Dwain Northey

A K Is for Boys, Apparently

Every once in a while, my ADHD brain decides that the important questions of the universe can wait while it investigates something that absolutely nobody asked it to investigate. This morning, apparently, we’re talking about names, spelling, and the possibility that the English language has been quietly messing with my head for decades.

Specifically, unisex names.

Take Chris and Kris. Both sound exactly the same when spoken aloud, yet Chris seems to lean masculine while Kris seems to lean feminine. At least, that’s how my brain has decided to interpret them. Then there’s Terry and Teri, where the traditional spelling with a y feels more masculine to me, while the i at the end seems to soften it into something more feminine.

And now I can’t stop thinking about it.

Why does a K seem tougher than a CH? Why does a Y feel more masculine than an I? We’re talking about the same sounds, the same basic names, and absolutely no logical reason that one collection of letters should have a gender identity attached to it.

Yet here we are.

The letter K has a certain visual aggression about it. Look at the thing. It’s all sharp angles and straight lines, like it was designed by somebody who thought the letter X wasn’t sufficiently intimidating. A K doesn’t just sit there looking pretty. It looks like it’s prepared to argue with you in a parking lot.

Meanwhile, CH is practically a linguistic group project. Two letters working together to produce one sound. There’s something almost diplomatic about it. The C and H have to cooperate, presumably after a lengthy committee meeting, before they can get anything accomplished.

Maybe that’s why Chris feels masculine and Kris feels feminine to me. The K is direct, abrupt, and visually sharp. The CH is softer on the page, even though both produce the same sound. My brain apparently sees the spelling before it hears the name and makes an executive decision.

Of course, this is not a scientific theory. It’s barely a theory at all. It’s an observation made by a middle-aged guy before breakfast, which puts it somewhere between amateur linguistics and wondering why the refrigerator makes that noise.

But the Terry and Teri situation makes it even more interesting.

The y in Terry seems to give the name a little more weight. It’s familiar, sturdy, and, in my experience, often associated with men. Teri, on the other hand, looks lighter and more delicate. The final i seems to give the name a little flourish, as though somebody decided it needed a touch of elegance.

Why? The pronunciation hasn’t changed. Nobody is adding a French accent. We’re not suddenly speaking Italian. We’ve simply replaced one letter with another, and somehow the name feels different.

Then again, perhaps the letters aren’t doing nearly as much work as I think they are. Perhaps I’m looking at decades of cultural conditioning disguised as personal intuition.

Names don’t develop their gender associations in a vacuum. We hear them attached to people throughout our lives. We see them in books, on television, in movie credits, and on the attendance sheets of our childhood classrooms. Eventually, our brains build associations without bothering to consult us about the process.

If most of the Chrises we encountered growing up were men, Chris becomes a masculine name in our mental filing cabinet. If the Teris we remember were women, that spelling begins to feel feminine. The spelling becomes a shortcut, and the shortcut starts masquerading as instinct.

There’s also a history to the way we spell names. Chris is commonly a shortened form of Christopher or Christine, while Kris can be a shortened form of Kristian, Kristina, or other names. Terry has traditionally been used for both men and women, and Teri became a recognizable feminine spelling. None of these spellings belongs exclusively to one gender, but cultural habits have helped establish patterns.

In other words, the letters might not have a gender. We just keep giving them one.

And that brings me to the larger absurdity of the English language: we routinely assign personalities, moods, and identities to things that have no business possessing them.

We decide that certain names sound masculine or feminine. We describe colors as masculine or feminine. We give cars names and personalities. We talk about ships as though they’re women. We look at a collection of letters and somehow develop an impression of the person who might answer to them.

Humans are pattern-recognition machines. We can find meaning in just about anything, including things that may not mean a damn thing.

Which is probably why my brain woke up this morning and decided that the difference between a K and a CH deserved serious consideration. Somewhere in the back of my head, an entire committee was convening to discuss the masculine energy of consonants while the rest of the world was presumably doing something productive.

I could have been thinking about the economy, the state of democracy, or whether Arizona will ever figure out that planting palm trees in the desert is a peculiar way to demonstrate our commitment to sensible landscaping.

Instead, I’m conducting a gender analysis of the alphabet.

And the really irritating part is that I still don’t have a definitive answer.

Maybe K really does look more masculine to me because it’s angular and abrupt. Maybe Y feels more masculine because of the names I’ve encountered over the years. Maybe CH and I seem softer because of associations I’ve absorbed without ever noticing. Or maybe my brain is simply entertaining itself by manufacturing a mystery out of four perfectly ordinary names.

That’s the thing about being curious. Sometimes you stumble across a genuinely interesting question. Other times, you spend twenty minutes wondering whether the alphabet has a gender bias.

The good news is that Chris and Kris can both be whatever they want to be, Terry and Teri don’t need to defend their spelling choices, and nobody should have to change a perfectly good name just because a guy with ADHD woke up and decided that a K looks like it could bench-press a C.

But I’ll probably notice it from now on.

And somewhere, a perfectly innocent person named Kris is going to introduce themselves, and a tiny, completely unnecessary part of my brain is going to whisper:

Interesting choice of consonant.

Some mornings, you just have to accept that your brain has its own agenda. Apparently, mine has decided to major in the gender politics of typography.

At least it’s keeping itself occupied. I just wish it would occasionally pick a subject that might be useful on Jeopardy.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

A Basket of Deplorables and a Couple of Bombs: The Great Republican Outrage Double Standard

There is apparently a special set of rules in American politics, and like most things in modern Republican politics, the rules depend entirely on who is talking. If a Democrat says something Republicans don’t like, we need congressional investigations, televised hearings, public apologies, and possibly a national day of mourning. If Donald Trump says something that would make a reasonably functioning democracy reach for the emergency brake, well, that’s just Donald being Donald.

Apparently, context is everything. Accountability is optional. And hypocrisy has become so thoroughly institutionalized that we might as well give it a cabinet position.

Remember Hillary Clinton’s infamous basket of deplorables comment during the 2016 presidential campaign? She suggested that a portion of Trump’s supporters belonged in a basket of people who were racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, and otherwise committed to some rather unpleasant attitudes. Was it a politically wise thing to say? Probably not. Did it hand the Trump campaign a gift-wrapped opportunity to portray itself as the victim of an elitist establishment? Absolutely.

Republicans treated that statement like Hillary had desecrated the Constitution, insulted the Founding Fathers personally, and kicked a puppy on live television. It became a campaign rallying cry, a national scandal, and supposedly definitive proof that Democrats despised ordinary Americans.

Never mind that she was describing a segment of his supporters, not every person who voted for him. Never mind the actual behavior and rhetoric she was criticizing. The phrase itself became the crime. The audacity of a Democrat expressing an unflattering opinion about certain Trump supporters was apparently beyond the limits of civilized political discourse.

How dare she?

And now, let’s turn our attention to Donald Trump, whose recent rally remarks about Los Angeles and San Diego being taken out by Iran have generated a considerably different response. Trump was discussing the war with Iran and the potential consequences of an Iranian attack, rather than straightforwardly advocating that the United States bomb its own cities. Context matters, and it should. But the question remains: Where is the same level of outrage, scrutiny, and accountability that Republicans demanded from Hillary Clinton?

Two major American cities. Millions of people. American citizens going about their daily lives. Families, children, hospitals, schools, businesses, and all the other ordinary things that make up a city.

And suddenly, we’re having a conversation about the possibility of those cities being attacked, while much of the political response seems to amount to, “Well, that’s Donald. You know how he is.”

And there it is. The entire Republican double standard distilled into one convenient little shrug.

Hillary calls some people deplorable, and we’re supposed to believe she committed a political sin of historic proportions. Donald talks about American cities being destroyed in the context of a foreign conflict, and suddenly everyone discovers the therapeutic benefits of lowering their expectations.

One statement gets treated like heresy. The other gets filed under Things Trump Says, somewhere between an insult directed at a reporter and another late-night social media tantrum.

Apparently, calling somebody a name is more threatening to the republic than talking about catastrophic violence. Who knew the greatest danger to our democracy was an adjective?

The Great Republican Vocabulary Police

But this selective outrage isn’t limited to Hillary Clinton or the things Trump says about American cities. Republicans have spent decades demonstrating that political language is perfectly acceptable right up until somebody uses it against them.

Remember when Republicans made a point of calling it the Democrat Party instead of the Democratic Party? This wasn’t simply a grammatical preference or an innocent case of forgetting a word. It was a deliberate political tactic intended to strip away the word Democratic and, in the eyes of some critics, emphasize the word rat hidden inside Democrat.

Very clever. Somewhere, a seventh-grade playground bully was taking notes.

The Democratic Party became the Democrat Party, as though changing a single syllable would somehow invalidate its members’ political philosophy. Because apparently, if you can make the other side’s name sound sufficiently irritating, you don’t have to engage with its policies.

Now, turn that same childish wordplay around.

Call them the Republic-Cons. Call them the Grand Old Pedophile Party, particularly when criticizing the hypocrisy of politicians who claim to champion family values while their party faces scandals involving sexual misconduct or abuse. Suddenly, the humor isn’t quite so funny. Suddenly, the language is offensive. Suddenly, we’re told that such rhetoric is beyond the pale, an attack on decent people, perhaps even something approaching treason.

Treason.

We have apparently reached a point in American political discourse where a childish nickname for the opposition can be presented as evidence of patriotism when Republicans use it, but as evidence of moral depravity when Democrats return the favor.

And let’s be clear: allegations of sexual abuse are serious matters. They should be investigated based on evidence, not political affiliation. No political party’s entire membership should be presumed guilty because of the actions of particular individuals. But the same standard must apply to everybody. If Republicans can use scandals involving individual Democrats to attack an entire party, they cannot reasonably demand that their own party be shielded from criticism when its members are implicated in similar scandals.

You don’t get to weaponize the behavior of individual opponents and then demand collective immunity for your own side.

And no, calling a political party an insulting nickname is not treason. Treason has a specific constitutional meaning. Being offended by somebody’s political rhetoric doesn’t magically transform that rhetoric into a crime against the country.

The Constitution does not contain a provision guaranteeing Republicans freedom from hurt feelings.

If it did, the Founding Fathers would have needed to establish a Department of Emotional Support before they even got around to writing the Bill of Rights.

Dumb Democrats and the Fragile Republican Ego

Then there’s Donald Trump’s latest linguistic masterpiece: calling Democrats “Dumb Democrats.”

Let that sink in for a moment.

The man who has built a political identity around insulting opponents, ridiculing journalists, assigning demeaning nicknames to political rivals, and treating public discourse like a professional wrestling promo has apparently discovered that alliteration is a devastating political weapon.

Dumb Democrats.

It’s practically Shakespeare. Somewhere, a high-school English teacher is wondering why we bother teaching metaphors when a president can simply repeat an insult until his audience applauds.

And, of course, Trump is entitled to criticize Democrats. Political leaders should be challenged, mocked, and held accountable. That’s part of living in a democracy.

But here’s the interesting part: Republicans have spent years insisting that Democrats are destroying civility in American politics. They condemned the “basket of deplorables.” They objected to criticism of Trump supporters. They have portrayed opposition rhetoric as proof that Democrats hate America and its citizens.

Yet when Trump calls his opponents dumb, his supporters are expected to regard it as entertaining political theater.

Apparently, the difference between an unacceptable insult and a brilliant political zinger is whether Donald Trump delivers it.

If Hillary calls a segment of Trump’s supporters deplorable, she’s an elitist who despises half the country.

If Trump calls Democrats dumb, he’s a master communicator connecting with ordinary Americans.

If a Democrat uses a mocking nickname for Republicans, it’s evidence of the left’s hatred and intolerance.

If Republicans rename the Democratic Party to work a rat joke into the conversation, it’s just politics.

And if somebody turns the wordplay around and gives Republicans an equally unflattering nickname, suddenly we’ve crossed a line that apparently only Republicans are authorized to draw.

You can practically hear the collective gasp from the party that made political insult comedy a central component of its campaign strategy.

How dare you use our tactics against us?

Outrage Is a One-Way Street

This is what makes the entire spectacle so exhausting. It isn’t that politicians insult one another. That’s hardly new. American politics has always included name-calling, personal attacks, and rhetoric that would make a respectable dinner party end early.

The problem is the manufactured moral outrage that appears whenever one side does something the other side has been doing for years.

Republicans don’t have to like Hillary Clinton’s language. Democrats don’t have to like Trump’s. Neither party has a monopoly on intelligence, decency, or patriotism. And neither party should be exempt from criticism.

But if we’re going to establish standards for political speech, let’s establish standards that apply equally.

If calling people deplorable is unacceptable, explain why calling millions of Americans dumb is acceptable.

If political nicknames are evidence of a deteriorating national culture, then let’s acknowledge that the deterioration doesn’t magically stop when Republicans are holding the microphone.

If criticizing an opponent’s supporters is an attack on the country, then perhaps we should stop treating every Trump rally insult as a contribution to the national interest.

And if a president’s remarks about cities being destroyed deserve context, then give context to everyone else’s remarks, too. Don’t turn a single phrase from a Democratic politician into a permanent indictment while providing an endless supply of interpretive charity to a Republican president.

The standard cannot be that Republicans get to be crude, insulting, and provocative while Democrats must remain perfectly diplomatic, even when responding to the same behavior.

That isn’t a standard. It’s a loyalty test.

And the people administering that test seem remarkably confident that their own side will never have to take it.

The Final Irony

Maybe that’s the real story behind the basket of deplorables, the Republic-Cons, the rat jokes, and the Dumb Democrats.

It’s not really about vocabulary. It’s about power. It’s about who gets to define what is acceptable, who gets to deliver insults without consequences, and who is expected to apologize for daring to respond.

The Republican political machine has spent years cultivating a culture in which outrage is a weapon to be deployed selectively. A Democrat’s unfortunate phrase can be replayed for a decade. A Republican’s outrageous statement can be excused before the news cycle has finished reporting it.

And the more outrageous the statement, the more elaborate the excuses become.

Eventually, the whole exercise starts to resemble a schoolyard argument in which one kid gets to throw rocks, pull hair, and call everyone names, but the moment somebody throws a rock back, he runs to the teacher and announces that he’s being bullied.

The teacher, inexplicably, suspends the other kid.

And the rest of us are left wondering when the adults are going to return to the room.

Here’s a thought: Maybe the country would be better served if we spent less time debating whether political insults hurt somebody’s feelings and more time evaluating what our elected officials actually say, do, and accomplish.

Maybe the threat to democracy isn’t a nickname, a poorly chosen adjective, or an alliterative insult.

Maybe it’s a political culture that rewards cruelty, excuses hypocrisy, and treats accountability as something that only applies to the other team.

Because if Republicans can call Democrats dumb, Democrats can call Republicans hypocritical. If Republicans can mock the Democratic Party’s name, Democrats can return the favor. And if Republicans can demand that Hillary Clinton be judged by every word she uttered in 2016, then Donald Trump can be judged by the words he utters today.

That’s not persecution. That’s equality.

And if the Republican Party finds equality of standards intolerable, perhaps Hillary wasn’t entirely wrong about the existence of deplorable behavior.

Although, to be fair, the phrase basket of deplorables may no longer be sufficient.

At this point, we’d probably need a warehouse.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Chicken Little for Congress: The Sky Is Falling, and Apparently Only Republicans Have a Ladder

There are just a few weeks left until the midterm elections, which means it is once again time for that cherished American tradition: politicians explaining why, if you don’t vote for them, the entire country will spontaneously combust, democracy will collapse into a smoking crater, and your grandchildren will be forced to learn Marxism before they can learn their ABCs.

At least, that’s what we’re being told.

I’m seeing more and more Republican campaign commercials featuring the same tired message, and now Donald Trump himself is joining the chorus. The warning is essentially this: If Republicans lose control of Congress, America is doomed. The socialists will take over. Everything we’ve worked for will disappear. The country will descend into chaos.

Apparently, we’re one election away from having our national flag replaced with a red bedsheet, our grocery stores converted into government-run bread lines, and someone confiscating the last remaining pickup truck in Texas.

Welcome to the Republican campaign strategy for 2026: Chicken Little has a political action committee, and the sky is always falling.

Now, I have a question. If things are going so wonderfully, why does your campaign sound like the final five minutes of a disaster movie?

We’re supposed to believe that the economy is thriving, America is stronger than ever, the administration is making unprecedented progress, and everything is finally moving in the right direction. We’re told to celebrate the victories, trust the leadership, and appreciate the greatness unfolding before our very eyes.

Then the campaign commercial starts.

Suddenly, we’re told that if Democrats gain control of the House or Senate, everything will be destroyed. The country will be lost. Socialism will swallow the American dream whole. Apparently, all this prosperity and progress is being held together with a couple of Republican votes, some duct tape, and Donald Trump’s personal guarantee.

That doesn’t sound like confidence. That sounds like a homeowner trying to sell you a house while standing outside it as the roof catches fire.

And let’s talk about this socialist boogeyman. Republicans have spent so much time turning the word socialist into a political equivalent of garlic to a vampire that the word has practically lost any useful meaning. Want affordable health care? Socialist. Want stronger labor protections? Socialist. Want the wealthy to pay a tax rate that doesn’t require a forensic accountant and three offshore subsidiaries to understand? Socialist.

Apparently, anything that involves the government doing something for ordinary people instead of simply asking them to donate more money to people who already have plenty is one step away from the Soviet Union.

Never mind that Americans already depend on public services and institutions every day. Public schools. Highways. Fire departments. Social Security. Medicare. The military. These are not all interchangeable policies, and they certainly don’t make the United States a socialist country. But they do demonstrate that the relationship between government, markets, and the public is more complicated than a 30-second commercial can explain.

The word socialism is apparently most useful when you don’t have enough time to explain what your opponent actually proposes.

And that’s the beauty of political fearmongering: You don’t have to explain your own record if you can convince voters that the alternative is the apocalypse.

Why discuss health care costs when you can show a scary picture of a red flag? Why explain the national debt when you can warn that Democrats will destroy the economy? Why talk about wages, housing, infrastructure, education, or the cost of groceries when you can suggest that your political opponents are preparing to nationalize your lawn mower?

It’s a remarkably convenient arrangement. The voters are asked to evaluate the future based on their worst fears rather than the evidence of the present.

And the present is where this particular sales pitch gets interesting.

If the country is on such a magnificent trajectory, why must Republicans repeatedly warn us that everything could fall apart the moment they lose a few congressional seats? If their policies are delivering the results they claim, shouldn’t they have something more substantial to show us than a collection of horror stories about what Democrats might do?

A successful record ought to be able to stand on its own two feet. It shouldn’t need to hide behind a curtain, jump out at voters, and scream, “BOO! SOCIALISM!”

Of course, the explanation may be that midterm elections are not simply a referendum on a president. They’re also a way for voters to evaluate the party controlling Congress, the legislative agenda, and the balance of power between the branches of government. The House and Senate are not decorative accessories in the presidential gift shop. They have their own constitutional responsibilities, and control of either chamber can substantially affect what an administration can accomplish.

That’s precisely why these elections matter.

But instead of making the case for their candidates, their legislation, or their accomplishments, the message increasingly sounds like an ultimatum: Keep us in power, or you’ll be responsible for whatever terrible thing we say will happen next.

That’s not much of a governing philosophy. It’s an insurance policy written by someone who insists your house will burn down if you cancel, while refusing to let you inspect the wiring.

And let’s appreciate the underlying irony. The same political movement that regularly promotes strength, confidence, American exceptionalism, and the ability to overcome adversity is suddenly telling us that the country is so fragile that a change in congressional leadership could destroy it.

Which is it?

Is America the greatest nation on Earth, capable of surviving challenges, disagreements, economic upheaval, and political transitions? Or is it a delicate little snow globe that must remain on one particular politician’s desk, or the whole thing shatters?

You can’t have it both ways.

A healthy constitutional republic is designed to survive changes in political power. That’s the point of elections. Parties win, parties lose, presidents come and go, and Congress changes hands. The system is supposed to accommodate those changes without requiring everyone to run into the streets wearing a helmet.

There are certainly legitimate reasons to worry about particular policies, candidates, or legislative proposals. Voters should examine those issues carefully. They should understand the consequences of different approaches to taxes, health care, immigration, energy, and federal spending. Elections have real consequences, and political disagreements are not imaginary.

But there’s a difference between warning voters about a specific policy and telling them that the entire country will be lost if your party doesn’t win.

One is an argument. The other is an anxiety attack with a campaign logo.

And Donald Trump has made this kind of political messaging a familiar feature of his public communication: enormous stakes, dramatic warnings, and the suggestion that his political fortunes are inseparable from the fate of the nation. The current campaign message follows that same basic formula. A Republican defeat is not presented merely as a setback for the party. It’s portrayed as a potential national catastrophe.

Apparently, the republic has become a subscription service. Let the other party take control of Congress, and your American membership expires at midnight.

Here’s what I find particularly exhausting about this approach: The sky has supposedly been falling for years, yet the people making the predictions never seem to run out of sky.

Every election is the most important election ever. Every opposing candidate is a threat to civilization. Every policy disagreement is a gateway to tyranny. Every change in congressional control is apparently the opening scene of a dystopian miniseries that nobody asked Netflix to produce.

Eventually, a reasonable person might wonder whether the constant emergency is the product being sold.

Fear is politically useful because it doesn’t require people to be happy with the present. It only requires them to be sufficiently frightened of the alternative. If you can persuade voters that the other side represents total destruction, you don’t have to convince them that your side is doing a particularly good job. You only have to convince them that the other guys are worse.

It’s the political equivalent of a restaurant owner telling you the food may be mediocre, the service may be terrible, and the plumbing may be questionable, but if you eat somewhere else, the building across the street will definitely explode.

So you keep coming back. Not because you’re impressed, but because you’re afraid.

And perhaps that’s the larger problem. When every election is marketed as the end of civilization, people eventually become exhausted by the constant alarms. Some tune out. Some become cynical. Others begin to assume that every warning is just another attempt to manipulate them into voting a particular way.

That’s dangerous, too. Real threats deserve attention, and serious policy disagreements deserve serious consideration. If everything is an emergency, distinguishing an actual emergency from an election-season sales pitch becomes increasingly difficult.

Which brings us back to Chicken Little.

Remember the story? The little chicken believes the sky is falling and runs around warning everyone. The problem isn’t that the sky is actually falling. The problem is that panic spreads faster than careful thought.

In modern American politics, however, Chicken Little has upgraded. He’s got television commercials, social media accounts, a professional campaign staff, and a very expensive production budget. He can now deliver the same warning in high definition, with ominous music and carefully edited footage of people looking concerned.

And every two years, he returns to tell us that this time, absolutely, positively, the sky is going to fall.

Maybe instead of listening to the volume of the warning, we should examine the substance of the argument. What have these politicians actually accomplished? What policies are they proposing? What evidence supports their claims? What would their opponents really be able to do if they won? And which parts of the forecast are based on documented proposals, rather than somebody’s imagination running wild in a focus group?

Those are reasonable questions for voters to ask, regardless of party.

Because the United States is not supposed to depend on one party maintaining permanent control to remain a functioning country. It’s supposed to depend on institutions, laws, accountability, and citizens who are willing to look beyond the latest political panic attack.

A change in congressional leadership isn’t the end of America. It’s a constitutional process. It can produce changes in policy, investigations, legislation, and the direction of government. Some people will welcome those changes; others will oppose them. That’s how representative government works.

The sky doesn’t fall because one party loses an election.

Sometimes, a party loses because voters are dissatisfied with what it has done. Sometimes, voters decide they want a different direction. Sometimes, they want a check on the people already in power. And sometimes, they simply want the government to stop treating them like frightened children who need a bedtime story about monsters to make them behave.

Perhaps the most revealing question in these commercials isn’t what Republicans say will happen if they lose.

It’s why they think fear of losing is a more compelling argument than the merits of winning.

If your record is as good as you say it is, explain it. If your policies are working, demonstrate how. If your opponents have bad ideas, identify those ideas and explain the consequences.

Don’t just point at the horizon and yell that the sky is falling.

We’ve heard that one before.

And after years of watching American politics turn every disagreement into a civilization-ending crisis, I’m beginning to suspect that the only thing reliably falling is the quality of the political conversation.

But don’t worry. I’m sure there’s a campaign commercial coming to explain why that’s the Democrats’ fault, too.

Cue the ominous music. Show the red flag. Fade to black.

Vote for us, or the sky falls.

Apparently, after all these years, Chicken Little is still running for Congress.

And he still hasn’t learned how to look up.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

I have spent a fair amount of time wondering why so many of the stories we tell ourselves seem to need a dark side.

Why can’t something just be good?

Why can’t we have a little light without immediately being reminded that somewhere behind the curtain, there are demons, sinners, eternal consequences, and apparently a celestial accounting department keeping track of everything we’ve done wrong since breakfast?

I’ve written before about our apparent inability to tell a story without putting some darkness in it. Maybe that’s just human nature. We seem to need a villain, a tragedy, a cautionary tale, or at least somebody wandering around in the background ominously reminding us that things could be much worse.

And then I started thinking about religion.

Specifically, organized religion.

I’ll willingly admit that I haven’t been to church in a very long time. I’m not making some grand declaration of atheism or claiming that I have figured out the mysteries of the universe. I simply haven’t been sitting in a pew on Sunday mornings for quite a while.

But I remember what it felt like when I did.

And what I remember most isn’t necessarily feeling bad when I walked in.

It was feeling bad when I walked out.

There always seemed to be something lurking around the edges of the service. Sin. Temptation. Judgment. Hell. The devil. Guilt. Shame. The possibility that I wasn’t quite measuring up to whatever invisible standard I was supposed to be measuring myself against.

Even when the sermon was supposed to be about love, there was often a warning attached.

Love your neighbor—but remember who the sinners are.

Forgive—but remember what happens to people who don’t.

Be kind—but don’t forget that there are people living the wrong way.

Believe—but be very concerned about what happens if you don’t.

It can make religion feel less like an invitation to walk into the light and more like a fire drill for avoiding the dark.

And I’ve always found that strange.

Because if the central message is supposed to be about love, compassion, forgiveness, mercy, kindness and hope, why does fear seem to get such a prominent speaking role?

Maybe that’s one of the reasons Christmas always felt different.

For a little while, the emphasis seemed to shift.

There were lights everywhere. Candles. Music. Decorations. People wishing strangers peace and happiness. Churches seemed to become less interested in reminding everyone what was wrong with humanity and more interested in celebrating the possibility that something good had entered the world.

And then, eventually, Christmas ends.

The lights come down.

And apparently we’re back to worrying about the demons.

Maybe I’m oversimplifying it. I know there are churches that genuinely emphasize love, service, acceptance and community. There are religious people who spend their lives helping other people without asking what they believe, who they love, how they vote, or whether they have checked all the appropriate theological boxes.

Those people exist.

And honestly, they’re probably closer to the version of religion I could understand.

Because here’s the thing I’ve never quite understood: Why spend so much energy convincing people that everyone else is different when difference is one of the most obvious things about being human?

We’re different.

Of course we are.

Different backgrounds. Different cultures. Different beliefs. Different ideas about God. Different ideas about whether there is a God. Different ways of loving. Different ways of living. Different questions. Different answers.

That’s not a bug in humanity.

That’s humanity.

Maybe if I ever walked into a church again, that’s the kind of sermon I’d actually like to hear.

Not one telling me who the demons are.

Not one explaining who is going to hell.

Not one spending forty-five minutes identifying which people aren’t living correctly.

I’d like somebody to stand at the front of the room and say:

Look at all these different people.

Isn’t that amazing?

Now go be kind to them.

What a radical theological concept.

Maybe the purpose of religion doesn’t have to be convincing us that we’re surrounded by people who are wrong. Maybe it could be teaching us how to live with people who aren’t like us without needing to fix them.

Maybe faith could be less about fearing the reaper and more about embracing the light.

Less “Here is what happens if you get it wrong.”

More “Here is what you can do while you’re here.”

Because eventually, every one of us gets the same ending. That’s the one theological proposition that doesn’t seem to require much debate.

We’re here.

We get some amount of time.

Then we’re not.

So perhaps the interesting question isn’t how terrified we can become of what happens afterward.

Perhaps it’s what we do with the time before then.

Do we make somebody’s day better?

Do we forgive somebody?

Do we help somebody who needs help?

Do we make room at the table?

Do we learn something from someone who doesn’t look, think, pray or live like we do?

Do we leave the world with a little more light than we found?

I don’t know whether I’d ever become a regular churchgoer again.

But I know what might get me through the door.

A church that didn’t spend so much time telling me what to fear.

A church that didn’t need an enemy.

A church that didn’t confuse difference with danger.

A church that understood that maybe the greatest expression of faith isn’t pointing toward the people standing in the darkness and explaining why they’re there.

Maybe it’s simply turning on another light.

And then another.

And another.

Until eventually, there isn’t quite so much darkness left to worry about.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

There is a deeply strange contradiction in the way modern society talks about women. We like to congratulate ourselves for being civilized, enlightened, technologically advanced, and supposedly more evolved than the barbarians who came before us. We have smartphones that can translate languages in real time, artificial intelligence that can write poetry, rockets that can land themselves, and medical technology that can keep a human heart beating outside the body.

And yet, apparently, we are still struggling with the revolutionary concept that women are human beings rather than merchandise.

Every so often, another story comes along and reminds us just how badly we have failed that particular class.

We hear about allegations of sexual assault involving college students. We hear about young women whose accounts are questioned, minimized, dissected, or somehow turned into debates about what they were wearing, how much they had been drinking, why they went somewhere, or why they trusted the people around them. And now, in Arizona, we have allegations involving a political candidate who says she was sexually assaulted while putting up campaign signs.

Because apparently even democracy can’t put up a yard sign without somebody deciding a woman’s body is an invitation.

The details of individual allegations have to be handled carefully. Allegations are not convictions, and accusations deserve due process. But there is a much larger issue underneath these individual cases, and that issue doesn’t require a courtroom verdict to recognize.

We have a cultural problem.

And it isn’t new.

Human beings have been objectifying women for as long as we’ve had enough civilization to document our bad behavior. Prostitution is ancient. Paintings and sculptures have depicted women as objects of sexual beauty for thousands of years. Then came the modern industrialization of it: pin-up girls, Hollywood, men’s magazines, Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler, strip clubs, advertising campaigns that discovered somewhere along the way that selling everything from automobiles to beer became easier if you put a nearly naked woman next to it.

We somehow managed to turn half the human population into a marketing strategy.

And before somebody jumps in with, “But women can choose to pose nude or work in a strip club,” yes. Of course they can.

That’s not the point.

There is nothing inherently wrong with consensual sexuality between adults. There is nothing inherently wrong with someone deciding to be a dancer, model, actor, sex worker, or anything else involving their own body. Agency matters. Consent matters. Choice matters.

The problem is what happens when a culture becomes so accustomed to seeing women as sexual objects that some people begin confusing being sexually attracted to someone with having some kind of entitlement to them.

Those are radically different things.

And this is where rape enters the conversation.

Rape isn’t fundamentally about sex.

It’s about power, control, domination, humiliation and the destruction of another person’s autonomy.

The sexual component is the weapon.

That’s an important distinction because we’ve spent centuries pretending that rape happens because men simply “can’t control themselves.” That’s nonsense. Men manage to control themselves when the consequences are serious enough. They can walk past attractive women every day without attacking them. They can experience sexual attraction without committing a violent crime.

Rape isn’t some biological inevitability.

It’s a choice.

And that brings us back to the culture.

I once knew a young woman who worked as a dancer while she was in college. She had a wonderfully blunt explanation for the existence of strip clubs.

Her assessment was essentially:

“The only reason strip clubs exist is because men are stupid.”

I wasn’t a parishioner at the Church of Strip Clubs then, and I haven’t exactly become a regular member of the congregation since. But I understood her point.

There is something objectively bizarre about paying another human being to stand on a stage and pretend to be sexually interested in you.

And apparently we’re willing to spend an astonishing amount of money proving that we’re willing to do it.

But again, the dancer isn’t necessarily the problem. She’s doing a job. The customer is making a voluntary transaction. Everyone knows the rules.

The more disturbing question is why our culture has spent thousands of years teaching men to view women through the lens of sexual availability in the first place.

We inherited patriarchy before we inherited electricity.

For most of human history, women were denied property rights, political power, education, economic independence, reproductive autonomy and control over their own lives. Their value was frequently measured through their usefulness as wives, mothers, caretakers or sexual partners.

We have made enormous progress since then.

But cultural programming doesn’t disappear just because somebody passes a law.

We can put a woman in Congress and still have people commenting on her body.

We can elect women to the highest offices in the country and still debate whether they’re attractive enough.

We can put women in boardrooms, laboratories, military cockpits and courtrooms and still have some idiot believe that “no” is merely the beginning of negotiations.

That’s the absurdity.

We are supposedly the dominant species on this planet.

We have altered rivers, split atoms, sequenced genomes, walked on the Moon and built a machine capable of generating an essay about how ridiculous human beings are.

And somewhere along the way, humanity apparently decided:

“Yes, but let’s still argue about whether women deserve bodily autonomy.”

Seriously?

This is our evolutionary achievement?

We have gone from caves to quantum computing and somehow dragged the same primitive impulse with us the entire way.

Maybe it’s time to grow up.

Women aren’t objects.

They aren’t trophies.

They aren’t advertisements.

They aren’t prizes for being nice to a man.

They aren’t responsible for preventing somebody else from assaulting them.

And they certainly don’t surrender ownership of their bodies because they wore something revealing, drank too much, went to a party, danced for money, flirted with somebody, changed their mind, or simply happened to exist in the same physical space as another human being.

Consent isn’t complicated.

Yes means yes. No means no. And everything else requires stopping.

That’s not radical feminism.

That’s not political correctness.

That’s not some terrifying attack on masculinity.

That’s kindergarten-level human decency.

Perhaps the real measure of whether we’ve become a civilized species isn’t whether we can build a computer smarter than ourselves.

Maybe it’s whether we can finally look at another human being and understand the simplest concept imaginable:

You belong to you.

What a revolutionary idea.

After thousands of years, perhaps we’re finally ready to catch up with it.