Since I let the cat out of the bag regarding my political views, I may as well make a post about George W. Bush and the war in Iraq. Here's my insight: they are not the same thing.

The war in Iraq is an extremely complicated issue. That geopolitical region is notoriously complex. Anyone who claims that the very idea of going to war over there is completely right or completely wrong is oversimplifying.

George W. Bush was a terrible president. Even ignoring the war, you still have the response to Katrina from the institutions he spent years setting up, and his war on science, and the way he loved to hand the country over to the religious right-wing, and the disdain within his administration for consitutional rights, and dozens of other solid reasons to believe that George W. Bush was not a good president.

Even if you assume that the war was necessary, it seems clear that the way it was presented to us was dishonest and the way the war was initially executed was either completely ignorant, horrifyingly corrupt, or both. "George W. Bush was a bad president" is not nearly as nuanced and debatable of an opinion as any given opinion about the war in Iraq.

There are actual questions that need to be asked on both sides of the Iraq war question. Instead, for short-term political gain, the country has been whipped up into a national frenzy of "everything about the war in Iraq is bad" for several years now. This is a very shortsighted strategy.

I realize that "This region needed some kind of intervention, but the execution should have been radically different" doesn't have the same ring to it as "end the war", but it creates a problem. As soon as people start to realize that there are at least a few reasons why the war might be considered less-than-terrible, there will be a backlash of "Wait - it's not bad - it's COMPLETELY GOOD!" After we all realize that's clearly not true either, everyone will get confused, shrug, and say "I guess this is too complicated to have an answer one way or another."

This is already happening. Whereas in 2006, 2007, and most of 2008, everyone had a definite opinion about whether the war in Iraq was "right" or "wrong", most people are already couching their opinion about the war in different terms. These days, people (including me) are a lot less likely to declare a side on that issue than they are to say "We were lied to going in" or "The costs of the war have been enormous". This is good for the national discourse, but let's be careful not to take George W. Bush along for the ride, because he doesn't deserve it.

During the time the war was the most unpopular, Democrats seized the opportunity for short-term political gain by saying "Republicans/Bush=Iraq war". In the short term, this has been a very effective strategy for the Democrats. However, the result of this in the long term may be that out of all the really great reasons to despise the presidency of George W. Bush, the Iraq war has become the only one that anybody will remember. And as soon as the Iraq war is understood to be nuanced or complicated (which of course it is), George W. Bush will be seen as ok (which of course he is not).

The more time goes by, the more I'm beginning to suspect that in a few years, everyone will already be saying "Yeah, the Iraq war is a really complicated issue, but it all worked out in the end, more or less, so who's to say if George W. Bush was right or wrong, overall?" I won't be saying that, hopefully, because it's puerile. But I can see it becoming "the thing to say" in a few years.

By making the Iraq war inextricable from George W. Bush's reputation, and meanwhile pretending that a complicated issue is simple, the anti-Bush crowd may have done George W. Bush the biggest favor possible in the long run.

I wrote a note regarding same-sex marriage on my facebook page last November. I'm putting it up here because this is our generation's chance to take on an important domestic civil-rights issue, and (as I explain below) I want to go on record as being on the right side of this one.

I would also like to point out that I think it's completely ludicrous that we're even arguing about it. Having to point out that homosexuals feel love the same way that heterosexuals feel love is silly, like I'm explaining these things called "human beings" to a robot or something. Taking it a step further - having to argue about it - is unbelievably absurd.

I am confident that in a few decades, this whole argument will be understood to be as ridiculous as it is. It seems like "Homosexuals should be allowed to get married" will look as obvious in retrospect as if I was arguing "Women can learn math and science without getting overwhelmed and passing out from a case of the vapors". I don't have a very loud voice (except in a purely literal sense), but I may as well add my opinion to the stack of opinions on this one.

I guess I need to contextualize this. I am not Mormon, but the "Mormon community" is one of the communities I am a part of. I don't plan to explain why that is right now, because it's not important to this post. (If anyone cares, I'll be posting a funny story soon which contains a few more details on the matter.) All you need to know to understand this is that I have a larger-than-average percentage of Mormon acquaintances, and I feel comfortable referring to the community as "us" when talking to Mormons.

So here's what I wrote last November, right after Prop 8 passed (I voted against it, in case that's not obvious.)

"I've never been more ashamed to be part of the Mormon community. Prop 8 has really brought out the worst in our culture. I wanted to write down a summary of the stupidest things I've seen written and repeated in conversations and on message boards, etc. by Mormon friends, acquaintances, or friends-of-friends, followed by my response to them. I'm not foolish enough to think that my arguments will change anyone's mind. This seems to be a polarizing enough issue that everyone has made up their minds. I just want to go on record as being on the right side of history on this one (looking ahead to that future date when gay marriage is tolerated by the church and everyone sort of pretends that we were never against it like we do now with interracial marriage.)

So here are some of the dumbest things I've been hearing:

1. "If we vote against Prop 8, we're going to have to let gay people get married in our temples!"

This is silly fear-mongering. We don't even have to marry heterosexuals in our temples if we don't feel like it. The temples already have an implicit "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" sign on them.

As a matter of fact, I believe a case can be made that the reverse of this argument is true. Voting for Prop 8 gave the government a stake in who gets married and who doesn't. This is a way bigger step down the path of letting the government decide who we can let into our temples. Voting against it is more likely to keep the government out of marriage decisions, like the decision of who we let get married in our temples.

2. "If Prop 8 doesn't pass, I won't be allowed to teach my kids that being gay is wrong anymore!"

No one really believes this. You can teach your kids whatever you want. Everyone knows that. What people are actually worried about is that their children will be exposed to an alternate viewpoint outside of the home. If you can't stand the idea that your child may be exposed to an idea you disagree with, then you shouldn't have children. Because guess what: they will be exposed to viewpoints different than yours. This will be true anywhere, any time, in any society, no matter what you do.

You may say "But being gay is wrong, and I want to protect my children as much as possible from anything that suggests otherwise." Of all the things that are wrong with that statement, the only thing I want to point out right now, in this note, is that "I want to protect my children as much as possible from this idea" is a different (and obviously much weaker) argument than "My right to teach my children is going to be taken away from me."

3. "I voted for Prop 8 and now all the homosexuals I know are mad at me - why?"

I'm reading a lot of comments from Mormons now questioning why the homosexual community is so upset with Mormons and Mormonism.

This is ridiculous. Of course they're going to be mad at you. You voted to take away their right to get married, and you did it in a very high-profile way. If someone voted to take away your personal ability to get married, you would be mad at them, especially if they made a big deal about it. It wouldn't matter why they did it. No argument they could give you would make you not upset.

If you believe in prop 8, the only thing you can do to make yourself look even more foolish is to be a wuss about it, by pretending you don't understand why homosexuals would be upset with you for it. You can memorize this as a general principle: If you vote to make it so someone can't get married, they will be mad at you. Telling them you did it to preserve your religious freedom will not make them any less upset with you.

4. The high-road persecution comments.

This is where the arguments start to get really pathetic. I'm reading/hearing countless comments by Mormons now, all over the place, that go "Well, the homosexual community has just decided to scapegoat us on this issue for whatever reason, and if they need to do that to feel better about themselves, that's fine, but I'm going to take the high road on this one."

In fact, here's an actual quote from a comment I saw on this issue: "i now see why they should not get married because from what i have seen, most are too immature to be able to handle it." - Ian Lumsden

This is even more absurd than the last absurd complaint, and we still haven't hit bottom on absurdity yet. This complaint acknowledges that people will be angry if you take away their ability to marry each other, and then pretends that the anger is immature. This is so silly it's almost beyond recognition as a thought. Find me anyone, anywhere, of any maturity level, who wants to get married, who won't get mad at you if you make it so they can't.

This is also the beginning of the "persecution complex" arguments. "We're so picked on, look at us." Let's get that out of the way right now: We are not picked on. Mormons are generally thought of as nice individuals who happen to have silly beliefs. People in the real world like Mormons as much as they like anybody. Right now, people are mad at the church because they disagree with them on THIS PARTICULAR ISSUE. You're just being silly if you think that there are very many people out there who care about Mormons to the point where they're using Prop 8 as an excuse to attack them.

5. Blacks did it.

The idea here is "Well, sure, we voted for it, but so did black people, according to exit polls. How come no one's mad at black people?"

First of all, this argument doesn't even try to explain why it was ok to vote for prop 8, or explain why it's ok for the Mormon church to have organized against it. This argument just says "Blacks did it too, look at them." In some ways, this is another "We're so persecuted" argument. "Look at all these people who voted for Prop 8, and we're the only ones who are getting singled out."

This is ridiculous, because there's no institutional organization called "Blacks" like there is for "Mormons". There's no single figure in charge of African-Americans who lays forth the doctrines for them to believe, like there is for Mormons. And you can bet that if there was, and if the "Leader of the Blacks" had released a statement compelling all black people to vote for prop 8, and they had dogmatically believed it, their organization would be getting just as much heat as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

6. We didn't even make that big of a difference, why are they focusing on us?

This is another blame-shifting, we're-so-persecuted argument. The idea is "Mormons only ended up being 2% (or whatever - the number varies depending on who you're talking to) of the vote for Prop 8, but we're getting all the attention for it passing, because we're getting singled out for no reason."

Can you think of another reason why you may be getting singled out for this? Do you remember the extent to which the organization of the church was mobilized to get this passed? How signs were distributed using institutional church contacts? Remember what a big deal it was inside the walls of the church? How statements were read over the pulpit? How some wards organized a get-out-the-vote effort using phone calls within their local wards to make sure everyone was voting for prop 8? How tens of millions of dollars was raised by members of the church?

Can you think of another institution in California that was making a bigger deal out of "yes on prop 8"?

Maybe these are some of the reasons why you're getting the most attention for this.

Did you just think nobody was paying attention?"

Plenty has been written about perfectionism. It's important to push past your perfectionist impulses, or you'll never get anything done. You've heard it before.

It's also very therapeutic to ignore the perfectionist inside your head. The perfectionist impulse begs you not to declare that a project is done until you've refined it just a little more, then just a little more after that, then just a little more again, and so on, forever. It feels good to defy that fate.

Every time you ignore the perfectionist impulse and finish something, it's a little less scary, but no less difficult. The good news is that if you do it enough times, you end up with a bunch of completed projects (of varying quality), paying you dividends of (varying) satisfaction, rather than a bunch of frustrating incomplete projects in your head that never quite measure up. It's important to know when to let a project go and move on to another one.

You've heard all of this a million times. I want to point out another facet of this issue.

You are only as talented as the best project you've ever actually completed. If you're a painter, and you've spent your whole life learning about painting, practicing styles, etc., but you can't manage to finish a painting, then Thomas Kinkade is actually a better painter than you. It doesn't matter if you are potentially a better painter than him. It doesn't matter if you're potentially the best painter who ever lived. It doesn't matter if you have an idea for a painting that, if you finish it, will be the painting that creates a resonating harmonic, ushering in universal peace forever. Until you've actually painted something better than Thomas Kinkade, he's a better painter than you. (You can still make fun of him, though - being better than someone doesn't happen to be a prerequisite for mocking them.)

In case anyone cares, my writing on this web site can be described as an attempt to subvert this natural perfectionism. I am aware that everything I've written on this site is sloppy, ineloquent, and kind of "crappy". There are a lot of web sites with better writing on them. However, in the contest of "the writing on this site" vs. "that great writing I've always been meaning to do but haven't gotten around to yet", the writing on this site will win every time.

That doesn't mean that once you finish something, you have to put it where everyone can see it. As soon as you finish a project, you have overcome your perfectionism one more time, whether or not anyone else ever sees it. How do you know when a project is finished? Time for a story.

In England, every city has a cathedral. There are churches everywhere, in every town, but to attain "city" status, you have to have a cathedral. When I first got there, I couldn't figure out what the difference was between a church and a cathedral. Is a cathedral bigger than a church? Is it fancier? Older? Exceptions could always be found to any such requirement.

Then Wolverhamption was officially changed from a town to a city. A certain "church" that I remembered from when I lived there was now a "cathedral", and therefore Wolverhampton was a city, for now they had a cathedral.

That was when I learned the difference between a church and a cathedral in England. A church becomes a cathedral when someone says it's a cathedral.

This is the same way a project goes from "I'm not quite finished with this yet" to "I made this thing and I'm ready to move on to something else". You declare it "finished", and it is. But if it turned out really good, please let me see it. Please?