A Mile Wide, An Inch Deep

Lately there’s been this drip-drip-drip of posts in my newsfeed that are — let’s be honest — rooted in racism. The slanted news articles, you know the ones. This one time a black person benefited at the expense of a white person, evidence of widespread “reverse racism!” Drip. This one black cop shot an unarmed white man but nobody cares because white people are discriminated against! Drip. A black person somewhere did something bad therefore it’s reasonable to fear all black people everywhere! Drip. Or the memes about black rioting. Drip. Or the absurdly emotional defenses of all police officer actions, even the ones that are demonstrably inexcusable. Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. They aren’t posted by people who think of themselves as racists or who condone explicit racism, but they do reveal an inexcusable myopia about the biases we all have and a disturbing lack of empathy for people of color. Although I have never been one to unfriend people who disagree with my...

As an atheist, I say "Merry Christmas" to everyone because I want to perpetuate the idea that Christmas is a non-Christian secular American holiday equally applicable to members of all faiths. Incidentally, that reasoning is exactly why it was Christians who once preferred the greeting "Happy Holidays" so as to preserve the religious meaning of Christmas. The so-called "war on Christmas" is, of course, nothing more than a ratings-driven push to gin up outrage, hatred, and   division -- which is pretty antithetical to the values of Christmas, whether it's my secular version or a follower of Jesus Christ's religious version. But this Christmas remember that when you insist on saying "Merry Christmas" to someone regardless of his or her religious beliefs, you are participating in my godless heathen agenda! Merry Christmas to all, and to all a goodnight!

Knowing that I will soon be leaving Congress, I made this flowchart today to help my colleagues predict in my absence whether or not Speaker Boehner has the votes necessary to pass any given bill. The flowchart was right during Boehner's "Plan B" tax proposal in 2012, right again during the battle over the Violence Against Women Act reauthorization, right again during the 2013 shutdown, right during the farm bill debate, right during the transportation spending bill, right during... Well, you get the idea. UPDATE: The flowchart also correctly predicted the outcome of the DHS funding showdown in spring 2015 over the president's immigration executive orders. If House Republicans could have controlled themselves and just gone after the 2014 EO (DAPA) related to the parents of legal residents, they could probably have peeled off a number of mushy Democrats. But they couldn't resist the siren call of full crazy and passed a funding bill that also invalidated t...

In response to the grand jury announcement in Ferguson, a (white) neighbor posted a meme, “Remember when white people rioted after the OJ Simpson verdict? Me either.” I’ve written extensively here about why memes (from any ideological bent) ruin thoughtful political discourse. Most of the time, I see little value in rebutting the specifics of a meme itself and counsel people (yes, you, Dad!) not to get angry at the unfairness of the meme but to instead highlight its absurdities. In this case, I responded with “No, but I do remember the times that white people rioted over football coaches and pumpkins.” But after some thought, I’ve decided the specifics of this particular meme are worth responding to after all. White people might have been disgusted by the OJ Simpson verdict – another rich and powerful celebrity gets away with murder – but we weren’t personally affected by it. If anyone would have been out in the streets rioting, it would have been victims of domestic violence who on...

©Jesse Christopherson, 2014

For the first time in over a decade I am experiencing a federal election more like a member of the general public than a congressional staffer. Long-time friends of this page know that by now I should have been bombarding them with my (in)famously long posts on policy positions or political shenanigans. Instead I'm all carpenter bee photos and mental health introspection. Maybe I'm tapped out. By 2006, I was already a Hill staffer and Jesse too. We volunteered on Jim Webb's successful campaign to take down George "macacca" Allen. Then I flew to Utah for the final weeks of my then-boss's similarly successful reelection campaign. I hate retail politicking but we all sensed it was going to be a wave year and being so involved -- for my home state, no less! -- was exciting. With the door-knocking help of my kid brother, Democrats took back the U.S. Congress. In 2008, I was the financial services staffer working for my current boss, breathlessly listening on the ph...

When life confronts us with evidence that there is a gap between who we perceive ourselves to be and who we really are, we have three possible choices: 1- change who we are to match our perceptions, 2- change our perceptions to match who we are, 3- deny there's a conflict.  I have, at various times, tried all three strategies.