On Politics

Recently Steve advised me to keep my political bias out of my business pursuits. He typically tries very hard to stick the label "Liberal" to me, as though it were an epithet or had any accuracy as a descriptor.

I am far too complex to be reduced to a simple Left or Right label. Anyone who tries to do so is perhaps just using a mental shorthand so they can move on to thinking about more important things (of which surely there are a multitude). Here in the Bay Area, I am especially struck with how quickly people want to know the label for a new person they've met: "Are you Gay? Bi? GOP? Dem? Vegan? A Moose-killer? Breeder?" Why do we need to pigeonhole someone in order to relate to them? What if we just let people reveal themselves slowly, and we didn't make assumptions about how they showed up? Are we really forced to move so fast that we can't spare the time?

It's really rather offensive.

My political views are as all over the map as my morality, my parenting style, and my vocabulary. These are parts of who I am, who I show up as; shall I create a fictional self to move through the world? That seems sick. No, I would rather be my full-volume self and encourage others to do the same.