What Keeps Me Up At Night

I grew up in a household in which politics was not discussed, not because it was impolite or because conversations would devolve into screaming matches, but because politics apparently did not concern people like me. My upbringing told me that politics was reserved for politicians, elites, academics, movers and shakers. You can imagine my shock when I began to delve into the world of politics and realized just how much politics did affect me. From the prejudices I faced from age 4 to the food that came to my table, politics had been shaping my life without me even thinking about it. And then I looked at everything that was going wrong with this world and the community around me. As I clambered out of my sheltered perspective, I found myself asking again and again: if this country and its democracy are so great, why do we have so many problems?

A while back, this clip from the opening scene of The Newsroom was circulating, and I was really struck by it. At the time, I could not quite articulate how I felt in response to it, but today, I can start to solidify these thoughts.

I am cautious about the nostalgic approach to America, about how great it "used to be" (one reason being that the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia can romanticize pretty much anything, and American history is not exactly immaculate). But what resonates with me, and what I am sure resonates with most of the country right now, is that every feeling we have in reaction to our country, our sadness, our disappointment, our anger, our hubris, our hope, is often rooted in our pride and love for this country. Why wouldn't we want our country to be the best it can be? Why wouldn't we get upset if it didn't? As we move forward in this discussion, I want the reader to keep this in mind. Voicing our concerns about this country is patriotic. It would be neglectful to do otherwise. Will McAvoy, the protagonist of this show, only really scrapes the surface when he says:

We were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed... the first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one. America is not the greatest country in the world anymore.

Some cited statistics I found on my own: of 35 developed countries studied, America ranked 34th in child poverty rates. A study from 2013 determined that the United States had the highest incarceration rate in the world and also had the highest prison population of a whopping 2,239,751 people. The U.S. ranks first in deaths by violence and has more of such deaths than the next three countries combined. It also ranks third in income disparity. A 2012 study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development found that while the U.S. spends more on education per student than most countries, it performed at average levels in reading and science and below average, 27th out of the 34 countries surveyed, in fact, in math.

So, first step: recognize there is a problem. Second step: identify where the problem is coming from. Is it just about being informed, as McAvoy asserts?

I do not believe that it is a coincidence that voter turnout in this country is lower than in most developed states, with under 54% of the voting-eligible population coming out to vote in 2012 and about 58% this past November. The root of the problem, however, is not people refusing to vote. The U.S. actually has the seventh highest percentage of registered voters and ranks fifth in extent of possible civic engagement. Juxtaposed with this is the fact that less than half of the population bothers to engage in a single civic activity a year, and almost a quarter do not discuss politics. Clearly, the conversation about American democracy does not end with voter turnout; something else tells citizens that they do not need to be as involved with politics and civic duties.

As I went through my "political awakening," rather than seeing only ignorance, I began to notice how people around me actually dealt with (or did not deal with) politics. I met children that would spew terrifying assertions repeated verbatim from their parents. I had friends who would alter their views depending on who they were with just to please others. Some were raised to never discuss politics because the issues are too contentious, and others still think politics do not apply to them. And the general rule of thumb is to not bring up politics at all. While I understand why people may want to resist getting into huge arguments every day, the problem with American democracy is that we don't teach people how to actually practice it, preventing them from engaging with crucial political matters that will impact millions of citizens. And this is distinct from just being informed about the political issues of the day; no good comes from knowledge if it is not exercised.

We need to stop keeping people from discussing difficult issues publicly. We need to stop trying to make politics a competition, a game, a source of entertainment. We need to urge people to realize their personal stake in politics, to educate themselves, to pursue solutions because the problems of today are not going to magically fix themselves. And with a democratic system, the people have the power to do this.

When discussing modern democracy, one must at some point turn to Enlightenment thinking. Immanuel Kant penned a short but fundamental piece called Answering the Question: What Is Enlightenment? in which he defined the Enlightenment as the "emergence" of a person's ability to reason on their own. But what is most interesting is his distinction between private and public uses of reason:

"This enlightenment requires nothing but freedom – and the most innocent of all that may be called "freedom": freedom to make public use of one's reason in all matters. Now I hear the cry from all sides: "Do no argue!" The officer says: "Do not argue – drill!" The tax collector: "Do not argue – pay!" The pastor: "Do not argue – believe!" Only one ruler in the world says: "Argue as much as you please, but obey!" We find restrictions on freedom everywhere. But which restriction is harmful to enlightenment? Which restriction is innocent, and which advances enlightenment? I reply: the public use of one's reason must be free at all times, and this alone can bring enlightenment to mankind.

In other words, in an Enlightened world, you voice your opinions in public, while in "private," you should "obey." However, in today's culture, the public and private spheres are flipped. Politics is too quarrelsome, too divisive, a private matter not to be discussed in open forums; you obey in public. What happened at work today, what you ate for breakfast this morning, and who you are dating, however, are free to go up on Facebook. Passing off political views as mere personal opinions that should be shoved under the rug is detrimental for democracy, the antithesis of it.

If the average person is given the impression that their political views are insignificant, "private," and personal, they do not voice them, and if opinions are not voiced, how can officials hear them? An article by Meira Levinson, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, describes the vicious cycle. "There is widespread recognition that political power is distributed in vastly unequal ways among U.S. citizens," so people are disheartened. "Why should we care?" Levinson asks for these people. See, they don't want to hear us after all. See, all of the average people are being ignored. Then, this status quo is used as a reason to not attempt to close the civic engagement gap. Voices continue to not be heard. The inequality is reinforced. "Political participation, expression of democratic values, stable political attitudes, and adoption of 'enlightened self interest'" all suffer because of this idea that everyone's political voices are not of equal importance.

It is only natural, then, if your voice does not matter, to believe your vote does not matter. An article from The Independent Review screams in its title: "Now More Than Ever, Your Vote Doesn't Matter," reinforcing every American's worst fear. If I had a dollar for every time someone told me, "I'm just one vote, my vote doesn't matter," I would not have to worry about ever holding a job. The article asserts that a vote, as most people think of it, only "matters" when it is the tiebreaker vote, then goes on to explore the statistics of your vote being that one tiebreaker. But here's some simple math: if 100% of the American people thought their vote did not matter, 0% would vote. It is this attitude that is to blame for preventing citizens from engaging with political issues.

Another effect of this outlook, which goes back to feeding into why we do not seem able to solve some of our most basic problems efficiently, is that we do not educate enough about civics in schools. This article in The Atlantic investigates this issue, and says three essential things. The first is that "it's important that we show [students] that that big machine that seems like it has nothing to do with you matters more than you think." As I described in my last post, every single thing you do is somehow affected by politics. Everything is regulated or protected or limited or promoted by the powers that be, so if you have a voice in your experience in this country... why not use it? The second is admitting our schools (my input: also the culture outside of schools, how we raise children, how we are taught to interact with our peers, etc.) do not have enough civic education. You only know what you don't know until you are exposed to it, and once you are educated in what you can do and what more you can find out, people can go on their own. All you need is a little push. And the third is that "you have to know about how the government works in order to make change."

Furthermore, not feeling like your voice matters and not seeing things change for the better for you personally make you distrust the government. Pew Research Center has reported a steady trend of more citizens being dissatisfied about the direction of the country since about halfway through 2003 and a catastrophic drop in trust in government, with over 70% feeling confident about the government in the late 50s and early 60s to today's less than 20%. It is no surprise, with this sentiment coming from the American people, that they have been prioritizing "freshness" in candidates, or the "outsiders."

Jonathan Rauch, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and contributing editor at The Atlantic and National Journal, wrote an article in 2015 on "amateur" presidents and other high-level leaders. While past presidents and vice presidents have mostly followed the 14-Year Rule, which says no candidate secures the position with longer than 14 years from his first gubernatorial or Senate win, recent officials have been having less and less experience. Our Senate, gubernatorial, and vice-presidential winning candidates' years of experience have been decreasing since the 60s. With our Presidents, George W. Bush had six years as Governor, Barack Obama had four years as Senator, and Donald Trump had 0 years of any political experience whatsoever. The ramifications of avoiding public discourse on important political issues of all citizens clearly shows in our voting patterns, and if we are to build a government the majority of us can trust again, we have to get involved.

Obviously, there are still many, many obstacles in the way of solving America's greatest problems, even once people start to become more aware and articulate in their opinions. However, if we are able to successfully address changing our culture so people can learn to use their voices and realize if they choose to be silent, then there is no way for them to be heard, we will be able to change the effects mentioned in this post. Disillusionment, sadness, hopelessness are heavy and can discourage you, but they are not reasons to step away for good. If no one confronts a problem, the problem does not just slink away. It expands, it takes root, and it only becomes more difficult to remove. Uncertainty and distrust are actually great reasons to get engaged, to get in there and change things for yourself, and realizing this is what propelled me into the world of politics.

Please Vote

Back in the first week of November, I was talking with a friend of mine when she admitted, with the air of revealing to me some exceedingly dark secret, that a friend of hers was choosing not to vote. "He's not voting? Why?!" I asked incredulously. She answered, "He doesn't like politics."

To say I take issue with this concept would be an understatement.

Firstly, people do not seem to comprehend how powerful voting as a concept is. We live in a democracy; each citizen (who is registered to vote) is entitled to get their* voice heard. You have a say in what your country becomes. If you think, "I'm just one vote, one vote won't change anything," realize that if everyone thought that, no one would vote. That line of reasoning is invalid, so go vote. Voting is the strongest way to say you support or oppose something. Your elected representatives, to keep getting reelected, have to heed the people's opinions. And having representation in government is what we are all taught the American Revolution was for. So why would you choose to throw away your voice?

That leads to my second point: voting is your patriotic duty, your civic responsibility. Human beings (for the most part) live in countries with millions of other people instead of living on their own. Why? Because living in an established state provides enormous benefits. A community, something to be a part of, pride, protection. Access to new technology, health care, larger economy, bigger entertainment, wider variety of culture. All the trappings of civilization, society, and for us, all the benefits of America *cue bald eagle noises*. In all seriousness, living within a larger system gives us many advantages. We in turn must contribute, and we do, most obviously in the form of taxes. But it is also our responsibility to participate in what happens in this country, because it is our home, and we are effected by what goes on, whether we see it or not.

And what is strange to me about people who do not vote and these last two points is: are there really people in this country who have absolutely nothing to say about how things are in America? Everyone has opinions! Everyone has things they like and things they dislike! If any readers know someone who doesn't vote - please conduct a little experiment. Ask them if there is a single thing about the state of this country they do not like. And if there is something, tell them they should vote.

Thirdly, I would like to clear the air about "politics." Growing up, I heard what many of you probably also heard: politics is for politicians, politicians are corrupt, politicians don't care about the general population, politics don't affect normal people, etc. This attitude is incredibly dangerous. Yes, politics is mostly a power struggle between some people you will probably never meet who work in a fancy building, but the rhetoric these people spread, the laws they put in place seep into our culture, our everyday life. Some people somewhere decided laws on driving in your state. You (hopefully) abide by them every single day as you drive around. Some officials wrote up food and health regulations, affecting your dinner experience at your favorite restaurant. Laws affecting the work place condition you to think that a certain kind of work environment is to be acceptable, your norm. Legislation affects you every day. Politics affects you every day.

So, please vote.

*I will continue to use the singular "they" pronoun throughout this blog to refer to all individuals.

Elizabeth Plank – A 21st Century Public Intellectual

One of the easiest ways for the average person to keep up with the movements and milestones of our world is to tune in to, not even necessarily the news, but the realm of public intellectuals. Depending on who is asked, the public intellectual can have slightly varying job descriptions, but the idea is that the public intellectual is someone who is well-versed in a field and brings concerns of that field to the general public. "Because they had to eat," public intellectuals are often journalists or academics who use their careers to pursue their critical analyses and not the other way around.

Elizabeth Plank is a textbook 21st century public intellectual. Education: she attended McGill University, at which she was on the Dean Honor List, and received her master's degree from the London School of Economics in social policy with specialities in behavioral science and gender studies. Academia: through an exchange program, she worked briefly at the University of Copenhagen, and after finishing her studies at the London School of Economics, she also held positions there as a research assistant and behavioral science consultant. Career: Plank works in various areas of media and communication, having held positions from editor to journalist to web show host. Since her area of expertise is policy in relation to behavior and gender issues, Plank's content usually focuses on "millennial perspective on politics, women's issues, and reproductive rights."

The problem with public intellectuals, of course, is that they are not all-knowing or unbiased, and blindly following and agreeing with them is counterintuitive to the point of their work. How do we then keep the spirit of public intellectuals alive without falling into this Kantian idea of guardians of enlightenment who lead the sheep? Stephen Mack offers an answer:

...It needs to begin with a shift from "categories and class" to "function." That is, our notions of the public intellectual need to focus less on who or what a public intellectual is – and by extension, the qualifications for getting and keeping the title. Instead, we need to be more concerned with the work public intellectuals must do, irrespective of who happens to be doing it.

So, let us stray for a moment from Plank's credentials and actually step backward to a key question: what is the use of a public intellectual? One New York Times article points out the important distinction that a public intellectual is not just an academic or a journalist. Another article emphasizes that the true public intellectual is somewhat of an "outsider" and believes "reason and truth could triumph universally through the transformation of public opinion." Stephen Mack's article mentioned earlier also notes that the public intellectual should capture some kind of "anxiety." In short, I would assess that the use of the public intellectual is in their hybrid perspective of expert and critic, as someone who can keep their audience grounded and informed but also can inspire engagement, questioning, maybe even flat-out controversy.

This leads me to the early work of Elizabeth Plank. Plank could have gone into pure policy or journalism, but she chose to write for the Huffington Post, a site which produces a mix of news and blog content. Her work has also revolved around progressivism, sexism, and how politics and culture interlock. A young, female, budding writer fixated on such issues working for a liberal, online source is certainly not the picture of the establishment, and from the beginning, Plank has used her approachable writing style and obligatory action plug to get the average person thinking about what gender inequality looks like in everyday life. Her first article was about the Amateur International Boxing Association requiring female boxers to wear skirts. In a slightly casual but still fluid manner, Plank describes why forcing female athletes to don skirts is such a problem (hint: skirts have nothing to do with boxing). The most notable part of this article is that she includes a link to a petition against the proposed skirt rule, urging readers to voice their disapproval of this sexist idea. In another article under the Huffington Post, Plank writes a comprehensive piece about the wage gap between white men and women of different races and ethnicities. At the end of her post, she includes the hashtag #WithoutTheWageGapIWould, encouraging her audience to express their own difficulties with the wage gap, and then lists things employers and employees can do about the gap.

I will address exactly how Plank persuades her audience later in this post, but here, I would like to note the crucial part of Plank's content that not only qualifies her as a public intellectual but also makes her an exceedingly good one - Plank consistently prompts people to act on the issues she discusses. She is not a passive commentator, she is not a curious reporter, she is, at the core, an activist. She motivates people to bring about the change they want to see, and that's what sets her apart from mere "laptop warriors."

Plank built the bulk of her career through Mic.com, at which she has worked for four years now. In 2015, two years after she started at Mic, she was placed in Forbes' legendary "30 Under 30" list for her engaging content and for doubling site traffic. Her work has often "gone viral," and she is responsible for social media hashtag movements like #AllMenCan, which, similarly to #WithoutTheWageGapIWould, asks her audience to get involved in the discussion and contribute their views on how they and others can create a more equal world. How does Plank manage to regularly snag the attention of the notoriously fickle people of the Internet?

From the start of Plank's public intellectual streak, she has been careful to stay away from overly flowery language, jargon, or expecting her audience to know everything about the issues prior to viewing her content. She commits to the "translation" of deeply rooted controversies for the average citizen, even now, despite the fact she is a more widely recognized figure. In 2016, Plank wrote an article on the Orlando shooting, in which she cited several key pieces of legislation necessary for contextualizing her article while also sprinkling the post with more colloquial terms and humor. For instance, she explains the Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act plainly and solemnly, while a few paragraphs before, she writes, "North Carolina has literally politicized where transgender and gender nonconforming people can pee." Plank is able to hit at the hard stuff and also make it relatively easy to digest, and this approach to "reason and truth to transform public opinion" has been, evidently, enormously successful.

By the time she started working at Vox just about a year ago, Plank had started to use humor and social media more and more. In the first installment of her award-winning Vox 2016ish video series, which is also posted on Youtube, Plank interviews Canadian Prime Minster Justin Trudeau, interjecting facts, bystander commentaries, and serious questions with her now characteristic humor: endearingly dorky behavior, meaningful pauses and delivery for emphasis, and sarcasm. In a video on Vox's Facebook from three weeks ago, Plank hilariously engages with the discussion of our new Cabinet in a satirical advertisement. In an ironically cheery tone, the video examines the disturbingly discriminatory platforms of newly appointed members. Plank masterfully uses her humor to highlight how ridiculous and actually upsetting she finds the state of affairs in America today, and with thousands of likes and hundreds of shares, she is clearly striking a chord with the online community.

There is also a huge advantage to using Twitter hashtags (which can get heinous, I know). Plank understands that asking her readers and viewers to contribute their own perspectives can have an entirely different effect on people. While people who dislike Plank may disagree with her purely on the grounds that they don't like her or her humor or her subject matter or whatever it may be, seeing people you know and care about post their everyday experiences can really change your opinion. I revisited the wage gap Twitter hashtag, and here are a few of the many testimonies. #WithoutTheWageGapIWould:

• better provide for my family
• not have to explain that student debt is a great burden on women
• not have to see fellow women as competitors
• not feel compelled to speak in a more "girlish" manner

Taking issues as big and historically tense as sexism and framing them in this kind of everyday way, a form of content translation in itself, demonstrates very easily to people the impact and injury certain groups may feel, how discrepancies in treatment influence policy, and how policy cycles back to inform our culture. 

In some of the articles mentioned previously, critics of the public intellectual seem to condemn those who try to uphold the title today via the Internet. Things like "clicktivism," or online activism, are a huge point of contention with the left, and despite the indisputable popularity and power of it, social media is often seen as unhealthy, even a menace to society. But Elizabeth Plank embraces the power of the Internet. She engages extensively through her online writings and on social media platforms, making her content more accessible to her young, progressive audience. She has spread her discussions on sexism and related policy matters, explained the complexities of these issues, and most importantly, incorporated ways for her readers to stay educated, get talking, and empower themselves.

So, once again: how do we then keep the spirit of public intellectuals alive without falling into this Kantian idea of guardians of enlightenment who lead the sheep? The key to success that Plank has demonstrated in her incredible growth in just five short years is the incorporation of audience participation. No one wants to just hear facts, no one wants to just hear opinion. What people want is for them to feel heard, for their issues to be addressed, for them to be able to do something. And on that, Elizabeth Plank delivers.

Why Can't Celebrities Be Political?

“Sweltering” would be an appropriate word to describe America’s current political climate. In the last several months, politics went from the one topic you should not bring up at the dinner table to the next most unavoidable thing behind memes. So, in this storm of politics, ethics, values, justice… where are celebrities hiding?

Whether or not people like Kendall Jenner or Justin Bieber are your cup of tea, today’s stars have an unbelievable amount of influence, particularly in our youth. Actors, singers, models, and reality stars are some of the most closely followed individuals in life and, obviously, on social media platforms. All but one of 2016's ten most followed people on Instagram are such figures, and all but three of Twitter's top ten are celebrities as well (one of the notable exceptions being Barack Obama). And while there are some deviations from the trend  – Beyonce and Jay-Z for Hillary, Shailene Woodley for Standing Rock, the multitude of award winners at last week's Screen Actors Guild Awards – why do so many famous people refrain from using their platforms and power to have important political discussions?

The most likely reason is that celebrities do not want to alienate their fans. Celebrities bring us entertainment; we pay attention to them because they provide us with shows that distract us from everyday troubles, songs that make us want to fall in love, sitcoms that make us laugh until we cry. Famous people not only inevitably disagree with many fans about politics but also anger fans who want stars to just be stars and keep us away from reality. There has been plenty of backlash from celebrities' political alignments, and even people within Hollywood like Mark Wahlberg, who believes celebrities are truly detached from the real world, have expressed disapproval of stars making political statements:

A lot of Hollywood is living in a bubble. They're pretty out of touch with the common person, the everyday guy out there providing for their family... Me, I'm very aware of the real world. I come from the real world and I exist in the real world. And although I can navigate Hollywood and I love the business and the opportunities it's afforded me, I also understand what it's like not to have all that.

Reservations like that of Wahlberg are understandable; anyone whose career and lifestyle depends entirely on other people liking them will have a somewhat skewed perspective, and especially for those in the upper echelons of Hollywood, privilege and subsequent ignorance can be in abundance. However, celebrities are still not above politics (at least, they should not be). As with my last post, I would like to touch on the core of politics. Politics is not just today or in the election cycle, it is not just for politicians and their prominent friends. Politics is about the structure of power. It is why we abide by the laws we do and why our society runs the way it does. No matter what occupation you hold, politics affect you. Therefore, celebrities, who are fellow people with rights, privileges, opinions, who are taxpayers and voters, are entitled to their political opinions.

That is not to say I believe every famous person should make huge declarations about every political view they hold. Another reason why stars may choose to keep their opinions to themselves is that bias spreads easily, and some of today's biggest celebrities have many impressionable and young fans. It would certainly be an issue for celebrities to actively try to indoctrinate their followings, but methods exist to have healthy conversations about politics. There is nothing inherently wrong with someone standing up for what they are passionate about, defending their views, or raising awareness about issues others may not know about. Is the default solution for any issue not awareness? True, movie actors are not exactly the most reputable source when it comes to politics, but if every celebrity was vocal about just one topic they were passionate about, how different would our world be? How many more people would at least be exposed to the issues of today?

My own entrance into politics was largely from outside sources, and if people never had public debates about politics, I would not be as aware as I am today. Allowing public figures to share on issues that they hold dear would not only raise awareness but also encourage political discussions amongst average citizens in everyday life. People love to criticize the influence of famous people and the spread of celebrity gossip; maybe we can start to see star power as a force for good.