Drew Downs

Make a New Normal

politics

  • Rethink Voting

    Voting in the United States looks nothing like the open, efficient, and fair rhetoric we use to describe it. It’s time we changed that. I looked up the closest polling place on my phone. Then drove to it. The door was locked. I looked it up again. The location was right. It was clearly the…

  • There’s a certain kind of bizarro argument we put up with. An intentional deception which claims we’re all responsible for our demise. They’re wrong. I honestly couldn’t believe what I was reading. It was like buying a copy of Superman and finding the issue is really about Bizarro. Women should leave the dirty world of…

  • We hide the truth behind violence and blind justifications. And yet our fears make the danger all the greater for those seeking the truth. Reading this morning that two more pipe bombs were prevented from being delivered to prominent Democrats, media, and civilians chills me to the bone. It leaves me fearful and confused; frustrated…

  • Our problem isn’t that we can’t tell when someone’s lying. It’s that we refuse to punish those who lie or protect those who tell the truth. Truth is a weighty topic. And yet it all feels so subjective. The elephant parable comes to mind. The one in which many people touch the different parts of…

  • We talk like we’re divided in two. But if there were two internets, it wouldn’t be split left/right. It’s more like right vs. everyone else. The way we talk about American culture is a lie based on truth. How we come to this lie, and why we stretch the truth to justify it, is vitally…

  • It seems like we are so divided, but that isn’t it precisely. We aren’t divided; it’s more like we’re scattered and pretending we’re divided. We’ve been talking about political polarization for longer than I can imagine. You’d think by now we would have solved the problem. And we would…if we really thought it was a…