Intentional Impact

Recently learned that it appears to be axiomatic to say that what people intend is less important, or less meaningful, than the impact of what they say or do. It seems to be an a priori assumption taken to be the truth, under whose logical apparatus any critique is a defense of the right to call someone “overly sensitive.”

No one seriously suggests that intent is more important than impact — that would be patently ridiculous. But to aver the opposite, and brook no dissent on the question, would be equally absurd, no? I’m honestly wrestling with the idea that the outcome matters more than the plan that led to it. Why does it? Just assume it is the case. Okay.

Maybe the harsh reality is some people are too sensitive, or maybe that observation is taboo now. (As a thin-skinned person at times, I resemble that remark.) It has been in vogue to be “intentional” and have good “intention,” making this phenomenon even stranger. Not going to universalize this, but that is how it looks to me.

As always, with most nearly anything, I could be wrong, so if you want, please let me know why the foregoing is misguided, clueless, or deficient so I can grow and be a better person. Honestly, that is my intent with this post. Used to think that we have no control over how our words and actions affect others, but now I’m confused.

Likewise, it has been fashionable to believe that we cannot actually make anyone feel anything, or that we are not responsible for how we make others feel, but perhaps that is all incorrect. It is really interesting to witness social mores changing so rapidly in real-time, not knowing where they’re going next. Is this the road to heaven?

On Independence and Interdependence

This country has been surprised with the way the world looks now. They don’t know if they want…to be diplomats or continue the same policy of nuclear nightmare diplomacy…This country wants nostalgia. They want to go back as far as they can, even if it’s only as far as last week—not to face now or tomorrow, but to look backwards.” (Gil Scott-Heron, 1981)

The Godfather of Rap was dead-on. Americans celebrated their 243rd year of being an independent country on Thursday, watching the glare of bombs bursting in air to mark nearly a quarter-millennium since the founders declared that “all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”

History hath shewn that, to remind us in the early 21st century how indebted we remain to the words of a late-eighteenth century document written by slaveowners who were also brilliant men part of their own time, faced against tall odds of taking on what was then the greatest empire in world history. They laid the foundation for what is now the greatest empire in world history, but Americans seem to like to think they live inside a democratic republic.

I feel that one of the reasons why we are struggling inadequately today is that we reckon our costs on too shortsighted a basis and are later overwhelmed with the unexpected costs brought about by our shortsightedness.” (Buckminster Fuller, 1968)

Bucky was right, too, and our shortsightedness has kept apace over the last half-century, as well as the damage wrought by our lack of foresight—or, if not wanting for it, maybe enough indifference or hostility to new ideas to quash dread progress. Having said that, it is undeniable that social change has been won by grassroots struggle from below, and very rarely if never from the wealthy and powerful who have always run these United States.

It may sound cynical to put it that way, but it is a little difficult to deny when you dig into things like the historical and documentary record of what actually happened around here. None of this is to say that we are condemned to the same fate as Sisyphus, forced to roll a boulder up a hill for all time, knowing it will roll down again. Maybe there are not so much repetitions in history but rhythms.

Already, Always Campaigning

It is now July of 2019 and so only sixteen months remain until the 2020 presidential election. To give an idea of just how far that is into the future, 16 months in the past puts us in March of 2018, which was incidentally when I moved across our great country, from Kings County to Alameda County. Things have changed.

Since today is the 1st of July, sixteen months ago this day was the 8th of March, 2018, according to the helpful folks at Research Maniacs, and per my journals the previous week I’d woken up in an airstream trailer in San Antonio, en route. (For the record, I have been keeping a daily journal since 2014, if anyone cares.) Whew!

So it seems to me that a lot can happen between now and the day when whomever is the Democratic nominee faces off against the most odious incumbent president my country has ever had. Yes, he is my president: My racist, sexist, disgusting asshole president. At this point my null hypothesis is he will be re-elected, 60/40 odds.

I have never hoped to be more wrong about anything, but that is how it looks at this point. Again, there remains quite a long time until the Day of Judgment, but it is worth recalling how what was assumed by all responsible pundits to be unthinkable became real. Nothing is inevitable, which suggests he could go down in defeat.

At the risk of cliché, anything could happen, but it does not look very good when you have no sense of consensus about who that nominee should be and it sometimes seems that only another major economic collapse would threaten the president’s chances. Well, Happy Fourth, my fellow citizens. It is still a republic, if we keep it.