Everything is political

A lot of what I write here (and on Mastodon, and on Bluesky) is about politics. So much so that you might think my day job has something to do with politics or social media, rather than engineering data flows to enable scientists to ask big questions about how we work. I don't really like writing about politics, so why do I do it?

In brief, because everything is political. For some people, politics is a game, something they do on The West Wing (and that's how I felt for years). For too many others, politics is a matter of life and death because their very right to exist is being batted about like a football. Everything is political, whether it's art or science, so I'm going to write about politics.

When people, usually white or straight or cis people, say they don't want to bring politics into something, what they really mean is that they're comfortable with politicizing someone else's existence, but they don't want that to happen to them. In a world where the would-be dictator Trump (the orange shitgibbon, if you will) installs political commissars from the so-called DOGE to enforce Newspeak, the people who can afford to ignore politics become fewer and fewer.

Content warnings and tags

I use content warnings on Mastodon, but Ghost doesn't really have that option. Instead, I try to tag my explicitly political posts with #politics, so if you want you can opt out of them (or focus solely on them, if you're a masochist).

My politics

My politics are unapologetically woke, and I will not sacrifice trans people or immigrants in order to achieve my own safety and comfort. I believe that we can offer America a progressive vision with space for everyone that lifts us all, rather than the minority Republican/conservative view that America is a place for the few, the white, the straight. I will speak from that perspective here, and if that bothers you then I remind you that it's free to unsubscribe.