Last night I went to the Met game. I finally go to see the team’s best pitcher and player, Jacob deGrom. The Mets don’t score much for deGrom, which is just luck, he’s a good hitter so you’d expect them to score more. That held up yesterday, the Metropolitans scored but three runs, good thing deGrom was better and allowed just one to the Diamondbacks. The Mets’ best position player, Peter Alonso, hit two home runs, giving him the major league lead in Home Runs, with 47, two more than the runner up, Mike Trout. Trout is not just the best player in baseball, he is in the conversation for the best player ever through age 28. He is the god of WAR.
A rarity for this season I lost the prediction game, I predicted 5-2 Mets and Alan said 3-2 Mets, a great prediction as the won, 3-1. I have to give myself a pat on the back, I didn’t buy food at the game. I made hot dogs that I ate at home and brought a peanut butter sandwich with me.
The topic of today’s sermon is priorities. Thought it’s not how it’s usually thought of, so much of our political differences and are disagreements of how much we value things. It’s also the most common way that prejudice effects policy. When New York City ended its policy of routine stop and frisk a friend of mine lamented how terrible it was. Without evidence he said that crime would increase. Of course it hasn’t. It’s reached new lows. But I’m not discussing the policy but the motivation. Those of us who were for ending the policy gave more importance to the known effects the policy had on people of color. We feel that the routine harassment and degradation of blacks and Hispanics was more important that a hypothetical marginal increase of the crime rate. We weren’t for more crime. We thought it was worth the risk to end a practice. My friend, who was of course white, wasn’t seeking to degrade people of color, but thought that saving them from it was not as important as decreasing crime. The devil is so often in the details of the cost/benefit analysis.
The gun rights supporters put a tremendous value on the right to bear arms. They think it as fundamental, the way that I would think of as freedom of speech. They don’t accept the comparisons to regulating driving as to them owning a gun is more important. The fact that I can’t fathom that doesn’t mean they don’t feel that way. They aren’t for people getting killed any more than people who were against stop and frisk were for people getting killed.
I wrote about an article in the Times, What Do Rally Playlists Say About the Candidates? I was struck by the extreme gender bias of Trump, well duh, O’Roarke, and Sanders. Why the music played is not important, it says quite a bit about their priorities. Their campaigns never gave a second thought gender equality. It’s not part of their mindset and I find that disturbing.
Much of the healthcare debate is the relative importance of restrictions on choices dictated by the government and those dictated by economics. To many it’s very bad if the government says you have to buy insurance or pay taxes but OK If you can’t get afford insurance or doctors. That choice between differentiating how you feel about outcomes based on if they are caused by actions or inactions could be the basis not of an entry but of an entire book. I’m sure they exist.
When I’m choosing a candidate the two things I care about are their competence and their priorities. What I love about Elizabeth Warren is that working on policy details is a priority to her. What those details are is less important as I’m not competent to decide many of them. I want someone that wants social justice but doesn’t think you accomplish it by waving your hands.
One thing where my priorities differ from many of my friends is the importance I give to intellectual honesty and rational arguments. When Trump’s supporters say to take what he said seriously but not literally, they are saying they don’t value that. More often my disagreements are from those who agree with me in political goals but disagree on means. It’s important to make sure you have your facts right. You should never find yourself stating, “Well that thing I said wasn’t true, but it’s exactly the kind of thing that is true.” I hear that all the time. People will rant about things that they speculate on as if they were facts. Drives me nuts. We have different priorities.
I don’t value purity. I’d rather have half a loaf than none. Others turn against anyone that disagrees with their personal orthodoxy. When it comes to endorsements, in a two-person race, If I prefer A to B I’ll endorse A even though A is imperfect, even if A has serious flaws, as long as A is better than B. Others, like the members of the GOP Freedom Caucus feel they can never compromise. There are true believers and there are RINOs, Republicans in Name Only; despite the fact that the most liberal Republicans in congress are well to the right of the most conservative Democrat. There are those on the left that feel the same way; the people that I most often find myself arguing with. It’s about the relative importance we give to things, not what we are for or against.
Getting back to where I started. So much of discrimination is based on exactly this, the importance given to negative consequences when they happen to blacks, Hispanics, women, LGBTs, Muslims, immigrants, Jews, and anyone else considered other. Where do we put the sewer plant? Near the poor people. Where do we put the museum, near the rich people! Nobody says it outright, and I suspect most people don’t even think it directly. It’s baked into the environment. A simple rule like “no beards allowed” sounds like it has nothing to do with prejudice, but that’s because we’re not thinking about those for whom beards have religious significance or those with skin conditions, far more common in blacks, which makes shaving difficult. We have workplace expectations that work fine for men but ignore that women get pregnant and nurse babies. We put the rules written, and just as significantly unwritten, in place without thought to sex, but we should be giving thought to sex.
We stockpile children in cages at the border because the imagined dangers of immigration are considered more important that the fate of brown children. People rant against affirmative action in schools but are fine with the biggest affirmative action program, the preference given to legacies. What’s important? One thing that’s important is to think about where your priorities lie and to try and to try to make them consistent. You’re not going to succeed, they are all slippery, but do the best you can. Just remember that it isn’t always that A>B or B>A, sometimes the answer is, it depends.
I got that off my chest now I can get ready to go out to see John Platt’s On Your Radar tonight. I have to stop by my PO Box, I should have a shipment of coffee from Ahrre’s waiting for me.
Wise Madness 