The Seven Deadly Sins of Dysfunction

Have you ever heard a child ask, “Why are things this way?” and found yourself unable to come up with an answer?

Why do we continue to rely on a dysfunctional process? An inefficient and unfair system? For transportation. For employment. For health care. You name it.

This question of “settling” for dysfunction always seems to come up at election time, and for good reason. The staggered primary system effectively disenfranchises massive numbers of Americans eager to vote on the presidency – a problem is magnified by media outlets salivating to declare “winners” and “inevitable nominees” before the votes are even counted.

If you live on the wrong side of Super Tuesday, it’s likely you won’t even get a chance to vote before two-thirds or more of the candidates have dropped out of the race. 

The solution is simple: A national primary. We all vote at the same time in the general election, so there’s no reason it can’t be done when we’re picking the nominees. 

But even if we were to change the primary system, when we get to the general election, we’d still be stuck with the Electoral College, an antiquated monstrosity that skews the popular vote by awarding electors (for nearly all states) on a winner-take-all basis. If you live in California, which has favored Democrats by 10 to 24 percentage points in each of the past five presidential elections, the result is all but a foregone conclusion.

I won’t even get into the problem with unelected “superdelegates” on the Democratic nominating process or the problem with voting on a weekday rather than a weekend or – as has been repeatedly proposed – a national voting holiday.

These mechanisms have all been in place for years, decades or even centuries. We complain about them, despair at them, and yet nothing gets done to change them.

Why?

For the same reasons we resist alternative energy sources, higher wages and guaranteed health care. I call them the seven deadly sins of dysfunction, and they apply to families, communities and organizations just as surely as they do to nations.

The sins

Fear. No matter how much we might moan about the current situation, we’re scared that any alternative will be worse. So we settle. We call ourselves "pragmatic: for failing to pursue options that promise to enhance our lives because we fear they have the potential to screw things up even more. This isn’t pragmatism, it’s fear. As long as we tell ourselves we’re “just being practical,” what we're really doing is reinforcing the status quo.

Pride. “America is the greatest nation on Earth, and we do it this way, so it must be correct!” When we make statements like this, we forget that America’s greatness is largely a product of its willingness to innovate. From Henry Ford and the Wright Brothers to Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, we’ve forged greatness through change, not through blind allegiance to past practices. Pride is the great antidote to ambition. It says, “We’ve made it” and basks in the glow of self-adulation. Meanwhile, situations are changing that require us to adapt or perish. In this instance, the great spiritual teachers are correct: Pride is a killer.

Greed. Once we’ve established a predictable flow of dollars based on a given system, those who are on the receiving end of those dollars have a powerful incentive to keep it in place. And those dollars give them the power to perpetuate systems, even as they become damaging to the public at large. This is true whether the recipients are political Super PACs, banks, lobbyists, oil companies, health insurers or lawyers.

Power. Those with the money typically wield the power, but money isn’t the only problem. Those empowered by the status quo routinely use shame, threat, peer pressure, manipulation and intimidation to bully and goad those without power into accepting things as they are. And it works.

Resignation. “It’s always been this way” and “It can never change” are the mantras of those who might wish for things to change but have seen attempts at reform and innovation stymied repeatedly by those whose self-interest lies in preserving the status quo. If your experience tells you that change is impossible, you tend to accept the way things are as the way they should be. You learn to accept the unacceptable and rationalize it as “good” in order to avoid the cognitive dissonance that exists between hope and reality. Welcome to Stockholm, my dear Syndrome.

Laziness. Sometimes, the necessary change seems to require so much effort it just doesn’t seem worth it. Switch to alternative fuels? How many oil workers will lose their jobs? How many gas stations will have to be torn down? It just doesn’t seem worth it. What’s forgotten is that we’ve done this before: Remember when the transportation economy consisted of railroads and horse-drawn carriages? Building the nation’s road and highway system was a far more mammoth undertaking than any conversion to alternative fuels would be. And the effort created far more jobs than were lost in the transition. We’ve done it before, and we can do it again. Sometimes, it just seems like too big a pain in the ass.

Negligence. We just don’t want to think about it. Election reform is a prime example. Every four years, we complain about how badly dysfunctional our election system is. But then, once the campaign cycle is over, we forget about it. It’s just not a priority anymore, so nothing gets done. Then, before we know it, four more years have passed and it’s too late to fix things, so we just accept – and validate – the broken system once again.

There’s a broad array of dysfunction arrayed against any hope for change. But the good news is that we humans are, despite our stubbornness, highly adaptable. What we have to realize is that, while there may be no perfect time to embrace change, every moment that passes is a bad time to perpetuate dysfunction.

Strict dress codes send our kids a message: We care about your appearance, but we don't believe in you

We’ve got it backwards.

Somewhere along the line, some of us decided to trade personal responsibility and freedom of expression for “the devil made me do it”-style passing the buck. We decided that accountability wasn’t important – that it’s better to judge the proverbial book by its cover than to bother reading a single word inside.

Here’s what got me going today: A school district in Clovis, California, right next to my hometown, tried to keep a student from enrolling in classes because he wears his hair in a short ponytail. He wasn’t just any student, but an honors student with a 5.0 grade-point average who said he wanted to honor his cultural heritage.

But his motivation shouldn’t matter. Cultural. Religious. Artistic. I couldn’t care less about his motivation it, as long as he’s not a terrorist or gang banger. What I do care about is that the school is abdicating its core mission: Teaching young people how to forge an adult identity – something they’ll never learn if they don’t have a chance to express themselves.

Pride.

Responsibly.

Without excuses.

"DISTRACTIONS"

It’s easy to make excuses, to say that a student isn’t learning because he or she is “distracted” by a peer’s appearance. Excuse me for saying so, but that’s an insult. Kids are smart enough to know they can study just fine, thank you, when someone’s wearing a colorful shirt, a beard, a pair of earrings or long hair. And they’re disciplined enough to do it, too – especially when adults expect it of them.

But we don’t. Instead, we expect them to fail just because someone else has a few hairs “out of place” (by our standards) or has the audacity to wear a T-shirt that might just prompt someone to think outside the tight constraints of the administration’s imaginary box. “You’ll be too distracted,” we tell them, “to be able to learn.”

Guess what: If kids can’t learn because they're 'distracted' by some guy’s wearing facial hair, they won’t be able to function in a professional world that places a premium on broad skill sets and the ability to adapt. Distracting? You bet. They’d be better off getting used to that kind of distraction and, wouldn’t you know it, they can handle it – better than many of us imagine.

CONFIDENCE

It’s only when we stop having confidence in our youth that they dumb themselves down and stop listening to us. Why should they listen to people who expect them to fail in the face of some perceived external obstacle – even something so minor as the way a person dresses.

Instead of encouraging them to focus on their goals and take pride in their achievements, here’s what we’re teaching them: to stop trying and scapegoat others for their failures. Do we really want to be complicit in this? Do we want to be the ones who teach them that a book’s cover is all that matters? That style is more important than substance?

If we tell them that a classmate’s clothing can “make” them fail academically, how different is that than telling them a woman’s clothing can “make” a man rape her?

The fallacy here is that we’re faced with an either-or situation, that we must either raise a bunch of irresponsible hippies who never contribute anything to society or a generation of imperial storm troopers in identical white armor.

That’s a false choice based on a lack of confidence in our kids – based, for some of us, on the assumption that their creativity is a threat to everything we’ve achieved. We accuse them of being undisciplined, of having no taste in music, of wasting their lives. For all our talk about making the world a better place for our children, we sometimes fail to realize that the best way – ultimately, perhaps, the only way – to do that is to empower them to make it a better place for themselves ... and we do the exact opposite.

SCAPEGOATS

We teach them to scapegoat others, which is the antithesis of empowerment.

But it's easy because what we all too often do ourselves.

We stop living our own lives, and two things happen: We make others (minorities and immigrants; those “others” who don’t look like us, practice our religion or speak our language) into fall guys for our failures. Meanwhile, we live vicariously through the clones we place on cardboard pedestals – celebrities, athletes and politicians, but most of all, our kids. Objects all of our own wish fulfillment.

Our kids, of course, aren’t clones or “mini-mes,” and we’re no better than those obnoxious parents who shout obscenities at Little League games. We teach them to play the game our way, then express disappointment when they ultimately decide to be writers or artists instead. In the meantime, we occupy ourselves by screaming at the poor scapegoated umpire to “go find a pair of glasses!” when that last strikeout’s our fault for forcing our kids into a mold that never fit them.

LESSONS

I’m thankful my parents never did that. They encouraged me to play basketball in junior high, but they never objected when I decided not to pursue it further.

And my high school never told me I couldn’t attend classes because I grew a full beard during my senior year (when it looked very much the same as it does in the photo accompanying this article, taken at my college commencement ceremony). No one ever complained that it was a distraction, and as for me, I blasted through my final semester with straight A’s.

If I’d been in Clovis, I might have been barred from enrolling in class.

We have two choices. We can empower our children to surpass our achievements, or we can enslave them to our ultimate obsolescence.

My own hope is that we equip our kids to go in search of lands yet undiscovered on roads less – or not yet – traveled.

On the trek that is our shared human journey, that will make all the difference.

What if we could vote "no" on candidates?

I want to vote "no" this election.

Not “none of the above.” This is different: I want to be able to actually vote against candidates I don’t like.

The cold, hard truth is there are a lot more politicians I don’t want elected than candidates I can get excited about, and I’m guessing you might feel the same way.

Sure, we can put photos of them dartboards and engage in some friendly target practice, and we can squawk about them on social media. But what if we had an actual, tangible way to express our displeasure — not by voting for some other candidate we might consider the lesser of two or more evils, but by casting a vote directly against that vile carpetbagger, commie or corporate crony we so despise?

Think of the satisfaction! We bemoan the lack of voter participation, yet just imagine how many more people might come to the polls to bury Caesar (under a mountain of “you suck!” chads) than to praise him.

ONE PERSON, TWO VOTES?

Pollsters routinely measure both favorable and unfavorable ratings for candidates. Why shouldn’t we be allowed to express those opinions at the ballot box?

What if voters got to vote twice: Once for the candidate they like, and once for the candidate they wouldn’t want to see in office before hell freezes over or a Led Zeppelin reunion tour — whichever comes second. (If I were a betting man, I’d put money on permafrost in hell over “Stairway to Heaven.”) Each vote would count equally, so you’d subtract the nays from the ayes to arrive at a net score. Imagine if the winner got 3 net votes instead of 3,000 or 3 million. We wouldn’t hear much talk of a mandate then!

Well, maybe we would. These are politicians we’re talking about.

If we wanted things to get even crazier, we could treat candidates like ballot propositions and vote "yes" or "no" on every one of them!

One complication: We’d have to change “one man, one vote” to “one man, two votes.”

So, as an alternative, we could retain the single vote — but give voters the choice of whether to vote for one candidate or against another?

RELEVANT AGAIN

Either way, the system would likely be a boon to two kinds of politician: moderates (aka centrists) and third-party candidates.

With radicals and true believers on both sides voting against their opposite numbers, the vast American center that’s often drowned out by all the shouting from the extremes might be able to gain a little clout by staying quiet. Third-party candidates would benefit, too, from flying under the radar (which they’re often very good at, despite their aspirations to the contrary.) A modest number of positive votes coupled with almost no negatives might just be enough to win it.

Would such a system result in more positive campaigning, because fewer candidates would want to risk getting too many “no” votes? Or would it give rise to even more vicious smear campaigns against the candidate viewed as the greatest threat?

Those are interesting questions.

CONSEQUENCES

Either way, candidates would have to think even more strategically than they do now, which could be even more fun to watch for political rubberneckers than it is now. We might as well post a traffic sign that reads “Warning: political pileup ahead.” For those who view politics as blood sport, this would be more fun than a trip to the Roman Colosseum in its heyday.

We voters would have to cogitate a little more, too. Do we vote for the candidate we like most or against the candidate we fear most? Or do we vote against someone else because that would be the biggest help to our favored candidate or party?

Delicious, isn’t it? There are all sorts of permutations and possible scenarios to consider.

I’ll leave you to consider the possibilities … and to wonder if this is a serious proposal or whether it’s all just tongue in cheek.

Sorry, but I’m not going to tell you. Instead, I’ll leave you with the same piece of advice that’s given to voters every time they enter the voting booth: You decide.

Why Hillary Clinton's in trouble. Again.

People don’t like being told what to do. Americans in particular. We don’t like “presumptive” candidates and inevitability. Yet that’s what both major political parties have tried to hand us in the current presidential race: candidates who are heirs apparent to political dynasties.

At the start of this election cycle, the powers that be were telling us about the near inevitability of a fall campaign between Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush. They had the money, they had the name recognition. It was all over but the shouting.

Now here we are at the start of 2016, and Clinton’s lead over a self-described socialist independent (Bernie Sanders) for the Democratic nomination is shrinking dramatically. Bush is struggling to even maintain a viable candidacy, far behind Donald Trump – who’s anything but a lockstep Republican dogmatist. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find two people who have behaved less like party loyalists over the past couple of decades than Sanders and Trump.

Meanwhile, former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg is weighing an independent run.

It’s amazing that political operatives haven’t caught on to what’s happening and, more importantly, why it’s happening. This isn’t your typical election cycle, in which populist candidates emerge, gain brief traction, then are cowed into submission by party machines spinning retread propaganda. Here’s why this is happening.

Lesson No. 1: You don’t win by running out the clock. Any sports fan knows this. How often have you watched your team try to sit on a lead or switch to a “prevent defense,” only to see hungrier opponents seize the opportunity to steal the game. They sense your team’s fear. They smell blood. And they pounce.

This is what happened to Hillary Clinton when she willingly donned the mantle of “presumptive” nominee back in 2008. She tried to sit on her lead, milk her “aura of inevitability” for all it was worth … and watched a hungrier Barack Obama sprint past her like the Roadrunner to claim the nomination.

The pragmatic Clinton wants to continue Obama’s policies; the revolutionary Sanders wants to build on them. Guess which sounds more exciting to the Democratic voter?

Lesson No. 2: You don’t win if you can’t learn from history. If the definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results,” Clinton’s halfway there (while, ironically, seeking to present herself as the most rational of candidates). She’s following the same kind of strategy that lost her the nomination in 2008 and expecting it to work better against Sanders than it did against Obama. Perhaps she assumes Sanders to be a weaker candidate than Obama was. But it’s helpful to remember that she didn’t view Obama as a major threat early in 2007, either.

As Lao Tzu said, “There is no greater danger than underestimating your opponent.” She appears to have done it again.

Lesson No. 3: Like it or not, it’s a game. Some might take offense at my use of sports analogies, but the candidate who loses sight of the fact that politics is blood sport does so at his or her own peril.

Regardless of what you think of him or his policies, Trump seems to understand this perhaps better than any other candidate in the race today: “Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score,” he once said. “The biggest excitement is playing the game.”

Many of us complain, in high-minded fashion, about negative campaigns and the horserace aspect of politics, but we still watch – just as we still gravitate toward negative headlines in print and online. There are times we say one thing because we’re embarrassed to admit the truth in polite company. If everyone else is high-minded, we want to appear that way, too.

But not if someone is telling us we need to appear that way. The same people who give in to peer pressure on a regular basis will balk at “going along to get along” the minute someone comes right out and tells them what to do. Once the pressure shifts from subtle to overt, from suggestion to expectation, we do an about-face and tell the self-proclaimed authorities and experts where to stick their presumptions.

Yes, elections are more than Monday Night Football on a debate stage. Policies are at stake that can change the course and quality of lives across the nation and beyond. But whether it be the NFL or the stock market, Americans have been brought up to believe that competition weeds out the less fit and creates the kind of success that benefits us all.

We declared our independence from a monarchy, and we don’t want to go back. Sure, we like all the pomp and circumstance surrounding our idols and icons, but we want to be the ones holding the crown at their coronation. We don’t like arriving late to the show and finding someone else has made the decision for us.

If people try telling us who we’re supposed to support, we’re likely to flip them the bird and vote the other way. That’s one reason Obama won in 2008, and it’s the same reason Trump and Sanders are seeing such strong support as we enter 2016.

People are telling us, “You can’t support him,” at which point we tune them out and refuse to hear them tell us why. Their reasons might be valid or not, but we don’t care. What we care about is that someone has presumed to try to tell us what to do.

Lesson No. 4: The familiar may be comforting, but if we perceive our lives to be less than what they should be, we’ll look elsewhere for answers. Fresh faces will trump (pun intended) staid guardians of the status quo when the deep flaws in that status quo are on display.

In the past, the status quo usually carried the day. But two things have changed that have upended the conventional wisdom behind running traditional “safe” campaigns.

1. The Great Recession. Many Americans still feel as though they’re caught in it, either because they have yet to recover financially or because things have gotten better so gradually it’s hard to notice an improvement. The status quo hasn’t been nearly as attractive as it used to be since 2007. That’s almost a decade now, and the longer the situation persists, the more deeply an aversion to “good enough” becomes in our psyche. Running a safe campaign won’t work the way it once did until/unless the middle class is firing on all cylinders and prosperity touches a broad swath of economic sectors.
2. Social media. Our immediate, online connections to one another have empowered us like never before. We don’t get our news exclusively from “authoritative” sources anymore, but from each other. The more effective social media are at providing an alternative voice for the voter, the more attractive alternative voices will be among candidates for public office. We vote for people who reflect our values, and those values are shifting right along with our level of connectivity. We’re realizing that, more than ever before, we can circumvent the “system” and call the shots ourselves now. People spouting rehearsed lines sound less and less authentic because we’re talking more to people who “go from the gut” and “tell it like it is” – each other.

Old-school politicians are still playing by the old rules. But once the game start to change, those rules matter less than they used to. Eventually, it becomes a whole new ballgame.

At this point, traditional candidates like Hillary Clinton still have a lot of tools at their disposal: party backing, deep-pocketed backers, ballot access, etc. Clinton may well win the Democratic nomination, but if she continues to "sit on her lead," she may find herself without a lead to sit on. On the other side, Trump has maintained his top-dog standing in the polls far longer than any of the "experts" predicted he would.

Whoever the nominees are and wherever we are in the course of our political evolution, it will be fascinating to see how it all plays out - both this year and long-term.

Let the games begin.

Our addiction to outrage is destroying us

"I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore." - Howard Beale (Peter Finch) in Network

Outrage. Rage directed outward. As a society, we seem to have become addicted to it. But as with almost any addiction, it's sapping our strength and distracting us from living our lives together in some semblance of community.

There was a time when crime and natural disasters topped the local news. "If it bleeds, it leads." But that principle seems to be giving way, increasingly, to a new trend, with prominence being placed on stories that either 1) create new outrage or 2) pour salt on the still-open wounds of past indignities be reporting on new offenses of the same sort.

Addictions can sap our strength, demoralize us, make us feel like prisoners, and our addiction to outrage does all these things. We're demoralized because outrage takes an enormous amount of emotional energy to sustain. We tell ourselves this is necessary because of the magnitude of the offense, and sometimes it is. If we weren't outraged at things like the Japanese internment, racism, sexism, the Holocaust, it would call into question our sense of compassion - and open the door for similar abuses in the future.

But an addiction to outrage is different. It demands that, when one issue is dealt with, we find a new object on which to focus our indignation. For most of us, this can be draining and produce a sense of despair if we don't get our way. As drug addictions progress, the highs fade and the level of dependence rises. The same thing happens with an addiction to outrage: "Victories" are often difficult to achieve, and each one seems less significant as we find some new affront that demands our attention.

My way is the only way

The word "righteous" is so often paired with "indignation," and with good reason. Outrage is based on a firm conviction that the other side is wrong. And this conviction can lead to the kind of arrogance that cuts off dialogue and ends any possibility for peaceful resolution. The outrage itself, rather than the reasoning that inspired it, becomes the motivation for pursuing first one cause and then another. "Because I believe it strongly" becomes "because it's right," which becomes "because I said so" and sometimes, ultimately, "because God says so." 

Those who are addicted to outrage adopt a sense of tunnel vision, just like any other addict. The high becomes the only goal; nothing else matters. This is why addicts break laws, trample on others' freedom and strive to control others, either by manipulation, threat or force and outright tyranny. Drug addictions often lead to an increase in crime and violence; an addiction to outrage can, in the same way, lead to violations of those and other boundaries.

The ability to focus one's attention intently on a cause can be transformational. We need activists who channel outrage into a force for needed change. What we don't need is an entire nation of outrage addicts shaming and shouting at one another, fueled by such high levels of dependence and frustration that their outrage has become hatred. Contempt. Vindictiveness. And that's what we're rapidly becoming, on both sides of an increasingly daunting ideological chasm.

Used properly, outrage can be a prescription for change. But like any prescription drug, it can cause severe damage if used without any kind of prudence or restraint. Channeling outrage into fighting for a cause is one thing. It's quite another to go out looking for something to feel outraged about in the hope that we can "change the world" and thereby soothe our damaged egos.

I'll be honest. I've done that. And judging from the behavior of more and more Americans, I'm far from the only one.

Can we put the outrage genie back in the prescription bottle where it belongs? I can't answer that, but I believe our future as a nation may depend on it.

You're irreplaceable, no matter what they tell you

Something touched me deep inside the day the music died. - Don McLean, "American Pie."

The past few days have been difficult. 

It didn't affect me directly when David Bowie died, but  it did affect me personally - as it did when Alan Rickman passed away a couple of days later. I didn't know either of these men. I wasn't a member of any fan club. I never dressed up like Ziggy Stardust, and I wasn't a Rickmaniac.

Both men were British, both were 69 years old and each was profoundly successful in his chosen field. Both died of cancer. But they shared something more than all that, an intangible something that made them, in a word, irreplaceable. Each was unique - fearless in ignoring, stretching and ultimately redefining the boundaries of their chosen professions for the sake being true to themselves.

"Actors are agents of change," Rickman once said. "A film, a piece of theater, a piece of music, or a book can make a difference. It can change the world."

"I don't know where I'm going from here," Bowie said, "but I promise you it won't be boring."

The sadness I felt at their passing had nothing to do with the fact that I'll never hear Bowie perform "The Man Who Sold the World" again or that I'll never see Rickman reprise his role as Severus Snape in some hypothetical "Harry Potter" prequel. It stemmed instead from the realization that I'll never witness them explore new creative challenges, which I have no doubt they would have met with the same finesse and originality they displayed in their previous work.

When a creative soul dies, it's as if creation folds back in on itself, curls into a fetal position and weeps. That's what I felt like doing because, in a sense, the music died again with Bowie. Just as it had with Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens in that plane crash 57 years ago. Just as it did again on Dec. 8, 1980, when John Lennon was shot. And when Freddie Mercury died. And Elvis. And so many others.

I can tell myself it's resurrected every time their songs are played and it's reimagined every time a new, vital artist comes along to stretch the boundaries in new and undreamt-of directions.

But that doesn't make the loss any less painful. Any less personal.

As if those losses weren't enough to deal with this week, I also learned that some people I knew had been laid off. They aren't celebrities, like Bowie or Rickman, but when I heard they'd lost their jobs, it felt no less  profound to me.

I imagined them going to exit interviews and being being fed that same old half-excuse, half-apology: "Don't take it personally. It's just business."

I have no idea whether these words were spoken in their cases, but they've been used often enough that they've become a cultural cliche, a way for us to console ourselves when we hurt someone. When we leave a relationship. When we hand someone a layoff notice. When we cut someone from the team. We tell them not to take it personally because we don't want to feel personally responsible for the pain we're inflicting.

But just what are we implying?

That to us, the person on the other end of our rejection was never a person in the first place. He or she was just a position, an impersonal cog in a malfunctioning machine that needs to be removed for the sake of efficiency. An obsolesce at best; a mistake at worst. And now it's time to get "leaner and meaner," with the emphasis on "meaner."

I can't think of anything meaner than treating someone as less than a person, more cruel than chastising him or her for having the audacity to take it personally when you've turned their personal lives upside down.

Of course, it's personal.

And here's the thing: Each of those people - each and every one of us, in fact - is irreplaceable. No less so than David Bowie or Alan Rickman. Each of us has it within ourselves to stretch boundaries, to imagine new vistas, to change at least some part of our world forever. And each time we tell someone, "It's nothing personal," we spit in the face of a unique, creative soul with boundless capacity to make a lasting impact on the future.

As a creative person, an author, I feel we have a basic obligation to nurture one another's artistry and to affirm each individual's personhood.

On the other hand, I count it a tragedy when we dehumanize people to assuage our own guilt or protect our bottom line. It's as if we're thumbing our noses at the people like David Bowie, Alan Rickman and all the other artists who've challenged and inspired us. By depersonalizing them in our own minds, we're eating away at our own humanity, our sense of empathy, our very souls.

All of this makes me very angry; I think I have a right to be.

And yes, I take it personally.