Ang's Journal

A few days ago, Alan texted Annie & told her to lock up the house. His reason? He had seen a woman driving slowly past our house, looking down our driveway, then down our neighbor's driveway. Then he saw her doing the same thing on the street around the corner from our house.

"Did you ask her if she was lost?" I asked him.

"No. I think she was casing our house to steal something, maybe packages."

Annie was worried enough about it that she was locking the doors behind us for the whole weekend.

This morning, an unknown car drove down our driveway. Hobbes started barking, Annie was screaming my name.

It was an Amazon delivery driver working out of a private vehicle.

This shit is so toxic. That boat might be smuggling drugs! Kill everyone on it without confirming any facts! That oil tanker might be part of a terrorist smuggling network! Board it & take the oil! There might be some criminals amongst the millions of immigrants that enter our country! Seal the border!

Fear, fear, fear, fear - be afraid! Never stop being afraid! Only a STRONG MAN will be able to quell your fear!

Thank you, but no. I choose the way of the Prince of Peace.

My self-image is that I am a rational person. I consider myself intelligent, well-educated, & curious. When I need to make a decision, I gather information (considering the source's expertise & bias & trying to find as many opinions & lines of evidence as possible), I look to history for information on previous, similar situations, & I try to identify my blind spots (cultural cluelessness, my own biases, areas of knowledge where I have zero experience or understanding). I draw a conclusion, but then I try to remain open to changing my mind, if I am presented with more input. BY NO MEANS do I consider myself a perfectly rational decision-maker, no one is. But I think my methods have given me a fairly decent algorithm by which to discern fact from fiction, to predict effects from causes, & to navigate the world.

But now, I am living in a world where facts are... whatever someone chooses to believe, I guess. Or rather, facts are whatever are being promoted as facts in a person's particular social niche, media bubble, or information silo. If you are a progressive, blue, Democratic-leaning voter in the USA, then facts include:

• The election system in the US is not perfect, but it is generally secure & correctly reporting the will of the voters.
  
• Sexual orientation & gender identity are complicated processes, & cannot be simplified to "conform to the norms of the majority or be considered evil".
  
• Human activity is contributing to global climate change, primarily via the release of carbon dioxide & methane to the atmosphere.
  
• Etc. etc. etc. It's boring to list them all. They even made signs to put in your yard that displayed an abbreviated list of "progressive facts".

But my point is that I believe these statements to be true because I have reviewed evidence that I find credible supporting these assertions, & I have not encountered much evidence that disproves them.

But if my method is solid, & I'm actually following it, then why did I have a conversation last week with A* that went like this?

Me: Can you give me one thing to look forward to from the next Trump Administration?
A*: Improved economic conditions.
Me: How will that be achieved? Through tariffs?
A*: No, I don't really understand how the tariffs are supposed to work.
Me: How then?
A*: Through energy independence.
Me: Even though the US is already the world's top producer of oil & natural gas...?

But instead of trying to argue, I sat quietly for a few minutes, thinking through my response to this reasoning. (Side note: it took an immense amount of effort to NOT argue based on what I consider facts.) I realized that I would never support the Trump Administration's approach to "energy independence", which (without a doubt) will be to promote increased extraction of & reliance on fossil fuels. So then I asked:

Me: Do you believe that human industrial activities contribute to global climate change?
A*: I don't know.

And there you have it. A* is an intelligent person. He worked in journalism for more than three decades. He's certainly seen the arguments regarding human impacts on the atmosphere & the consequences, but he doesn't believe the data that seems so irrefutable to me. But because he doesn't believe in the connection between releasing carbon dioxide & methane & dangerous changes to the global climate, he isn't going to worry about supporting an "energy independence" policy that will increase the burning of fossil fuels.

This realization has sent me spiraling. We had a near-fight earlier this year when I asked A* if he thought Haitian immigrants were eating dogs & cats in Springfield, Ohio & he also said he didn't know. How can he not know? How does he determine what is true & what is false?

But on climate change, it hurts more. I am literally a professional environmental scientist. While the global climate is not my specific area of expertise, I am knowledgable enough to have a pretty good grasp on the data & the arguments. But apparently, my husband doesn't believe me when I say that data models have predicted for DECADES that continued release of carbon dioxide & methane into the atmosphere is going to have horrible consequences for humanity (well, for the entire planet), & that so far, real-world observations either confirm the predictions made by modeling or suggest that they were too conservative & things are actually getting worse more quickly than predicted.

So, does A* believe anything I say? Does he think my career is just some big joke? What is he thinking when I prattle away about my models of natural attenuation of dissolved-phase contaminants in groundwater? Does he want to pat me on my head & tell me to just go back to the kitchen & stop worrying my pretty head? Poor deluded little girl, thinks she knows something about how the world works! It's cute!

I don't know how to live in a world where - it's not even a world where we don't agree on facts, but a world where we don't even agree on how to determine whether something is true or false. I don't know how to talk to people. I don't know how to process any incoming information or answer any questions. There's doesn't seem to be a point to doing those things anyway, because how are you supposed to decide what you should be doing, if you don't know what's true?

In this mindset, the mental obliteration promised by a long, hard drinking session sounds really good. So do other forms of annihilation. I'm not there, but it's been a long time since those things seemed so tempting.

Hello friends,

As some of you know, my friend (& incidentally my boss) Beth McNally is hosting a Ukrainian exchange student this year. Tusya is 16 years old & is originally from Mariupol. Tusya has been with the McNallys for the entire school year & during that time, Beth has come to know a few other Ukrainians living in her town of Farmington, New Mexico.

As the situation in Ukraine has become more desperate, I think many of us want to do something - anything! - to help. To that end, I am sending out a list of real Ukrainian women who are either internally displaced within Ukraine or who have fled the country. They are asking for donations via PayPal. Beth's friend Olena Erickson, originally from Ukraine herself & now living in Farmington, has vetted all these accounts. They are real people, known to her family & friends. And they are in desperate need of immediate help.

You can send money via PayPal directly to these women using the email addresses listed below. ANY AMOUNT HELPS.

1. Lydmilabyehkova1969@gmail.com left Cherson and still on her way to western Ukraine.
2. Ksenya230996@gmail.com 9m pregnant from Charkiv currently in western Ukraine. No money.
3. Igohdar1982@gmail.com. still in Cherson with 2 kids under 5. No money for food. Prices are high.
4. Galapankeeva4@gmail.com still in Cherson with a child with Down syndrome.
5. Ireneustynova@gmail.com in Poland with 1.5 y.o. no money.
6. Seka02@ukr.net from Bucha evacuated to western Ukraine, 1 child and 26 weeks pregnant.
7. Tanyaabadea@gmail.com 2.5 y.o + 8m pregnant. No money, need stroller for older child can't hold her anymore.
8. Alocika50@gmail.com still in Ukraine with 3 kids pleading for money for food.
9. Olya1591@gmail.com volunteer in Charkiv. Buys and delivers food for elderly and disabled.

Please distribute this email list to anyone who might be able to help.

Thank you,

Angela.

Waiting to watch the President's announcement, but the news is: Osama bin Laden is dead.

I have been waiting for this day for nearly ten years.

Here he is! Live-blogging....

Hahaha, we removed the Taliban government in Afghanistan. We had operations from around the world.... but he's not mentioning Iraq. Funny - bin Laden wasn't found dead OR alive in Iraq. Huh.

A compound deep inside Pakistan? Where? Twitter is saying Islamabad. NO - Obama says it was a Special Forces strike in Abbottabad.


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Hate to think this way, but what a shot in the arm for Obama2012!

Also: HILARIOUS that this announcement was a cutaway that overrode Trump's stupid Celebrity Apprentice show.

I just had a very long conversation with a Syrian woman who lives on my floor named Aliaa. Naturally, we talked politics.

I find it very difficult to discuss politics with people who are from the Middle East. First of all, I'm almost overwhelmed with some diluted feeling of guilt - I feel like saying, "I'm SO SORRY for what my government is doing ..." But another problem is that often I feel like we're dealing with two completely different sets of information, & both of us consider our set of information to be "the Facts". Aliaa doesn't believe any Arabs were involved in the 9/11 attacks: "I've met Arab religious fanatics. Believe me, they aren't organized enough to do something like this." I asked her why Palestinians were happy to hear about 9/11; she said they weren't. I said, "But CNN showed celebrations on the West Bank the day the news was received." She said the video of celebrating Palestinians was actually a year old, & that Fox News had issued an apology for showing it. I don't know if this is true or untrue. She also told me that American soldiers in Iraq are committing suicide in large numbers. I have heard NOTHING about this (hollyinpa, did your brother say anything about this??).

So - I'm not enough of a news junkie to have hard data at my fingertips to refute things she says, but even if I did, I sense that her reply would be, "The American media is not presenting all of the truth" or somesuch.

As a counterpoint, Ingrid & I met an Iraqi man in London who told us that we should be extremely proud of our nation's actions & that the overthrow of Saddam was the best thing that could've ever happened to Iraq.

Anybody have some insight/advice here? Please, serious comments only (this means you, Hiveboys).