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Adam J. Nicolai

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Archive for category: Uncategorized

All Good Things

March 22, 2018
March 22, 2018

A friend of mine announced today that he has pancreatic cancer and is in hospice.

And in that bombshell of a sentence, the word I debated using the most was “friend.”

See, I’ve never met this person. I have only ever communicated with him through Facebook. I was introduced to him by a former boss, a person I had a lot of respect for, and even though she was conservative in her views, she saw that we were both secular liberals, and put us in touch. Over the years I’ve been lucky enough to know him, he has made me laugh and made me feel less alone. I have come to recognize his name with joy, and respect his words. So even though I’ve never met him, I don’t hesitate to call him a friend—and I don’t even feel the need to add the qualifier “Facebook” to that word.

His communication that he was dying was honest and dignified. He said he accepted what was happening to him, that he was OK with where his journey had brought him. It was a sharp reminder that we should all be so lucky to make the same claim, and an inspiration to this atheist of what I strive for. Happiness, contentment, love. The true meaning of life, the most important things.

I have had family members die that didn’t make me cry, but I cried today for this man I never met. For the reminder that all of us have a time limit, and that all good things come to an end. For the bitter fact that life isn’t fair. Out of gratitude that I live in an age where it was possible for me to meet him without meeting him.

Social media gets a lot of flak, much of it deserved, but it is a force for good as well. Today, as I think about my dying friend, I’m thankful for it. It allowed me to not only get to know this person, but also to experience his last digital words, his acceptance of his fate. That is something I will treasure until my own time comes, when hopefully it will serve me as well as it served him.

0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by Adam Nicolai

Black Panther

March 13, 2018
March 13, 2018

I knew going in to Black Panther that it would probably be good. The reviews were roundly positive and it was making a lot of money globally. I did not expect it to be my new favorite Marvel movie.

It has the superhero, the action scenes, and the single nemesis I expected. On face, it also has a familiar plotline: Acts 1, 2, and 3 pretty much follow the broad strokes of my  expectations. But it broke the mold in two key ways that elevated it for me: First, in its unabashed embrace of African culture and the beauty of black skin, and second, in the character of Wakanda itself. Because Wakanda may be a fictional nation, but it is absolutely the main character of this movie.

I was expecting a good guy vs bad guy story, but I was delighted to find much more: an exploration of protectionism vs global engagement and a candid acknowledgement of the costs of colonialism, particularly as paid by black people.

Danai Gurira and Michael B Jordan steal the show. Gurira is a joy to watch; her character (Okoye, a bodyguard for the king) has a surprising and pleasant depth for this sort of supporting character: a good person who makes some questionable decisions based on her interpretation of the law. She exemplified, for me, the sorts of difficult decisions countless government officials (Preet Bharara and Sally Yates come immediately to mind) had to make after Trump took power. She effortlessly joins the ranks of Eowen, Rey, Wonderwoman, and the other incredible female role models we’ve been blessed with in recent history. And Jordan presents a fascinating and compelling antagonist, whose flawed actions are driven not only by a sympathetic backstory, but by the untenable continued oppression of black people worldwide. I didn’t want him to achieve his aims, but I was still rooting for his cause to be taken up, and that’s part of the beauty of the film: its protagonist’s victory would be hollow if it didn’t involve an acknowledgement and even adoption of his enemy’s motivations.

All of this depth, wrapped up with some fantastic set pieces and driving action. Eye candy galore, intimate personal conflicts, AND deep political and philosophical questions? In one movie, and a MARVEL movie at that? I loved it. It made me ache for what the current Star Wars trilogy could have been. I hope Rian Johnson is taking notes. Coogler and Cole have shown how to incorporate meaningful politics into pop culture action without missing a beat.

0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by Adam Nicolai

The Burden Should Be Ours

February 20, 2018
February 20, 2018

I hear a lot about these Parkland kids that are standing up for themselves in the face of both the horrific gun massacre that slaughtered so many of their classmates, and the Republicans’ continued appalling failure to act to prevent more like it. I hear that they are courageous and visionary, and that they are going to rise up and fix this problem. People say this like it’s a good thing.

Are they courageous? Absolutely. Visionary? Certainly.

But I feel like this calculus ignores that they are also terrified. That they were dragged into this fight, literally, at gunpoint.

I love these kids, but I hate that they have to do what they’re doing. They never should have come to this point, because we—YOU and I—should have solved this problem long before it shot their friends to death.

Claiming that “they will solve this problem” is a copout. It is just another way to wait around and hope someone else fixes it. Do they need our support? Yes, absolutely, of course, but the fact of the matter is that WE SHOULD HAVE ALREADY BEEN DOING ALL OF THIS. They should be getting our backs, not asking us to get theirs.

The fact that we claim a bunch of teenagers in Florida are now responsible for solving this problem is ghastly. They aren’t. They are children. Our continued and abject failure to demand change has resulted in a massacre that has altered the course of their lives forever. That is not a cause for celebration. It is a reason for shame.

After Columbine, we should have demanded change—of our laws, of our legislators, and of ourselves. And certainly after Sandy Hook, we should have refused to accept inaction as a possibility; we should have staged a die-in at every state capitol, barricaded doors, swarmed the news, and demanded better laws that would actually protect our children. We spent far too much time waiting to get angry, and we cannot now allow these kids to pick up our slack. We need to pick up our own slack.

Post. Donate. Protest. Call your rep, call your rep, call your rep.

Don’t leave these kids carrying this god-awful burden alone. We failed them once. We should be carrying them now, not the other way around.

0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by Adam Nicolai

Next time

February 15, 2018
February 15, 2018

One of these times it’s going to be my kids. I’m going to hear the sirens and be choked by sick dread. I’m going to check the news and hear the worst words I’ve ever heard. I’m going to hate myself for keeping them in school when we could’ve had them use the internet, I’m going to wonder why the fuck we stayed in this shithole country when we knew almost 100 people get murdered by guns here every day, and none of it is going to matter. None of my self-hate or screaming is going to be matter, because my kids are going to be dead.

One of these times it’s going to be your kids or grandkids. You’re going to feel that bubble of fake security shatter, that invincible sense of “it won’t happen to us” vanish and leave you alone in a sea of thrashing horror. You’re going to stare into the camera of a news station that temporarily gives a shit; you’re going to sob and beg before the red eye of the camera turns away and moves on.

One of these times it’s going to be our nieces or nephews. A shadow passing so close it’ll freeze the blood in our veins. Will that be enough to make us write or call our representatives? Maybe even the ones that don’t directly represent us, but instead use their power daily to shut down any possibility of action on the floor of congress? If our precious niece with the chubby cheeks gets slaughtered in her kindergarten room, or our nephew who finally got to start driver’s ed is gunned down in the back while fleeing for his life across a football field, will that make us pick up the goddamn phone and stop acting like such complicit pieces of shit?

One of these times it’ll be our rep’s kid or grandkid. They’ll be the ones who have to watch the news, horror-stricken; they’ll be the ones who finally realize how fucking absurd it is to insist that more guns will solve the problem. And maybe they’ll finally even think about banning bump stocks or limiting clip sizes, briefly—before Wayne Lapierre steps on their necks.

Then, with tears still drying on their cheeks and the blood of their own kin still staining their hands, they’ll knee down and lick his shoe.

0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by Adam Nicolai

Thoughts on Al Franken

December 7, 2017
December 7, 2017

I coached policy debate for about ten years, and in policy debate we had a thing called a “perceptual link.” That was a fancy term for something that happens not because A causes B, but because people THINK A causes B. One of the ideas you learn in policy debate is that when a perceptual link is involved, the TRUTH DOESN’T MATTER. What matters is people’s perception, and ultimately, their attitudes based upon that perception—because those attitudes can directly affect elections, markets, and other attitudes. While it can feel unfair or ephemeral, a perceptual link is no less a driver of events than hard science or mathematical absolutes.

Al Franken, my senator for nearly nine years, resigned today due to a perceptual link.

We are in the middle of an unprecedented wave of consequences for sexual abusers, from Roger Ailes and Bill O’reilly to Louis CK and Garrison Keillor. Wherever these people are employed or answerable to economic partnerships, they are going down in droves—losing their jobs, their shows, and their continued livelihoods like dominoes.

But it’s different in politics. In politics, the voters decide. And so you have Donald Trump and Roy Moore, both accused of pedophilia, one in the White House and one on track to win the race for Senate in Alabama. You have John Conyers, who resigned the day before last, and, of course, you have Al Franken.

I don’t know what actually happened with Al. I don’t know what he’s actually guilty of and what he’s not. But I suspect, based on what he’s admitted in his apologies and what he’s hedged on, that he did some very inappropriate things at his own campaign events – particularly, grabbing some butts that weren’t his to grab, and trying to kiss women who were thoroughly uninterested.

I think it’s important to note that this behavior is not as inappropriate as touching a 14-year-old girl under her clothes, or hosting a sex party with 15-year-olds – crimes that Moore and Trump are accused of, respectively – but it’s still behavior that should be unacceptable from anyone, and particularly from a US senator.

In a perfect world, the relative scale of these crimes would be considered. Trump would have failed in his bid for the presidency because of his disgusting habits, and Moore would have dropped out of the race – both would have faced criminal charges. Franken, arguably guilty of a lesser offense, would have faced an ethics investigation, probable censure, and steep opposition in his next primary.

The problem is that whole question of “a lesser offense.” Roy Moore and Donald Trump are both so incredibly toxic, they both taint the conversation so thoroughly, that it is impossible to be accused of a lesser charge right now without getting swept into their orbit. “Moore, Trump, and Franken” were mentioned as a single unit over and over in the news and on social media. The correct punishment for pedophile politicians, at a minimum, is for them to lose their positions, and people are right to call for this action from Trump and Moore. But being lumped in with them due to the current environment, Franken had to either accept that resignation was the appropriate consequence, or attempt to argue on a national stage that his offenses were of a lesser degree. That would have required going over those offenses in excruciating detail: the age of each of his accusers, the situation in which he molested them, his excuses or reasons for doing so. Publicly litigating those kinds of details in the current environment only makes them worse. Every time Franken would have to say “I touched her butt,” he would be admitting his sexual harassment publicly.

In the meantime, Moore would get elected to the senate and Trump would continue to occupy the white house. Every time Franken opened his mouth to argue the lesser magnitude of his offenses, he would sound just like them. Look at some of the “arguments” he’s already tried to make: “I didn’t mean it that way,” “I meant it affectionately,” etc. Setting aside the questionable validity of these statements, simply making them strips away his ability to effectively legislate for women.

I suspect he decided one of three things: that his career wouldn’t survive such a trial, that it wasn’t worth the agony of trying to parse out the severity of the offense, or that doing so would play directly into the hands of vermin like Trump and Moore, who would point gleefully at him and cry, “See? See?” while skating clean on their own, far worse, offenses. Maybe he decided on all three. I don’t know and probably never will. What I do know is that in this environment, today, public perception prevented any kind of nuanced analysis of his relative sins. He was automatically lumped in with the worst. I’m not saying that was good or bad. It’s simply what I think happened.

There is one more angle to this, which is this idea that the democrats stabbed him in the back in order to maintain the party’s “moral high ground” and as a result we should all hate them. Setting aside for the moment the fact that democrats on both sides of the current divide – establishment/Clinton democrats and “herbal tea party”/Sanders democrats – called for him to step down, again, I don’t believe public perception would have allowed for anything else. A public ethics investigation involving the kind of language I described above, in the current environment, would have absolutely annihilated any argument that the democrats are the party of feminism. When both sides are making the exact same excuses for their sexual abusers, using the exact same language, and pointing the exact same fingers, there is no moral high ground.

“So what?” you might say. “What has the moral high ground ever gotten us?”

The thing is, the moral high ground is not and has never been about “getting us” anything. It’s about doing the right thing, even if it costs you, even if that cost is higher than it would be in a perfectly fair world. It’s about aiming for an ideal in the hopes that one day you will reach it. I keep hearing this argument that the female senators who called for Al’s resignation yesterday were party loyalists, just trying to keep the party’s nose clean. I say if that’s case, thank god for them.

If both parties demand that the other party’s molesters step down before they take down their own, they are no different on this issue. If both scream and point fingers, they are no different. If neither is willing to enforce their ideals by making difficult decisions, then they are the same.

No, the Republicans are not going to rush to follow the example set yesterday by Kirsten Gillibrand. They are going to laugh at us, and scorn us, and gloat, and celebrate taking down one of their most vocal and capable critics in the US senate. But come next November, the American people will still have the option of voting for a party that actually backs up its platform statements with action, and without that, this country is truly and finally doomed.

I loved Al Franken. I was enjoying the rumors that he might run for president. I was proud to vote for him and still, today, believe he was an excellent senator.

At the same time, I am appalled by his behavior. I understand the calls for him to step down, and I understand his decision to heed them. I won’t paint him as a victim in this, but I will recognize that sometimes good people do bad things—and sometimes, due to circumstances beyond our control, they have to suffer larger consequences for those things than they truly deserve.

2 Comments/in Uncategorized /by Adam Nicolai

Vegas

October 2, 2017
October 2, 2017

Just drop your tribe for a second. Drop your political affiliations. It’s just you in the void.

Do you think it’s a good idea to let the general public have unlimited access to fully automatic weapons?

To have clips on belt-feeds?

Just… pretend for a second you’ve never heard a litany of arguments about this. Do you want to see machine guns when you go to the grocery store? Do you want to fear death by bullet every minute of every day?

They tell me I can’t talk about gun violence today. Just like I couldn’t the day 20 first-graders were massacred, or a bunch of people out watching Batman were slaughtered. But guess what? We won’t talk about it tomorrow, because tomorrow will bring something new. If we don’t talk about it today, we never talk about it at all – until, of course, the next time. And one of these times it will affect you, or it will affect me.

This is the first time, that I recall, that one of these massacres has affected people I knew. One person’s mother was in Vegas today. Another person’s son was there. Both are okay. But that’s two degrees of separation. That’s far too few for my taste.

We entered the stage a long time ago where a sharp, sudden noise at Target makes me look for a shooter and pull my children to cover. I’ve never been in war; I don’t have PTSD; I live in the richest first-world country in the world. Why is this my automatic, first response to a sharp noise in public?

And still, they tell me not to talk about it. It’s wrong to “politicize” this. The icy hand of right-wing speech oppression is long. It extends even to this, even to the natural and automatic desire to protect yourself and your kids. Don’t you dare talk about it. Don’t you dare politicize this massacre.

Just sit there, silent, and wait your fucking turn to die.

0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by Adam Nicolai

Re: New Books

September 12, 2017
September 12, 2017

Couple big writing updates:

1) It’s been awhile since I posted an update on my current project, A Season of Rendings. I have been busting my butt on this book this year, and in the last month or so I’ve really gone into overdrive. Last time I think I said I was planning to have it out this year. This is usually about the time I crawl back and have to admit that I won’t make my goal. Not this time.

Barring acts of nature, A Season of Rendings will be available on Kindle by the end of December. This is me, reiterating the previous goal and even doubling down on it. Mark it in the history books! And just to put my money where my mouth is, watch for it to become available for pre-order right around the end of September.

2) I’ve decided to make it my primary goal for next year to produce two full-length novels. That might not sound like a big deal in a context where self-published authors are producing 6 – 15 books a year, but these will not be formulaic romance novels designed to turn a quick buck. These will be real Adam J Nicolai books, of the kind you know and love. I’m not just pulling this goal out of my rear, either: I did real maths!

I see that look on your face. I wouldn’t believe me either, given my track record. But this is me, promising: by end of December next year, there will be three new books on Kindle written by yours truly. One of them will be A Season of Rendings. One will be book 3 in the Redemption Chronicle, tentatively titled Of Dark Things Waking. The last will be something new. I’ve got four ideas for that last one. I’ll let you know which one I go with as the time draws closer.

0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by Adam Nicolai

Sea Level Rise

September 6, 2017
September 6, 2017

“Sea level rise” is such an innocuous phrase. It sounds like the coming in of the tide, like it will creep up on us slowly. Like we’ll be able to look out our windows and say, “Yep, it’s higher. Might be time to think about building a levee . . . or maybe moving.” It implies all the time in the world – or at least enough to safely react.

I spent my early adult years thinking this way. Now I realize it’s not like that at all.

The sea level won’t rise calmly, like a filling bathtub, and our coasts won’t recede gently. They will spasm beneath the onslaughts of storms like we’ve never seen before, suffering devastation that leaves them permanently deformed. The sea won’t “rise” so much as it will pounce, borne inland by superstorms and Cat 5 hurricanes.

When I saw pictures of New Orleans underwater during Katrina, Haiti and New York underwater during Sandy . . . when I see the pictures today of Houston underwater because of Harvey and as we all brace for the horrors sure to be delivered by Hurricane Irma, I don’t think, “My god, look at the flooding.” I think, “This is a glimpse of the future. This is what the new coastline will look like.”

It is happening. It is happening as we speak, before our eyes, the world over. It is happening just as the world’s climatologists predicted it would, and it is the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced.

0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by Adam Nicolai

What Year Is It?

September 4, 2017
September 4, 2017

Twin Peaks: The Return is over. I didn’t think it could affect me like it used to. I thought I was older and more grounded now, and that’s still all true, but I won’t lie: the ending left me profoundly unsettled. My mind is whirling and I’m actually reticent to go to sleep tonight for fear of what I might dream.

The horror of Twin Peaks is its power to meticulously dismantle every norm, to deconstruct reality and turn things literally backwards until you are left wondering what is real; if anything is real at all. And not in a cool Matrix-ey way but in a horrible, “Oh my god the shattered pieces of my mind are crumbling through my fingers” kind of way.

The show’s final episode forces you to ask, “Is he real?” “Is this really happening?” and “Are they actually there?” until you abandon your demands for a rational reality, just digging in your fingernails and hanging on for dear life. It’s a precarious state to enter, and you can’t just turn it off when the show ends.

For the last 25 years Dale Cooper’s doppelgänger’s last question (“How’s Annie?”) has haunted me. For the next 25, the last question of Dale Cooper himself may very well do the same.

Well played, Mr. Lynch. Well played indeed.

0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by Adam Nicolai

I Don’t Buy It

August 14, 2017
August 14, 2017

Trump spoke out against white supremacy today. He gave a speech calling them “repugnant” and referred to them by name – the KKK, the neo-nazis, white supremacists. Good news, but when I break it down I’m not inclined to believe it was heartfelt. Why?

Well, how much time do you have?

— It was two days late.

— It was delivered with “all the enthusiasm of a hostage video” (this quote from Walter Schaub, Trump’s own former ethics chief).

— It was tele-prompted, which means someone else wrote it for him.

— It came only after enormous pressure from other Republicans.

— It *still* hedged, if you listened to it carefully. “As I said Saturday…” and “As I’ve said before.” Except he’s never made an absolute black-and-white denouncement like this before. Never. Which comes off like a weak dog whistle buried in the noise: “Don’t worry, guys, they’re twisting my arm but I’ve still got your back.”

— It still didn’t directly repudiate their support of him or their use of his name.

— He didn’t tweet it. He’s made 4 tweets today, none of them repudiating white supremacy, and every single human being knows that when he really means something, he tweets it.

— It was sandwiched in between two other appalling actions: a tweeted insult against Ken Frazier (the black man who quit the president’s advisory council over the speech on Saturday), and a threat to pardon Joe Arpaio (the Arizona sheriff who defied a court order instructing him to stop racially profiling people for potential deportation).

There is still some good news here, though. His DoJ is investigating. He was forced to come to the microphone and speak the words they wrote for him, which shows his will can be bent. His approval rating took another shellacking for his sniveling equivocations over the weekend, dropping to 34% in the latest Gallup poll (!!). A campaign to make him prove what he said by firing white supremacists Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka is gaining steam, fueled by Trump’s own speech. Outside of the Trump administration, a social media campaign to identify, doxx, and punish the alt-righters who beat Deandre Harris half to death is working incredibly well, and The Daily Stormer, the Nazi website, was dumped by their host (GoDaddy).

But this isn’t a Grinch story. Trump’s heart is just as shriveled and black as it was on Saturday. Yes, the words passed his lips– a lot of words have passed this guy’s lips–but I’m not fooled by them. I’m not breathing a sigh of relief. I look at his actions, and it’s obvious the words he spoke were exactly that:

Words.

0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by Adam Nicolai
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