Another Kind of Love

Despite the pandemic, the economic dislocation, the political instability and the pure fear that engulf us, my thoughts continue to turn to love.

It is clear that there are a lot of angry people out there. The Republican convention is showcasing much of that anger, especially the kind felt by millions of Americans who resent the way our society is changing.

I understand nostalgia for the past. And the bitterness that hard work doesn't necessarily mean you'll get ahead any longer. Plus the special type of alienation that this just  doesn't feel like the country it once seemed to be.

If you don't pay close attention, it can seem that some of the newcomers to our land are leapfrogging the stages our ancestors endured from poverty to a better way of life. These days, there are examples of newcomers almost instantly moving to the head of the line, especially in the technology industry.

But appearances are often deceiving. The people "making it" in tech have put in their time, often in a distant land, rising from poverty to get educated and acquire the skills to push the technologies sweeping our world to new levels of convenience and efficiency.

if it seems as if everything around us has transformed into one giant software project, launching at beta and iterating based on user feedback, it has. Everything, that is, except us.

Indeed, there are efforts to improve our bodies with technology as well. Daily news stories tell of new ways to grow livers inside human bodies, and Elon Musk even has some sort of new chip to implant in humans, for what purpose I am not quite sure.

But you get the feeling that soon we will simply be scanned by devices that categorize us according to pre-set metrics and channel our desires accordingly.

The actual experience of being a living human being is somewhat different. We are not robots, nor will we ever be. I prefer love to fear or hate because love is very messy. It doesn't fit into neat packages and it comes in all shapes and sizes, colors and ages. It feels good and it hurts at the same time.

The problem with the anger and fear expressed by so many under-educated Americans is it can crate political circumstances that ultimately hold back progress. 

So the Republican problem is the anger of the party's base at technological change and the demographics that accompany it is that this progress is not rooted in liberal ideology any more than it is rooted in conservative ideology.

Allow me to offer a concrete example.

Soon after the web emerged in the 1990s as a tool to navigate the amazing new world of digital information, one faction of the evangelical Christian movement became deeply concerned that new forms of pornography were becoming far more available to the general population.

This, in turn led in 1996 to an attempt to restrict web-based content with an initiative called the Community Decency Act (CDA). I was working at HotWired at the time and was aware both of the astonishing new volume of information being unleashed (including pornography) and the policy attempts to squash it.

Thanks to some conservative leaders in Congress and non-profit organizations like the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF), resistance to the CDA emerged and ultimately the issue went to the Supreme Court, which ruled in essence that information wants to be free.

The Court struck down the provisions of the act meant to restrict free speech, including pornography, and upheld a little-notice provision known as section 230, which states "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."  As EFF explains, "In other words, online intermediaries that host or republish speech are protected against a range of laws that might otherwise be used to hold them legally responsible for what others say and do."

Naturally, this may seem overly wonkish to many people, but it remains a fundamental reason we have been able to develop a much richer, more complex information-based economy on a global basis over the past quarter century.

At one stage in the legal struggle, I submitted a written argument on behalf of the freedom of speech. It is probably buried in some obscure brief somewhere; perhaps it was never even published, I don't know.

But even with all of the mess that comes with it, including pornography and even hate speech, that right to create and consume whatever kind of information we want to create and consume is a fundamental building block of our modern world.

The Democrats have a problem with the "cancel culture" faction that seeks to erase history because some of the heroes of the past said or did objectionable things by today's standards; or in the case of slavery, did unconscionable things.

No matter how hard one might try, you cannot erase history. You have to acknowledge the good with the bad, and strive to not repeat the bad parts.

The Republicans have a problem because history will not be returning; it's time to step into the future, whether we entirely like it or not.

That's why I write about love. Love is about what we can create together; not what we can accomplish by ripping ourselves apart. Love understands Section 230.

***

The best moment of the RNC so far, by a long shot, was Melania Trump's speech last night. She departed from the theme of attack attack attack to instead take the high road and highlight her work with children, veterans, victims of drug addiction and disaster survivors.

Her message was one of unity and compassion. Just as Jill Biden gave the best speech of the Democratic convention, IMHO, Melania's will stand as the best of the Republican convention.

* Many of the Republican Party's biggest household names won't be involved in the convention this week. George W. Bush and his family, John McCain's family, Paul Ryan and Ted Cruz are among the Republican stalwarts not present at Trump's RNC. [HuffPost]

* The GOP’s dubious calculus on Democrats and the suburbs -- Republicans’ overarching strategy to scare Americans from a diverse nation, specifically a diverse suburbia, is years out of touch with reality in much of the country. (Washington Post)

* "Panic attack" searches reach all-time high during pandemic. (HuffPost)

* So far this year 1.4 million acres of California have burned in wildfires, 25 times the amount this time last year. (DW)

* Yes, the historic headquarters of the Big Basin Redwoods State Park are gone. The redwoods themselves may be scarred, but most of them still stand. Among the survivors is one called Mother of the Forest. [The Associated Press]

* Smoke from California wildfires is now visible in Kansas (SFGate)

* More than half of all storefronts in San Francisco are no longer in business due to COVID-19, according to the survey by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. (CBS)

* New Swing State Georgia Could Decide Control of the Senate (Bloomberg)

* If You Wait Until Your State’s Deadline To Mail Your Ballot, You May Be Too Late (FiveThirtyEight)

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