Satori: Awakening

"Awakening" is the last of the early songs recorded for the album Belief.  I can still hear all the influences of this song- The Who, Fugazi, etc. There's even a little bit of Traveling Wilbury's in there.  The song is a bit of a second cousin to "Belief." The story here is mostly about bringing the recording back from the dead, but I did want you to know three things:

1. Becky Kupersmith wanted to call our first album, King of All I see based on a lyric from this song. 

2. Ryan Jones sang on the bridge, and probably should have sung on a lot more songs, because he's a better singer.

3. The breakdown is my favorite in any song. 

This particular recording has an interesting story behind it, because the original master no longer exists. So Andrew McKenna Lee and I had to resurrect the song using a casette as our master. There had been an expectation when we finished the album that we would put out a CD, but then we discovered how much a CD cost, and we opted to put the album out sooner rather than later, so we put it out on casette.  We argued that we could release the CD version later.  Sigh.

The two biggest problems with a casette master are: 1. The speed and 2. The hiss.  The speed meant that the song was not at its original tempo and not quite in the original key.  This was pretty easy to fix.  The second problem was the hiss, which only became noticeable in the quiet parts.  We Eq'd some of the hiss away, but you also lose a bit of high-end sparkle, so I added an acoustic guitar, which doubled the guitar part I played on the electric. This meant that I could eliminate the original intro, and have the acoustic as an intro, which meant I needed to re-record the vocals for the intro and try to blend it into the original once the original recording kicked in. 

Unfortunately, the hiss returns thoughtout the song whenever it got quiet, so I began adding other sounds and overdubs to mask the hiss- the sound of a wave, a ringing bell.  You'll notice these elements whenever the band gets quiet. 

The last spot of hiss was at the very end.  So I just recorded the last note for bass, drums and guitars.  Hopefully you can't tell the difference, but now that I've told you...

 

Satori: Belief

 

"Belief" is another early Satori song. The story of the song goes back to the summer of 1990 when I went to Greece.  So much of my writing my senior year was colored by that experience.  The cover of the album was shot there, and yet, that's me jumping off a cliff into the water.  I believe a gal named Janet McClelland took the shot, and this was in the era of analog photography.  There was no checking to see how the picture came out, and an action shot like this... well, who knew.  There had been several instances of cliff jumping on that trip, and I had taken several pictures, and I felt certain they would all turn out awesome.  I asked Janet to take one, just so I could be in one, but I didn't think it would turn out. Hers was the only that turned out. 

At any rate, the first time I jumped off a 60 foot cliff, I was extremely nervous.  I needed to clear about twelve feet from the launching point in order to land in water that was deep enough.  I was in the middle of a sleepless six week trip, and I was high on adrenaline and emotion, and I can't say that under any other circumstance would I have taken that jump, but I did, and the fact that I did stuck with me. 

Well, fast forward about six, seven months. The music came first, and while we jammed on the music I felt compelled to utter one word: belief.  I wrote the rest of the words that night. The song and the picture go hand in hand, as do Satori and belief.

It might seem a bit odd for a band with a buddhist name to be singing about belief.  I did not have a conscious understanding of Buddhism at that point, but I had read Kerouac's Dharma Bums, the year before and it had magnetized me towards Buddhism. In the book, the narrator climbs a mountain with Buddhist friend, Japhy Ryder, and the friend tells him as they come down the mountain that you cannot fall off the mountain if you simply let go to the mountain.  Or something like that.  While I was in Greece, we climbed mount Olympus.  I did it with my guitar, and I ran down the mountain following Japhy's advice, and found that he was right. I couldn't and didn't fall of the mountain. 

My understanding of satori was that it was a brief flash of enlightenment- though many buddhists today would argue that is kensho.  But it is a point where we experience a kind of enlightenment, where we are able to see into the nature of reality.  Typically, this requires the exhaustion of the rational perspective through the use of koans and meditation, but the result is deep understanding. 

This goal of enlightenment was paired with my fervant desire to live as richly as possible, which might seem to in no way related to any buddhist concept.  There was a tension there to be sure.  The goal of the music that we created was a sonic illustration of that tension. The verses of "Belief" are all about winding up the tension for the release of the choruses. The song is all about tension and release, which was Nirvana's formula right?  It's a bit ironic that I wrote this song, before I knew they even existed, and about a year before Nevermind exploded onto the scene. But Kurt Cobain had a much darker view of the world. I saw a light at the end of the tunnel.  

I think what made us different is that we had an open mind about the world.  It wasn't dirt, but it wasn't perfect.  Were we true buddhists?  Well, I remember chanting buddhist chants before a show to center us.  But then on stage we sought to unleash the fury of belief.  It seemed a bit of a contradiction. 

I never say what the belief is, because it doesn't matter (to some extent).  If you are with the universe, and the universe can carry you, then your belief is true and good things will happen, I suppose.  But we need belief.  We can't live our lives without it.  We are not widgeteers put on this earth to create units for distribution.  We need meaning and depth and purpose.  Belief is what propels us forward.  

Somewhere in the thirty years since I wrote this song, I find myself among the crowd that sees the world through a materialist and mechanistic worldview.  The world is a series of numbers, and we must follow the numbers to make choices.  Science will show us the way, right?  Except that science is just a tool, and it can't answer the questions that matter the most: What path should we follow? Why does it matter?

Beliefs are future-oriented ideas.  If you act, you act on belief.  If you raise your child, you do so based on belief.  Even something as mundane as putting money into an IRA requires belief, because the future is unwritten.  Why do we construct the lives that we construct?  Reason can't answer that.  It can hopefully support it, but belief is a faith that we are heading in the right direction.  You don't need a religion to have belief.  You just need to believe. 

While belief propels us towards the future (and out of the circumstances that steal our energy), satori is the stillness.  It is the quiet.  Just as we need strength to conquer our demons, we need peace to surrender to our angels (not exactly a buddhist concept).  But the stillness and the quiet provide us with the space to reflect on harmony. Belief shoots us out of the cannon while satori gives us a place to land.  

I often paraphrased Steven Wright and spoke of Satori of that moment when you fall back in your chair and then catch yourself.  For a second you don't know what's about to happen, and it could be terrible or it could be a tremendous relief.  For the band, the satori was the moment in the song that captured that uncertainty.  In "Belief" it was the second before each chorus when the music stops for a second, and there's no certainty that it will land. 

The tension between the satori and the belief runs through our music. We might think of tension as a negative, but the tension in the bow-string is what sends the arrow through the sky. 

Dirt

I was a senior in high school when I wrote "Dirt." I think I had recently listened to the Red Hot Chili Peppers album, "Blood Sugar Sex Magic", which may have influenced the rap-ish style of the song.  I remember sitting in my old bedroom for some reason, and writing the song in one sitting.  Even at 17, I had written epic songs. At five verses, this certainly qualified, but unlike some of my other epics, there wasn't any fat to trim. If you scroll down and read the lyrics, I think you'll see why I'm justifiably proud of this accomplishment. 

At that point I was heavily influenced by Bob Dylan, and what I can only call underground music- alternative, punk? It wasn't alternative yet, and it wasn't punk like the Clash.  I listened to Jane's Addiction, Dinosaur Jr. and I frequented hardcore shows in Louisville, because that seemed to be the only scene for young musicians, but I can't say that I was ever welcomed into that scene. At any rate, this is what results when you combine early 90s alternative with Bob Dylan.  

However, unlike all those sources, I was really trying to dig through the dirt at that age to find something positive.  Dylan's "A Hard Rain's a Gonna Fall" and "It's All-Right, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" were tremendoustly influential in terms of creating songs that present a cascade of images to the listener, but they both illustrated a kind of existential crisis, which I resisted.  Many of the underground music that I listened to had a cynical view of the world, which I also resisted.  As dark a song as "Dirt" might seem at first, it's not a cynical song. If anything, I was trying to demonstrate the bankruptcy of a worldview that reduces life to a shallow, materialistic emptiness.  How ugly is everything, if everything is dirt?

The song was easily Satori's "hit", assuming that you could understand what I was saying. Still, the song never left the set list in all the years of Satori's existence.  Often-times, it was the show-closer, with guitar solos, and drum solos.  The song always propelled itself into a lengthy jam.  The song evolved over the years and became less punk and more rap-rock over the years.  My idea of a rap delivery was MCA of the Beastie Boys.  

When we recorded this song in Pittsburgh for this album, we were playing the song live- minus vocals.  I felt that I had flubbed the solo, but Brian Gager and Andrew Lee (our producers) convinced me that it sounded great.  Because of the lack of sonic separation, we would have had to record the song from scratch, but that wasn't their motivation.  I think they thought my recovery made the flub seem intentional, and the intentionally late return from the second bridge gave the recording a kind of exciting uncertainty.

Brian had the idea that the video should end in  spy chase.  We used to joke that we made spy music, and the ending to "Dirt" certainly had that vibe. As you listen to the end, imagine a car chase with a James Bond type in a tux and fancy car. 

How much more can you demand of me?

I tell you the truth, you jail me for profanity

You're free of criminals, save for your own vanity

You ever be totally clean?

How many victims in your crusade for purity?

How close is your endgame of security?

Honesty is just another casualty until your vision is complete

So let's all clap hands

Don't blink if it hurts

No call to understand

If everyone is dirt.

Soul game, nothin' could be easier

Don't believe, it's a question of pleasing her

How much are you willing to release for her

Nothing but everything will do

Mystify, rectify, justify, testify

We've got a darkness nothing can purify

Don't be a hero Heros are crucified

Nobody sheds a tear

So let's all clap hands

Don't blink if it hurts

No call to understand

If everyone is dirt.

Once I had a dream, I had a vision

A light was tearing through all of religion

Saved from a head-on collision

Ready to taste our fate

Stared at- a victim of analysis

Tied down- political paralysis

Don't turn away! Visions of apocalypse

Tell me it's not too late

So let's all clap hands

Don't blink if it hurts

No call to understand

If everyone is dirt.

You stand tall, the moral majority

Let me introduce you to the mortal minority

Don't be afraid, it's the death of authority

We're ready to break away

Ask yourself what is it that's chaining me

All these years of testing and training me

Pressures' on, stripping and straining me

Why should I live that way?

So let's all clap hands

Don't blink if it hurts

No call to understand

If everyone is dirt.

You never blinked once at a traffic fatality

You were never quite sure it was a part of reality

Time's up! Face your own mortality

As gruesome as it may seem

Naked now, born without a history

Could it be the key to your nagging misery?

Now that your clean, it's the end of your mystery

Is it as bad as you dreamed?

 

Satori: a brief history

 

To listen to the album, click here. 

Once upon a time- very much in another life- I was in a band called "Satori."  The band began early in 1991 with me, Becky Kupersmith and Dan Chaffin.  That incarnation of the band spent most of its existence in Becky's basement. We wrote an album's worth of material, and we searched for another guitarist, because you're supposed to have two, right?  We auditioned my friend Dan Patterson, who had played with me in a band called Downpour, but he lasted long enough to impart a riff that became the song "Obvious War."  Then we tried Simon Furnish, who thought we were complete as a trio, though I suspected that he was just trying to be nice. 

We put together an album of material over that Winter and Fall.  We played at St. Francis High School, Jewish Community Center, and our big gig which was opening up at Laser Chase.  Not a lot of a exposure. Still we felt like we should record an album.  Becky brought a recording from a rehearsal using a jambox, and we took it to Mike Bucayu of Kinghorse.  He said we didn't sound passionate enough, which I suspect meant that we didn't sound like a hardcore band, which we weren't trying to. 

At any rate, we started recording an album at Ant-Man studios? It was on Barret Ave, I think.  We recorded six songs in an hour, and the guy mixed two of the songs in another hour.  We had a six hour package.  I thought we would be able to record another three songs, but when I came back, he said he spent the next four hours mixing, and we were out of money.  The math didn't add up, but I was an 18 year old without a lot of confidence.  We managed to get Becky's parents to put up the rest- though I've never heard the end of it. 

I had been jamming with Matt Frederick early that summer, and I was surprised that he could play guitar.  I had known him in Middle school, and didn't know him to play an instrument.  I thought he would make a nice addition as an acoustic guitar player in a punk band.  He joined on a few of the last songs in the studio, but in the end nothing happened with the record, because I didn't realize how much it would cost to actually put an album out.  I used to tell people that I'd recorded an album, but that the label chose not to release it, which in a sense was true. 

We played one show at Tewligan's that summer as a quartet, and then Becky moved away to Lansing, Michigan. Dan, Matt and I went off to college.  Satori went into hibernation until winter break.  

We had about three-four weeks off that break, and my friend Hewett was in town, which was never a given, and he expressed interest in playing, and the four of us jammed without a bass-player. We auditioned Frances Zopp, who hadn't been playing very long, and while we had similar musical tastes- she got me into fIREHOSE- I was hoping to find someone with more experience.  

Matt found Ryan Jones and we practiced as a five-piece for a single show at Uncle Pleasant's.  There may have been five people at the show.  It was clear to all of us that we were going places.  Well, except Hewett who never played in the band again. 

That Summer we played and practiced.  We worked up songs like "The Plague", "Mercury" and "Save the World".  We were eager to record and EP.  We selected four songs, and recorded at Mountain View studios in Richmond over Thanksgiving.  Again, the recordings were never released, because we hadn't budgeted for that.  I think it was more important to have a recording than to put out an album.  We did use the recordings as a demo, and we played a smattering of shows here and there, in Louisville, Kenyon, Transylvania over the next year and a half. 

The hardcore scene was not interested in us at all, but it was around this time that Nirvana, and Pearl Jam and the grunge scene began to pick up steam, and we were kind of grungy.  I mean, we'd played in barns, basements and bars.  That's grungy, right?

Despite a lack of any encouragement outside of our own circle, we decided to play as a band full-time when Ryan and Matt graduated, and before Dan and I's senior year in college.  That was when we recorded the album that was originally called Part of the Soil, but I renamed because we didn't have the original album cover, and I did have a picture of me jumping off a cliff in Greece, which we had used as a t-shirt.  

We worked with Andrew McKenna Lee and Brian Gager, who went above and beyond recording our album.  We spent an entire week on the recording recording as a band live (minus vocals) and then putting over various over-dubs.  There's a real vibe on the recording, because we were actually playing as a band on every track. We did manage to release an album (on casette).  Andrew and Brian were a bit disappointed with the results of our packaging, but we must've sold all 100 copies of the album, because none of us has any.  

We played on a monthly basis that year, but we had also made the inexplicable decision to live together as a band, which instead of bringing us closer together drove us further apart, and after the lease was up, we went our separate ways as a band, reuniting for one concert at Rudyard Kipling, which may have been our best attended show, ironically.  

Here we are years later, and having unearthed a copy of the album (now called Belief), I can honestly say that we should have gotten this into the hands of more people.  It's a strange album, and it veers stylistically, but there's a good chance you'll enjoy a song or two.  

My Old Kentucky Home

 I have a read a lot of people expressing concern about Kentucky's state anthem, "My Old Kentucky Home." The original lyrics celebrate antebellum south- slaves and all.  I have taught this aspect of the song to 8th graders and high-schoolers alike for years.  My purpose was never to ruin the song for anyone.  My teaching of the history of the song was always in the context of a history class.  It might surprise you to know that despite years of teaching this song, I continue to stand for the song come Derby time and sing along.  In order to understand why, I don't need to bring you into my history class, but my song studies class. 

Yes, I invented a field I call song studies as part of my Masters Thesis over a decade ago.  I believe this field should exist, and I have been fortunate enough to have taught it as a class on three occasions.  My background as a songwriter really helped me teach this class, and I discovered that there was a lot of knowledge to be transmitted on the subject. Despite the ubiquity of songs in our culture, people seem to have some pretty mixed-up ideas about what a song is and what it can do.  I could write a book on the subject, but for now I will simply say that a song is not its history. 

I have opened every song studies class by listening to a version of the national anthem, which really illustrates this point.  I typically pick Whitney Houston's performance, because she's an amazing singer, but also because nobody can sing it like her.  If Whitney Houston is singing, you don't sing along. You listen.  The students listen.  Then we ask what a song is.  Almost always they say, "words and music."  That's the moment where they learn their first lesson: a song is a performance.  Songs are not created by songwriters, they are created by performers.  

Now if you have ever ready a Shakespeare play in an English class you may have thought you were reading a play, but you were actually reading a script.  A play is performed on a stage.  Songs don't live on a page, they live in performance.  And if you have ever seen a performance of one of Shakespeare's plays, there's a good chance that they cut some of the scenes.  In some cases, Shakespeare probably just wrote a scene for the purpose of giving his leads a chance to change costumes.  Did I just ruin Shakespeare for you?  Then you're not paying attention to the performance.  The actors are the ones who will provide you with an understanding of the meaning of the play, and just because you saw Romeo and Juliet in high school, doesn't mean the current performance of Romeo and Juliet has the same meaning, because it's not the same performance. 

But back to our national anthem.  "The Star Spangled Banner" is based on a poem by Francis Scott Key, and there are four stanzas, but I've never heard a performance of the Key's poem in its entirety, though I know that it has happened.  The full poem mentions slaves, which makes it historically accurate, but problematic if you want to get everyone singing along. Although, during the Civil War, Oliver Wendall Holmes Sr. added a fifth stanza, which may be worth singing:

When our land is illumined with Liberty's smile,
If a foe from within strike a blow at her glory,
Down, down with the traitor that dares to defile
The flag of her stars and the page of her story!
By the millions unchained, who our birthright have gained,
We will keep her bright blazon forever unstained!
And the Star-Spangled Banner in triumph shall wave
While the land of the free is the home of the brave.

But can you do that?  Can you change the meaning of a song? Songs change meaning every time they are performed, and the most important meanings are the ones created by the performers and their audiences.  

Did you know that "The Star Spangled Banner" was basically the melody of a Gentlemen's club theme song?  Yeah, and it was a British club at that.  And the people who put it to music knew that too.  Of course, that's neither here nor there.  Nobody who sings the song filled with patriotism does so imagining a bunch of 17th century Englishmen having a boozy good time. 

I usually end my class by listening to Jimi Hendrix's performance of "The Star Spangled Banner."  Since Hendrix didn't sing any words, was he paying a tribute to an English drinking song?  Most people would agree that he wasn't. What does his performance mean?  Is it a tribute to patriotism?  I don't think so, but I'll let you make up your own mind. 

Songs are not fixed in their meaning. They are not statues that need to be torn down. People change the words, and they change the gender, and they change the meaning.  Van Morrison's "Brown-Eyed Girl" was originally going to be "Brown-Skinned Girl." That is a very different meaning. Does that mean you now have to like a song that you found to be overplayed by every wedding band? No! You can still dislike it (or like it) based on your direct experience of the song.  If you don't, you're not listening. Some people have changed a single pronoun in a song, and in so doing have created a new song. Compare The Animals' version of "House of the Rising Sun" to Bob Dylan's version of the same song.  The lyrics are slightly different, the performances are miles apart, and the meanings are in different time zones. 

Now clearly the folks whose job it is to enshrine songs, decided it best to scrub "My Old Kentucky Home" of its racist lyrics, and just like "Brown-Eyed Girl" the song became something new.  Otherwise, why change the lyrics?  Speaking as a songwriter who has changed his own lyrics to make a better song, I for one am thrilled that I need never be beholden to my original idea, because, sometimes the original idea is horrible. 

If it was truly necessary to understand the song's original meaning, than we would need to understand something of Stephen Foster's intent.  It certainly wasn't about celebrating the South, which was something he knew nothing about having only been in the south once. His original intent was to write a song that would make money. He wanted to write a hit. And he did.  You can hold that against him, if you like, but you'll have to stop listening to pop radio for the same reasons. 

Yes, I've taught the past of "My Old Kentucky Home" for years, but that past isn't on my mind when I hear the song, and I hope I never have to listen to someone trying to perform an "authentic" version of the song.  I can't tell you what the song means, and you can't either.  But what's on my mind when I sing the song at a Derby party (the only time or place I have ever done so), I think of having a good time with friends. Or sometimes I think of singing it in grade school.  

To close or not to close

If the debate on school closings were a debate on birth control, the choices would be between abstinence and the rhythm method. Abstinence provides full protection without any of the fun, and the rhythm method provides the fun, without a lot of protection. Fortunately, for those that want to have sex without procreating there are a lot more options than those two. We should have more choices for educating our children. It should be acknowledged that opening schools without taking precautions is a bad idea, and that trying to teach large populations of children virtually is also a bad idea. They are both bad for different reasons, and it should also be acknowledged that there is no harm-free solution here. The question is: who will you be harming and how?

If you are eager to get your kids back into school, you will be spreading the virus. How much the virus spreads should be the focal point of the discussion. If you are eager to see your children learning in person, then you need to address the challenges that this disease poses. Children will need to socially distance, wear masks and regularly wash their hands. Classrooms will need to be deep-cleaned regularly.

If your only metric of success is how the virus spreads, then it would seem that there is no way that schools can re-open. But, I would urge you to consider other metrics. You may still come to the same conclusion, but you will likely have a deeper compassion for those with whom you disagree. Some other metrics to consider: mental health, social development, educational growth to name a few. Also, you should know that there is a direct correlation between a person's economic status and their health. As the economy contracts, it will take a toll on people's health, and fewer people will be able to see a doctor, and yes, more people will die. So I want to remind you that you have not solved the problem, you have simply picked the bad choice that works best for you under your circumstances.

What will happen to the children of the workers who don't enjoy your circumstances? Much of the economy must be done on-site and in-person. Food is produced, shipped and stocked in stores, where people working around the minimum wage are asked to become essential workers. There are people all along the supply change who are making it possible for you to quarantine. Many of them do not have college degrees, and their life was no picnic before Covid-19, and yet many are still doing their jobs. You can't propose shutting down schools without providing some means of caring for their children. The irony in closing schools is that you will not seal the bubble, but create a population of unsupervised children wandering around the neighborhood without masks. You’ve only sealed your bubble.

But wait, it gets trickier, because whatever outcome we select has to be palatable to a supermajority of people. This is tricky, because it will require that the ultimate decision pull in a significant number of the never-maskers, and the never-leave-homers alike. Sounds impossible, right? The people who believe that wearing a mask infringes on their liberty will have to give some ground, and that might seem easy, but imagine that you have been minimizing the harm your naked face might potentially do, and now having to acknowledge that for the past few months you have disregarded other people's well-being to a lethal degree. On the flip side, the folks who have been berating others for not wearing a mask may need to realize why they are wearing a mask in the first place: so they can engage in the basic activities that humans engage in. That includes education.

Many people are staying home for a good reason. Some of them belong to at-risk categories. They will be staying home regardless, and that will certainly include teachers who will be able to virtually educate those children. While that may open up some space it won't be enough. Whether in a class-room, on a bus or in a cafeteria, there will need to be fewer kids in schools, and that can only be accomplished by alternating in-person teaching for kids. The compromise is that kids will be in school but not every day.

I can tell you what this looks like from experience. This summer I taught in-person for the Governor's Scholars Program in Kentucky. Kids wore masks all day, and we were strict about keeping kids six feet apart. Classes were half as big so as to ensure that there were no more than ten people in a room. If you asked these kids if participating in this program under these conditions was worth it, they would universally say "yes." I was skeptical about the program at first, but I am glad I did it. I understand that there was a risk to my safety, but I also believed that minimizing the risk was within my control.

If you think your children will not wear masks, they will. If you think that going to school two days a week isn't worth it, it is. Yes, it will be a challenge, but one that we can do. People are already doing it all over the world. If that seems too rosy for you, it is based on grim necessity. People say we're in the middle of a pandemic, but I think that is a rosy assessment. We are in the beginning of a pandemic that will be present for the rest of the school year at least. We need to provide a system of education for our children that is not constructed in piece-meal increments, one that addresses the needs of all our citizens, and most important of all, one that is sustainable.

I am a teacher, and I can do this, and I can tell you that your children can do this as well. In fact, your children can do this better than you think. Yes, children can wear masks all day. Yes, they can socially distance with adult supervision. Teachers have a lot of experience enforcing rules, and so do kids. If you want more adults to wear masks, send their kids to schools where they have to wear masks. Even if your district won't open, I strongly urge you to create social groups for your children where they can learn to follow these rules, and interact with others. Parents who home-school have been doing this all along, because a parent can teach math, english and history, but kids learn about society through each other.

The Progressive Dilemma

For Context: read this.

First of all, I am planning on voting for Biden, so don't lecture me on how I'm supposed to vote.  This is not about how I'm supposed to vote, but how we are supposed to think about voting.  Not just in this election, but in every election going forward.  I am a progressive, and many of my friends are moderate democrats. I also have friends who are conservative, and I don't hold it against them, even though I disagree with them strongly.

As I thought about the Tara Reade allegations (which as of this writing are only allegations), I felt that the moment really illustrated the dilemma progressives experience almost every election, but to illustrate the dilemma, I want to pretend that the distinctions of "moderates" and "progressives" don't exist.  Instead, let's see the problem as between those people who have experienced sexual assault and those who haven't.

Now, let's imagine you've been sexually assaulted.  Sadly, many of you don't have to imagine it.  Now there are two candidates for you to choose from, and both of them are sexual predators.  From my perspective, I'd say you get a pass.  You don't have to participate in that election.  Why should you feel obligated to make that choice?

Of course, that's the low-hanging fruit of my point.  The real point goes even deeper, because the context goes deeper.  During the last presidential election the Democratic Party fielded the first female candidate against a known sexual predator.  She lost.  Women (and victims) were appalled, but then an amazing thing happened: MeToo.  Women (and men) began stepping out of the shadows to be heard, and while the results weren't always what we'd hoped for, it sure seemed like the tide was turning.

Then Tara Reade's allegation came out. Now I can't say that it's true or not, but it might be.  And so in the wake of the MeToo movement, we may actually be fielding two sexual predators in the general election.  For the survivor, the question becomes, "How do I choose between the two?" Sure, the argument is that one of them is less evil, and if you can hold your nose and make that choice, great, I guess.  But I refuse to shame you, if you can't.  For some people, the evil can never be accepted, regardless of how little of it there is in relation to someone else.

I used to talk to my students about 9/11 and how America lost its mind, and we'd open up the debate on torture.  Someone would inevitably argue that a little bit of torture is okay.  I mean, waterboarding? That's hardly torture, right?  I mean these are bad people, and it could save lives. That last point is debatable, but I do think that action movies have permanently skewed our perception in that regard.

But then I would ask, "So what if torture is effective?  Are you still okay with it?"  A few more of them would raise their hands. "I mean, if it's effective, and it saves lives, why not?"  Then I would ask them, "What about child molestation?"  A look of panic would spread across their faces.  And mild confusion. Is this one of Mr. Kincade's traps? "I mean, what if the terror suspect had children?" I'd say, "You could threaten them, right?  I mean, you might have to act on it, to make the threat credible- but only a little bit.  Hey, you're saving lives."

Most rational people would argue that a little bit of child molestation is still not okay, but for some people the more persuasive argument was this:  what if it's for nothing?  What if you get the wrong guy? Or the information is bad?  What if you break your own code, but get nothing in return?  What if you turn a blind eye, and the worst still happens?  Will it be easier or harder the next time?

I can tell you from experience that it gets easier, and that's not a good thing.  At various times in my life I have had more and I've had less integrity.  I think I had a lot in high school.  I had been a bit of an outsider, and I didn't feel I needed to go along to get along.  But when I went to college things started to change. I didn't want to go, but I didn't know what else I could do.  I compromised, because I thought it would be easier, but I discovered that it wasn't.  Taking a principled stand seems hard it first, but it is much easier in the long run.

Having kids changed all that.  I realized that I was responsible for raising two children, and that I was a role model.  If I cursed, they cursed.  That might not sound so bad, but if I was thoughtless, they'd be thoughtless, and... well, you see where it leads.  Being a teacher also made me a better person for the same reason.  If you don't show enough care to your students, they will return the favor- and there's a lot more of them than there are of me.

Don't get me wrong- there is a time to bend.  After all, you might be wrong.  The pandemic has a lot of folks questioning their bedrock principles.  A lot of people are questioning the very stability of the society they live in.  If you aren't questioning what's going on, then there's something wrong with you.  Which is why I don't presume to know the truth of Reade's accusations.  I have not decided in advance.  Sometimes we have to move forward with imperfect knowledge.

I would like to hear Reade's story- the way we heard Christine Blasey Ford's story.  If she can say what happened, and explain why her story changed, that will make a huge difference.   I accept that there's a risk.  Some people are good liars.  Some people are horrible at telling the truth.  But while there is a risk to hearing her story, there's a real risk to not hearing her.  How deep does our support for survivors go?  Will they speak out, if people don't listen?

Which is why this is the progressive dilemma.  I have progressive friends who decided that they won't vote for Biden, because of the contributions that he accepts, but I know many who are no fans of his, but would stop at (next to) nothing to stop Trump.  Where we draw the line can often be personal, and we should never feel shame for out convictions, and we should never shame others having their convictions.

I started this off by saying that I would vote for Biden- for now.  But if Reade's story gains credibility, or another person comes forward, I will publicly denounce Biden.  And if Trump wins by one vote, I won't lose a minute of sleep over that.  A little bit of rape or a little bit of torture is not worth it to me.