Stephen, a homie from college, now lives in Kawasaki, Japan, which is about an hour away from Tokyo if memory serves me. We both did our junior years abroad; he in Tokyo, I in Beijing. After graduating last May, Stephen took a job working for the city hall in Kawasaki, and I came back home to Seoul, South Korea, and am about to pass the one year mark for my two-year-long military service.
When Stephen landed his current job a few months before graduation, he and I entertained the thought of visiting each other in our respective countries. Stephen lived up to his end of the deal last October by visiting me for a week. Now, it’s my turn. We’ve been planning and coordinating this trip for months, and tomorrow I am going to Japan. For two weeks.
Here’s the game plan: Tomorrow I’ll get off work, bike home, get my things, get on the airport express line, arrive at the airport, check in, get some food, and get on the plane. Easy. I reserved a window seat so I can take some nice take-off footage.
I am excited for this trip for a number of reasons. I enjoy the feeling of physically leaving my habitat. Here’s a quote I like about travelling:
내가 속한 국경을 벗어나는 일은 오랜 관성에 찬물을 확 끼얹고, 세상을 인지하는 새로운 감각을 획득하는 동시에, 내 몸과 의식이 담긴 세상을 냉정하게 거리를 두고 봐라볼 수 있는 기회이기도하다.
This is by a Korean writer named Mok Soojung. Let me take a pitiful stab at translating this.
Leaving the borders to which I belong is like pouring ice-cold water on the long-established, idle inertia that governs my everyday life. It is the act of acquiring new sensors to put in my perception toolbox, as well as an opportunity to take a long, hard look at the very world where my body and consciousness reside.
This is an abysmal translation, but the gist is this: I think travelling, the act of physically leaving home, makes you see the invisible force in your everyday life. It’s impossible to see what kind of havoc the storm is wreaking when you’re in the eye of the storm.
The second reason is I like being on planes. Looking down at what looks like an ant civilization from the sky makes you think about the hours and days you’ve spent down there as an ant yourself. You play your life reel as you stare down at all those tiny cars, tiny houses, and tiny people each living out their one-of-a-kind lives. When you get high enough in the sky and the clouds obstruct your imagination, you close your eyes, and put a full stop to yet another chapter in your life.
The hours you get in the air are unlike the hours you get on land. You are limited to tiny legroom, frontal vision, and one armrest. But your headspace is limitless. You can pick and choose from a myriad of different mind journeys, and just sit back, relax and zone out as the ride takes you adrift.
I tried a different approach this time in my preparation of the trip. I subscribe to the belief that the more you know, the more you see. So I started studying Japanese three weeks prior to my trip. I think I might have a tiny leg up since I speak Chinese and Korean, which are probably the only two languages in the world that are even remotely similar to Japanese. Korean and Japanese share virtually an identical grammar structure, something I’ve come to appreciate immensely, and knowing Chinese characters come in handy too for reading Kanji. It took me a few days to learn Hiragana and Katakana. I utilized a variety of YouTube videos, and followed their mnemonics approach to memorizing. Right now I can stammer through anything written in Hiragana and Katakana, and can say basic everyday things like “What is the WiFi password?” “How much is one beer?” “Which apple is the most tasty?” I tried to only learn sentences that I felt had practical application. I really like apples.
I think learning the language of the place you’re about to visit is paramount if you’re visiting for some time. I think if you can communicate even on the most basic level, and can read a few things here and there on the street, it would be a total game changer; it would add so much depth to the experience as a whole. Not to mention it is just pure fun to recognize characters you had studied in the books just a week ago.
I only get two weeks in Japan this time. I have to do all the preparation I can to make the best out of this opportunity. I’m sure Stephen will be an amazing guide and an interpreter, but I want to do this as independently as possible. I don’t want to turn into a helpless baby overnight. That is not my idea of travelling.
This is a transcription of a talk originally given at Wordhack, a monthly event at Babycastles exploring the intersection of language and technology.
When talking about generative text, there is often a predilection to start with its histories. This is perhaps an impulse towards humbleness, an important recognition that although computers have radically shifted the field, they certainly did not invent it (and are only tools, after all).
Generative poetics has the obvious roots in Dada, in the cut-ups movement, in found poetry and the modern-then-post-modernists who (although not all working with computers) certainly were operating in an era rife with the promise of automation and a future of intelligent machines. Looking at this work, it is easy to see the seeds of what many of us in this field are pursuing now; work like The Wasteland, or Ulysses, or Burroughs’ many experiments with shuffled text all take advantage of the same thing that contemporary generative poets do; that meaning is mutable, that it builds itself in the mind of the reader as words compound, that we as humans are built-in pattern recognizers and storytellers and that any text need only do half the work; we will fill the gaps, follow the shift, and assemble a one thing to take home with us, even when it is made of many.
But rarely does the history of this space extend farther than the early 1900s, and viewing cut-ups and the fragmentation of language as a fundamentally modernist discovery presupposes one of the basic functionalities of text; that it is modular. Language works precisely because it splits apart and recombines according to set rules; this supposition is the basis of core concepts like the word, the character, the syllabic utterance. Dadaist cutups although a remarkable reflection of their times, were almost certainly not the first instance of pieces of language being reassembled into new forms.
To start, one could perhaps look at the poem-fragments of Emily Dickinson. Although her work was significantly edited after her death in order to appeal to Victorian sensibilities and is only just being published in its original, it was written with little regard to convention. It seems she selected scraps of envelopes, notes, and discarded papers precisely to fit each poem. Dickinson was financially comfortable and need not go to such lengths to preserve paper, nor was she known to jot down poems while out, where notebooks might be absent. These paper fragments were collected to house poetry in a tangible way; the poems follow the shape of the paper, and lines break and shift to fit their borders.
Dickinson numbered each of her poems chronologically, and also numbered are many scraps that seem more like lists or notes than poems, particularly poems in the style of the 19th century. But they are sandwiched between more conventional verse, and together create a body of work that includes within its borders- bare sentence scraps, notes to self, and notably; several recipes. Poems like Kate’s Doughnuts, a piece of what we can only assume is found text, is placed at the exact same scale and importance as all of the Dickinson that is so famous today.
Of course, there are much earlier examples; one could consider Honkadori, a 12th century Japanese poetry intertextual technique in which writers would allude to, or quote, famous historical poems inside of their own text. This allowed a sort of unfolding meaning; someone familiar with the earlier poem would recast the apparent text into a different light, while holding the contemporary framework on top. It allowed poems to exist in two spaces, a sort of layered experience that depended on a recycling mechanic, a borrowing of history as a contextual technique.
Kokinshū 606:
Keeping this longing
Hidden within is what hurts –
With only me to hear my sighs
~Ki no Tsurayuki, 9th century
1035:
Another evening’s sighs:
Have I forgotten
This hidden longing
Is mine alone to suffer
As days become months?
~Princess Shokushi, 12th century
This fashion could have been an import from China, like many others at the time, or could have risen independently from the rich poetic practice of the Japanese imperial court. Regardless, it bears similarity to pre-imperial Chinese court argument starting as early as 300 BCE. This is a style of text that only reaches its full meaning when listeners draws connective lines from unit to unit of text; standing alone, each unit of argument lacked the power of the structure of a whole. Building on itself, it followed, as William Boltz argues in “the composite nature of early Chinese rhetoric”, a logic of signs that take their power from one another.
Or perhaps one could consider folk traditions at large, in which historical stories often include within their borders rich local subtexts of family histories, cultural norms, and personal anecdotes that are folded into traditional text- a borrowing of experience that intercuts the everyday lessons of the world into long-standing stories.
And there are likely many many others that have been lost to poor research, destroyed histories, or general negligence.
But I wanted to point specifically to the medieval concept of Melitzah, perhaps one of the clearest example of early cut-ups surviving today. Melitzah (also sometimes called Shibutz, or sometimes classified under the more general Midrash) is a medieval Hebrew literary device in which a mosaic of fragments and phrases from the Torah, rabbinic literature, and the liturgy are fitted together into new meaning, most often in the form of religious argument but also in poems, letters, and personal writing.
Unfortunately, there are very few medieval pieces translated, but here is a later example in an Ukranian letter between brothers from around the 1850s (although primarily medieval, Melitzah came back into fashion in the 1770s during Haskalah, a kind of Jewish enlightenment).
… How could I dare not answer them with some word of instruction to you; for, what could I say and tell and with what can I justify myself!? [1] For how can my heart rouse me to open my mouth and speak words which are not true against the Rule of the Creator? Have I, a slithering worm cursed among people, complained against Divine Providence? And, who is this and what is this that I should express opinion on such matters? It is very true that I have learned how to commit sin against G-d: I have sinned and transgressed before Him. Only in this am I able to justify my actions and to rectify my deeds, only in this: that I am in truth guiltless before the Lord, my G-d and of my fathers. And, I have not done evil against my G-d. Also, if I have spoken out of the bitterness of my soul words which are not true, my feet have not yet stumbled and my steps not slipped [2] for the reason of having read at that time horrible and awful things which all ears would resound upon the hearing of them [3], and people would not believe it if it were told [4].
Then, my soul being cast down [5] and my spirit poured out, bereft of words, I am unable to write down everything that was in my heart, because it was not consoling that I had requested; neither words of succor did my soul desire. For does not my letter demonstrate what lay then upon my spirit? But, now I am not true to myself now that my soul has returned to its tranquility. I shall understand my foolishness and I shall never return to folly [6]. And of you shall I ask that you write me also in the future (more) letters such as these, letters of preaching and knowledge, letters of wisdom and understanding. For your last letter, with its flowery language, captures the heart as do the beautiful words of our holy prophets. Its content is deep and requires exactness, and its utterances are sayings of beauty [7]. Please make known to me knowledge so that I may know. Pray, give me understanding so that I shall understand, and you should know that you will not sow good seeds among thorns and thistles, and that your sagacious words will not become lost into nothingness. I shall tie them around my neck [8] and bind them around my throat [9]. I shall inscribe them upon the tablet of my heart, and together with your memory they shall never depart from me.
Behold your brother, wishing you peace.
Shmu’el.
1) paraphrased from Gen. 44:16
2) from Psalm 73, verse 2
3) phrasing from Samuel I, 3:11; Kings II, 21:12 and Jer. 19:3.
4) from Habbakuk 1:5
5) from Psalm 42, verse 6
6) from Psalm 85, verse 9
7) from Gen. 49: 21
8) from Proverbs 6:21
9) Proverbs 3:3
Translation from Alex P. Korn, Ph.D.
What is so special here is not the conceit of recombinatorial text, nor even recombination with the intent of borrowing authority, but rather that Melitzah is motivated specifically by the presence of holy words. In Melitzah the sentences made of compounded quotations mean what they say, but they also ring with associations and echoes to the original source. Beneath the surface of any particular piece of text is a long history of canonical faith; by this, the new sentiment is influenced, but it also reaches backwards; the historical, divine text takes on a layer of the new. It is a methodology of prayer as much as it is an attempt to express something eternal or empirically true.
Michael Marmur, who has studied the quote-impulse in historical Jewish texts, might have said it best;
Biblical verses are sewn into the text of the poem and come to serve a variety of functions. In point of fact, the lines of distinction between the decorative and the generative aspects of quotation are blurred in the extreme. Just as a quotation beautifies, it also amplifies. The sources become the basis for almost unbridled creativity, and, at its apogee, the art of applying these verses blurs the distinction between the extrinsic and the intrinsic.
Of course, contemporary generative text works in much the same way; fragments are pieced together forming new meanings out of older language. This is quite apparent in Markov-chain type generation (where a text is analyzed for A’s chance of following B), but it also holds true in more complicated techniques like recursive neural networks. Even at their very best, these machines are all about their corpus; without something to learn from, they produce nothing at all.
So much of the work of someone working with these tools is on the side of the input; carefully seeking out the right kind of text, learning how to structure it. What is smart about Melitzah and other historical generative textual practices like it, is that the input- the corpus- is highly specific. One can trust the Torah to have a fairly unified voice, to carry a certain weight, to work in the same way over time. Of course, the writer of these verses was performing the task of our machines by hand; assembling bits and pieces, altering grammar to fit, finding the perfect passage to touch another.
In many ways, these medieval Hebrew scholars were perfectly tuned to this task. After all, they lived in the world of the Melitzah; they were trained to rabbinic literature in the same way that we are trained to emoji or to Wikipedia articles. We understand how they function; we have lived in the content so thoroughly that we know the form of the thing.
This type of training is a possibility for machines. They too can learn how a Wikipedia article is structured, or what sentiments various emoji generally represent, or indeed which pieces of liturgical text flow into each other. They excel at this kind of task- reproducing structure, getting the ‘feel’ of a thing.
So often when I talk about my work to writers unfamiliar with generative techniques, they joke that they will soon be out of a job. It is in jest, but it happens so often I can’t help but feel it comes from a place of genuine panic. I try to explain; sure, my tools can reproduce the right structures but they don’t really ‘get it’, meaningful output or not. Any moment of delight or clarity is on my end- the creative act here is in the reader.
When I say that the creative act is the reader’s, I imply the creator as well as the audience. When working with generative text, it is impossible not to read. One has to look for bodies of text that can function as useful sources for tools; big enough, or concrete enough, or with the right type of repetitive structure; learnable. And then one has to read the output of such machines, refining rules and structures to fix anything that breaks that aura of the space one is looking for. In this, we are not unlike the medieval scholar who studies holy verse to become fluent enough in that space that it becomes building block.
To ask if a machine could really understand the Torah, or for that matter- the importance of an Emily Dickinson recipe or a cutup newspaper poem or Wikipedia or emoji is not a question for now. That is, at this time, still our job; our machines stay tools like any other. What we are learning is what carries through, what we can teach our machines, and what lends them strength. The delight is all ours.
It’s easier than you think to learn another language especially since you already know one.
Why Most of Us Failed in High School
The majority of us have failed to learn a second language even though we’ve all learned our first.
Everyone on the planet is fluent in at least one language. So we all have what it takes to learn at least one.
So why is learning a second language so hard?
It’s because it’s taught wrong.
We were placed in a cold classroom and expected to speak in front of our peers in a language we didn’t know. It’s bad enough that public speaking is the number one fear for people and that’s in their native tongue.
Now imagine trying to speak in a foreign one.
And when we made mistakes, we were punished with red marks on the page and low grades. And unlike most classes, our failures in a language class are public. This conditioned us NOT to speak for fear of looking stupid or saying something wrong.
Imagine teaching babies to speak this way. No one would ever learn to speak.
Learning Like a Baby
As babies, we learned our first language by immersion, listening and mimicking every single day. All we could do was listen, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And not once, did we receive a grammar lesson from anyone.
We didn’t study grammar books. Endlessly conjugate verbs. Memorize vocabulary. We didn’t get marked down every time we made a mistake.
And that’s why we learned it so well.
But as adults, we cannot afford to go back to this approach. We don’t have the time. And the good news is that we don’t need to because we can actually learn faster.
We can use our working vocabulary to accelerate our learning.
Learn it Like a Video Game
Every time you start a new video game, you have to learn the controls. The first time you play, it takes a while to learn the controls. But the next game and next are easier since there are many similarities.
But think back to how video games teach you the controls, or at least the good games. They give you just enough training so that you can start playing. That was your goal. To play a video game.
So the sooner you’re playing, the sooner you’re having fun. And isn’t that the whole point of the exercise? And if you’re having fun, you don’t even realize that you’re still learning how to play the game. It just happens.
And before you know it, you just react without thinking. And you’re doing things — hard things — with ease. How did you get so good? By practicing. But it didn’t feel like practicing because you were too busy having fun to realize that you were practicing.
Now imagine if video games taught you how to play the way languages are traditionally taught. They’d have you practice jumping for 20 minutes. Then crouching. Then tomorrow, more jumping and then sneaking. Then the next day… Well, you get it.
Learning a language is the same. You came here to speak. Not to conjugate. Or memorize. So the faster you can get to speaking, the better.
You need just a tiny bit of starting vocabulary and then you should start conversing. Isn’t that the whole point of the exercise? Isn’t that the goal?
So the sooner you get to speak, the sooner you’re having fun. And when you’re having fun, you won’t quit. And if you don’t quit, you’re going to learn. And you’ll learn much faster than the traditional boring methods.
You need to put in the time to learn anything. Imagine if that time was always fun. Before you know it, you’re speaking another language.
By the way, this is how music should be taught. But that’s a subject for another post.
But What About Grammar and Vocabulary?
Grammar is clearly important. But think back to how you learned grammar originally. And I don’t mean taking an English class in grade school. That’s just giving names and categories to things you already knew.
You learned grammar naturally by hearing it.
The same goes for Vocabulary. You hear words in context and surmise their meanings. You still do this in your native language. For example, if you don’t know what the word surmise means in the above sentence, you can figure out what it means because you understand all the other words.
Your parents didn’t drill into you the right way to use, go, went, going, gone. They didn’t run around the room pointing at objects saying their names. But you learned it before Kindergarten.
You learned all the necessary elements of grammar and basic vocabulary by experience and repetition. How? By listening and speaking.
This is the natural way of learning language.
Let me Tell You a Story…
My plan at this point in the article was to recommend multiple products that support this accelerated approach to language learning.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any.
Except for one. And in all honesty, it was developed by a friend of mine, Luke Pancoe with YLanguage.
So here’s his story…
He struggled for years to learn Spanish in grade school and failed. Frustrated, he took Latin in high school so he didn’t have to worry about speaking in front of anyone.
Then in college, Luke went to study abroad in Florence, Italy with no intention to learn the language since he thought everyone would speak English. But he was wrong. Fewer people spoke English than he expected.
Even though he couldn’t speak the language, he fell in love with Italy and its people and wanted desperately to communicate with Italians. He knew that this was holding him back from truly experiencing Italy like the Italians do.
Luke knew that the classroom approach didn’t work. So when he got home, he began a regimen over the next year watching YouTube videos, going to Italian meetups, talking with Italians online, reading grammar books, using different language apps like Duolingo and watching TV and films in Italian.
He was spending 7 to 8 hours a day for months in a desperate attempt to learn Italian. And in just under a year, he finally became fluent.
Armed with his new skill, he returned to Italy and it was like he was visiting a whole new world. For 3 weeks, he spoke only Italian. Being surrounded by his Italian friends and being able to easily converse with them, he felt what it’s like to be an Italian.
Next he learned Spanish and French. But this time it was much faster and required less effort. He was conversational in French in 4 months and Spanish in 3 months. Each time he learned a new language, he was able to optimize his process.
After learning 3 languages, Luke realized that he could teach anyone to be conversational in 3 months in any language by only dedicating 30 to 60 minutes a day. So he spent the next 2 years developing an online course called Italian in Your Pocket.
His system is basically everything I’m advocating in this article. It concentrates on speaking and listening. The very first week, his students are listening to conversations at normal speed and speaking.
Students, who put in the 30 to 60 minutes a day, are able to hold basic conversations totally in Italian with their fellow students in as little as 3 to 4 weeks.
The Language Revolution is Here
These results prove that traditional methods of classroom-style teaching can be greatly improved upon. Grammar and vocabulary do not need to be the center point for new students.
Hearing and speaking as soon as possible accelerates students’ understanding and speaking abilities in the new language. These quickly acquired skills reward students early and often, making the process of learning highly enjoyable. And because it’s enjoyable, students will want to continue learning. This positive feedback accelerates the learning process.
We need to have a real revolution in how we teach languages. Academia has failed nearly every student it’s encountered. We all have the ability to speak multiple languages and speak them well.
All it takes is the right approach.
If you liked this, click the💚 below so other people will see this here on Medium.
If interested in learning languages, check out Luke Pancoe’s website at YLanguage.com.
If you want to join a community of web developers learning and helping each other to develop web apps using Functional Programming in Elm please check out my Facebook Group, Learn Elm Programming https://www.facebook.com/groups/learnelm/
My Twitter: @cscalfani
Have you ever wondered where the ampersand symbol came from?
Or wondered how to use the number sign or the pound sign?
We’ve outlined some common symbols and meanings so you can learn their interesting origins and histories. Let’s go!
The Ampersand Symbol (&)
What is the ampersand symbol?
The ampersand symbol is a logogram; in written language, a logogram is a character that denotes a particular word or phrase. In English, the ampersand is the logogram &, which may look more familiar than the word ampersand.
The & symbol represents the conjunction and, which is used to grammatically connect words or phrases.
Where did the ampersand symbol come from?
The symbol & comes from the first century AD, when scribes wrote in Latin cursive. The ampersand symbol actually comes from the Latin word et, which means and.
Linking the letters e and t created the ampersand symbol. Today, the ampersand symbol still signifies the word and.
The word ampersand, however, is actually a lot newer than the symbol itself — more than 1,500 years newer.
When the ampersand symbol was added to the English alphabet in the early 1800s, reciting the alphabet became tricky, as ending it with and was awkward. So schoolchildren would say, “X, Y, Z, and per se and,” since per se means by itself.
Of course, merging these words creates the word ampersand.
How do I use the ampersand symbol?
Usually, you shouldn’t use the ampersand in formal situations, although academic usage depends on the preferred or requested style guide.
Ampersands are most commonly seen in business names; in the academic world, you might use an ampersand to join author names in an in-text citation or list of references, such as in APA style. You might also use an ampersand to address a letter or in a screenplay.
However, the word and is most commonly preferred.
The At Sign (@)
What is the at sign?
The @ sign, read aloud as at, was originally most often used in accounting to mean “at the rate of.”
Today, the at sign is most commonly used in electronic communication. You’ve probably used it for email addresses and in social media to address a specific person’s account, which is why the symbol is now universally found on keyboards.
Where did the at sign come from?
Interestingly, the at sign is known to have been used by monks and was possibly even invented by them to speed up the transcription process (which was, of course, done by hand).
Using the at sign helped them to decrease the number of pen strokes necessary to communicate the same information.
It’s also likely that the at sign originated from à, which means at in Italian.
The at sign was also once used as an abbreviation for amphora. The amphora was a unit of measurement for large terra cotta jars of the same name that were used to ship wine, spices, and grain.
The unit later took on a role in commerce to mean at the rate of, where it is still used today.
How do I use the at sign?
As noted, the at sign is used today in commerce and in electronic communication. It is logically used in email addresses and across social media.
It’s also used in informal speech to signify the word at, but this should definitely be avoided in formal writing.
The Pound Sign (#)
What is the pound sign?
The pound sign, the number sign, or, more recently, the hashtag are all the same symbol (#).
It comes from the Latin abbreviation for weight, lb, standing for libra pondo, which means “pound by weight.”
Calling it “the number sign” originated in Britain, as the name pound was confused with the British currency (i.e., pounds). Today, it is often referred to as the hashtag, and it also has different meanings for musicians, proofreaders, and computer coders.
Where did the pound sign come from?
The official name of the pound sign is the octothorpe, a word invented in factories that manufactured telephones.
In the 1960s, the telephone keypad was modified to include the pound sign, and octo was used to refer to the eight ends around the edge of the symbol.
The use of thorpe is a little less clear; it could be named after famed American athlete Jim Thorpe, it could be a nonsense word, or it could refer to the Old Norse word “thorpe,” which means farm or field.
The word hash is actually older than octothorpe. But only recently have hashtags been popularized across social media, especially Twitter, to tag topics of interest on networks to more easily track and find posts on certain topics.
According to Benjamin Zimmer, an American linguist and lexicographer, Stowe Boyd was the first to coin the term hashtag in this blog post in which he referred to the use of the hash symbol to tag topics on Twitter.
How do I use the pound sign?
Some style guides might allow for the use of the pound sign to denote the word number, but the pound sign is more commonly used in informal contexts.
As mentioned above, musicians may use the sign in reading music (as it indicates a sharp), proofreaders might use it to designate the insertion of a space, and computer coders can use it to mark comments or commands in programming language.
Clearly, the usage of the pound sign varies; it is still seen on telephone keypads, but you can also use it to mark hashtags on Twitter.
Nifty!
Conclusion
You can’t use the symbols &, @, or # in most formal contexts, and most of these symbols and meanings have diverged from their original uses.
But the ampersand symbol, at sign, and pound sign are all still in use today, and only time will tell how these symbols and meanings might morph in the future.
Originally published at www.scribendi.com.
I don’t have anything against Muslims or immigrants, and I didn’t believe him when he said he would round you all up and send you out of the country. I thought he’d stop at the national registry.
I was just tired of the two party system controlling our country and I felt like the Democrats were putting up yet another career politician who was pretending to care about “average people,” who would just say anything to get elected. And I’d read a lot of stuff about her emails and her charity and it all was just clear evidence that she is yet another corporate shill masquerading as a liberal. I just couldn’t will myself to vote for her and so I voted Stein. She’s from the Green Party, and it’s time we make a change.
And I remember thinking that might have been a mistake on the week they opened the national registry, and they started making you carry ID cards and wearing special badges on your clothes if you weren’t one of the people who dressed like a typical Muslim (for a while they thought all of you wore scarves, or turbans or those little beanie things).
And I remember how surprised I was when they made people who were legal Mexicans wear special badges too to prevent the deportation squads from wasting time checking their papers. I have a lot of friends with Mexican last names who have to wear their citizenship license pin and carry their papers now, even though they’re fifth generation American — further back than me. It’s a pain in the ass, but most days no one bothers them.
My point is, I know it’s been especially hard for you Muslims and I’m sorry about that. I was pretty sure the Supreme Court would block him from doing any of this. I thought the very idea was so un-American there was no way he’d get away with it. But once he packed the court, they found it was legal, so, what’s to be done? It is American now.
I remember when Clinton was speaking out against the registry. A lot of us showed up in Washington to protest against it — see, I didn’t abandon you completely — and she was there. And standing there on the Mall, listening to her, it occurred to me… I couldn’t stand her voice, honestly. That cackle of a laugh. I hated her old-lady face, which reminded me so much of my mother’s — and I had a complicated relationship with my mother.
So, on your way to the camps, I want you to know that I just couldn’t get myself to vote for that woman because I hated everything about her. I’m sorry you’re going to have to live in a detention center for a while, but her voice, you’ll have to agree, is really irritating. Hopefully they let you out in two to three years when we figure this all out, like he promised.
On Your Way to Prison for That Miscarriage, I Just Want You to Know…
I didn’t really take seriously that he would add criminal punishments for abortions, like he said he would, or that he would back the “life begins at conception,” movement in your state. When they started opening inquests after every miscarriage and arresting women for suspicious womb activities, I thought maybe I’d made a mistake, but at the end of the day, there’s nothing I can do about how awful you people in the South and the Midwest are. If you want to live in a place where you have rights, just save up some of your Wal-Mart paychecks and move to California.
You see, I’m tired of politics as usual and I refuse to be held hostage by the two party system any longer. I feel like this country needed a new direction, a real shake up. I mean, I didn’t vote for the guy myself, but I understand why people did, and as for me, I wanted to see some real change happen in this country and I got my wish. I don’t have a womb and won’t ever be arrested for suspicious activities inside of it, but I really do empathize with you that this is the kind of change we can do without.
On the other hand, we’ve started construction on the wall.
Anyway, I want you to know that I needed to express my frustration with the political system and with the choices we were presented with by the corporate oligarchy and it’s not my fault you’ve been imprisoned. You likely should have been more careful. I know they banned birth control in your state, but maybe you should have ordered some online from Canada, you know? Or just not had sex. I mean, I’m as sex-positive as the next guy, but you knew the potential consequences.
On Your Way to Your Court Martial, I Just Want You to Know…
I appreciate that you refused to follow the order to indiscriminately bomb that village. I’ve always felt sorry for people who have to serve in our military — I mean, I get that for someone like you, it’s a way out of poverty. We both know that you were forced into serving in the military because you’re poor and it has next to nothing to do with your love of country, so I was really impressed that a poor, uneducated kid like you decided to take a stand and refuse to follow orders.
I know he promised during the campaign to order you to commit war crimes, and you could argue that as a citizen it was really up to me to hear that and vote against him, but a friend of mine posted about the email server and how it was hacked (turns out that wasn’t true — oops) and that her foundation was used to peddle influence (not true either. Oh well). I thought these things were disqualifying. I know, I could have read one of the many pieces telling me that these were made up controversies — my Democrat friends kept telling me to read them — but she’s a crook like the rest of them, so I couldn’t allow myself to vote for her. That’s just my politics. I have to be true to myself.
In a way, I think we can agree that I was taking a brave stand, just like you were taking a brave stand by refusing to bomb that village. I could have been your first line of defense against a Commander-in-Chief who promised on multiple occasions to violate the Geneva Conventions, but I had to stick with my principles. I hope you can respect that, soldier.
But anyway, I wanted to say thank you for, yet again, bearing the burden and defending this country. In this case by refusing to follow illegal orders. I hope the judges are lenient.
On Your Way to Your Son’s Funeral, I Just Want You to Know…
I didn’t believe him when he said he’d increase the policing in black neighborhoods. When he said he’d make sure that cops weren’t prosecuted for cases like your son’s — and I get it, it was a bottle of Snapple and an orange water pistol, but you shouldn’t have allowed him to own anything that even looks slightly like a gun. You know what kind of world it is out there for people of color. This is a racist country, just like Dr. Stein always says, and you should have been more careful.
Besides, I and my friends did warn you that if you nominated Clinton, we’d never vote for her. So really, this is on you.
Despite that, I want you to know that yes, I get it. Your kid is dead, and that’s a tragedy. But we should have more choices in our political campaigns. And maybe in four or eight or twelve years, we’ll have better candidates and we can all vote for someone we really believe in.
Well, except for your son. Sorry about that.
On Your Way to the Voting Booth, I Just Want You to Know…
The stories above don’t have to be about you. Your story isn’t written yet. Consider this the ghost of election day future.
Hillary Clinton will make a great president. She has spent a career fighting for workers, for moms, for kids. I can literally inundate you with links demonstrating these facts.
But if you aren’t planning to vote for her right now, despite that lengthy career, my guess is it’s because you wouldn’t believe anything in any of those links. My guess is that you’ve decided you don’t believe anything Clinton says, nor do you believe any of the mountains of evidence demonstrating she will be a great president.
Okay. Then all I want to ask you to do is believe that Donald Trump is who he says he is. Believe he’ll do what he says he’ll do. And then compare the two: the Clinton of your imagination (the person you think she really is despite any evidence I might provide) and the Trump we see every day. You cannot imagine a Clinton who will do more harm to our country than Donald Trump is promising to do.
Read any Trump speech. Please. You have to decide he doesn’t mean any of the things he says in order to even take the slightest risk of him becoming president. He has promised to:
Deport all illegal immigrantsCreate a national registry of Muslims and bar them from the countryIncrease the militarization of the policeStart a trade war with ChinaTortureViolate the Geneva Conventions, including intentionally murdering the wives and children of suspected terroristsCreate criminal penalties for women seeking abortions
Trump, even with his current “rally” in the polls is at around 44–45%. That means we can beat him pretty easily, but it requires you to vote for Clinton. There isn’t another option this year. I know that’s unfair to you. But you can’t rationally compare the two of them as being in the same ballpark of “evil” no matter what you believe about her.
And as unfair as it might be that you have to vote for Clinton, whom you dislike so much, think about the millions of people who will have something far worse happen to them if we elect President Trump.
On your way to the voting booth, I just want you to know that you can stop stories like these from happening. Your country needs you. The world needs you. You know what to do.
(If you like this piece, please hit recommend so magical Internet algorithms will make sure more people see it.)