This Texas Progressive's 2018 year in review

This outpost of the Texas Progressive Alliance hopes readers keep any New Year’s goals simple and measurable, and as goals not resolutions. This outpost also hopes readers consider or pursue life changes in the New Year that increase their contentment and are done at their own personal choice.

SocraticGadfly describes how DSA darling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had another unforced error on Twitter — this one over Congressional pay in the shutdown.

Gadfly also offered a roundup of his top blogging for the year, going by views and other factors. Much of it was devoted to batting down conspiracy theories.

And here are some posts of interest from other Texas and national blogs and news sites.

At the Dallas Observer, Jim Schutze takes a look at the white year, black year and general year in review, while giving good decade-aged kicks in the nads to John Wiley Price and the Perot clan.

Texas Monthly looks at Steven Mark Chaney’s acquittal after serving 25 years on a murder sentence due to junk science..

Since this is a year-end wrap, Texas Monthly also looks at its top Texas books of 2018.

Along with your host, Michael Harris suggests reading actual print books, even as he, an author, struggles with that.

Ken Paxton’s prosecutors are challenging a pay ruling against them by the CCA, and he is trying to undercut them again, notes the Texas Tribune.

Grits for Breakfast posts his 2018 top 10 criminal justice reform stories.

The Texas Observer notes six Texan individuals or groups who lost power this past year. (Contra Kuff, I think the section about Bexar Dems is pretty clear.)

Fracking of gas as well as oil is great for the Texas economy, bad for climate change, the AP describes.

Dos Centavos posts his personal 2018 top 10.

David Bruce Collins takes a look at how many of the U.S. Democratic freshmen are actually New Democrats.

The Texas Trib notes that state Sen. Charles Schwertner remains in the MeToo spotlight after an ambiguous investigation.

The Texas Observer catches my own state Senatecritter liking him some white nationalists. Unfortunately, as it also notes, after being primaried by a sensible state Rep. and winning, Bob Hall coasted to victory.

The Observer also offers up a collation of six stories about rural Texas.

ProPublica reports Dallas schools aren’t helpful for minorities, in many ways.

Jim Schutze seems to have a bromance for Angela Hunt running for Dallas mayor; he’ll accept Scott Griggs.

Paradise in Hell remains our premier interpreter of Individual 1.

Juanita says "good riddance" to Paul Ryan.

Therese Odell suggests a New Year's resolution we should all adopt.

The Bloggess celebrates another successful community giving effort.

Many unions are still slouching toward Gomorrah. World Socialist notes a Wisconsin Aerospace local that scrubbed a strike and won’t tell the public why.

Eating toads and other nonsense, New Age and otherwise

I hear New Age / positivity thinking / success gospel / bright-sider / secrets of selling aphorisms and slogans all the time, whether on  public radio, in books I scan but pass up at the library, mouthed by people in 12-Step groups, vouchsafed by people in personal growth programs and more.

At their best, they're arguably not totally harmless, though with some of them, the kernel of motivational truth they bespeak may outweigh their downsides.

At their worst, when told to people in cancer recovery, soul-killing stretches of life, or other problems, they're a mentalist form of social Darwinism and thus, quite harmful indeed.

So, let's dig in and look at a few of these.

That "eating toads" phrase, though commonly attributed to Mark Twain, comes from the French aphorist Nicolas Chamfort, according to writer and novelist Paul Theroux. He wrote: "Swallow a toad in the morning and you will encounter nothing more disgusting the rest of the day."

So, let's start right there.

1. Here's my take on that phrase, "Swallow a toad in the morning and you will encounter nothing more disgusting the rest of the day."

Why shouldn't I instead figure out a way to better my life so that I don't face the perceived necessity of toad-swallowing in the morning? Better yet, why shouldn't we as a society work for that as a societal goal? And, why shouldn't we also as a societal mindset, move at least partially beyond the "no pain, no gain" behind this?

Related to that ...

2. One of the most common of these pseudo-insightful aphorisms is "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

So laughable on several grounds.

My standard response is: "How do you know in advance if it will kill you or not?" Plus, as a good secularist, I know there's no "you" left after you are dead.

Bill Murray, in a Tweet a few weeks ago, had a more sarcastic take: "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you smaller." And, that actually, if it's "sometimes" rather than "always," is true, sarcasm aside. A bout with cancer may not kill me. However, it will certainly weaken me, and perhaps for the rest of my life, not just temporarily. And, not just physically. The "fog of chemo" is a well-known mental issue for cancer survivors. And, even after chemo's done, I may be permanently affected enough physically by the cancer for the effects to include my mind, my self, my personality.

Add in that this was first uttered by Nietzsche, and that's probably good reason to dump the phrase right there.

3. I mentioned earlier, that these phrases are downright harmful if told to, say, a person trying to get over cancer. Or a person in a 12-Step program still struggling, and struggling in part because the slogans sound like nonsense.

One of them is "All you have to do is believe," or something similar.

Excuse me, but believe in WHAT? This sounds like Eisenhower's take on civic religion, namely, that everybody needs some sort of religion or deity.

Wrong.

Second, the harm? The cancer survivor who is told this, when encouraged to try an "alternate" treatment, then gets told her lack of faith is the problem when she doesn't get better. Ditto for the would-be sober person for whom an "anonymous" group simply doesn't work. Both of them get depressed, with various further, potentially deadly, consequences.

So, you want a New Year's resolution? Work on decluttering your mind from stuff like this.

A new mindset

Shortly after I moved to Odessa, Texas in 2009, the sports editor at the paper recommended a Thai restaurant as a good eating place. As it turns out, it was next door to my apartment complex there.

Well, I never went there. And, my last night in Odessa, as I walked around the complex, I was glad.

And, there's a story behind that.

More than a decade ago, in southeastern New Mexico, my office manager was an interesting, and generally good-at-heart person. Her religious/philosophical/psychological beliefs were a mix of Joyce Meyer's riff on the success gospel and a vaguely Christian/New Age mashup of "things are meant to happen."

She wanted out of the city, and definitely to a better position. And she was smart enough.

That said, she sometimes said words to the effect of, "I probably haven't gotten out of here because I haven't done X."

Well, for various reasons, those words stuck in my mind after I was fired at that newspaper and moved on to a new newspaper job, new city. I thought, at times, maybe I haven't left here yet because I haven't "done X."

Well, I eventually got moved to metropolitan Dallas, where there are a million X-es to do. After my newspaper in our suburban chain closed, I was trying to get out of my rural East Texas newspaper job after that as soon as possible. But, I didn't have that mindset, nor did I even think about it.

Nor did I after I got back to Dallas. Then, the entire chain closed.

And, I eventually wound up in Bush-ville.

And, as I walked past that Thai restaurant, I didn't think about not having gone there. I did think about how that old "thing must happen for a reason" and related mindset was pretty well purged.

And, that's my New Year's resolution for myself and wish for you readers: A new mindset.

Skeptical about "received wisdom" in the best way, skeptical about myself in the best way, and open to new growth in the best way.

Happy New Year.

Possible New Year’s resolution No. 1

From me? Hmm.

How about driving to the Preston Hollow neighborhood of Dallas sometime from Jan. 21 or soon thereafter, and giving a full-moon greeting to Dallas’ newest couple?

(Before the Secret Service manhandles me and beats me to a pulp, that is.)

And, amongst your resolutions?