The most important U-turn I’ve ever made
During my senior year at Lockhart High School, I was inspired by a graduate friend as well as my childhood theater director to try my hand at Lincoln-Douglas debate. With their help, I pulled an all-nighter to write my affirmative/negative, discuss logical fallacies, note taking tips and cross-examination strategies before my first match which took place at Del Valle High School. The topic was the 1993 Robin Hood plan, which provided court-mandated equitable school financing for all school districts in the state. Even though I certainly improved as the season went on, I got whooped that day. However, it sparked in me a quest for truth, reason, and facts as well as an ongoing debate about property rights, wealth redistribution, our social contract, and what equality of opportunity really means. That year, the year before then Governor Rick Perry approved a tax swap that cut the state public education budget by billions of dollars, I made myself a promise that I would develop my own position on every issue. For the last 12 years, I’ve sought out opportunities to challenge my views by not just debating to prove my point, or that the person on the other side of the argument proved my point, but to actually, truly, listen and learn.
As a Cadet at the Air Force Academy and throughout my time on active duty, the issues that affected me the most were our country’s misguided drug wars, half a century of foreign military interventionism beginning in Iran with the overthrow of the Shah in 1953, the escalating militarization of police, the lack of prosecution of any Wall Street executives in the wake of the ’08 financial crisis, and my view that politics was simply broken due to campaign finance laws that have skewed our representative democracy toward mostly elite special interests. For his principled anti-war positions, I was drawn to support Ron Paul between 2008 and 2012, yet my understanding of history, economics, and the perspective of the least advantaged in our society was infantile; I hadn’t yet read The People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn, the New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein, Austerity by Mark Blyth, or Republic Lost by Lawrence Lessig. I didn’t truly understand the anti-New Deal roots of Neoliberalism. I didn’t yet comprehend “Velocity of Money”.
To be blunt, in retrospect, President Obama was a far better president than Ron would have been. I’m seriously glad he implemented the Affordable Care Act to get 20 million people on insurance who didn’t have it before. I admire his successful Iran Nuclear deal with the help of Dr. Ernie Moniz (100x the Energy Secretary of Rick Perry), his cap and trade program with signals toward 100% renewable energy, the attempts to tamper down lobbyist impact on conventions, as well as the market rebound that has been steadily building since March 9, 2009, even though Trump thinks he had something to do with it. Obama’s Department of Justice reports for Baltimore and Chicago command respect. Lastly, Obama’s record 1,715 clemencies granted to non-violent drug offenders is what won me over on his legacy.
Although I had a thought experiment up my sleeve to explain away the “magic” of the unabated free market, I could never reconcile Paul’s policies with the unnecessary death of his campaign manager, Kent Snyder, whose pre-existing condition priced him out of insurance and burdened his family with $400,000 in medical bills. I could never reconcile how the free market could prevent employers from discriminating against women on pay and healthcare, especially access to contraception. I could never understand why Ron Paul libertarians were anti-choice. I could never reconcile how we’d prevent rivers from catching on fire without an EPA. I could never reconcile how a person of color or a gay or trans person was expected to drive cross country with peace of mind that they could stop and get gas without being discriminated against unless there was a monopoly of force given to a government that can demand companies, which most certainly are not people, by laws set in place through representative democracy. I could never reconcile how the elderly would exit this world with any ounce of dignity if we were to strip away two of the most successful government programs in world history: Social Security and Medicare. The thought experiments fell flat when I read Joseph Stiglitz, George Akerlof, and Michael Spence’s Nobel prize winning analyses of markets with asymmetric information, Thomas Frank’s Listen Liberal, Robert Reich’s Saving Capitalism, and Jeremy Scahill’s coverage of Erik Prince’s Blackwater.
After transitioning from the Air Force back to Central Texas, a huge part of the shift from libertarian to progressive was sparked by my mom. She has spent the last several years working with environmentalists in Caldwell County to push back against an unruly landfill company that has flipped Caldwell’s Commissioner’s Court red and are running the agenda with an all-out assault on the rights of my hometown community. After years of healthy debates with my mom, and after she introduced me to Senator Bernie Sanders, I know this corporate assault on individual liberty to be the only outcome of “Who is John Galt?”-style philosophy, and the Citizens United & McCutcheon Supreme Court rulings have made that considerably worse. Additionally, I was steered progressive by a YouTube show called the Majority Report with Sam Seder and Michael Brooks, who had an open challenge for libertarians to call in and debate for the last 7 years; I’ve watched almost 100 of them. There are many others who argued with me along the way: Kat, Ben, Curtis, Chase, Brandon, etc. — and I owe people a debt of gratitude for simply taking the time for discourse.
When it comes to what I believe, as a science advocate, I understand the universe to be roughly 13.7B years old, the planet is roughly 4.55B years old, and we’ve been evolving for roughly 3.2B years. As the son of a mother who survived polio, I understand vaccines to be vital for a healthy community. As the son of a father who was a public college music professor and President of American Federation of Music, Local 466 in El Paso, I understand we must provide a social safety net that includes education as a right for all people, and we must have strong collective bargaining for working people. As a pianist, I understand we must protect opportunities for the humanities, social sciences and arts. As an Information Technology professional who worked for 3 years consulting with companies all over the US to help strengthen their talent pipelines of candidates transitioning from the military into engineering, electrical, electronic, solar, wind, mechanical, and nuclear technician roles, I understand we must have a strong emphasis on STEM and trades if we want to compete in a global economy. As the planet continues to dangerously heat up and refugee waves continue to spike geopolitical tensions, I understand we cannot take the stance of my Congressman that it’ll all be fine because melting polar ice caps will create an economic boon from more shipping lanes for oil tankers.
Ever since Nixon appointed Lewis Powell to the Supreme Court, corporate power has skyrocketed. If we’re to ensure there’s a planet left for the next generation, we must work as a broad-based, inter-sectional coalition, not as individuals, with an “ideologically coherent alternative” to Conservatism. Centrism won’t get it done, and Democrats should abandon it. If we’re to come up with solutions for an increasingly automation and AI driven world, we must, as Senator Elizabeth Warren says, work on “Strengthening the Basic Bargain for Workers in a Modern Economy.” I’ve never canvassed neighborhoods, donated money, or otherwise volunteered for any political party’s candidates except for Democrats because the Democratic Party is the only vehicle for the changes we need to make happen. If Democrats are to turn Texas Blue in 2018, the only way forward is Left. As Bernie says, “we’re all in this together”.
