"It's Now or Never"
As in, don't just sit there behind your laptop and grouse about the way things oughta be, do something! (This is primarily a note to self)
THE BOTTOM LINE: This installment re-emphasizes what CeeGees is supposed to be all about, and introduces a new initiative that will force me to grow a pair and actually talk to people instead of just editorializing and bellyaching about the ills of American society. (Not that I’m going to stop bellyaching, there will still be plenty of bellyaching…..)
As I pondered the future of CeeGees.org over the 2022-23 holiday break, the biggest red flag that kept leaping out at me was how, so far, the newsletter’s only purpose has been to allow me to editorialize. To yap opinions at you. (And sneak in dad jokes and YouTube links referencing goofy movies…I’m not bummed about that part, though. That element of the letter must and shall endure.)
I feel like I have something to say, sure. Throwing out my thoughts on political and social topics, I hope, has been useful, to some degree, to the folks who have subscribed to this point. And I thank everyone so much for spending time with the posts, even as I’m sure it’s quite clear I’m still in trial-and-error mode.
But what I really want for this thing to do is to provide more of a legit service. I want there to actually be some independent journalism goin’ on up in here!
Which…takes balls. Not to mention time. Neither of which I’m confident I will always have. (I’m still not even confident in the name CeeGees, but I’ll stick with it till I—or you!—come up with something better.)
But anyway. I’m gonna give this new idea that came to me last week a shot. I don’t know how deep I will end up allowing myself to dig—my biggest problem, aside from longwindedness, is that I don’t know how to get out of my own way sometimes, to stop thinking so hard about how it *should* be done and just do it, already—but pivoting in this way is going to get us much closer to my overall goal with CeeGees.
Which is to:
…find Common Ground, forge Common Good, refute Corporate Greed…
[That’s the 77 millionth iteration of the CeeGees tagline, I don’t know if “refute” sounds great but it does align with how I see this letter better addressing corporate greed. We’re not going to end it, but I’d like to chip away at the notion that America only thrives when it’s capitalism-at-all-costs.]
CeeGees’ overall goal was meant to be zeroing in on what Americans truly want for themselves, their families, their friends, and their communities. If we figure out what our common hopes and dreams are, we can help each other realize them.
Idealistic? Sure! And what of it?!
We can be idealistic and practical at the same time, can’t we? Use practical tactics to inch toward progress while still aiming for the ideal outcome to eventually emerge?
Look. Every Black, brown, white, gay, straight, rich, poor, young, old, male, female, right-leaning or left-leaning person in the country wants happiness. And they want the ability to pursue happiness unencumbered by some authority that has no business affecting their lives or their families’ lives—be that the government, or “the man,” or any other powerful entity.
I agree with right-leaners that the government can and often does hold us back. I just believe that, here in 2023, Republicans are holding us back far more than Democrats are. Not that Democrats are the pure force for good they represent themselves to be. They’re plenty beholden to interests that hinder our pursuit of happiness, too—especially the Dems who are based in D.C.
I’m a registered Democrat, but I’d officially become an independent if I thought it’d do any good.
But right now we only have two parties. And Republicans’ #1 priority coincides, unfortunately, with what I believe to be the country’s #1 problem (and one of the whole wide world’s biggest problems, for that matter). And that’s obscene corporate greed.
Republicans constantly make decisions that hurt the average everyday American in favor of helping corporations make more and more money, which in turn makes the higher-ups more and more filthy rich and the lesser-thans more and more financially unstable.
I—sometimes reluctantly—consider Bernie Sanders’ ideology to be my political North star. But I have no interest in his “democratic socialism.” I understand why people are afraid of anything or anyone connected with the word “socialism.” Not that I know a lot about socialist leaders throughout world history, but I do understand that many of them did some sick shit (“sick” as in “bad”) that flew in the face of what “socialism” is supposed to be about…which, I think, is essentially using the government to regulate the economy so it’s fair for all.
Bernie’s insistence upon defining himself as a democratic socialist and trying to popularize that movement lost him the presidency in 2020 (IMHO). So I’d love it if we just skipped the labels, and focused on what we want the end result to be.
My End Result is a fair and just society that provides the best for the most. And I think that’s Bernie’s mission, too, as illustrated in his impassioned speech from this week on “The State of the Working Class in America.”
[Here’s a few minutes from the end of it that particularly grabbed me, but the whole thing is worth listening to…]
ANYWAY. The pivot.
The most preposterous component in U.S. government today, which is somehow legal and should absolutely be made illegal, is the practice of gerrymandering.
I don’t always agree with Michael Moore. I’d say I agree with him, I don’t know, maybe 82% of the time? I can’t get onboard with prison abolishment, for instance, along with plenty other proclamations the politically-minded moviemaker’s made that make me bristle.
[NOTE: In case you haven’t read the CeeGees “About” section, my given name is Michael Moore. I switched to Dean when I moved to L.A. to be a rock star. Which totally happened, but that’s not important right now so I won’t bore you with all those gory details. (Except to admit that, yes, before we made it big, Machine Gun Kelly and I were sparring back and forth on what our stage names should be when we got famous, and we came up with this:]
When I do agree with Michael Moore, though (and it’s probably more than 82% but I don’t want people to think that I’m a crazy lefty so between us let’s just keep the official tally at 82%), I usually agree with him pretty strongly.
Michael recently completed a 12-episode run of his podcast, Rumble with Michael Moore, entitled “Blue Dots in a Red Sea.” As a Nashville, Tennessee, resident, these shows really resonated. Because Tennessee is a ruby-red state, despite its two biggest cities, Nashville and Memphis, being sapphire-blue. (Yes I know sapphire comes in more colors than blue, but…they’re most often blue, dammit, and “sapphire-blue” sounds cool, so we’re going with “sapphire-blue.”)
So even though I live contentedly in my artsy little sapphire-blue East Nashville neighborhood bubble, I still feel plenty of ruby-redness when, for instance, I head just a few miles north out of town to visit my buddy in Gallatin. The Teslas give way to F-150s fairly quickly as you head that direction. (Not that there’s anything wrong with F-150s!)
My biggest takeaway from Michael’s “Blue Dots” pod series came from the January 1 episode, when he laid out his “More Democracy!” New Year’s resolutions for 2023. His #1 resolution was:
“We have to outlaw gerrymandering and voter suppression, or we are never going to be the country we say that we are: one person/one vote, where everybody has a fair and equal chance. We need to make voting easier, for all people. We need to pass a ballot resolution in states across the country that [makes each state] a good state to vote in. A fair state to vote in.”
The gerrymandering part especially hit home, because Nashville has just this year begun a 10-year run of having to grapple with just about the worst form of the practice.
As I understand it, gerrymandering involves state legislatures redrawing district maps with the express intent of giving one political party a distinct advantage over the other.
The redrawing of the districts is done every ten years in correlation with the Census Bureau’s every-ten-years count of the country’s population. The idea being that, across ten years’ time, people will have moved to other states, or moved to other parts of the same state, and circumstances will have naturally changed enough to require some tweaks to the process that determines which citizens should be assigned to which representatives.
But wouldn’t you know it, politicians found a way to manipulate the system so they can cheat. (I know, weird, right? Not like them at all!)
Pre-gerrymander, someone living in a certain neighborhood has a really great chance of being represented in government by someone who lives and works near them, and therefore shares many of their constituents’ interests, perspectives, and values.
Post-gerrymander? All bets are off. Exhibit A: How Tennessee’s Davidson County, which includes Nashville, is now represented.
Nashville has never been split up into multiple districts before (and when I say districts, I’m talking about the ones that determine how we are represented in the House of Representatives in the U.S. Congress). Before the 2022 gerrymander, all of traditionally Democratic Davidson County made up the eastern third of a relatively small district, District 5, which had been represented for decades by moderate House mainstay Jim Cooper.
Now the city’s been split into thirds:
As The New York Times reported at the time of the gerrymander, Tennessee’s Republican legislature successfully “dismembered Nashville’s solidly Democratic House district and scattered its remains among three new districts that stretch deep into Republican rural areas. Almost certainly, each of the next House members representing [these three] parts of Nashville will be a conservative Republican.”
Q: When was the last time Nashville was not represented in the House by a Democrat? A: Way back in the Seventies. The Eighteen-Seventies.
Indeed, three far-right Republicans now represent Nashville in Congress. Andy Ogles replaced Cooper in the 5th district, and wasted no time aligning with MAGA brethren like Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert to oppose Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House. In so doing, they held the government hostage until McCarthy promised a number of pretty outlandish things to their “Freedom Caucus,” including giant budget cuts many fear will weaken Social Security and Medicare.
Meanwhile, my new district is District 6, and my new House representative is John Rose. He voted to overturn the 2020 presidential election. So yeah, he’s an insurrectionist. Not someone I would have selected to represent me in D.C., but alas: gerrymandering ensures that a huge percentage of voters don’t get to choose their politicians; thanks to gerrymandering, politicians get to choose their voters.
Right, so, the pivot then. (See? Longwinded.)
Ultimately it’d be great to abolish gerrymandering in Tennessee, like Michigan recently did. Get an independent commission to redraw the maps, rather than a biased state legislature.
[NOTE: It is certainly not just Republicans who gerrymander, by the way. Democrats do it when they think they can get away with it, too. But based on my wholly unscientific research so far, it seems like they’re responsible for about a quarter of it.]
The problem with outlawing gerrymandering in Tennessee is that Tennesseans aren’t allowed the option of creating a citizen-led ballot initiative. Only the state government can decide what initiatives are presented to the public. And the Tennessee Republicans who run the show here don’t appear to be in any rush to relinquish that exclusive power.
So first we’d have to lobby to win the right to introduce citizen-led ballot initiatives. Which we should totally do!
But for CeeGees’ purposes—which is to say, for the purpose of finding common ground between diverse groups of people so we can work together toward a common good—my thought is this:
How different are we, really, in artsy East Nashville from, say, the folks three-plus hours away in rural Winfield, Tennessee, which is on the opposite end of District 6?
Maybe they like guns more over that way. Maybe there are a few more “Don’t Tread on Me” flags flying. And there are probably more than a few F-150s on the roads (and probably zero Teslas).
But those are just assumptions, based on stereotypes. And even if they’re all accurate, how heavily do those lifestyle proclivities factor in when Winfield residents consider what they truly want out of life—for themselves, their families, their friends, and their community?
I’ve decided I need to grow a pair and find out.
I’m going to learn all I can about the towns and the townspeople I share District 6 with. Hopefully I’ll make some connections and find a few folks who wouldn’t mind telling me what life’s really like there where they live. What’s going well, what’s going not-so-well. What’s unique about their community. And what they would like Rep. Rose to consider when he’s voting on their behalf in the United States Capitol building. (At the same time, there are plenty of Nashvillians who reside in District 6 I have a lot to learn about, as well. I’m thinking of the Black community, in particular.)
I’ll be reaching out to people online first, I’d imagine. And then, depending on how the whole balls-acquisition process is moving along, I’ll drive to these District 6 towns and, I guess, actually meet with folks. Like, in person.
The dream would be for the info and perspective I gather from across the district to get some traction and help drive the point home that—as long as we’ve all been thrown into the same lot together like this—we may as well push for representation that takes all of our collective well-being into account.
Who knows, maybe CeeGees will inspire someone within the next year or so to run for Congress who could better-represent all of us. Someone who’s not hopelessly beholden to one party. And certainly not someone who’s caught up in the insurrectionist MAGA movement. It’d be nice to have somebody who just wants to make life better for people—from one end of the district, and one end of the political and social spectrum, to the other.
So my hope is that the unfair gerrymandering situation in Nashville ultimately backfires on those who devised it. That not only will Nashvillians from all different backgrounds not be silenced, but that the voices of rural Tennesseans, too, will be amplified. And not just amplified in volume—the loudest voice isn’t what we need. We need the truest voices to be given a platform, and to actually be heard.
Pretty much everyone who’s reading this right now (at least here at the end of the third week of 2023) is a friend or family member. I haven’t really pushed CeeGees because I didn’t feel like it was providing enough value yet. So I’ve hesitated to ask people to subscribe for free, even, let alone to consider supporting the project with a paid subscription.
So, if you find it appropriate, would you please let some other folks know they can go to CeeGees.org and sign up for free? (Or for money if they can, and want.) And let me know what you think about this new hare-brained scheme of mine, too…
Thanks again for reading.
Yours,
~Dean