guitar but now it’s an “Anyway, here’s Wonderwall” meme that makes me feel like a chump, thank you very much, internet). Simple but building and still sad but I was 16 and naive and hadn’t really experienced anything to make it click.

And then, nearly a decade later, I had my heart truly broken and it clicked.

The title phrase of “Losing My Religion,” a song about romantic expression, Mr. Stipe said, is a common Southern expression that means being at the end of one’s rope.

The Pop Life – New York Times March, 1991

Of course 12-year-old Jason didn’t get it. 16-year-old Jason wasn’t nearly as deep as he believed he was (like all teenagers) and while he’d fallen for girls he hadn’t really been hurt by any. Not yet.

The emotion in the song rings most true when you can put yourself there, when you feel that pain, that loss, that wit’s end leading into anger and a jumble of feelings.

Where you say too much, but you haven’t said enough.

Where all these fantasies come flailing around.

I think I thought I saw you try.

But that was just a dream.

Just a dream.

Dream.

—
I’m better now, of course.

But it’s a song that’s stuck with me and evolved over the last twenty seven years. A song like this couldn’t Top 40 these days (though a song like this wasn’t likely to Top 40 those days either). It’s an art form that’s been kinda lost lately, a song that takes on a meaning far beyond its literal lyrics and can stand the test of time and evoke emotions decades later.

It’s still among my favorites, still something I’ll play a bit on the guitar when I’ve got the time, something I’ll share with my boys when they’re a bit older but not too old to think their dad’s musical tastes are lame. Hpefully they’ll never truly feel the meaning behind the song the way their dad did, though I know they probably will. And it’ll click.

Jif and Dukes on White

A Forgotten Southern Sandwich – Garden & Gun

Through the hardships of the Great Depression and the lean years that followed, peanut butter and mayonnaise kept many struggling households afloat. They were also the ingredients in a sandwich that was once as popular as peanut butter and jelly in parts of the South.

I remember being introduced to peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwiches by my grandfather. At home, sometimes the mayo would be Miracle Whip, giving the sandwich a bit of a sweetness. I haven’t introduced the delicacy to my boys yet, but it’s about time.

Facebook Is a Terrible Gatekeeper

Stop Reading What Facebook Tells You To Read – Mashable

By going to websites as a deliberate reader, you’re making a conscious choice about what you want a media outlet to be—as opposed to letting an algorithm choose the thing you’re most likely to click on. Or! As opposed to encouraging a world in which everyone is suckered into reading something with a headline optimized by a social media strategist armed with nothing more than “best practices” for conning you into a click.

There was a time when prevailing minds on the Internet debated about “The Cult of the Amateur” and how any Tom, Dick, and Harry having a website or publishing an ebook or posting a song on MySpace was going to be the end of culture as we knew it. Facebook has made all of that seem quaint.

Before publishing houses, record labels, newspaper editors filtered the noise, acting as gatekeepers and sorting the good from the bad, the legitimate from the meh, the real from the fake. Now culture is driven by data and algorithms spurred by sensational headlines.

In 2001’s Republic.com, Cass Sunstein feared the creation of a Daily Me as the result of a democratic Internet. The concern was that the online world promoted isolation into tribes, choirs, and echo chambers insulated from competing thought. Facebook is a result of that – it’s a way for users to digest the firehose that is the World Wide Web through a one-stop-shop, often in a way tailored to fit however we have defined ourselves through our friendships, our likes, our comments, our shares. For many it is a primary means of getting news (67% of Americans somewhat relied on social media for news last year). And when Facebook identifies you as a thirty something white guy with right leaning political views, guess what angle it’s going to feed you? Or who they’re going to sell access to your feed to?

Breaking free of that requires work. It requires manual typing and visiting sites that look different from one another or update at random times throughout the week. Or using an RSS reader like Feedly. Yeah, you’re probably still going to stick with what you know and like, but you’ll at least challenge yourself to go beyond a format that rewards sensationalism and outrage to reach the lowest common denominator in as few words as possible.

Actually browsing the web doesn’t just allow you to be a better reader, it asks authors to be better writers. Clickbait headlines and regurgitated Reddit thread listicles are lazy writing, but profitable. If you put your time toward quality work you reward quality effort.

[Y]ou’ll give them a reason to be different, and interesting, and independent, and to carry out some kind of mission that isn’t aping what everyone else does just to stay alive in the 2018 media climate. You’ll make everything just a wee bit better. You’ll incentivize them to keep you coming back for more. And you’ll be taking more control, and opting less for the control Facebook takes from you, and everyone else.

UPDATE: Old favorite Kottke.org had a great post back in April about how “Blogging is most certainly not dead” and had a great quote from Kari at karigee.com:

I also keep it out of spite, because I refuse to let social media take everything. Those shapeless, formless platforms haven’t earned it and don’t deserve it. I’ve blogged about this many times, but I still believe it: When I log into Facebook, I see Facebook. When I visit your blog, I see you.

Hello?

Why No One Answers Their Phone Anymore – The Atlantic

Not picking up the phone would be like someone knocking at your door and you standing behind it not answering. It was, at the very least, rude, and quite possibly sneaky or creepy or something. Besides, as the phone rang, there were always so many questions, so many things to sort out. Who was it? What did they want? Was it for … me?

Technology is much to blame. As the author points out, there are just so many easier ways to reach someone today – text, email, Facebook, Twitter. Honestly, a lot of that has eroded many old customs from phone calls to chance catchups with old friends to high school reunions – my 20th was supposed to happen last year, it passed with barely a shrug while all my old classmates liked the latest photo of my newborn son on Facebook.

Spam calls are of course a problem too. But more because the infrequent ringing of my phone has picked up thanks to any number of recorded voices over spoofed numbers trying to sell me extended warranties, timeshares, new lines of credit, and who knows what else.

Ultimately, we already hold conversations every day at our own pace and time instead of having to commit a half hour block to actually talking. Phone calls are tedious by comparison, you actually have to focus on the person on the other end of the line, heaven forbid!