As you may have guessed if you read this blog with any level of consistency, I am a man of quite a few opinions. I personally love the idea, the concept of opinions, and how they shape a person and their interests. In particular, I have a number of political opinions that I have shared in articles throughout this blog, and will continue to do so as the opportunity pops up. However, we all have political issues that, for whatever reason, we are particularly drawn toward. One of the things I find so fascinating about politicians is that we ask them to hold a bevy of opinions on an ocean of topics, but really, like us, they have their own pet issues.
This was drawn into focus for me in particular with the North Carolina Senate race recently, when Kay Hagan began to talk more forcefully about the Voting Rights Act in contrast to some of the anti-democratic laws (in regard to access to voting) that have been pushed through the GOP legislature. Considering her likely opponent is a member of the Republican legislature, and that these laws are not popular with the majority of the state, it seems quite natural that the senator would begin to state her opposition to such laws.
What struck me as interesting about this is that this is almost certainly not what Kay Hagan initially became a part of government for; nothing in her background would suggest that voting rights legislation has long been a part of causes she has championed, nor that it's something about which she is wildly passionate. I'm not suggesting that the senator hasn't always held these beliefs (I'm guessing she has), but like any politician she saw an issue her views were on the popular side of, and she ran with it. We've seen this on a larger scale recently with more and more Democratic politicians (and even some Republicans) siding with gay marriage legislation in the face of positive public support for such bills. Again, most politicians didn't enter the political arena with the specific intent of helping gay couples (I doubt that someone like Barack Obama had that high on his list of things to accomplish when he first ran for public office several decades ago), but politicians react to what is pressing and in the public consciousness, and what is important to the general populace at the time. Politicians are people of varied opinions, but one that they all share is the need to win more elections.
What does this have to do with Attenborough, you ask? Well, I figured since I espouse so many political opinions on this blog, I should go over some of my pet issues as another GTKY post (we haven't done one in a while). I, like all of you and like all politicians, may have a lot of opinions, but there are ones that I celebrate more forcefully and more deeply than others. I managed to winnow the list down to ten (not an easy task), and will list them in alphabetical order below (I got you down to ten-don't make me go further). These are the issues that I actively seek out documentaries on, that I actively learn the opinions on before I vote in a primary or general election, and that I most hope to change people's perceptions on during discourse or discussion.
I don't really remember what the campaign was initially for, but the phrase "the arts enrich us" is something that has shaped much of my adult life (several of these issues overlap, and number six shares most of the beliefs of this bullet). While a good chunk of my arts education was self-taught through seeking out every book I could find in my small town library, I did grow up with classes in music and literature, and the continued celebration of the arts is something that I cherish. Study after study has proven that countries that over index in math and science scores (such as Japan and the Netherlands) have mandatory art classes. Arts education has been proven to help in particular in lower-performing schools to close the gap in performance scores, and students who study the arts and music are generally more well-adjusted and have a stronger sense of self-worth. All of this is to say that when arts education gets cut in favor of other school programs, I remember Richard Dreyfuss's words in Mr. Holland's Opus, "You can cut the arts as much as you want...sooner or later these kids aren't going to have anything to read or write about."
2. Climate Change Legislation
You want to make me super uncomfortable in a public setting? Come up and start talking about how much "baloney" climate change is. Depending on the situation, you'll either see me literally biting my lip or hear me go on a ten-minute long tirade about the dangers of pseudo-science and how study after study after study has shown that climate change is a pressing concern to the stability of the planet and that it is indeed man-made. I strongly support climate change legislation, tougher regulations regarding environmental laws in the country, and support the Kyoto treaty that for some inane reason the U.S. has not signed into law. If you ask me the biggest disappointment of the Obama administration, you'd be hard-pressed to find something bigger than the lack of movement on climate change laws in the country and around the world.
Finally, the David Attenborough connection becomes apparent. I watch films like Africa and Frozen Planet and my heart breaks that so many people want to sacrifice the beauty and wonder of nature with so little in return. Conservation, of course, goes, hand-and-hand with the desperate need for climate change legislation (environmentalism makes up a trio of issues on this list, and is probably the political issue I am most adamantly supportive toward). Instead of expanding into more lands and cutting down more forests and arctic wildernesses and jungles to find non-renewable resources and cause further carbon dioxide emissions into the air we should fund further scientific research into creating better and safer efficiencies in the areas we are already drilling and farming.
4. Disease and Medical Research
One of my great rallying cries in text messages to my friends (and my poor mother) is that research into medicine and disease prevention is something that we should be crucially investing toward. I mentioned this in yesterday's article briefly, but I do feel that with larger scale diseases (such as cancer and AIDS) that we have fallen into a treat but not cure approach to the disease. This is, and I'm just going to say it, in part because medical treatment has become such an enormous industrial behemoth. You hear tinfoil hat theories regarding how it is a financially better decision to have someone suffer from a disease and just cure the symptoms than it is to address the actual disease, and while I want to believe this isn't true, we do live in an era where you can have an iPod the size of my thumbnail, but we haven't cured two of the most studied diseases in human history.
Also, a bit of a caveat within this-literally nothing makes me angrier than people like Jenny McCarthy and those people who are against vaccinations based on absolutely no scientific evidence. I quit watching The View (at one point, one of my favorite shows) for a reason-I won't support someone who espouses such dangerous and baseless beliefs in a public setting. Freedom of speech is something we all should enjoy, but it doesn't mean I have to support what you say.
5. Energy Research
Oil, coal, and natural gas are not renewable. Solar and wind energy are. Oil and coal are horrible for the environment, both in terms of their effect on climate change and in their impact on water, air, and land pollution. And yet I feel like the media spent more time devoted to whether we should consider fracking last year than we did debating whether we should be transferring all of our automobiles into electric cars? It doesn't make sense to me at all.
Probably the narrowest issue on this list, and I should note that this translates over to preservation of music, art, sculpture, architecture, television, and literature, but film is the one that I most put my heart-and-soul into believing. Film is a universal language, and as I believe that art is a unifying force for humanity, I feel on a very strong level that we should do everything we can to preserve our cinematic heritage. And yes, that means that I think that the Library of Congress and other government agencies should step up to the plate and help to fund saving silent era and early sound films in the hopes that they will be enjoyed for generations to come. On a different note, I also hope that we find more and more ways to make films open to the greatest possible public audience-it does no one any good to have, say, an early Mary Pickford short film locked in a Los Angeles vault and have no one ever see the movie. Art is meant to be shared. We should do what we can to aid the process.
7. Gay Rights
Obviously as a gay man this is a pretty personal one, and of all of the issues on this list, it's probably the one that has seen the most progress. My heart soars whenever another state grants marriage rights to gay couples or another country takes down an arcane anti-gay law. I truly feel that this is an issue that will be addressed (at least on paper) in our lifetime.
I do want to note that as I have learned more about the gay rights movement and participated in it, the title of this personal issue has expanded more into the broader "equal rights." Only the most obtuse of people cannot see how sexism, racism, xenophobia, and bigotry of all sorts hold back progress (in America and abroad), and addressing both the institutional and the perceptive inequities that plague society is dramatically important to move forward for all people.
Again, a very specific issue, but like film preservation, it's one that I hold dear. I don't think a week goes by where I don't grumble about the ending of the space shuttle program. I have an explorer's heart, I suppose, and think that when you stop moving forward you inevitably start moving backward-manned space flight is the gateway to further colonization in the rest of the galaxy, necessary for the infinite survival of Earth's species, and perhaps the only way that we may finally answer that largest of questions-are we alone in the universe?
9. Teachers' Rights
One that I probably don't talk about a lot, but I grew up in a family of teachers, and I think that we need to continue to equip teachers with the tools they need to thrive. This means not funding charter schools and not leaving education with massive cuts whenever the budgetary belt needs tightening. Instead of having charter schools which cherry-pick students, why not address the larger concerns of fixing lower-performing schools with better quality equipment, access to materials, and stronger nutritional/health programs? And if we want to indeed talk about the "children are our future," there's no better way to acknowledge that tired but accurate cliche than with a qualified (and adequately-compensated) educating workforce.
10. Term Limit Laws
Almost every other issue on this list links to another issue, with the possible exception of this specific pet peeve. I've talked about this one at length before, but term limit laws are one of the few anti-democratic laws that seem to cross both parties with regularity (though it is more of a Republican belief than a Democratic one at the end of the day). If you want to "throw the bums out" fix issues like Citizens United, laws about false or negative campaigning, get more people to take advantage of primary elections, or just vote against the person you don't want in office anymore. However, don't hamper other people's voting rights if you can't figure out a way to stop someone from being elected. If enough people want someone out of office, they'll vote the politician out. And if they don't, well, we live in a democracy-if you can't win, get more people to vote or change more minds, but don't stop them from being able to vote for whom they want.
And those are the ten, at least today (I cheated on a few and added some other issues in). What would you like me to write about in the next GTKY post? Share in the comments!
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