In considering the 2016 US Presidential Election from the perspective of my

family, not some theoretical family, but my own family, there are a few key
issues which motivate me to cast my vote as I am. This applies both to the family
I was born into, the family Ive chosen to have with Elizabeth, and our extended
family. What I am sharing here are some stories from my own experiences within
my two families that have been highly influential in how I think about politics and
its role in peoples everyday lives.
As someone who was born to teen high school sweethearts, Ive always had a
fairly high degree of romanticism when it comes to the family. Although my
arrival in this world was not planned, it was nonetheless greeted with love and
commitment. My parents love each other and despite their extremely different
personalities, theyve shown an ongoing determination to not just survive in their
marriage, but to thrive in it. Our family setup was surprisingly traditional
considering their ages and working class backgrounds. My mom primarily stayed
home and oversaw the domestic sphere, while my dad worked the long hours to
ensure that we were financially secure. There were times when she worked
outside the home to supplement their earnings, but mostly we could count on
coming home to a parent who could help with homework, assist with
extracurricular carpools, or to listen to our various stories about what was going
on at school or with our friends. When my dad had time off we would spend it at
the park or playing catch, or in some way together. So far, so idyllic. As far as it
was up to them, my parents did pretty much everything they could to provide a
comfortable, happy and balanced home life.
Now, those of you who have known me or my family for a longer period of time
know that our situation was not one of perpetual peace. Like every family there
are certain patterns and pathologies that seem to travel down the generations.
In our case it was mental illness that constantly strained the sanity and safety of
our home. Dealing with someone who had violent impulses, addictive
tendencies, and who could spiral out of control unpredictably took a toll on
everybody over the years. It led to a brief time of our family being split apart; it
involved physical assault on people and property; it meant we became far more
familiar with our local police than we cared to be. Thankfully, the dedication of
my parents, the grace of God, and the difficult and courageous choices of the
family member who most suffered from all of this have led to a situation where
all of us have been able to heal and move on and live normal lives. Despite that,
I cant ever forget, nor would I wish to forget, the impact this had on my family
and what I learned as a result.
One of the first and most important things Ive learned from this experience is
that total unconditional love is necessary for people dealing with family members
who have addictions or mental illnesses. Unfortunately, this is by no means
guaranteed for most people, especially when drug use and mental illness
become intertwined in a downward double helix of self-medication and mental
disease. Even when you love the person it can be necessary to do things that are
seemingly cruel, like report them to the police, commit them to mental
institutions, or abandon them to the care of the state in order to get treatment.

Applying this to my view of government, I came to see that there is a strong link
between mental illness and criminalization. Mental illness itself is not a crime,
but it can lead people to commit acts they would never dream of. In those
situations there is a heart-wrenching decision that has to be made by the
families. Should they risk possible incarceration or even bodily or deadly harm
coming to their loved one by calling the authorities, or should they handle things
within the home and risk someone else in the family suffering assault or worse?
I say this with great respect, there are wonderful police officers who put
themselves at risk daily to serve their communities. They deserve all the support
they can get. As with any large group of people, there are also police officers
who enjoy their position of authority and act less like public servants and more
like dictators. Uniforms that should demand respect can easily be abused in the
hands of the wrong people. Thankfully, I never witnessed any truly egregious
behavior on the part of the police, but I certainly saw officers make a number of
faulty assumptions and treat my parents as though they were too weak to handle
a rebellious kid. One officer even suggested he would engage in child abuse if it
were his child. I think unless you have had to call the cops on your own loved
one, then you cant possibly understand how truly awful it feels and how much
strength it takes to release control of the situation and admit you need help.
Families and mentally ill people are incredibly vulnerable in these situations.
What I took from all of this was an appreciation that people, like police officers or
others in uniform or authority, are people at the end of the day. We should
respect their position enough that when people in these positions abuse their
authority, they must be held to account. Otherwise, all the people risking their
lives to do their jobs in a way that actually puts the public first are tainted by
those who dont.
Secondly, I had the chance to see the political aspect of these issues at work at
the state level. A friend from church worked as a mental health advocate and
invited my mother to testify about our familys experiences with the mental
health system, or lack thereof, in Arizona. There was an effort to defund a crucial
program that directly impacted families like ours. My mother gave her testimony,
answered questions from a notably sour-faced committee chair whose position
was not helped by it, and then we waited for the outcome of the vote. As it
turned out, the funding was upheld and it could be the case that our familys
story made a bit of a difference. We were also approached by one of the
committee members after and offered assistance and support. Because of this, I
am not as cynical as many people are when it comes to politics and politicians.
Are there people who are corrupt, greedy, or simply playing a high stakes game?
Yes. However, I have personally met many people who have demonstrated a
commitment to help those who need it, even when those people would not be
counted amongst their likely voters.
The bottom line from my experience growing up is that cynicism about politics is
the easy and cheap excuse for remaining unengaged and reactive. Watching
partisan, or even supposedly non-partisan, news, signing Facebook petitions and
the like are primarily selfish exercises in affirming the rightness of positions we

already hold. When we actually go to a hearing, see and meet the politicians,
and hear the arguments for and against a particular matter, it becomes much
more difficult to write off the whole endeavor of government as irrelevant,
rigged, or otherwise corrupt. There are people in elected office and millions of
civil servants who work largely without thanks to make the country, state,
county, or town we live in work as well as possible. They come from all walks of
life, religions, and even political parties.
Of course, I am not also the product of a family; I am also the co-founder of my
own family. Elizabeth and I married fairly young and had our first children in our
early 20s. As members of the generation that was just finishing degrees and
embarking on professional life at the very time of the September 11 th attacks,
the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the bursting of the dot com
boom, we saw first-hand that the old social contract in which you could get a
decent job, especially with a good degree, and be assured a middle class income,
healthcare, and some sort of provision for the future was fundamentally, maybe
irretrievably, broken. My first jobs were one short-term gig to another as various
companies hired me under highly predatory right to work conditions, all while
taking advantage of lax regulation to use their investors money to make a few
people very wealthy before bankrupting their companies and leaving everyone
else with no work, no money, and even sometimes no unemployment insurance
as they hadnt paid the premiums. In this sort of Wild West atmosphere, it
became clear to me that my job security and even the assurance that I would be
paid promised commissions or salaries was so poorly protected by local law that
it effectively depended almost entirely on the good faith of my employer. When
people are building a business to last and doing so with integrity, this good faith
is probably enough. When, as was my experience, they are using the business as
a vehicle to get rich quickly with little regard to delivering promised results to
customers or promised compensation to their employees, it was incredibly
disheartening to see that there was virtually no recourse I could take that would
not require me to already have substantial means at my disposal to hire the
requisite lawyers.
This constant insecurity in employment extended directly into the fundamental
issue of healthcare. As young parents we were consistently faced with the
agonizing dilemma of whether or not to seek medical treatment for our babies
for fear of being unable to afford it. Needless to say, in the case of our own
health, we were even more reluctant to see doctors because we didnt want to
live under the burden of the unparalleled cost of US healthcare. A couple
occasions are illustrative here. Once, when our oldest son was just a baby, he hit
his head on some furniture and had an absolutely horrendous lump on his head
that was multi-colored and enormous. We took him to the emergency room, and
in an act of kindness, or maybe subversion, the attending nurse tore up our
paperwork and advised us that when a head injury produced outward swelling it
was probably fine to stay home. We were far less lucky when I fell ill with a
suspected case of meningitis. The cost of two emergency room visits, one of
which was caused by a failure to notify me of the side effects of a spinal tap,

came to over $4,000. At the time, this was equivalent to just over 2 months of
my take home pay and we could barely pay our bills as it was.
These occurrences were nothing compared to when I suspected I had a more
significant health problem around the age of 25. Although I was running a
reasonably successful small business at the time, most of the money I made
went straight back into the company and ensuring our clients were looked after.
As such, I could not come close to affording a private family healthcare plan.
Consequently, when I saw that the local school district needed teachers it
seemed like a good chance to do a rewarding job, get a stable base income, and
obtain health benefits. Once my employment plan finally matured and allowed
me to see a doctor, I had gone a year without seeing a health professional for
fear they might discover a problem that I couldnt afford to treat. As it turned
out, I did indeed have cancer, thankfully a very treatable one, but the delay
meant that I had multiple surgeries and chemotherapy to go through, instead of
the one simple outpatient surgery that typically occurs if it had been found
earlier. Despite having good insurance I found myself struggling to pay all the
fees, prescription bills, and co-pays that came along with seeing multiple doctors
and being hospitalized. This was compounded by my inability to work full time,
which in the end meant we gave away or sold most of our possessions,
voluntarily gave up our home and planned to move in with a family friend during
my treatment. When that arrangement became impossible after just one or two
nights, we were forced to drive around the city with our two toddlers in the car,
looking for the cheapest possible motel, finding nowhere we could afford to even
sleep. That was a real low point. I had begun losing all the hair on my body from
chemo; I was in indescribable pain from the surgeries and medicine; I was so ill
that every smell made me want to puke, and I had a family I could not look after.
There was no way I could ask Elizabeth to drive around every night looking for a
temporary home or expect our kids to have no stability. Thankfully, I was able to
call my parents, they drove all night to come and help us and we uprooted
ourselves and my treatments so that we could have a safe place to stay while I
finished treatment and recovered. It should be noted that our brief stint with
homelessness and relocation to another state meant I had to sign reams of
paperwork I could barely understand, while highly medicated, from my bed in
order to get approval to finish my treatments elsewhere.
Ten days after finishing my treatment, in a move that must have seemed crazy to
our families, Elizabeth and I loaded up all we could into our suitcases and got on
a flight to Scotland with our two little boys, who were only 2 and 3 years old. This
experience was life changing in more ways than I can say, but in terms of
healthcare it was a revelation. Immediately after registering as a student and
obtaining the necessary visas, all of us had access to quality healthcare. I
weighed something like 105-110 pounds, was very weak, and needed frequent
monitoring and follow-up care once we arrived. All of my clinic sessions, CT
scans, x-rays, lab tests, and other costs were covered by the National Health
Service. Through most of my time as a student I worked and paid taxes, but
these seemed a small price to pay for the peace of mind in knowing that we
could see a doctor when we needed to without wondering if we could afford it.

This treatment extended to the rest of our family. Elizabeth was able to get
specialist treatments, albeit after being on a waiting list, which we could not
have afforded in the private system. Even more importantly, we had access to
early education for our kids. This meant that when our oldest started nursery
school and they noticed his developmental delays, he got immediate help and
accommodations at school to help him improve. After referrals to pediatricians
and neurological specialists, he was diagnosed with autism and provided with
speech therapy, a personal school assistant, and group therapy for behavior and
emotional management. These early interventions allowed him to remain in
mainstream classes and to maximize his chances at living the most normal adult
life possible someday. Many of these things would have been completely out of
reach to people on a low income.
There are many, many more stories I could share, from the amazing care
Elizabeth received during her highest risk pregnancy to our experiences living in
both a very libertarian-style social setup in the Middle East to a European social
democracy here in Finland. What it all comes down to, for me, is quite simple.
There are some things that money cant buy, and there are some things you
shouldnt need it to buy. You cannot buy health, but you can buy access to the
best doctors, treatments and hospitals. You cannot buy learning, but you can buy
therapies, tutoring, or test preparation courses to obtain educational
advantages.
Why should these things have to be bought? Do we expect people to pay
individually for using the fire department or police? Are they held responsible for
the costs of things outside their control, like being victims of crime? Do we
charge a personal fee for each person to be protected by the US military based
on the vulnerability of their particular state, or their travel plans? Should people
pay the coast guard for being rescued at sea? If people should be able to get the
lifesaving services of the fire department or police without worrying about their
ability to pay, why should they be unable to access the equally necessary
services of healthcare professionals? Why does society bear the cost of crime
socially, but expect people to individually bear the cost of health needs which are
just as often the result of bad luck, car accidents, and the like? How does it make
sense to have taxpaying workers unable to work and pay tax because of poor
health, increasing their families need for welfare or other government aid, and
potentially even leading to their death and the permanent impoverishment of
their survivors? Why should kids be provided with radically different levels of
school funding, quality teaching, and access to the types of schooling that can
provide them with a good career or a good shot at university, just based on how
much money their parents make? Why should kids with special needs only get
their particular needs fully met if their parents can afford it?
Some people may argue that these matters should not be the responsibility of
the government. In that case, if they wish to be consistent, why not also charge
people to have a police officer visit them, to use the courts, or to have a fire put
out at their house? Other people point out that the government has limited
means and cant possibly pay for everything. They make a valid observation and

I actually respect this fiscally conservative argument. What it lacks is the

recognition that there are a number of choices when it comes to our spending
that reflects our priorities. The US does not lack resources to spend on
investments in infrastructure, education or healthcare. What is lacking is an
understanding of the way these types of spending can pay for themselves in the
form of more revenue from higher incomes, lower crime, and more efficient use
on resources. Furthermore, despite rather ludicrous claims that the US military is
weak and needs more money thrown at it, the facts show that nearly half of all
the money spent on military costs on earth is spent just by the USA. If there was
$1 trillion+ available for an optional war in Iraq, surely we can find a way to
invest in good education for all children, and access to good healthcare for
everyone.
As someone whose life has been indelibly shaped by interactions with people
who have mental illness, educational special needs, and who has been unable to
afford healthcare when I needed it most, I support a philosophy of government
that recognizes the effects these issues have on our whole society, and which
therefore shares the costs of dealing with them through society. I dont believe
everyone has equal ability, but I do believe that every child deserves to be
educated in a way that makes use of their abilities and which gives equally able
kids from all backgrounds a genuine chance at success. If we look at some of the
most radical investments ever made by the government from the GI Bill, which
gave World War II veterans access to free university education and
unprecedented growth in national GDP and personal incomes, the moon launch
initiative, which yielded countless technologies that continue to serve vital
terrestrial uses, to the establishment of Medicare and Social Security which, for
all their problems, did more to decrease poverty and death related to aging than
anything prior, we can see that there are causes which can unite people of all
political persuasions and beliefs and which can bring the country together in the
service of higher goals.
As a husband, father, son, and brother, that is the type of politics I can believe in
and support. It is that vision I will take with me when I fill in my ballot in the
coming days.