Update and scripts

Hi, patrons! Things are going well. I'm hard at work editing the new video about the hierarchy of patriarchy. It will be over an hour long, so make sure to pack a lunch when you watch it. My hope is that The Enforcement of Hierarchies mini-series will be helpful to people, especially with everything going on in the world and in the United States specifically. 

I haven't been on social media as much lately. Twitter is not good for me. That might hurt the discoverability of my work, but it's simply for the best right now.

With that out of the way, here are some scripts from previous episodes.

WHY RESIST ARREST?

When any individual is killed by a police officer, the community mourns, the family rages, friends cry, and the police department defends itself from any accusation of wrongdoing. The police department is assisted in this defense by a willing, often uncritical media that knows not to push too hard against an institution that the people believe is populated with heroes. When a police officer shoots a suspect, media outlets write their headlines in passive voice or with euphemistic language. “Officer-involved shooting,” is a common term that provides cover or feigns neutrality. The police department is assisted by the media in other ways, through punditry – common narratives about the suspect, such as “He was no angel.” and “The police are here for our protection.” Another common narrative about the suspect, one that is repeated without skepticism, is some variation of “He shouldn't have resisted arrest.” The implication of this talking point is that compliance with the police will invariably lead to a better and safer outcome, and that any force used against a suspect is justified no matter how trivial the resistance or how trivial the initial alleged crime. This talking point shifts the blame to the suspect – the victim of the police. This talking point is absolutist, meaning if an individual is suspected of any crime – from homicide to selling cigarettes – the same lethal force is justified. If a suspect resists arrest through any means – from attacking the police officer to simply backing away and not immediately complying – the same lethal force is justified.

In fact, this absolutist talking point also provides cover for a police officer even if the suspect is proven notto be responsible for the initial suspected crime. If the suspect resists an arrest based on false information, that itself is a crime, and that is enough to allow the defenders of the police officers to provide justification for the death of the suspect. The public's perception of the modern centralized police has evolved in the wake of the death of George Floyd, the conviction of Derek Chauvin, and the media attention given to similar incidents over the past twelve months. The public is finally beginning to be aware of the fact that police violence cannot be solved simply through compliance alone, and police violence can even be instigated through compliance. The argument of “non-compliance justifies death” – hereafter referred to as “the non-compliance justification,” has a few obvious counter-arguments. First, the non-compliance justification is based on the premise that any resistance is cause for a lethal response, something that can often be defended legally due to laws that favor police officers but is more challenging to defend rationally or morally. Second, the justification is also based on the premise that compliance will invariably result in both fair treatment by the arresting officer and the safety of the suspect – something often proven untrue.

Third, the related assumption is that resistance will invariably lead to worse treatment – something unproven as an absolute. Fourth, the justification brushes up against the “just world fallacy,” meaning that it presumes the arresting officer is doing their job fairly and judiciously – that no matter the circumstances and no matter what the officer does, the suspect is “getting what he deserves.” Fifth, the justification presumes the rights and authority of the police officer – rights that are self-justifying. The non-compliance justification must be interrogated, because far too often, it is used by the police, the media, politicians, and a portion of the population to provide cover, to shift blame, and to dismiss the lives of suspects as forfeit under the flimsiest rationale. The question of suspect non-compliance can be answered by examining common arguments that defend and valorize the police. Among the most common arguments in defense of the police is also an argument that confers suspicion on anyone who does not share this admiration. “If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to worry about it.” This argument is often used by police officers to encourage compliance, but it is also used by politicians and ordinary citizens to defend controversial laws, surveillance, and the institution of policing itself. The implication of this argument is not only that the potential suspect should not worry but also that if the suspect is concerned about the police, that alone is suspicious.

The premise of the argument is that distrust of the police alone is evidence of a crime. It's a trick argument. If the potential suspect says “I have nothing to hide,” then the individual making the argument says “Then you have nothing to worry about,” and encourages the potential suspect hearing the argument to comply with the police. If the potential suspect says “I don't want to give up my autonomy and place my faith entirely in the police,” then the individual making the argument says “Then you have something to hide,” which to them, justifies interrogation, arrest, and harm to the suspect if they resist. In either outcome, the individual making the argument gets what they want. It's not an exchange of ideas or a debate – it's a trap. It's a variation on the loaded question – rhetoric that contains a controversial and unproven assumption. The most famous example of this is the question “Have you stopped beating your wife?” Whether the respondent says “Yes” or “No” they will be admitting to the crime. The way out of a loaded question is to the reject the premiseof the question instead of giving one of the two predetermined answers. In the case of the “nothing to hide” argument, the premise can be rejected in several ways. For example, the “nothing to hide” argument mistakenly concludes that privacy and autonomy are things that are only desired by criminals. Privacy is generally understood as fundamental to an individual's freedom.

Without privacy and autonomy of the individual, there is control of the individual. For another example, the “nothing to hide” argument presumes guilt until proven otherwise, which is the opposite of how our criminal justice system and indeed society is meant to function. We are innocent until proven guilty by the criminal justice system, not the other way around. Yet another way to reject the premise is to conclude that even if one has nothing to hide, there is an understandable lack of trust between the individual and the state. The information that the state gathers may not uncover anything technically criminal but could still be used against an individual nonetheless. Some things are not criminal but are still embarrassing, and some things might not be currently criminal but could be at a later date. Or the information could be used by someone else who gains access to it and misuses, or the information could be used by a future administration for unjust purposes even if the current administration has no such intent. Or the information can be used to fabricate a crime. Upton Sinclair once said:

“...a study of many labor cases had taught me the methods of the agent provocateur. He is quite willing to take real evidence if he can find it; but if not, he has familiarized himself with the affairs of his victim, and can make evidence which will be convincing when exploited by the yellow press.” Yet another way to reject the premise is that admit that even if a suspect has nothing criminal to hide, surveillance, intrusion, and overreach are frightening all on their own and can cause psychological harm for individuals under this surveillance and suspicion. Interrogation, searches, and arrests are harmful or even traumatic even if they do not lead to a day in court or conviction. Full disclosure, I have had my car searched twice by law enforcement. One time without my permission and another time with my permission. In other words, whether I cooperated or not, my car was going to be searched. In both cases, nothing was found. I have been detained (but not arrested) by law enforcement at a national border once, and questioned by the police based on wrong information on another occasion, but I have never been arrested or charged with a crime. I have no criminal record. Nevertheless, each instance with law enforcement was unnecessary and humiliating, and no interaction with the police, even after they concluded I had done nothing wrong, has ever ended with anything even resembling “I'm sorry, we were wrong.” Instead, every interaction ended with some variation of “You're free to go,” which I assure you, is not the same thing.

Nobody wants to be feel less than. In short, there are completely legitimate reasons why individuals do not always comply with the police, and sometimes, non-compliance is not illegal. Resisting arrest almost always is, but not all non-compliance is resisting arrest. For instance, at least on paper, police officers cannot conduct a search without cause, and failing cause, police officers cannot conduct a search without permission. These laws vary by state and by situation. Individuals have rights and are under no obligation to comply with the police beyond what they are legally required, and have no obligation to explain why. So, what about non-compliance that is technically illegal? What about resisting arrest? I would never encourage a stranger to do something illegal, and I am not going to do so today. However, we have to understand why an individual would resist arrest because an explanation that begins and ends with “resisting arrest is illegal and therefore unjustifiable” does not give a full scope of the picture, and presumes too much. It presumes innocence and righteousness to the police, presumes that the arresting officer is always correct and that every arrest is legitimate, presumes that both the law in question is just and that the criminal justice system is always fair, and presumes that illegal always equals morally wrong and that legal always equals morally right. So, let's interrogate why an individual might feel the need to resist arrest.

First, the suspect may have understandable moral objections. An arrest and even temporary imprisonment afterwards involves treatment of an individual that under any other circumstances would be widely considered morally unjustified. Physically restraining, confining in a car, confining in a small room, and finally forcing that individual to argue their way out of the circumstances to freedom, would be both unjustified and illegal if it were done by anyone else except a police officer and subsequent others employed by the criminal justice system. It would be assault and kidnapping. We allow the criminal justice system to be an exception – to inflict harm on its citizens out of a societal contract and a institutionalized belief in retributive justice, but when an individual is faced with circumstances that would otherwise be considered immoral, their reluctance to comply is understandable. Next, an individual may have economic objections. A great many arrests and convictions result in fines rather than jail time, making the cost of an arrest insurmountable for many people. Furthermore, an arrest will often require the suspect to arrange to pay a bail bond – a deposit that allows release from pre-trial detention. Further still, even if the arrest or detention does not lead to a trial and the suspect is allowed to go without being charged, the detention itself may have an economic impact because the suspect would not be able to work that day.

Individuals suffering from economic hardship have reasonable objections to being arrested on what may be a false charge or a minor infraction. Backing away and pleading with a police officer not to arrest them seems understandable given the circumstances and the consequences of being detained for even a day. Next, an individual may be reluctant to comply because of the humiliation of being arrested and the fear of temporarily losing autonomy over their body. Being arrested cannot help but be traumatic for many people – to be taken away by a complete stranger, often after having a gun pointed at them. Police search the suspect, often touching them in a manner that under any other circumstances would be criminal. This may be particularly terrifying for an individual who has had a previous sexual trauma, as the encounter may trigger memories of that incident. The threat of that trauma trigger may be enough to send the suspect's body into a defensive posture, prompting resistance to the arrest. If a police officer attempts to arrest a suspect while the two are alone, the arrest feels dangerous, especially for women if the arresting officer is a man. If a police officer attempts to arrest a suspect in public with witnesses, the experience is not only humiliating but can damage the suspect's reputation among their neighbors. Next, people of color may be particularly resistant to arrest due to a long history of racial profiling and racial violence at the hands of the predominantly white police force in the United States.

People of color, from a young age, are often taught by their parents about the dangers of police officers and the necessity of avoiding them. Study after study, report after report, and lived experience after lived experience, all point to a pattern of racism among a police force that is coordinated to over-police communities of color, especially black communities. Every once in a blue moon, a different study appears that claims that racism does not exist among the police. However, in order to believe this rare study, one must ignore the existence of a statistical outlier, ignore the vast majority of studies and experiences that show a pattern of racism, and simply accept the unbelievable: that there is not enough racism in the United States to create a pattern of systemic oppression and that police officers, the only agents capable of enforcing this oppression, are simultaneously immune to racism. Nevertheless, those who wish to ignore any pattern of racism among the police are quick to point to the outlier study, which is almost invariably compiled through data from the police themselves. Due to this pattern, when people of color are threatened with arrest, there is an added component of fear or humiliation, as well as a concern that the criminal justice system may not treat them as fairly as a white suspect arrested for the same charge. An arrest is so threatening that resisting that arrest, though dangerous, might appear less dangerous than compliance. Next, a suspect might resist their arrest due to the history of violence among the police.

Defenders of the police claim that it is only through resistance that suspects face violence, and that once arrested, suspects will be treated well and face no violence. However, some of the most high profile deaths have occurred while in police custody. In April of 2015, Freddie Gray was arrested for carrying a knife. The police officers believed that the spring-assisted knife was in violation of the laws, whereas the state's attorney for Baltimore City later claimed that such a knife was completely legal. Nevertheless, Gray was arrested and given what is commonly called a “rough ride,” a purposeful injuring of a suspect while in custody on the way to the police station. Gray died. Tragically, death while in police custody is a fairly common occurrence. In addition to this, violence against women in police custody can often be sexual, as the power dynamics make women vulnerable to this abuse. Data on this pattern is incomplete due to fear of reporting, which means these statistics are generally understood to be only a fraction of total abuse suffered by women at the hands of the police. Defenders of the police claim that if suspects know that the police are violent, dangerous and have a pattern of killing suspects without just cause, why resist? However, this argument puts the onus on the suspect, even while admitting that it is the police who are dangerous.

On the most basic human level, suspects resist arrest because they have been taught all our lives and learned through their experiences to not comply with someone who might mean them harm. Race and gender may compound this non-compliance, but resistance in the face of harm is universal, and at the very least, that should be acknowledged. In spite of the fact that non-compliance with an armed stranger is an understandable and very human response, those who never find fault in the police must always blame any violence that a suspect suffers on said suspect – no matter how disproportionate. When a police officer kills a suspect, apologists invariably claim that it was justified using a kind of circular argument. “A police officer must only kill if necessary. Therefore, if the police officer killed the suspect, it must have been necessary.” That does not account for the possibility that the police officer either killed the suspect without any real provocation or that the police officer was marginally provoked but used an excessive, disproportionate amount of force. For example, George Floyd resisted arrest, but he did not resist arrest in such a way that threatened the life of Derek Chauvin. Furthermore, Floyd's alleged crime was non-violent and therefore was not a significant threat to the community. Nevertheless, it could be argued that if the incident had not been recorded and spread throughout the news media, Chauvin would never have been arrested, let alone convicted.

Conviction of a police officer for an on-duty killing is extremely rare. There are many problems with proportionality of response. First, a police officer may use deadly force if he believes there is a credible threat against himself or others. However, that determination is made by the police officer, in the moment, and is rarely contradicted. Second, if a suspect resists arrest by fleeing the scene, even if this escape is not a threat to the police officer, the police are often permitted to fire on the fleeing suspect. This sounds absurd and contradicts the notion that police only use deadly force when absolutely necessary, but the United States Supreme Court has ruled that this is acceptable. From a Supreme Court ruling in 1985: “Where the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a threat of serious physical harm, either to the officer or to others, it is not constitutionally unreasonable to prevent escape by using deadly force.” In other words, police are allowed to shoot unarmed suspects in the back if the officers have concluded that they have cause to do so. Once again, this probable cause is generally determined by the officer on the spot, and due to the Supreme Court ruling, it is not often contradicted. Such incidents are sometimes called “awful but lawful,” meaning the incident and justification is obviously wrong, obviously irrational, but still protected by a society that values police officers' lives more than others.

Whether or not something is determined to be currently legal is not the final world on it being right or wrong. Apologists for the police often point to the dangers of the occupation to dismiss police violence. According to Officer Down, 364 police officers in the United States died in the line of duty in 2020. However, very few of these instances were the result of suspects killing police officers or suspects resisting arrest. Most were from COVID-19. Officers actually killed by suspects include one by assault, thirteen by vehicular assault, and forty-five by gunfire. In other words, fifty-nine police officers were directly killed by suspects in 2020. Comparatively, the police killed 1,021 people in the United States in 2020. According to Industrial Safety and Hygiene News, police officers are not even in the top 20most dangerous professions. Strange as this may sound, a pizza delivery driver is far more likely to be killed in the line of duty than a police officer. Any death is tragic, but the danger of being a police officer is often overstated as a means of justifying their behavior. In conclusion, based on the evidence and simple common sense, police violence cannot be solved simply through compliance, police violence can even sometimes be instigated through compliance, and the justifications for incidents of police violence often use exaggerated statistics and flimsy rationalizations. We have to be better at discussing police shootings.

In order to hold the police accountable, we must allow ourselves to be skeptical of the police whenever there is a shooting. We should not presume guilt, but we must be reasonably skeptical due to how the data is collected and how often we have seen the pattern of police shootings and the pattern of justification. That is why the non-compliance justification is so dangerous – because it presumes a default innocence on the part of the police officer. It is the opposite of skepticism – the opposite of accountability.

I THINK YOU SHOULD LEAVE

I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson is a sketch comedy series created by Tim Robinson and Zach Kanin. It debuted in 2019 and was renewed, but due to the events of 2020, there is a more than two year gap between seasons. Its second season premieres next month. Even if someone has not seen the series over the past two years, they have most likely stumbled upon a meme derived from one of the sketches. One of the more popular is the man in the hotdog costume saying “We're all trying to figure out who did this.” In the hotdog sketch, a hotdog-shaped car in the style of the Oscar Meyer

Wienermobile, has crashed into a clothing store. The man in hotdog costume tries to convince everyone else in the store that they don't know who drove the car and caused the accident and that it could easily be any one of them. The sketch has been appropriated on social media to be used whenever someone in a position of power is abdicating responsibility. Other popular memes and reaction images come from sketches like “Car Ideas” and “Honk If You're Horny.” Social media is populated primarily by millennials and zoomers, and reaction images from I Think You Should Leave are popular on social media dominated by millennials and zoomers, meaning Twitter more than facebook. Robinson himself, born in 1981, is an elder millennial. What is it about I Think You Should Leave that resonates so much with the relatively young?

It's not enough to say “Because it's funny,” that's not an analysis, that's a cop-out. Bob's Burgers is funny, too, but it's not being referenced by millennial Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. I Think You Should Leave reaches people is a novel way that young people find comforting: the comedy from nearly every sketch in the series is driven by a character who is insecure. The series has become required viewing for the two generations who have the least amount of savings, were born into the worst markets, the worst circumstances. The very first sketch has two characters: an employer and a prospective employee  looking for a job, played by Robinson. The prospective employee awkwardly says goodbye after what appears to be an interview that went well for himself. He pulls the door to leave but finds it is a push door. Rather than admit he made a mistake to the man who holds his potential job in his hands, Robinson's character pulls the door harder and harder, breaking it, to prove that the door can be pulled open. This is only the first sketch, but nearly every subsequent sketch in the series revolves around being insecure. In the birthday party sketch, another character, also played by Robinson, is concerned that his friend does not like his present, and rather than letting it go, insists upon more and more proof that the friend is not planning to exchange the present with the gift receipt. At first, this insecurity appears relegated only to Robinson's character but soon infects everyone else at the party.

They're all insecure about their gifts and their friendship with the young man celebrating his birthday. Zoomers reaching adulthood are discovering what millennials learned a little while ago, that maintaining adult friendships is challenging outside of school or the workplace and that social media is both the only way to keep in touch and the worst way to keep in touch. The friend celebrating his birthday loses all his friends – on his birthday – over something trivial. Insecurity is the primary driver of nearly every sketch. In the “Christmas Came Early” sketch, the woman who works in the office is deeply insecure about her intelligence and her popularity with her co-workers. In the “Magician” sketch, the wife is insecure about how her husband is perceived by others, and this infects the husband in the end. The boyfriend in the “Fully Loaded Nachos” sketch is so insecure in his relationship that he can't even talk to his own girlfriend about something trivial but instead needs someone else to do it. The principal in the “TC Tuggers” sketch awkwardly tries to justify the product placement of the show-within-a-show. The ex-husband in the “Laser Spine Specialists” sketch is insecure about his place in the world and his manhood following his divorce. The husband in the “Fenton's Stables and Horse Ranch” is insecure about the size of his genitals. The series is populated with desperate people trying to convince everyone that they don't feel desperate. [Stanzos]

Insecurity and embarrassment go hand in hand. The man in the “Caleb Wendt” sketch is choking to death but does not want to embarrass himself in front of a celebrity he admires. The award presenter in the “Lifetime Achievement Award” sketch desperately tries to cover up the fact that a dog has embarrassed him in front of everyone. The businessman in the “Whoopie Cushion” sketch is only briefly embarrassed through the oldest trick in the book by his co-workers, but anyone suffering from anxiety knows that there is no such thing as a minor embarrassment. That incident will be recalled over and over again through intrusive thoughts for the rest of that day and probably will be recalled from time to time long after everyone else has forgotten about it. The man in the “Bozo” sketch wants to fit in so badly that he ends up embarrassing himself in the process. Insecurity about fitting in is terrible, the nagging feeling that we don't belong, that we'll never be “part of the Turbo Team.” Anxiety and fear populate these otherwise hilarious sketches, particularly the big fear, the fear of death. There are a lot of references to death and perhaps way too many references to skeletons. The pediatrician in the “Baby of the Year” sketch is named Dr. Skull. The owners of Fenton's Stables and Horse Ranch are named Ted and Emily Skull. In “The Ghost of Christmas Way Future” sketch, there is a war between humanity and skeletons.

In the awkward inserts into the “Robert Palins” song, Robinson's character speaks of skeletons coming back to fight humanity and have another chance at life. There are two separate, unrelated skeleton wars in one season of a comedy series. Not to mention all the other references to our mortality, such as the entirety of the “Funeral” sketch, another funeral at the end of “Honk If You're Horny,” and this line from the “Instagram” sketch: “No coffin, please. Just wet, wet mud.” In the “Babysitter Excuse” sketch, Robinson's character says that their babysitter ran over and killed some people, but not to worry, because their lives did not matter. The insecure man from the birthday party dies at the end of the sketch. The season ends when the man who killed Jim Davis appears, and though the sketch closes abruptly, the implication is that the people in the Garfield home are doomed. Young people in the 21st century have a kind of dual perspective on their future: that they are young and everything is ahead of them but also that their future is nothing, a climate anxiety mixed with a fear of not having enough for retirement. There is this clawing, scratching, desperate energy throughout the entire first season, the biggest of moods for people of a certain age. [“I want my treasure chest!”]

WHERE TO GO WHEN THE WORLD ENDS

On some days, usually when it rains, I think about the end of the world. It might sound bleak, but this is a defense mechanism. Planning for the worst case scenario makes the scenario appear less chaotic in my mind, because now I know that even if it happens, I will have already prepared for this eventuality. But planning for the end of the world is trickier than, say, planning what I will do if I make less money than usual one year or what I will do if get sick and need to quarantine. Now, when I say “the end of the world,” I don't mean the end of the world – because there is no planning to be done there – just sit back, relax, and let the asteroid strike. By, “end of the world,” I mean the point in which the climate has changed enough that my current living conditions will be inadequate, even unlivable, due to the heat, rising ocean levels, or other conditions caused by the warming of the Earth. It has already begun and has been growing increasingly worse every year. Dangerous conditions due to heat, flooding, environmental degradation, and weather events believed to be caused by the changing climate force more than 20 million people to leave their homes each year. They are often called “climate refugees.” This is already happening, even if it has not happened in my neighborhood yet. I live in Philadelphia these days. Although it's not too close to the ocean, that will only help so much. Temperatures will increase to make summers unbearable, and precipitation will increase that will make winters worse.

Flooding will increase along Schuylkill River and Delaware River. This will cause greater flooding near the Philadelphia International Airport as well as Eastwick, Manayunk, and more. I can also expect more hurricanes like Sandy and Irene. The good news for me personally is that I don't own, I rent, and I work out of my apartment, so there is nothing keeping me in Philadelphia if things get too hot. Also, I have only lived here for a few years, and it won't break my heart to move somewhere else. However, my circumstances are not universal. “Moving” is not a cure-all. Not everyone has the money to relocate, and some people dohave the money to relocate but no career waiting for them in the location they desire. Not to mention some will simply refuse to move because they have family in the area. Whether someone has a concern about their home that's related to crime, high unemployment, climate change or anything else, the response “Why don't you just move?” comes from a place of privilege. For most people, it is not as simple as that. Some homeowners might be planning for climate change and looking into retiring somewhere more suitable, but if they attempt to put their house on the market after flooding is inevitable and the heat is too great, finding a buyer will be quite the challenge. Furthermore, some will refuse to move because they will still believe, even as the water rises above their feet, that climate change is a conspiracy operated by Big Sun, or something.

Worst of all, moving is only a temporary measure that can rescue an individual but will not have any effect on the climate itself. The adverse effect on our climate can only be slowed through radical changes, such as switching to renewable energy sources, but those decisions are not made by us. Even recent mandates do not seem to go far enough. That means that as impractical as I just said it was, moving somewhere less dangerous as things get bad might be the only option that I have. I've lived in other nations before, but never for more than a year, and I'm at an age when starting over in, say, the Netherlands, is not an option – in addition to all the legal and bureaucratic challenges of immigration. My options are exclusive to the United States. Also, I'm getting too old to keep starting over even in other parts of my own nation, so wherever I choose needs to be permanent. I don't want to have to get used to a new city when I'm a senior citizen. I'm approaching forty, and I can already sense myself getting set in my ways. I've been reading a lot of articles, plus the book How to Prepare for Climate Change, and it looks as if choosing where to escape depends on a wide array of criteria. Nowhere the climate-proof, there are simply different degrees of danger. First, I will need to search for a city that is not particularly hot right now.

Projections are that the United States will be between 5 degrees to 6 degrees hotter on average in approximately 30 years if the change in temperature that we are already seeing continues. That 6 degrees change is more likely to be confined to the middle of the US, meaning from Tennessee to Nevada. I lived near Las Vegas once upon a time. It was too hot for me then, and it will be simply unbearable soon. I lived in Austin, Texas years back, and while I loved the food, and the whole scene there, I can't imagine moving back. I can't select a city that I know is too hot, especially a city in Texas, because their utilities have big problems that their government is not particularly keen on fixing. For years, I dreamed of living in Southern California. Hollywood, Disneyland, great food and excitement, but based on how hot the summers are right now and how hot even the winters will get, I think this dream will go unfulfilled in my life. Wildfires, earthquakes, and the increasingly crowded Los Angeles metropolitan area make this option untenable for me. Second, I will need to live in a city that has high enough elevation to avoid flooding. Moving back to my hometown of Baltimore is not an option, as it has a mean elevation of 350 feet. I also can't just drive to nearby New Jersey or Delaware for the same reason. Finally, I must choose an area that has the paradoxical criteria of being safe enough from flooding but close enough to a water source.

Climate change produces the conditions that lead to drought. Anywhere on this map that has some color to it will be even less viable as temperatures increase. Based on all this criteria, arguably the worst place to live as the climate spirals out of control is Florida. It's already hot, it's close to the ocean, it has low elevation, and it is often struck by storms that will be become even more frequent as the climate changes. Florida has little risk of drought, but that is about all it has going for it. Basically, if you live in Florida, you might want to try to not do that anymore. So, where the heck am I going to live? There are a few options. First, somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Washington and Oregon both get good precipitation, eliminating the problem of water shortage. I'm no meteorologist or climate change, but based on everything I have read, it is too rainy for significant droughts, moderate in temperature most of the time, and though both states have coasts, Washington and Oregon also have a high mean elevation. Of the cities in that area, Portland feels right for me. While much of the city is flat, the Tualatian Mountains run through the northwest and southwest reaches of the city. Portland receives higher than average precipitation, little snowfall each year, and it's not too far or too close to the ocean. A real Goldilocks area. In terms of culture, I think I would fit right in. There is a significant activist scene, like-minded anarchists, as well as modern, progressive laws related to controlled substances.

Two problems exist, though. For one, Portland is fairly close to Mount Hood, a volcano. There is no reason to believe it will erupt any time soon – its last eruption was in 1866 – but that is the kind of thing that might make me anxious. For another, Portland meets the criteria so well that I suspect that the city could become crowded by the time I decide to move there. Everyone is reading the same data that I am. Portland is not particularly large for a “big city” – it's only 144 square miles. By comparison, Chicago is 234 square miles, Indianapolis is 368, Nashville 496, and so forth. If Portland becomes a climate change destination, it might get packed fast. I could live in a small town nearby or the suburbs, but I can't function in small towns and the suburbs creep me out. If I don't live within the city limits of a major metropolitan area, I am miserable. An alternative might be Seattle. Coffee shops, the Space Needle, tossed salad and scrambled eggs, all that, but it depends on how well the city will prepare for the rising sea levels. Also, its square mileage is nearly identical to Portland. Moving away from the Pacific Northwest, a completely different option is New England. Drought, heatwaves, wildfires, and hurricanes are rare. The drawback has less to do with climate and more to do with personal preference. I don't want to live in Bridgeport, Connecticut or Providence, Rhode Island for the rest of my life. They both seem like absolutely love places to live if you don't mind being bored all the time.

I'm sure Manchester, New Hampshire sounds like Heaven if your idea of having fun is taking a warm bath, but I guess I've been spoiled by the excitement of living in big cities where big things happen. That leaves me with Boston. At a glance, it would seem that Boston could not make the list of habitable cities as climate change gets worse. After all, it's so close to the ocean, but it looks like Boston city planners have been really proactive in their climate change preparations. They have plans to elevate roads, put marshes in to absorb flooding, and reinforce the wharf. Boston is ready. I can see living there. It's a little weird that among my top choices are places where Dr. Frasier Crane lived, but OK. The only other option appears to be certain parts of the midwest, especially Minnesota. Minneapolis could be my kind of town, and I do have friends there, but it is not at the top of the list. Preparing for the changing climate always feels disappointing, because it shouldn't have come to this. I shouldn't have to add concerns about heatwaves and floods to my plans on which Frasier City I want to retire in. In the 1970's, when whistleblowers were warning us and scientists were testifying to Congress, that should have been when the world – or at least when the United States started taking this seriously. It's an uphill battle, because we have one party that doesn't want to do anything about climate change and another party that wants to something but not enough. Oh, well. I'll see you in Portland.