1: If your congressperson is too afraid to hold a town hall, why not ask someone else to hold it? People in state government — representatives of other parts of the country — anyone. This is a prime opportunity to build people up as coalition-builders and even as potential presidential candidates.

I don't know why it never occurred to me before, but there really is no point in blandly labeling myself as "nonpartisan" when I could more accurately (if somewhat aspirationally) describe myself as a "political deviant."

Good faith argumentation is such a necessary skill in democracy, and so many people don't see it modeled anymore. How do we raise the public standard for difficult conversations? How do we make it impossible to miss that there are people out there who are grappling with thoughts—not with each other?

Politics isn't what people think often think of when they hear the word. Every decision that reflects one's values, every social pressure that constrains those decisions, and every act with an impact on other people are the fundamental basis of one's politics. I *don't understand* partisanship.