After some baffling election results 2016 and 2018 elections, I’d like to propose what should be the Democrats’ new version of gerrymandering: moving state borders to group like-minded, homogeneous groups of voters together.

I’d start by giving the annoying Florida Panhandle to Alabama and adding Atlanta to North Carolina, thereby fixing two problems once and for all. (See graphic.) It would make all four states more homogeneous and avoid the bifurcated cultures – and consistently infuriating election outcomes – that drive the citizens of those states (and the rest of the country) crazy.

I humbly call my plan “kevinmandering.” 

Please feel free to suggest your ideas for new, improved state borders and let’s make kevinmandering the next big political craze!

Kevin Kelton is a former Saturday Night Live writer and cohost of The More Perfect Union podcast.

Election Day is November 6!

Hello, hello MPU-universe! We are officially in the last weekend before the election and if you’re like me, you’re busy doing some sort of Get Out The Vote action! Whether you are phonebanking, canvassing, texting, or planning to provide rides to the polls, you are AWESOME! Let’s make this election go down in history as having truly epic participation!

I’m also working with Greg, DJ, and Kevin on the rundown for the podcast which includes discussions about whether or not a president can alter the constitution via executive order (spoiler: no), what it means that the Pentagon is refusing the request to send troops to the border (spoiler: Mattis is better at his job than Trump is), and discussing if Trump has been secretly subpoenaed by Robert Mueller (spoiler: there have been no spoilers leaked).

For now, let’s dive into all the news that’s not fit to ‘cast!

HalloWTF: We just wrapped Halloween, and, as much as we could wish it were otherwise, that holiday cannot go by without an example of costumes of appallingly bad taste. This year is was a bunch of teachers (!?!!??!) who dressed as the border wall and the most racist depiction of Mexicans since Speedy Gonzalez.  Their district superintendent is now looking into the matter.

Costumes like that serve only to make other people feel bad or afraid. If I were Latino or Hispanic, I would feel distinctly unsafe sending my kids school with teachers who did that. It’s not just insensitive, it’s outright hostile.

For anyone saying “What? It’s a joke.” Yeah. It was a bad. mean joke. I’m not saying Halloween has to be serious and overly PC. I’m just saying Halloween shouldn’t be about being an asshole.

It is actually very easy to dress up for Halloween and NOT being wildly inappropriate. You just need to follow these simple rules:

1. You may dress as a fictional character.
2. You may dress as an animal or plant.
3. You may only alter the color of your skin if you are altering it to a color that does not occur in humans (i.e. You may paint yourself green to look like Gamora in Infinity War. You may NOT paint yourself brown to look like T’Challa in Infinity War).
4. Vintage Nixon masks are always funny.

If you follow those rules, you too can have all the fun on Halloween without making anyone else feel bad.

Deterrent Fail: Remember when some Republican flack was on tv in 2016 and said if we let immigration from South and Central America increase we’d have taco trucks on every corner? And all of Liberal Twitter was like “Taco truck? Tell me more.”

Well, former FoxNews personality and current Don Jr gal-pal Kimberly Guilfoyle has the latest not very threatening threat:

I can’t say the Star Wars cantina is my favorite sci-fi/fantasy hangout option – I’m more of a Leaky Caldron kind of girl – but it’s by no means a place I would shun. It definitely seems better than the cafe in Berlin where the young Nazi started belting out “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” in Cabaret, which seems to be what far-right America is after.

Countdown: As of this writing, there are only 13 days until the release of Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. That is not political or even controversial. I’m just really excited to see this movie.

By the time I sit down to write next week’s column the election will be over and most of the results will be certified. Remember to vote.  And please vote for candidates who stand against racism, homophobia, transphobia and misogyny. Thank you.

By Kevin Kelton

This Tuesday, Democrats need young voters to turn out in record midterm numbers. Yet news report after news report still tells us millennials just aren’t motivated enough to vote. “I’m too busy” or “Voting won’t make a difference” are among the array of excuses young people give when asked why they don’t plan to cast a ballot.

So let’s try a new tack. Instead of asking them to vote for their own self-interest, let’s appeal to their sense of friendship. The young people I know are incredibly loyal and compassionate to their friends and peers. They care deeply about gender rights, civil rights, fairness, and justice. Maybe appealing to the better angels of their nature can cajole a few to the polls.

Toward that end, I suggest you ask your voting-reticent kids and acquaintances to consider these people on Tuesday morning:

• Think about your friends who are gay, trans or still finding their gender identity. Do you think it makes a difference to them which party controls congress for the next two years? Will it make a difference to them if there is no check on Trump stopping transgenders from serving in the military? Or from even being considered a real gender? Will it matter to your gay friends if they can be fired or legally discriminated against for the mere act of coming out? Does it make a difference to them if the can continue to get married, or if their current marriage is someday annulled by an act of congress abetted by an increasingly right wing judiciary?
• Think about your black classmates. Will it make a difference to them if civil rights, voting rights and affirmative action laws are rolled back to the point of being meaningless? You don’t want to vote, but if you don’t vote, they may never get the chance. Republican state legislatures – again, abetted by conservative courts – are increasingly finding creative ways to stop blacks and Latinos from voting. The chance to vote may not mean all that much to you, and we understand. But will they understand if your lack of civic duty robs them of the chance to make their voices heard?
• Think about your female friends. Will the #MeToo movement be stronger or weaker with a Republican congress? You may be right that both parties are tainted by corruption. But only one party painted Professor Christine Blasey Ford as a hysterical, opportunistic liar. Only one party wants to take away a woman’s right to choose. Only one party continues to fight against paid family leave, increasing the minimum wage (which is particularly helpful to young women and single mothers), and only one party continues to push abstinence as the only acceptable form of birth control. If you don’t want to stand in line for an hour to vote for your own rights, would you stand in line to protect your sister’s rights, or your mom’s, or your best friend’s?
• Think about the kind man who cuts your parents’ grass or the kind woman who helped raise you and your siblings. It was always amusing that they could barely speak English, and you and your family had to communicate with them with your limited Spanish. Maybe he came here as a young boy; maybe she is a citizen because her parents immigrated here a few years before she was born. But they are good people who became your extended family and you could count on. What will it mean to them to live in an America where their citizenship can be taken away, or their parents or kids can be deported in an instance, suddenly disappearing with no trace? Would you stand in line to vote to help protect their children from suddenly being orphaned by an ICE raid? Is their entire future worth a half-hour of your time?
• Think about your friends in college (or applying now) who will increasingly be saddled with crushing student debt. Would you take a half hour out of your Tuesday to vote for the party that stands for lower student loan rates, finite payback periods, and a return to the days of low-cost or even free public colleges? Is 30 minutes of your time worth tens of thousands of dollars to your younger brother or sister? Because in many ways that’s on the ballot, too.
• Finally, think about another friend of yours: the future you. Think about the world you’ll be living in in 20 or 30 years. I know it’s crazy to think about far off things like Social Security and Medicare and pension plans. But do you want to spend your thirties and forties wearing surgical masks out in public, like they do in Beijing? Hooking up is hard enough. Imagine trying it with one of those on. Will you consider voting to protect your lungs and your future sex life? (Or the planet you plan to live on for the rest of your life?)

If you think it’s a waste of your time to go vote, next Tuesday, okay – maybe it is. But is it something you can do for someone else? You’d do almost anything for your best friend, your little brother, your big sister, your LGBT friends, and your minority classmates and work pals. If you’d do anything for them, can you do this?

Because, yeah, maybe it won’t make a difference. But, if enough young people like you think about their friends this Tuesday, maybe it will.

The outcome of the midterms may not mean anything to you, but it means everything to them. It’s 30 minutes, about the time it takes to get your car washed or wait for a pizza to arrive. Give that 30 minutes as a gift to your friends this Tuesday.

Do someone you love a small favor. Vote.

Kevin Kelton is the founder of Open Fire Politics and cohost of The More Perfect Union podcast.

“Every now and then a madman’s bound to come along.

Doesn’t stop the story. Story’s pretty strong. Doesn’t change the song.”

– Stephen Sondheim, Assassins

It is Sunday in America and we are grieving for 11 souls lost to a mad gunman at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. At the same time we are relieved and grateful that a would-be mass bomber was arrested in Florida on Friday, before he could inflict physical harm on others.

On Facebook yesterday, DJ posted this tweet:

This was my reply to the question:

In the case of a person so unbalanced that the idea of sending bombs via parcel post seems reasonable, no. A mind that damaged could twist any outside force into justification for enacting violent ideation. Remember Mark David Chapman was inspired to shoot John Lennon by The Catcher in the Rye.

But – BUT – the Trump style of hyperbolic and negative speech is what is driving more sane people to be awful in uncountable, tiny ways. He has given permission for regular folks to be their worst selves. They may never commit acts of physical violence but they are using words and small actions to hurt the people around them. His supporters’ everyday acts of hatred are a million paper cuts of harm to society.

For many years, I have been active in gun violence prevention advocacy. What I have learned from that work is that the mass shooter is not the real gun problem. The random act of extreme violence perpetrated by the profoundly damaged human being is not the problem we should focus on solving. Because that is not a systemic problem addressable by policy changes. The mass shooter, the bomber, that person is working at the behest of an internal force that would compel him or her to be violent regardless of outside stimuli. The problem of the deranged killer is the derangement, which is a condition that will demand manifestation and will settle on any excuse.

As I quoted above, “Every now and then a madman’s bound to come along.”

In gun violence prevention, the real problems are much simpler. Keeping guns locked away from children. Keeping guns away from domestic abusers. Keeping guns away from people with ideations of self-harm. The smaller, more everyday problems are less visible, but more solvable.

Similarly, in Trump’s America, the real problem – one that is foundational to our society, and probably most societies –  is not the crazed zealot determined to cause mayhem. It’s everyday community on community bigotry. It’s the sign in the window reading “No Irish Need Apply”. It’s the housing development with bylaws that exclude certain types of people from purchasing homes. It’s the separate drinking fountains and segregated schools. It’s the country club that won’t accept Jewish members. It’s the indigenous nations pressed into unwanted corners of the country by laws they had no voice in creating. It’s the baker who refuses orders from same-sex couples. It’s the school that denies the self-affirmed gender identity of trans students.

It is the us seeking to exclude a them.

We have all experienced the personal struggle to overcome us-versus-them thinking and accept new people into our personal circles. We have all overcome the fear of the unknown to reach out a hand to the stranger who looks truly strange to us. And we all understand that it bring us closer to being the kind of people we truly want to be.

We also know that it is hard work and it is probably against our evolutionary wiring. We wouldn’t be so quick to exclude if exclusion hadn’t been crucial to survival at some point in our ancient past. Being the better person isn’t easy and it is often a fight against our intrinsic natures.

What Trumpism has done is given people permission to stop having that fight and let their intrinsic natures win. He allows us to be our worst selves. He gathers his “us” close to him and tells the madding crowds that yes. Yes, they may openly disdain “them”.

Most of the people who have gratefully accepted his new rules for social commerce would never shoot up a synagogue. That’s not what we need to fear from them.

Instead, they would be the person huffing and griping in line at a grocery store because the person ahead of them is paying with an EBT card. They would be the one who yells at restaurant server with an accent to “Just learn English!”. They would change seats on public transit if a person of color sat beside them. And they would teach their children to do the same.

The top elected official in our country is a boorish, vulgar man. He is unkind and insensitive. He is a walking manifestation of our worst, most trollish impulses. For the people who share his prejudices, the opportunity emulate him and to stop trying to suppress those feelings is clearly seductive. They are happy to mirror the boorishness, the vulgarity, the unkindness, the insensitivity. They feel free to be their worst selves.

The greatest violence Trump has done is to the social compact we once had where we agreed to do unto others as we would have them do until us. The loss of that contract has made us a restive, anxious, and angry society for the moment. We are all bitter and sharp with one another. We are all struggling and no one is happy because, ultimately, acts of unkindness are unsatisfying and leave no joy in their wake.

We feel helpless in the face of the armed madman because he is unpredictable and his periodic emergence is probably inevitable. But we should not feel helpless in the face of small acts of cruelty because we have power over them. We can weigh our own words before we speak. We can stand at the side of the person receiving the cruelty and show ourselves as allies. We can confront others for their cruelty and ask that they stop. We can do that and we should do that. That is what the ideal of a peaceful society demands of us.

I have faith that we all still have access to our better selves and we can walk back from this shadow of cruelty that Trump has cast over us. All we have to do is remember who we wanted to be before a madman came along into the White House.

The 2018 election is November 6! Vote like democracy depends on it!

By Rebekah Kuschmider, MPU co-host

Hello, hello MPU-niverse! Remember how on the podcast last week we were lamenting how it had been a slow news week? Well, we won’t be having that problem again!

This week we saw the Saudi government say that a likely political assassination was actually a fistfight. Mitch McConnell announced his intention to cut Medicare, Social Security and repeal Obamacare if Republicans retain control after the midterms. And now Trump is saying the US will pull out of a Reagan-era missile treaty with Russia on the grounds that  Russia can’t “go out and do weapons [while] we’re not allowed to”.

That’s a real quote. I took it from the BBC. It’s not fake news. That’s how our foreign policy is being articulated in 2018.

We will scream into the void discuss all of this in detail when we convene to record the podcast this evening. For now, here’s all the news that’s not fit to ‘cast!

Viagra Nation: I’ve been on a kick of researching telemedicine options this week after seeing an ad for a telemed app specifically to distribute erectile dysfunction meds. The ad ran during a primetime baseball broadcast so it got an audience like whoa. It’s the same audience that watches all those Cialis bathtub ads every week. This app makes it possible to get the Cialis – albeit not the bathtubs – delivered to your door in discreet packaging after you have a virtual consult with a doc via the app.

Now, there is nothing at all wrong with this. Not a darn thing. It’s innovative and entrepreneurial and there is a slot in the market for it. No one, and I mean no one, is contesting this app.

The thing that is grinding my gears is that there is an equivalent app for people who want to get birth control or emergency contraception but it doesn’t have acceptance of the ED app. First of all, the network of doctors willing to participate in the birth control app is far lower than those willing to prescribe erectile dysfunction meds by mail: the birth control app works in 17 states, compared to 38 for the ED app. Second, the BC app IS getting pushback from conservative forces. There are people who erroneously believe that emergency contraception causes abortions and they don’t want the medication to be easily available.

As I wrote at Medium this week, these same people don’t have an issue with door-to-door boner pill delivery even though 100% of unwanted pregnancies are caused by sperm. Which come from boners. Just sayin’.

As for drugs that actually do induce abortions, getting those via telemed is…well, easier now than it was a week ago. Let me begin by saying that medical abortion (as opposed to surgical) is safe, effective, and recommended for terminating pregnancy before 10 weeks. That means they are 100% legal everywhere in the US. Science even defends prescribing them via telemed, an incredible convenience considering that many people don’t have easy access to gynecological services in their region. But the same people who hate emergency contraception have largely blocked US-based telemed distribution of medical abortion drugs.

Enter Women on the Web, an organization that has been offering global telemed distribution of medical abortion drugs for years. Or rather, don’t enter. Women on the Web has never before shipped to the US because our anti-abortion forces are so virulent that the organizers feared they would shut down their operation entirely rather than let US residents access legal, effective medication to end an unwanted pregnancy. Instead, the founder has created a spin-off operation called Aid Access just for women in the US. That way if American antis shut them down, only Americans are harmed. The rest of the world can carry on as usual.

So that’s the state of sex pills in the US. If you want a hard-on, you can probably get one delivered. If you want to avoid pregnancy, you can maybe get pills for that by app. If you want to end a pregnancy? Call a service outside the country.

Come on…Ted: The only good thing to come out of the Citizens United ruling is the trend of really awesome political ads sponsored by groups that don’t have to watch their language. This web ad from the PAC Fire Ted Cruz and directed by Richard Linklater is particularly amusing.

Speaking of the Midterms: There are only SIXTEEN DAYS until the 2018 election! Early voting is open in many states. Click here for a complete list if you want to find info for your state.

You also need to double check your polling location. Click here to check that info.

Finally, memorize this phrase in the event that you are denied access to the polls once you arrive:

If you are turned away at the polls because your name is not on the register, don’t walk away. Say this: I REQUEST A PROVISIONAL BALLOT AS REQUIRED BY LAW.

Don’t let them steal your vote.

— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) October 14, 2018

There’s lots more coming on the podcast so look for the new episode tomorrow morning. Until then, have a nice weekend and go tell everyone you know to vote blue!

by Kevin Kelton

There are some 80 million millennials in the U.S. today, approximate 25% of the country and 31% of the voting-age population. And they seem angry. As I scan their posts in my Facebook political group, Open Fire, I invariably read sentiments like, “Your generation screwed it all up for us” and “Now we are left to clean up your mess.” This is especially true inside the Democratic party, where more liberal leaning young people eternally bitch and moan about their elders in the progressive movement.

If you are a Democrat over 50 – or worse, God forbid, a baby boomer – it can seem like we are at war with millennials. They blame us for supporting Hillary and her eventual loss to Trump. They blame us for climate change and the loss of the Supreme Court. They blame us for corporatism. They blame us for the sorry state of our politics.

But their self-righteous condemnation is misplaced. If millennials want to solve some problems, the first place they should look is a mirror. They represent almost a third of all potential voters, yet they turnout in historically poor numbers. If those 80 million potential voters – who skew heavily Democratic – voted in percentages more in line with older demographics, this nation would look vastly different than it does today. Only 49% of them bothered to vote in 2016, some 20 points lower than baby boomers. In a presidential election that was decided by a mere 77,000 votes, their lack of participation was clearly the difference.

And their midterm turnouts are even more miserable. Voters under 30 made up just 13% of the total votes cast in 2014 and 12% in 2010, about a third of the Boomer turnout. 

Yet the millennial generation takes no responsibility for their communal lack of civic passion and effort. It’s as if their friends’ indifference to their political future was somehow our fault.

Let’s look at the playing field. Did the generations that came before them make mistakes? Sure. Lots of them. But we also gave them the internet, smart phones, sixty years of relative peace and prosperity (with a few dark spots along the way), advances in medical science, cures for AIDS, eradicating Polio, reliable birth control, and a slowly improving social contract for minorities and LGBTs. Is it perfect? No. But is it progress? Undeniably.

As for education, we built the best public university systems known to mankind, with massive discounts for instate tuitions. Yet less than half of all college bound students take advantage of their own state’s universities and the associated in-state tuition. They would rather inherit tens of thousands of dollars in student debt to move across country than go to an equally fine college a few hundred miles away. Then they complain about the student debt we’ve saddled them with. In 2014, 10,230 New York high school grads left the state for pricier out-of-state schools, while California saw 17,196 of its graduates migrate elsewhere for college. Is it the baby boom’s fault a New York high school senior with a 3.8 GPA chooses USC over SUNY Stony Brook? I get that the winters are nicer in Los Angeles. But $150,000 nicer?

We also gave them online voter registration and “absentee” vote-by-mail, making their commitment to political change that much easier and convenient. Too much of a hassle to stand in line on election day? A pen, ten minutes and a stamp is all you need. (In some states, even the stamp is optional.)

The one thing we didn’t give them – and for that we should take responsibility – is a broad understanding of the electoral process. Radicalism (liberal and conservative) works fine in the streets, from the anti-war protests of the sixties to the Stonewall riots to the BLM and MeToo movements. But real political courage takes place by coming together for a common cause greater than your own ideological purity test. Would single-payer healthcare and free public colleges be nice? Sure. There are a lot of things about the Democratic Socialist movement that would probably be an improvement. But is it politically viable? No, and not even a Sanders-Warren administration will change that.

Because while it’s true that Americans as a whole lean liberal on most issues, the historically low levels of millennial voting participation has allowed our governing institutions to veer far right. Sadly, a mere 17% of our national population holds a majority representation in the U.S. Senate, and the equally disproportionate electoral college means a Democratic presidential candidate has to win several million more votes than her Republican opponent just to have a chance. With the highest court in the land now firmly ensconced in conservative hands for another generation or longer, it’s impossible to see a scenario where our representative democracy becomes more aligned with the progressive values of voters overall.

To stop from slipping further backwards, we need to band together as a party and hold the line on social rollbacks and corporate giveaways. Every seat in the House and Senate is ground we must hold until the presidency and its inherent levers of power are back in Democratic hands. There is no room for ideological purity tests on this current political battlefield, or for fragging our own. I personally will support any Democrat who gets nominated for any seat. My only litmus test is the D in their bracket. Ideological purity is a luxury for the party in power, not the one seeking it.

But enough finger pointing. I’m not here to beat up on millennials. I just ask that they stop beating up on me. We mostly share the goals of an improved healthcare system, lowering our environmental footprint, battling wealth inequity, showing compassion for minorities and the disadvantaged, and advancing civil and gender rights. Our prescriptions differ at the margins, but our ideals are in line.

So if we must be at war with millennials, let’s be at war together against the Trumpian conservative movement that is trashing American principles and values by the day. I want to be at war with millennials. But on the same side of the war. Brothers in arms. In a battle for the soul of a nation, not the soul of a political party.

Kevin Kelton is the founder of Open Fire Politics and cohost of The More Perfect Union podcast.

Actual photo of 2018

Oh, hi there, MPU-universe. Hang on a second. I’m just trying to put out this dumpster fire over here but it just keeps burning.

This week has been truly amazing. We saw a Supreme Court nominee yell at all the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee but no one asked him if he thought he could rule fairly on cases involve Democrats considering his open animosity toward them (Spoiler: I bet he can’t). We saw Trump declare to the world that he and Kim Jong Un are in love. And we saw Kate McKinnon steal the entire SNL cold open with her impression of Senator Lindsay Graham.

Other people will try to say Matt Damon was really the funny one on SNL and he was but let’s be real. For everything else that is wrong with America today, at least we can all know that we live in the same moment in time as Kate McKinnon.

We’ll get to all of this and more when we record later today, but for now, here’s all the news that’s not fit to ‘cast!

We Need Diverse Books: As many of you know, I am a reader. I read the way most people watch tv: for hours a day as my primary source of entertainment. This is not an indication of intellectual prowess; I just prefer book to tv because books are quieter. The books I read often involve a grisly murder and an intrepid investigator who is probably harboring an inappropriate love interest while also solving crime. It’s genre fiction, not great literature.

My resolution for 2018 was to read more books by authors of color. I felt like this should be an easily achievable goal and, to a certain extent, it is. There are a lot of really amazing books by authors of color on the market at any given moment. These are books that deal with untold episodes of history and explore the cultural role of under represented peoples. They are Important Literature.

But as we established, I don’t always want to read Important Literature. I want a murder and an intrepid investigator and all that. And I’m not the only one. Mysteries and thrillers often top the best seller lists. But they’re often by white people! And the intrepid investigators are white! Sometimes you find characters of color making guest appearances in the book but they aren’t the prime focus.

Look, I know damn well there are smart women of color writing mysteries and thrillers and chick lit and other kind of genre lit. But I have to go hunting through the internet begging for recommendations for authors of color. Meanwhile, Goodreads and Amazon send me lists of white authors right to my inbox every day.

It’s time for more diversity in publishing. ALL of publishing, not just literary fiction and cultural criticism. Genre fiction needs more diversity as well.

Get on that, publishers.

P.S. If you want to know exactly what I’m reading, I’m on Goodreads. Let’s talk books!

Book Club: Speaking of books, I had a book club meeting this past Friday. We read Praise Song for the Butterflies by Bernice McFadden, which was excellent, by the way. (And she is an author of color!) But when women gather in 2018, we help each other to cope however we can. This week? I brought cake.

We didn’t even cut slices. We just went at it with forks, Tina Fey style.

You gotta do what you can to survive, these days and what I needed was angry cake.

Check Your Breasts: Finally, October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. That means you’ll see pink ribbons clashing with Halloween decorations everywhere you go. It’s a cultural happening. But it’s also a serious health issue and one that any human being with breast tissue is at risk of contracting.

The American Cancer Society has guidelines for early detection of breast cancer. Check them out and work with your doctor to figure out what our risk factors are and what types of exams you need. Cancer screenings are covered without co-pay as a matter of law under the ACA so your clinical exam or mammogram won’t have any out of pocket fees if you have insurance. If you don’t, look into the Breast And Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program through the CDC. That can help you get the care you need even without insurance.

That’s all from me this week, folks. Tune in to The More Perfect Union podcast when it drops on Monday!

Actual selfie of Rebekah whenever she reads about people excusing Brett Kavanaugh.

by Rebekah Kuschmider, MPU-cohost

Welcome back, MPU-inverse. How are you? I’m exhausted.

I would like just one week in 2018 to last an actual week. It seems like weeks this year have all lasted about a century and a half. They are all jam-packed with headlines that would make Jerry Springer go “Nah, man. That sounds too fake. Can’t sell it.”

But it’s not fake! It’s all happening! We really do have a Supreme Court nominee being questioned about his role in a sexual assault. Rod Rosenstein really was saying stuff – maybe joking, maybe not – about the president being unfit to serve. There really are going to billions of tariffs on Chinese goods right before the holidays! IT’S ALL REAL!

We’ll talk about all this and more on the podcast for for now, let’s check the lighter side of the world. Here’s all the news that’s not fit to ‘cast.

Be Less Crazy: This week has a lot of women losing their damn minds as we discuss the validity of sexual assault allegations and what constitutes valid enough. It feels like women are screaming “Just treat them all as valid and investigate them all and don’t pick us to pieces!” and large swaths of men are saying “Yeah, ok, but how do we know bitches don’t just be cray?”

If you are getting defensive and want to say “That’s not what men are saying, Rebekah, what we mean is…” Just stop. Stop thinking and keep reading. This next part is for you.

Feminism has been a powerful movement. Women have worked for centuries to make sure that the women who come next have it just a bit better than they did. And it’s worked. Women in America today have it better than women in America have ever had it.

It’s better not because women have gotten better. It’s better because men have gotten less crazy.

Let me explain. In a fantastic interview in 2014, Chris Rock – who is a fucking oracle for our time – summed up the state of progress for black people by saying this:

“There are no race relations. White people were crazy. Now they’re not as crazy. To say that black people have made progress would be to say they deserve what happened to them before…So, to say Obama is progress is saying that he’s the first black person that is qualified to be president. That’s not black progress. That’s white progress. There’s been black people qualified to be president for hundreds of years. If you saw Tina Turner and Ike having a lovely breakfast over there, would you say their relationship’s improved? Some people would. But a smart person would go, “Oh, he stopped punching her in the face.” It’s not up to her. Ike and Tina Turner’s relationship has nothing to do with Tina Turner. Nothing. It just doesn’t. The question is, you know, my kids are smart, educated, beautiful, polite children. There have been smart, educated, beautiful, polite black children for hundreds of years. The advantage that my children have is that my children are encountering the nicest white people that America has ever produced. Let’s hope America keeps producing nicer white people.”

The same is absolutely true for women. It’s not that women have changed; it’s that men have gotten less crazy.

But I’m here to say that some of you are still kinda crazy and you have to stop. Just stop. If you’re the guy saying “Well, why didn’t she report it at the time”, if you’re the guy saying “He was a teenager”, if you’re the guy trying minimize the emotional wallop of seeing an sexual assailant being seriously considered for the Supreme Court, this just 2 years after an alleged sexual predator was elected president, you are still too crazy. You are still making it harder for women.

This is true if you are a woman or non-binary too. If you are in any way making excuses for Brett Kavanaugh, you are still too crazy.

Listen, I’m a grown up and I can handle the IV drip of rage I feel when I see people being deliberate obstacles to the progress of others. I grew up on it. But my daughter is six years old. She hasn’t been handed a plateful of rage yet and my job as her feminist mother is too reduce the helping of rage she’ll have to digest in her lifetime. Maybe I can’t give her a life of unadulterated joy but I’ll be damned if she has to be as angry as I am. As my mother was. As all the feminists before her have had to be.

So for the sake of the girls and kids of color and LGBTQA kids all coming up: be less crazy.

Wolfpack: If you’re depressed and/or angry about the previous section of this column, it’s ok. I am, too. Fortunately, we live in a  time when Abby Wambach gives kickass graduation speeches as women’s colleges and we can watch them online. I strongly encourage you to watch her right now and then throw away your own red riding hood. It’s time to be the wolf you were always meant to be.

That’s all I’ve got this week, folks. Be less crazy and be like a wolf. Maybe that will make everything all better. Meanwhile, tune in to The More Perfect Union Podcast when it drops on Monday!