Andrew Yang: Not Just Your Teenage Son's Favorite Candidate

Andrew Yang is my family's #1 candidate.

Last weekend, my son and I drove three hours to Waterloo, Iowa to see Yang in person.

In a brew-pub, Josh and I were happy to stand (having sat in the car for three hours) to the side of the rows of chairs, just a few yards from where Yang was about to deliver an eloquent stump speech.

Now, for context, let me tell you that I have been working around law school books for about 20 years.  When I was hired as a temp in 1994, the publisher gave me a list of names and told me to call everyone on the list and explain that I represented the publisher, we were exploring the idea of a new Law & Policy series, and what did they think of that?

One of the names on the list was US Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. I had only the vaguest knowledge of the US Supreme Court.  It did not extend to the names of every judge on the court,  only the most high-profile judges whose names turned up regularly on the evening news.  (We had evening news then.)

Justice Stephen Breyer kept a pretty low profile.

I dutifully called him.

There were gatekeepers, of course, but I used the prestige of the publisher as a battering ram, and bashed my way through every gate, one by one.

At last, I had Justice Stephen Breyer on the phone.

I explained how the publisher was contemplating a new Law and Policy series.  What did he think of that?

He talked about the intersection of law and policy. He gave no indication that his time was super valuable.

I type fast, and tapped out every word on a loud typewriter, a constant patter in the background of our chat.  The smarter people are, the faster I have to type.

Most people on that list had, at most, one or two opinions on the subject of law & policy, but they might keep me on the phone for 30 minutes.  I'd only type those two ideas.  I wouldn't type every word, why would I?  Sometimes, I'd just stop typing, and listen, politely.

But a Supreme Court Justice--that's hecka typing.

Sure, I shouldn't have bothered the man--jaws dropped when the editors learned what I had done, though the publisher was greatly amused.

And while my chat with Breyer was extraordinary, speaking with smart people became a normal part of my job.

This is a round-about way of saying, I am not so easily impressed.

Andrew Yang impresses the heck out of me.

In that brew-pub, within reach of the first row of seated Iowans,Yang spoke for twenty minutes  without a single "uh" or "um." And yet, he didn't seem smooth or smarmy.  He came across as extremely focused, with a perfect command and mastery of the facts.

Sure, it's a stump speech, and he's given the same talk in various permutations a hundred times or more.  But it didn't feel that way.  It felt fresh, energized, and earnest.

The Q and A was the same. No uhs or ums.

A woman who had started a for-profit local newspaper asked, How might the federal government support local news outlets struggling to survive?

Yang (I'm paraphrasing) talked about matching grants with enough detail to show that he had given this some thought and wasn't making it up on the spot.  Local journalism is the key to a healthy democracy, he said, citing the alarming trend of local newspapers failing and disappearing in towns and cities across the country.

You may think Yang's proposal of a Universal Basic Income, or the Freedom Dividend, is a fringe concept.  But really, the problem is that it is a solution to a problem that many of us don't have yet.  A lot of Iowans have it, but a lot of my FB friends do not.  And that problem is that many jobs in retail have disappeared, thanks to Amazon; and more jobs will disappear over then next decade as AI replaces humans in customer service.

Where you think Yang is crazy, I think he's visionary.  I think Yang has a more sophisticated understanding of technology than other candidates.  He knows how technology is being developed around the world for business interests, and he can follow its trajectory through the next decade.

Andrew Yang is the only candidate anticipating what AI will mean for jobs in customer service--where people can expect to lose their jobs to AI robots just as people in manufacturing and retail have lost their jobs to automation and Amazon, respectively.

(Since I started in legal ed publishing, the jobs of composition--setting book pages--and printing & binding have all been moved to India.  In 1994, those jobs were all done in the US.)

It's useful to know which way the wind is blowing, to be prepared and adapt to the foreseeable future.
Of all the candidates, Andrew Yang seems to be the only one thinking and planning with real vision and foresight.

While Uniform Basic Income (UBI) would help to alleviate poverty immediately, and provide not only a safety net but a better quality of life for all Americans, most people dismiss it as Andrew Yang's pipe dream.

When we consider the thousands of jobs that have been and continue to be eliminated by a handful of tech companies (that are making ever-greater profits), and when we recall that our personal data is being amassed by those same companies and sold and resold for billions of dollars (of which we see not a penny), finding ways to tax these behemoths to fund UBI kind of snaps into focus.

For a thoroughly researched and compelling argument for UBI and other proposals--on climate change and a host of issues--please go to Yang2020.com.  There, you'll discover the real Andrew Yang, the one with whom the post-debate fact checkers from the Washington Post cannot find fault.

What Is A Cup of Water

Mothering is "the act of bringing up a child."  It is also "the act of being like a mother," especially, according to the Oxford Dictionary, "to be caring, protective, and kind."

Fathering, on the other hand, is the paternal act of begetting progeny.  It is also "the act of bringing up a child as a father. " But what "as a father" means, the Oxford dictionary does not endeavor to explain.  We can only assume that the act of being a father cannot be described--it simply is. One might say, fathering is the fact of being a father.

Another way of looking at it is that younger generations may decide how they want the act of fathering to be described in future editions of the Oxford Dictionary.

Currently, I think of "mothering" as acts of nurturing and caring, and I think of "fathering" as animal husbandry.  With regard to humans, the word "fathering" is seldom used--perhaps because the definition is incomplete.

Semantics, you say?  Don't underestimate semantics.  I need only spend a few hours on Duolingo to see how language reveals culture.

French Duolingo:
"This cheese is superb."
"Everyone knows that his uncle is in love with her."
"Not that blue dress, please; the other one."

 Spanish Duolingo:
"The soccer game is this Saturday."
"Soccer is my favorite sport."
"That blue dress is too expensive [or cheap]."
"Juan, do you want to eat a sandwich?"

I haven't studied English as a second language, but I've studied it as my first language.

My English Duolingo:
"I'm going to the dog park."
"I'm going to feed the horses."
"What does today's weather look like?"
"Josh, have you done your homework?"
"I haven't thought about dinner."

Yes, semantics is a bullshit major, but language does have a way of reflecting something of our cultures and selves.

My mother lives 1200 miles away.  I miss her a great deal. I miss her jokes, laughter, and company. I miss her face. And I miss being mothered.

I live with my husband, who fathers my son--and sure enough, none of us are quite sure what that means.

And I live with my 16-yr old son.  A teenage boy is neither fathering nor mothering.

But when my son was little, if he found me feeling ill or distressed, a beatific expression would come over his dear little face, and he would offer me a cup of water.  Then he would bring me a cup of water.

I think he picked this up at school.  Students who become distressed or ill in school must receive concern in the form of a cup of water.

I remember thinking that it was a sweet impulse that my son had to bring me water, but I also wondered, Why does my son think that water cures everything?  Why did he associate every health event with dehydration?

But now, I realize: It wasn't the water, idiot! It was the mothering. It was the gesture of caring that was important.

When you think about it, this is as pure an act of mothering as there is--roughly equivalent to picking up a crying babe and applying it to one's breast.

My son went to school and someone taught him this beautiful act of kindness, which he learned to exercise reflexively, on every appropriate occasion. Mothering.

He's forgotten all that now. At 16. he's as befuddled as his father when it comes to TLC.

And, I'll admit it: Lately, I've needed a lot of TLC.

In November, I had a toothache, followed by a painful tooth extraction, followed by a painful condition called "dry socket."

In December, I woke up with inflamed knees--caused by sensitivity to injections of synovial fluid the previous day.  I had a few weeks of hobbling around on crutches and packing my knees in ice before I recovered.

Pain passes, but it can be a lonely and isolating experience.

And that's where mothering becomes so important.  Mothering is the cup of water, the cool hand on a hot forehead, the sugar in the medicine, the expressions of concern that make the pain tolerable, every discomfort easier to bear.

It has been a learning process, but, bit by bit, my husband has begun to understand, and to learn how to be mothering.

It wasn't easy for him to relate to my physical pain and suffering, because he is literally never sick.  Someone who never gets sick could be forgiven for believing that good health is simply a matter of strength of intention. Of mind over matter.  By that logic, the rest of us choose to become ill.  We induce illness, why?  To get attention, of course.  In that case, the obvious solution is to withhold attention.  Expressions of concern, any gesture of caring, will only contribute to the perverse motivations of the afflicted.

But even one most hardened by good fortune observes that a GI bug is not worth the chicken soup; nor does the inflammation that turns two knees into fire plugs seem a reasonable price to pay for getting out of chores.

My husband has come around.

Some might suggest that stoicism in the face of others' suffering describes the masculine style of parenting.  Where the Oxford English dictionary demurred, they might say that fathering is the training of children to become self-reliant.

But I think that relies too heavily on stereotypes of fatherhood that younger generations seem to be rejecting.

Not that there's anything wrong with self-reliance, but the act of withholding (fill in the blank: love, care, concern) is a default setting for most of us.

Just as it is easier to destroy than to create, it is easier not to nurture.  

Nurturing and concern require thoughtfulness, empathy, and action.

Mothering is always an inconvenience.

I have a friend, a young veteran whose military training taught her how to kill.  It taught her how to care for and use a gun, and how to kill another person without hesitation.  Her training changed her, she told me.  It turned her into a killer, which was something that she wasn't, before her army training.

But now, she has an alpaca.  He's silly and fun, and recently he became very ill with a meningeal parasite.  The veterinarian gave him a 50/50 chance of recovery.  Becka (not my friend's real name)  mothered her alpaca through his illness with the full burden of fear and hope that is a parent's lot.

The alpaca will recover.

In addition to the relief I know Becka feels, I think my friend must also feel the deep satisfaction of knowing that whatever else she is, she is also capable of caring and healing, even when the odds of success are only 50/50.

We have yet to decide what fathering means, but we know well what mothering is.  It is the chicken soup I bring to my friend.  It is the infrared lamp  that my friend holds over my knee. A phone call from my mother.  A cup of water from my son--the milk of human kindness.  A thing we can't live without--mothers, not least of all.