How Can I Improve?

Quick thoughts about my efforts to make a real difference on crucial—and even existential—issues.

“I will eventually get to where I need to be—I will do it. I’m excited to turn my Substack into the thing that it has the potential to be.”

“So the deep insight here is that the public needs to have a picture in their mind of how the legislative process in the US actually works—without that picture in their mind, it’s like you’re speaking Greek to them.”

“I think that my pieces about the war in Ukraine have completely and utterly failed to construct this picture in people’s minds—my next piece will hopefully achieve this and will hopefully therefore get somewhere.”

Overall I’m proud of my Substack so far, but I recognize that I have an extremely long way to go.

I will eventually get to where I need to be—I will do it. I’m excited to turn my Substack into the thing that it has the potential to be.

And I will get back to interviews ASAP—my interviews have been way stronger than my other pieces, but I’ve been struggling with massive unmedicated issues lately, so it’s been hard for me to plunge into the demanding process of editing interviews.

A Race Against Time

It’s scary to be alive in 2022—we have literally 10 years to turn things around regarding global heating or else we’ll go off the cliff, and apart from global heating you’ve got US war crimes and US atrocities and a whole range of extremely serious and urgent and apocalyptic problems.

And it’s a huge burden on your shoulders to (1) know something about the solutions to these problems and (2) recognize that the mainstream media freezes out almost all serious discussion of the solutions to these problems. Regarding these problems, it’s a race against time to break through the propaganda bubble and reach the public and turn things around—it’s not enough to know the answers and the answers won’t be useful or meaningful or helpful when we’re all corpses.

I have to—in this race against time—start to structure my pieces better and structure my pieces more intelligently. I need to use charts and graphs and everything possible in order to convey things more effectively to people.

And nowhere is it more obvious that my Substack needs to improve than the issue of the war in Ukraine—I feel ashamed and guilty about how badly I’ve failed to explain that whole issue to people. Putin invaded Ukraine on 24 February, which is a long time ago—I have tossed various stones into a lake on this matter, but all of those inert stones have sunk invariably.

Keep in mind that the war in Ukraine—if it drags on—will do the following things:

• burn the planet, since the war locks in a massive amount of global heating and since the war undermines the efforts to decarbonize our economies

• starve countless millions of people, since the war cuts off people’s food

• stress political systems as a result of global starvation

• help the proto-fascist GOP gain power in the US, since the proto-fascist GOP benefits enormously from inflation, since people blame the Democrats for inflation

• potentially wipe out the Ukrainians

• potentially lead to nuclear war

So you can see why it’s painful for me to have failed so badly on this topic—this topic reaches into all of our lives and dictates what humanity’s fate will be.

Regarding Each Issue, Does the Public Have a Picture in Their Mind?

Someone left an absolutely brilliant and excellent and insightful comment on one of my pieces—here’s a polished version of the comment:

Good article. Usually I like to challenge people’s articles (username checks out, right?), but in this case I agree with everything written here. I would like to add one other observation of mine to build off what you wrote.

The way the legislative process is taught and explained to people is so broken and boring that a reason for this depoliticization you mention is that the government lawmaking process seems so convoluted and difficult to understand that many people just give up in trying to influence the process altogether and would rather do something simple like vote and hope for the best. Then tune out until next time they’re supposed to vote. I can’t say I blame them sometimes.

The process makes it way easier for special-interest groups and corporations to get away with what they do because they have the money and resources to game the process inside and out, get the best talent to go on the Hill for them, and donate to the right candidates so that they feel indebted to them to some degree. The game is slanted towards them in more ways than we can imagine.

For example, I support Medicare for All, but there are so many moving parts in the legislature that it can seem overwhelming at times to accomplish anything on that matter. Same with climate change or other things, especially when the goal is to make radical changes in a short period of time. You need to get buy-in from the legislators (and their staff) in subcommittee who decide which bills to move forward to the committee, then you have to fight a ton of special-interest groups to ensure that nobody waters down the bill in committee, then when it’s in committee you need to get the right people in there to testify in support of the matter and give them the right information, then when it passes committee you need to get a majority of the House on board (and avoid earmarks and markups and all the other nonsense that comes with that), and so on and so forth. And all of this is while members of Congress are being bombarded with hundreds of issues and bills at a time. Nothing comes easy when trying to accomplish something legislatively in D.C. (or even at state level for that matter). Anyone who says otherwise has not spent a day working on Capitol Hill.

None of this even talks about the bureaucracy at the federal level and how they would go about enforcing and implementing something like Medicare for All. And everyone has a different vision for how all of this should work too from subcommittee all the way up to its implementation.

I think that’s why a lot of people check out and why people gravitate towards anti-governmental populism. If they can’t understand the process and feel (correctly) that it is not made to benefit them, why not just burn it to the ground? The more people understand how things get done and feel engaged and empowered to utilize it, the less disengagement and disgruntled sentiment you get. You can make changes and get things done, but it’s not easy. The easier we can make it for people to understand, the easier it will be to join activist groups.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

I sent this comment to some major scholars—really big names—and they all thought that it was a great comment. They all agreed that it would be worthwhile for me to do a piece to elucidate the legislative process in the US.

And when it comes to intelligent progressive strategy, one of my friends—a major scholar—said the following about the comment, though note that I polished this comment up a bit so it’s not verbatim or anything:

Issues aren’t inherently complicated.

I would say progressives haven’t done a good job breaking issues down into bite-size pieces that are understandable, that are administratively doable, and that provide real gains.

Medicare for All is a great example; the proponents have spent almost no time on a serious incremental approach. They talk about getting us there in four or five years; that’s close to nuts, would never happen politically, and would likely be a disaster even if by some super-miracle Congress approved it.

So the deep insight here is that the public needs to have a picture in their mind of how the legislative process in the US actually works—without that picture in their mind, it’s like you’re speaking Greek to them.

So when it comes to the war in Ukraine, does the public have a picture in their mind about (A) how peace could happen and (B) what that whole process would look like and (C) the ways in which Washington is blocking and impeding and impairing and undermining that whole process?

I think that my pieces about the war in Ukraine have completely and utterly failed to construct this picture in people’s minds—my next piece will hopefully achieve this and will hopefully therefore get somewhere.

But I interacted with one scholar who expressed puzzlement about my concern—this scholar told me that everyone they’ve spoken to about the war in Ukraine actually does have a picture in their mind regarding (A) and (B) and (C).

So let me ask all of you guys about whether you have a picture in your mind regarding (A) and (B) and (C)—how many of you guys could answer the below questions? I’m just asking a “Yes”/“No” question about whether you do or don’t have answers to these things—I’m not asking for your actual answers to these things. Here are the questions:

• If the war drags on, what’s at stake from worst thing to least worst thing? 

• But how could peace possibly happen? 

• Regarding a peace deal, would there be no vote on the Russian side—since it’s a dictatorship—and how do we know that the Russians wouldn’t just violate the peace deal in a year?

• Regarding a peace deal, would the Ukrainian people vote on this and how would the vote actually be conducted and how would the vote happen in a country that’s at war and how would the vote happen in a country that’s been devastated? 

• Regarding a peace deal, what precedents can you point to when it comes to doing a vote like this in a devastated country that’s at war?

• Regarding a peace deal, would all Ukrainians participate in the vote and would Ukrainians abroad participate in the vote and would you just need 50.1%?

• What are the elements of a peace deal?

• Would the peace deal involve Ukraine losing any territory?

• For each element, to what extent are Zelensky and his government on board?

• For each element, to what extent are the Ukrainian people on board? 

• Zelensky says a lot of hawkish stuff and our media covers that hawkish stuff, so what should we make of that hawkish stuff? 

• Given that all of the elements don’t necessarily have sufficient support—from the Ukrainian people—right now, how long would Zelensky and his government have to persuade Ukrainians to vote “Yes”?

• Regarding the efforts on the part of Zelensky and his government to persuade Ukrainians to vote “Yes”, how effective might such efforts be and to what extent would the West back such efforts?

• For each element, how specifically is Washington impeding peace through actions? 

• For each element, how specifically is Washington impeding peace through statements? 

• How can we get Washington to remove the impediments? 

• How can we get Washington to actually start to facilitate peace? 

• What does doing nothing look like? China is doing nothing. And doing nothing is better than blocking peace. 

• What does facilitating peace look like? Facilitating peace is better than doing nothing. 

• How much time do we have to make peace? 

• Is this a race against time?

• Why should Ukrainians vote “Yes”? 

Let me know to what extent you guys have a picture of what the answer to these questions would be—regarding these questions, I think that critics of the efforts to prolong the war have failed to paint a picture in people’s minds about what the answers are.