FLASH POST: The Left and Democratic Party Should Reconcile and Regroup After the Last 50 Years

I found this article, which does a good job indirectly explaining how history makes sense of today's Democratic party after World War II and Vietnam War anti-war movement. The party has finally reached a point where it can reconcile after recovering from the dismembering the party took in the late '60s, '70s, and '80s.

In other words: this article tracks the rise of Neoliberalism from World War II and Vietnam Party to today through the eyes of the Democratic Party. I did this deep delving because I've been getting confused by claims that the Democratic Party is "more to the right than it was compared to so many years ago." Sadly, I can't agree so much with this statement on the domestic social and cultural level. The Democratic Party only shed most of the Southern Democrats something like 10-20 years ago (which doesn't feel that long ago to me).

Yeah, Clinton and Obama went Right when it came to economic policy. Culturally and socially, though, I feel like the activist Left on the ground has generally outpaced the Establishment rather than the social Overton Window having gone Left a fair amount then moved Right again for the Democratic Party. The cultural and social issues generally got swept under the rug like before the post-War push for Civil Rights by the Establishment from Eisenhower to Johnson (race and ethnicity) while other cultural issues like same-sex relationships being accepted sped forward justifiably to demand affirmation of humanity. We still have a distance to go on a societal basis, but many Left Activists and even mainstream society, to some degree, have come to accept many cultural and social issues faster than the Democratic Establishment

Overall, the Activist Left and the Democratic Establishment needs to reconcile their ideas and approaches then get back on track for the progress of ideals it pushed for the '60s while shedding the bad ideas like using neoliberalism to spread liberal values. Arguably, the Democratic Establishment has done some work to shed the illiberal aspects, like moving away from a Southern Democratic stance which contributed to false senses of bipartisanship between parties, but that moving has taken years to accomplish.

Now, however, the Democratic Party has an opportunity to get a hold of things, come together, and look to stand up for liberal stances (as much as the Democratic Party understands them) and even opening itself to Progressively Economic stances. Trump has definitely provided a shock to the system to push the Democratic party in this direction.

But Left, let's try to figure out how to work within this opportunity for reconciliation, regroup, and Progress the US to Liberalness in ways that we never thought that we could. Maybe through such a reconciliation, we can find ways to advocate and encourage Liberal values in the rest of the world without neoliberalism and forced hegemony. Instead we can use affirmation of humanity and identification with each other as humanity to improve the world.

Who's with me?

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A Dental Regimen that Works for Me; Maybe It will for You, Too

Now for something different from my usual cultural, social, psychological, and political criticism. Today I'll describe my morning and evening dental regimen.
A friend posting an article with the title "We may finally know what causes Alzheimer’s – and how to stop it" has inspired my sharing of this regimen. Suffice to say, the linked article remains tentative on its conclusion. Nonetheless, practicing good dental hygiene, no matter what, can only provide someone benefits.

My motivation for finding a good dental regimen started about ten years ago. I had gone to the dentist for the first time in many years because work finally provided dental insurance. At the end of that initial consult, the dentist said that I needed about $3,200 in dental work because my teeth had gotten so bad. That cost reduced down to about $2,100 after the dental insurance manipulated the cost and provided benefits.

I vowed that I would never face that kind of dental bill again for preventable problems. I also wanted to avoid heart problems that come with bad dental health and want to keep my teeth as long as I can. An implant before 2006 cost about $2,000, which I had to get for unavoidable genetic reasons. I have another unavoidable genetic space on the opposite side of my mouth that could use an implant, but $2,500 or so exceeds how much I can throw around these days. If I have to get another implant, I want a good one that will stay in my mouth for awhile, but I much rather avoid getting implants in the future.

Another factor: I learned to hate the build up of plaque on my teeth. Before I really learned about plaque, I thought that biofilm was unavoidable without the help of a dentist. Since I found out about my regimen and started getting into using it, my teeth feel like I've just gotten out of a dentist appointment every time I finish the regimen. Since I've gotten good with the regimen, my dentist has given me good grades on my dental hygiene every appointment. . .and that's generally as long as I've been OK with keeping to the regimen for the most part then get perfect with it for about two weeks before my routine cleaning.

You could easily do a search online for plaque to find out that it's a biofilm of saliva, bacteria, and other life forms that can exist in your mouth and glom onto your teeth. We can't avoid developing plaque throughout the day. It just happens. Sure, you can reduce the build up by cutting down on sugars and carbohydrates, but I like my sugars, carbohydrates, and acids in moderation. Second, you REALLY don't need to cut out eating sugars, carbohydrates, and acids on a reasonable basis for the sake of your mouth.

I've only encountered one food that I've decided to avoid regular eating on the basis of dental health: pineapple. I love pineapple and it provides some great dietary enzymes. The big problem with pineapple comes from those dietary enzymes. One of the enzymes has the chemical makeup of breaking down meat proteins. People use pineapple and that enyzme (forgetting the name of it) to tenderize meat before cooking the meat. That enzyme, whether ingested by biting into pineapple, drinking pineapple juice, or even drinking pineapple juice from a straw, attempting for it to go straight into your throat, that enzyme will break down your gums if ingested on a daily basis. I highly discourage eating or drinking pineapple on a regular basis.

Back to plaque, teeth, and gums and how these factors go into developing my regimen: Once again, plaque build up is inevitable. Fortunately, our body has a defense against that plaque build up. Our saliva should have a good concentration of the minerals that make up teeth: calcium, phosphorous, and some other minerals in smaller ratios such as carbon, magnesium, and others. This matrix of minerals that make up our teeth is called Hydroxyapatite.

Another factor about plaque build up: the bacteria in your plaque generates acids to break down your enamel and dentin for the bacteria to eat. The more acidic our mouths, the more our teeth break down, the more that our mouth becomes a friendly habitat to the bacteria that generate acid to break down, which then compound together onto your teeth until you have a $2,500 dental bill in a few years because of too many cavities and your gums receding.

Our body tries to create saliva, with the minerals that help build up our teeth and with a base pH balance. Seven is a neutral pH balance. Lower than seven is acidic and higher than seven is base. So it all comes down to a battle of pH balance and providing minerals to build up our teeth. Our teeth are continually demineralizing because of the acidic plaque biofilm and remineralizing from our hopefully base saliva along with any aid that our dental hygiene can provide (one interesting fact: apparently, tannins can aid in dental health and so can black tea). If plaque generates more of an acid environment in a day, our teeth breakdown in a net loss. If we generate a more base environment, our teeth build up as a net gain.

DISCLAIMER BEFORE GETTING INTO REGIMEN DETAILS: I'm not a dentist, a scientist, or any kind of guru. I'm just some guy with the ability to search the Internet, read, and perform analysis from multiple sources to evaluate claims made. This regimen works for me, and I don't know how well each step/ingredient of it works other than I have subjective negative experience when an aspect of the regimen is taken out for a period of time. While doing my research, my two main principles were:

1. How well does the step or ingredient fit into the cohesive and coherent body of information that I've built up about teeth, gums, and oral ecology?
2. Could this step or ingredient cause harm or how much harm could it cause if used wrong?

At this point, my regimen has remained cohesive, coherent, and pretty harmless except for maybe my wallet. This isn't an inexpensive dental hygiene approach. In the end, it may cost as much as getting a lot of restorative work done by the dentist. The regimen avoids a bit of trauma, avoids inconvenience, and avoids the degradation of the overall integrity of my teeth and gums, but it still costs money. This way of dealing with dental health probably helps the wallet because I can better predict and plan costs rather than suddenly end up with this huge bill from the dentist. Nonetheless, it costs money.

Also, I introduce product brand names and such, but I'm not giving them any official endorsement. No brands or companies are paying me for introducing these products. They work for me. Maybe you know of a better product.

EDIT at 5:12 PM 1/28/2019: Like building up your teeth, base materials like calcium and magnesium hydroxide might cause build up on the pipes after going down the drain. I periodically need to request that my building manager come to fix the clog. But there are other mitigating factors: old building from the 1930's and I have long hair. People in other units generally have to call the maintenance man to request declogging services and the shower drain clogs regularly, too.

All that said, let's start with the regimen:

1. Rinse with a mixture of a tablespoon of food-grade 1.5% Hydrogren Peroxide (H₂O₂) and tap water to fill the rest of the small cup. When in short supply of 1.5% H₂O₂, I've used 3% and was fine. I advise against that, though. I have the feeling if you ingest enough of that, bad things can happen.
   
   Rinsing with H₂O₂ seems counter intuitive. It's an acid. Don't we want to fight the aggregate acid environment in our mouth with the opposite, base? H₂O₂ is antiseptic. It kills indiscriminately. But apparently it's weak enough to not cause lasting damage to your teeth. I read somewhere that some scientist or engineer compared washing plumbing pipes with H₂O₂ versus other acidic antiseptics, H₂O₂ caused the least damage to the structural integrity of the pipes. I picked my dentist because he advertised his H₂O₂ method for treating gums and whitening teeth. I haven't opted for that treatment yet because it's EXPENSIVE, but knowing that H₂O₂ can help dental health is useful.
   
   I like to think of using H₂O₂ as a first round of attack. It will kill off some amount of the bacteria in my mouth, which will give me more surface area to mount my attack and restorative properties. Fighting plaque is as much about disrupting the matrix it creates as it is about fighting the acid the plaque creates. Aim for both the cause and effect.
   
   Repeat rinsing with that cup until the mixture of H₂O and H₂O₂ is gone.
   
   Make sure to switch out the rinsing cup every week to cut down on the build up of bacteria on the cup. If not disposed of correctly, you could acquire strep throat or something else.
   
   
2. Make a new rinsing salve in the same cup using the following steps:
   
   1. Put enough baking soda (base) that covers the middle of the bottom of the cup but allows you to see the outer edges of the bottom of the cup
   2. Put a good sized spoonful of xylitol into the cup (unclear how it works, but a fair amount of studies have demonstrated that the more xylitol in your mouth, the less bacteria you have on your teeth)
   3. Fill up the rest of the cup with tap water
   4. Stir with spoon
   5. Put 3 drops of Eucalyptus essential oil into the cup (antibiotic)
   6. Put 2 drops of Clove essential oil into the cup (contains tannins and eugenol, another anti-septic and a minor topical painkiller -- good for when you have recessed gums) - I only put in two drops because clove tastes STRONG!
   7. Put 3 drops of Chamomille essential oil diluted myself by tapwater because of strong taste into cup (chamomille is an astringent, like tannins, anti-inflammatory, and might have some antibiotic characteristics - this one definitely fits into the "can't hurt" category)
   8. Put 10 drops of Calendula essential oil into cup (antiseptic and anti-inflammatory)
   9. Stir with spoon (experiment on your own with how much essential oils to put into the salve or how much to dilute the oils before putting into the salve; potency of essential oils can vary and you may have different tolerances to taste and such than me)
3. Floss with dental tape, rinsing your mouth with salve after flossing both the top and after the bottom. Make sure to use dental tape, not floss, as dental tape has more surface area and won't inadvertently cause harm to your gums if you get rough.
   
   [insert graphic of dental tape]
   
   
4. Poke through the gaps between your teeth with a plastic RotaPoint from the front and the back (you'd be surprised how the different angle gets new stuff out from the gaps between your teeth). Rinse your mouth with the salve after poking the gaps for both the top and after the bottom.
   
   Make sure to switch out RotaPoints every one or two weeks to cut down on bacteria and avoid getting sick.
   
   
5. Poke through the gaps between your teeth with an interdental brush. Rinse your mouth with the salve after poking the gaps for both the top and after the bottom.
   
   
6. Scrape your tongue with a tongue scraper. Rinse your mouth with the salve.
   
   I rinse my tongue scraper in 3% H₂O₂ for a day in the rinsing cup after all is said and done for a day once a week.
   
   
7. Brush your teeth with a soft toothbrush and toothpaste. When brushing the chewing surface of your teeth, feel free to go side to side and be rough.
   
   Be VERY gentle on the back and front of your teeth. Your goal is just to disrupt the biofilm matrix on your teeth, not to polish your teeth. All the chemical and physical treatment of your teeth so far in the regimen will have weakened the grip of the biofilm on your teeth. If you're rough with your teeth, you can scrape away enamel AND also injure your gums. At all costs, avoid injuring your gums. Once your gums start receding, the biofilm can start causing REAL damage to your teeth.
   
   When brushing the fronts and backs of your teeth, place the brush on the top of a section of your top teeth and brush down. Do a section the size of your toothbrush at a time. Do not brush side to side. Do the opposite with your bottom teeth. Place the brush on the bottom of a section of your bottom teeth and brush up. Do a section the size of your toothbrush at a time.
   
   You'll be fine if your barely feel the bristles on your teeth. Gentle is key. You're just disrupting the biofilm, not polishing. I can't stress this enough.
   
   Start at the top and move to the bottom. Don't rinse with the salve until you're done brushing.
   
   For toothpaste, I use Epic Fluoride & Xylitol toothpaste. I know some people don't care for fluoride, but per both my dentist's insistence and my experience, fluoride does a good job on adult teeth and in children's teeth, in moderation (children have to be wary of getting fluorisis, but that's a problem of too much fluoride in drinking water than a moderate amount of fluoride). As I understand it, fluoride actually replaces degraded enamel with minerals stronger than the original enamel. Fluoride can play a vital part in keeping your teeth healthy and strong.
   
   
8. Rinse for 60 seconds with Dessert Essence Tea Tree Oil Mouthwash. Tea tree oil is antibiotic, maybe antiseptic, too. This product also contains witch hazel, which purportedly has astringent properties along with some anti-infllammatory characteristics.
   
   
9. Rinse for 60 seconds with Milk of Magnesia (I just buy the generic stuff off the shelf at Walgreens). That's right, this anti-constipation mixture can work great for building up teeth because it's a solution of base liquid. Honestly, if anyone ever looked at my shopping records for the last five years, I wonder what they would think about my eating habits and stomach issues that I don't have!
   
   
10. Chew and rinse for 60 seconds with calcium carbonate chewables or TUMS. I just use generic TUMS from Walgreens. If you can, use sugar free chewables. Don't worry if you can only purchase chewables with sweeteners, though. I usually chew and rinse with two at a time. These are a combination of base solution and putting calcium into your saliva.
    
    
11. Rinse for 60 seconds with the salve of baking soda, xylitol, and essential oils that you made earlier.
    
    
12. Rinse for 60 seconds with a mouth rinse that has fluoride in it. I used to use Tom's Children's Rinse with Fluoride, but I haven't been able to find it lately. Nowadays I'm using their Fresh Mint with Fluoride.
    

This regiment works great for me. I swear by it for myself. As I said above, though, I'm not a dentist, scientist, or guru. I also am not being paid to endorse any of the products that I mention in this essay. It's just gotten time for me to share with the world something that's worked for keeping my teeth healthy, and maybe it can work for you. If it doesn't, that's fine, too. You know your teeth and body better than I do.

Maybe someday I'll team up with a dentist or scientist to figure out how effective all this is and market it to the world. As things stand for now, though, the effectiveness and veracity of all the above is up to us to figure out for ourselves.

Good luck!

If this information has aided you in any formative way, please don't hesitate to Buy Me a Coffee.

If you like what you see here and in the past and want to free me up for more, support my endeavors by Buying Me a Coffee!

FLASH POST: Left Candidates and the Evolution of Social Norms as Highlighted in Elections

Fascinating thing about all the high profile candidates on the Left: they all have some mark against them that they have to deal with. Their pasts show

• That people can change
• People don't always have control of their organizations
• that social norms have changed FAST

But how do we evaluate these candidates' history and whether they meet the standards of "woke enough" essentially, whether it be about their

• Rhetoric
• Language
• Evolving beliefs
• The people around them
• The ability to develop a "woke" organization

I'm guessing the last factor of developing a "woke" organization can play a big part, considering our current POTUS and the scandal upon scandal upon scandal. Even if we remove campaign scandals, the development and churn of Trump's

• Advisers
• Cabinet heads
• Department heads

has been atrocious. Trump, on his own, doesn't have consistency and stability on his list of virtues. Quite the opposite, in fact. Trump, his cronies, and his judicial appointments also practically provides the illustration in the dictionary for "not woke" (though Mitch McConnell can't be excluded when discussing judicial appointments).

Suffice to say, watching the arguments and discussions on the Left of how to evaluate the candidates for the 2020 Primaries and Election will provide a fascinating case study in social, cultural, and political development. I appreciate Stacey Abram's entrance into this arena by stating that Democrats Will Win In 2020 ‘By Telling Our Story,’ Not Running Against Trump, but I'm sure many on the Left will have their opinions about how this discourse will

• Develop
• Have norms and 'rules' of its own
• Result after all is said and done

I welcome thoughts and input on this discourse in the comments section of this entry and future comments that touch on this discourse. Feel free to provide your input as you see fit.


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Too Much Empathy? Rely on Identification as Path to Social Redemption?

Are we empathizing with others too much, not identifying with others enough? Empathizing is imagining, not feeling. Identifying is truly feeling another's feeling. Empathizing is conscious action. Identification doesn't need consciousness. But we often hear about over-identification having unhealthy consequences, from

• Everyday people getting caught up in demagogic fervor
• To others stalking someone after meeting in passing or after a single boring date
• To children or spouses suffering abuse while excusing their abuser
• To someone enabling a relative or friend to engage in unhealthy behaviors by not challenging their actions or even by sponsoring their behavior when the enabler lends money

Western civilization has hit some hard times of anger, fear, and violence. We've erected media bubbles then try to engage in call out culture when that bubble bursts. The United States government has shut down. Brexit is divorcing from the European Union. Asylum seekers get turned back at borders with little, if any consideration, allowed to die in deserts or on the sea. Leaders aren't trusted by the people, mainly because they don't listen to the everyday people buried under student loans and all other types of bills, while the 1% glories in their tax cuts. Illiberal democracies have flourished, while the marginalized and their allies fight to just be treated as human beings in all their identities. Also, don't forget that people get stopped, frisked, and sometimes shot in the streets and their back yards just for the color of their skin by law enforcement (and often because of calls to the cops by people without melanin).

The list could go on, but I'm just a straight white cis-male guy. I don't have these experiences, but I can hear about them from other people, whether through

• First person narratives in real life
• On the television
• On the radio or podcasts
• Reading through social media, news stories, and written first-person accounts

I often have a hard time listening to the accounts. Though I've lived in Chicago, I haven't viewed the Laquan McDonald. Do I need to? I believe it has happened. I've seen a lot of blood and gore on television and in the movies. I have listened to the NPR/Chicago Tribune podcast 16 Shots, which covers the case of Jason Van Dyke, the police man who shot McDonald, and goes into some detail about what actually happened that night.

I don't avoid the video because I don't want the bother or that I don't think it has value as an artifact history or anything like that. Instead, I find it easy to feel sad and shame at the knowledge that the event has occured. I can imagine the horror of what happened that night by

• Knowing that I have a hard time tolerating a paper cut
• That I appreciate life so much through the good and bad
• That I remember the fear of nothingness that comes with imagining death I originally felt in 1986 or 1987 in Groton, Massachusetts when I ran out to the closest parent to get comfort
• Knowing from what I've read, heard, seen, and been told by people of how easy I have it and hearing the built up evidence of how people like me don't have things so easy - I listen, I watch, I imagine, I think things through

Strange to say, but I can identify with the misfortunes of others through the fear of losing or not having the fortune that I have. I can't say that I fully understand or have visceral comprehension of the lived experience of this Other that I am not. Nonetheless, my imagination can make my pale experience intense enough to know that people who go through these experiences, survive and don't survive, have it worse by so many more magnitudes that they deserve more to allay and relieve these experiences. I would love to do more to assist in delivering, but I'm honestly working on healing my fractured heel and building a financial power base to do so.

Through the gratefulness of my own fortunate fate and the possibility of losing my condition, I can identify with the misfortune of others that comes through no action of their own.

Pundits, politicians, and people on social media profess that we need more civility and more empathy. I don't think civility and/or empathy will do enough to improve society or civilization. Civility might have a concrete action base to it. Empathy, on the other hand, remains too abstract, too much of a thought experiment. Empathy requires not just conscious thought, but also rest, food, reduced stress, and even practice. In our consumerist, career-driven, power-hungry society, and that's just to survive for some people, putting in the effort to develop empathy can cause difficulty. Even just all the exposure to

• Violence
• News
• Hate
• Demands on our attention and time from so many people

I can see how some people of privilege might not have energy to develop empathy. Frankly, I also get why a lot of people without privilege will resort to calling out others and anger after facing nonstop pressure and aggression.

But we can seek and push for identification, in connecting with each other in our common humanity. I honestly don't expect the lower rungs and marginalized parts of society to do so because they shouldn't have to face their every day marginalized reality. Identifying with those other than them will only show them how shitty they've got it.

Identification for the privileged, however, can prove so much more visceral and concrete than empathy. Us in the higher rungs of society need to open ourselves and expose our emotional core to the world and the pain in it. It will hurt, I guarantee it, but we have the power to address that pain if we band together and concentrate our efforts. The thing is, we have an inbuilt instinct to identify in this way, if we just show the will to open ourselves and look at reality. It will help us feel more connected. We may not have as much happiness, but we will have more sense of meaning, which can give us more.

In stories, killers who have redeemed themselves or soldiers often try to stop the innocent from killing. Historical records and studies have demonstrated that people have a hard time killing. Fascist parties, organizations, ethnic groups, and nationalistic countries have to go to great lengths to dehumanize other groups and enemies for their members to kill with vigor. Cops have to be trained for trigger happiness while also falling back on internalized racism for dehumanization to do it even easier. Someone has had to make an academic discipline and training practice called Killology to figure out how to teach soldiers and police to kill even better. This same man has identified video games as teaching children to kill by using his very same techniques.

I believe people lose a part of themselves when they kill and require dehumanization and need all this training to kill because they identify with their victim and have to de-identify from their victim to intentionally kill. Studies have shown that killing in the name of revenge or white hot anger proves easier and has less of an affect on someone.

For other motivations, though, all these issues with identification arise. Looking into another person's eyes or even just seeing another human being close up, so much like yourself, you see yourself in the other person. The two of you have a common humanity. It just so happens that through some trick of history, you have the goal to kill the other person. You aim to snuff out their existence, to put them into nothingness that we can't conceive of, that strikes fear into ourselves. Killing that other person, we extinguish ourselves. To do so again, we have to further cut off our capacity for identification with others.

Then we have random examples in history of people who don't need to act with charity, who have everything they need, could continue living a good life, but then abandon that life for one of selflessness:

• The Buddha
• Jesus Christ
• St Francis of Assisi
• George Ripley (a Unitarian/Transcendentalist minister)
• Martin Luther King, Jr.

The list goes on and on. Over the last ten years, I've tried understanding George Ripley's motivations for the path he took until he became disillusioned and cynical. It took a reading up on the life of St Francis and a little more thinking to get it. Today's inspiration on reading up on St Francis came about from his prayer that I used as a mantra to encourage more mindfulness:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me bring love.
Where there is offense, let me bring pardon.
Where there is discord, let me bring union.
Where there is error, let me bring truth.
Where there is doubt, let me bring faith.
Where there is despair, let me bring hope.
Where there is darkness, let me bring your light.
Where there is sadness, let me bring joy.
O Master, let me not seek as much
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love,
for it is in giving that one receives,
it is in self-forgetting that one finds,
it is in pardoning that one is pardoned,
it is in dying that one is raised to eternal life.

I don't consider myself a religious person much these days, but this prayer sticks with me. Today, I saw a common thread with at least three of the great men I listed: The Buddha, St Francis, and George Ripley. Both the Buddha and St Francis had a common experience. Through internal character and encounter(s) with poverty: they had their privilege challenged by surprise identification with the misfortune of another. Buddha and St Francis connected, they could feel the suffering that the other person experienced and saw the injustice that came from their own privilege and wealth. These two individuals drastically changed the course of their lives, took vows of poverty, and influenced history, possibly inspiring others after them to feel such identification and seek to alleviate misfortune in the world.

George Ripley didn't have the same level of success. How many of my readers have heard of this man before and know anything about him? After having a pamphlet war with one of this mentors about this very topic in different words then exprienced the downturn of the neighborhood where he ministered during the Panic of 1837, Ripley tried to inspire his ministry and even his religious organization to become more active in alleviating the material conditions of the people suffering the economic downturn, many of whom were immigrants to Boston. Ripley's ministry and religious organization rebuffed Ripley so much that Ripley eventually quit his position and started the utopian community, Brook Farm, nearby to Boston. Sadly, Brook Farm failed and Ripley lost a lot of faith in humanity, pretty much just settling into becoming a writer about literature. Nonetheless, the level at which identification with the pain of others in Ripley pushed him to action provides me, at least, with some inspiration to act.

I don't know what or when that action will be. I've felt that inspiration for awhile now, even though I spent most of my time trying to understand that inspiration and try to make rational sense of it. Seeing it as visceral identification with other people just makes a lot of sense to me and more concrete than empathy, which is a tool of imagination and conscious action. Identification, however, can strike us without warning and a truly felt emotion, not lead us to feel something we think we should feel. We need to open ourselves to the shock and the emotion, considering society, our families, and many of our upbringings have led us to see that closing off as healthy and rational.

I think empathy, sympathy, and compassion all have their part in exercising our ability to identify with others. In the end, though, I believe that it will take wide open, concrete, emotional identification to lead us to a better place and time, out of this Dark Age destroying civilization.

(I understand that we need to be cautious about over-identification. Once my table clears, I'll have to look more into that side of things.)

Who's with me on this ride?

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FLASH POST: Political Party Implicitly Accepted as Religion in the United States?

CONTENTS

1. FLASH POST: Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Out Identity
2. Personal Status as It Relates to The Lextopia


Anybody read Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity by Lilliana Mason yet? I haven't, but it sounds interesting.

Interesting interview of Lilliana Mason at In A Minute with Sam Sanders podcast about how our political party affiliation has reached the level of religion. Per the interview, Mason makes the hypothesis that since the passing of Equal Rights legislation in the '60s, affiliation with a political party has become a strong aspect of our identities; so strong, in fact, that party affiliation has become analagous to religious affiliation. I wonder if this implicit understanding/acceptance of party affiliation as religion contributes to "gerrymandering protection" in which initiatives against maladaptive gerrymandering has creating "competitive districts" as one of its goals.

I've put this book on my to read list, but I'd be interested in hearing other peoples' thoughts on this phenomenon. Does such a phenomenon feel true? Does party affiliation analogous to religious affiliation contribute to the tension in America today? Does this phenomenon contribute to our media consumption bubbles? Any other thoughts that this possible phenomenon brings up for you?

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PERSONAL STATUS AS IT RELATES TO THE LEXTOPIA

I haven't written in about a month and a couple weeks ago. At about that time, I had started physical therapy. I had fractured my heel in a bike accident in which after a complicated sequence of events, a delivery van-truck had rear ended me. I got flown over the handle bars, landed on my right foot, then stumbled to the ground. I tried walking around a bit. Feeling enough discomfort in my foot, I decided to stay on the ground until I got picked up by my wife and brought to urgent care. Other than my heel getting fractured, I had maybe a scratch or two.

I've been lucky with this injury. Most people who get this injury are contractors or people in the construction industry who fall off ladders, roofs, or some high-up location. About two weeks ago, I asked the orthopedist how long I should expect pain even after I'm walking fine. His long explanation cut short: I'm such an outlier on the side of good luck (just cracks and no displacement of bone in my heel), the orthopedist didn't know how much longer I'll feel pain. Most people who get the injury have their heel all cracked up and scattered around their foot, requiring surgery, screws, and largely never able to work in their industry again, hoping to get onto workers comp disability or something. In the long run, even though this experience hasn't been a fun ride, I've had a comparably minor injury (though humbling since I needed crutches, have had to use my body in ways it wasn't built to be used, and IT'S SO DAMN EXHAUSTING!).

The orthopedist had initially prescribed bed rest but still fine for me to work for the first month and a half. The orthopedist also told me to take off the protective boot when in safe locations and move the foot around to cut down on how much physical therapy I'd have to do later. Other than soreness from using my arms and crutches to move around and sadness at my leg atrophying a bit from disuse, I didn't feel much pain. Exhaustion and soreness from moving around, yes, but not much pain. I could even do some occasional writing, especially on The Lextopia when I got up about some social or political issue.

Once physical therapy had started, though, the pain and extreme soreness started. Getting an atrophied leg and foot working again takes some hard work. My best comparison is like the day after taking a stretching or dance class for the first time, except physical therapy feels like that first class EVERY TIME. So upon initally starting the physical therapy, the pain from it made thinking straight for a length of time difficult. I got caught up a lot on some backlogged television, but I really couldn't concentrate well enough to do much more, and I've got plenty to do!

About a week and half ago, I started walking again without crutches, on my own power. I started the day after an orthopedist appointment. The doctor told me everything looked fine enough that it's up to me and the physical therapist on how much weight to put on the heel, how much not to use the crutches, and when I can finish the physical therapy. I started taking the bus because I could walk that far. I admit with the snow storm this weekend and the ice that could have accumulated on the sidewalks, I may have to reconsider my own capabilities. Balance and pain still cause issues, especially with suprise movements (when I could easily balance myself or trip myself into a balanced position without trouble when fully able).

I make progress every day. I don't walk perfectly and balancing on one foot still remains difficult, but I'm getting there. Hopefully in a couple weeks, I won't have to think too much about how far I can walk before I will get exhausted and frustrated from both weakness and pain. Maybe I'll be back to walking to the grocery store and feeling the compulsion to walk around to expend some extra energy. Nonetheless, without Lyft, Instacart, or the elevators at work and home, I don't know how I would have made it through the last two to three months!

Suffice to say, I believe that my cognitive abilities will return to enough of a baseline that you'll see more at The Lextopia. I'm working an essay about the basic emotion/instinct of disgust and bigotry, which I hope to publish soon. I also have a backlog of personal stuff and paperwork to gather together for the claim on my injury, so hopefully that stuff won't get too much in the way.

In the meantime, I plan to integrate more "Flash Posts" like the beginning of this section into The Lextopia. Flash posts will be things that just grab my attention throughout my days that I think my readership will find interesting. Hopefully you will! Don't feel shy about commenting or even "Buying Me a Coffee"! The more I'm "bought coffee", the more I can hopefully post.

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