At the most critical moment of our time, the people of this great nation have risen up, shown up, and made our voice heard. America has chosen democracy over demagoguery, unity over divisiveness, decency over insults, facts over lies, and science over fiction.

President-Elect Joe Biden and the first woman Black-Indian-American Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris, we are holding you to your promises. We need your strong leadership to restore the integrity of the executive branch, to put the pandemic under control, and to strengthen our commitment to justice for all.

From climate to China, economy to education, healthcare to healing, the Biden administration will face tough challenges ahead. Then again, the job of the president and vice president of the United States are not supposed to be easy. Critical issues cannot be resolved over Twitter. Biden and Harris will need a strong coalition to lead this country out of the damages created in the past four years. They will need people with not only qualifications in their fields but also compassion in their hearts.

This election has demonstrated that our democracy is still strong and resilient. Totalitarian, fascism, and dictatorship have no place in this free nation. The United States is still one of the greatest countries in the world. We need to come together to heal our wounds, revive our souls, and lift up our spirits. There are no red states and blue states. There’s only the United States of America.

Break out the champagne glasses, it’s time to celebrate “America the Beautiful.”

Zeynep Tufekci writes in the Atlantic:

At the moment, the Democratic Party risks celebrating Trump’s loss and moving on—an acute danger, especially because many of its constituencies, the ones that drove Trump’s loss, are understandably tired. A political nap for a few years probably looks appealing to many who opposed Trump, but the real message of this election is not that Trump lost and Democrats triumphed. It’s that a weak and untalented politician lost, while the rest of his party has completely entrenched its power over every other branch of government: the perfect setup for a talented right-wing populist to sweep into office in 2024. And make no mistake: They’re all thinking about it.

Yes, indeed!

Jane Mayer writes in the New Yorker on “Why Trump Can’t Afford to Lose”:

Trump has famously survived one impeachment, two divorces, six bankruptcies, twenty-six accusations of sexual misconduct, and an estimated four thousand lawsuits. Few people have evaded consequences more cunningly. That run of good luck may well end, perhaps brutally, if he loses to Joe Biden.

The future of Trump will be dark and devastating.

My own mama says I’m thugged out. Wait, that was what 2pac’s mama said. My own mama told me to tone down my English on Facebook. People are telling her that I am being too vocal. She’s worried about my safety.

I am actually not being vocal on Facebook. I write for my website first. I just reshare them on Facebook. Sure, I sprinkle a bit of profanities here and there, but they are just part of my style. I am not spilling out any hateful rhetoric. I am not the one who declares Civil War if Biden loses. I am all for empathy, compassion, and unity. Still, I apologized for making my mama worried.

She asked me if I voted yet. I told her I voted a month ago. I asked her if she voted and she said no. She asked me who I voted for and I told her Biden. She said China has bribed Biden and I should have voted for the other guy. At this point, I was just speechless. All of my conversations with her about him all these years meant nothing to her.

If she wanted to vote for him based on her own choice, I would respect her decision. She told me I should have voted for him based on what other people were telling her. She chose to believe other people over her own son. That has always been the case all my life. She loves me unconditionally, but she never places her confidence in me. It didn’t matter what her own son said to her. She would take anyone else’s words over mine. I am not mad at her. In her heart and mind, I am still her little boy and her first instinct is to protect me. I get that; therefore, I still love her no matter what. Her heart is in the right place even though her mind will never change.

For better or for worse, I can’t wait for this to be all over. I have some serious relationships to reconnect. I really miss drinking with my mom. I used to cajole her into sharing an Olde E and chicken wings with me. I swear—the fried chicken wings from Queen’s Six Pack must have been marinated with crack. They are so damn addictive. I have to get a fix every time I go back to Lancaster. I miss those snow days when she made bánh xèo (crispy Vietnamese crepes) and I made cognac and coke. We drank slowly and ate bánh xèo until we were drunk and bloated. I miss the good olde days, mama. I love you, mama, and I will never let anyone come between us—definitely not that orange motherfucker. Sorry mama, I have to cuss.

This is it, America. Let’s hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. In this election, our values, our characters, and our lives are on the ballot.

America has been through so much in the last four years. Our principles, prides, and practices have been desecrated. From caste to class to community, we are further divided than ever. America is losing its soul. Four more years of division, dishonesty, and disillusion will put our nation in danger to the point of no return. The worst has yet to come.

I hope the outcome of this election will heal our country, strengthen our democracy, restore our decency, and save our lives. We need to bring back empathy, integrity, and civility. After this election, I hope America will come together to seal our cracked nation. The scars will never go away, but we will be stronger together. So let’s skip the civil war. Instead of fighting among ourselves, let’s fight against COVID-19. Instead of tearing down each other, let’s rebuild respect. Instead of spilling out the hate, let’s show some love.

After this election, I hope family members will come back together and friends will come around. Politics isn’t worth losing relationships over. I hope I won’t have to rant about politics again, or at least until 2024.

Before I shut the fuck up, I just want to say, go vote if you haven’t. Vote your conscience. Vote like your life depends on it. I am optimist that America will pull through this time.

Peace, love, and unity.

With her meticulous research and articulate storytelling, Isabel Wilkerson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, unearths the unspoken caste system in America. Caste is the infrastructure of our divisions. It is a four-hundred-year-old social system that separates people according to their ranks. The higher caste has more privilege, power, and entitlement over the lower caste.

Before reading this book, I wondered why caste and not race or class. After reading it, I understand why caste makes complete sense to break down the complexity of the injustice system in America. For example, policemen of color, including a Japanese-American officer in Oklahoma, a Chinese-American officer in New York City, and a Muslim-American officer in Minneapolis, were charged of brutality whereas cases from upper-caste officers were dismissed.

From London to India, from the rise of Obama to the phenomenal of Trump, from historical documents to personal accounts, Wilkerson has skillfully pieced together all the details to create a coherent picture of the caste system. It is an important, eye-opening book that helps explain the injustice of the past as well as the presence. I highly recommend it.

The election is two days away and voters should have made up their mind by now if they haven’t voted already. At this point, it’s a waste of time trying to change people’s mind, but I have to call out the disrespectful, disturbing rhetorics in the Vietnamese-American community from Trump supporters.

Reading the vicious attacks on Kamala Harris from the Vietnamese-American Trump supporters breaks my heart. It’s fine to support someone they believed in and to oppose the other side, but it is wrong and unacceptable to be racist, sexist, and misogynist. Ms. Harris is one of us. She’s half Asian. Even if they aren’t proud of the fact that she is a heartbeat away from being the Vice President of the United States, they should respect her. I am not going to repeat their degrading language because it is a disgrace for the entire community.

Watching the confrontations between Trump vs. Biden supporters in the Vietnamese-American community shake me to the core. Again, I am not going to link to these embarrassing video clips in which Trump supporters demand the opposite camp to kneel down. They even have the audacity to tell Biden supporters to go back to Vietnam. Who the fuck do these Vietnamese-American Trump supporters think they are? The yellow supremacists?

The Scalia Law School has a new dean who comes from business background. His first order of business is to get rid of Mason’s Green, Gold, and Orange. The only color from the Mason guideline that he approves is Bright Blue (#007dc5). Thanks to SASS, updating the color scheme for the entire website was effortless. Replacing one CSS file and voila!

Yesterday, we rolled out an updated logo with Mason’s Bright Blue. All the links and highlighted items are also blue. Our new color palette consists of blue, gray, and white. Maybe I getting wearied of Mason’s Green, Gold, and Orange, but I find the Bright Blue to be refreshing. I also appreciate the limitation of just using a few colors.

I am sure there will be more changes to come, but just changing the color alone makes a difference.

I changed the typefaces again. For body text, I switched to Bookerly, designed by Dalton Maag for Amazon Kindle. I love how legible Bookerly appears on e-books. I also changed the background from pure white to light grain-like paper quality. I am a lover of physical books.

For the headers, I went with Ballinger, by Signal Type. I had the opportunity to work with Max Phillips on supporting Vietnamese. I really love the black weight for headers. I wanted to use Ballinger’s text weight, but I still hesitated to use sans serif for body copy. Maybe some time in the future.

In the previous iteration, I said that it would be a while before I made the change again and yet it only lasted 4 days. That’s the beauty of having my own site. I can change it up whenever I want to. I love the freedom to write as well as the freedom to design.

The homepage is featuring a lovely illustration of a diverse group of people supporting Joe Biden. I lifted that artwork right off joebiden.com, which is being displayed way too far down on the official website. I wanted to give it more prominent space on my site until Election Day. Go vote for Sleepy Joe so you can sleep better at night knowing a competent, compassionate president taking care of America.

Let’s talk about selfishness. Yes, I am selfish as fuck and I know it. While I might be critical of myself, it is crucial to recognize my own flaws. At the very least, I won’t turn into a narcissist.

I am so selfish that I do not eat my kids’ leftovers. I have seen so many parents, particularly Vietnamese parents, load up their kids’ with so much food on their plates that their kids would struggle to finish.The father usually ended up eating his kid’s leftovers. Fuck that, I wouldn’t eat that shit; therefore, I only give them what I think they can eat or a bit less. They can always ask for more.

I am so selfish that I don’t give my kids a hand on everything. Learning to skate, for example, I let them fall so they can learn to balance themselves. After that, it would be a piece of cake for them to pick up. Now their skills have surpassed me. When I taught my second son how to swim, I let him jump from the pool down then try to swim to me. The first time, he struggled to float so I picked him up. By the fourth or fifth jump, he was ready to float all by himself.

I am so selfish that I do not let anyone take advantage of my generosity. If you’re generous with me then I am generous with you. If you treat me with respect then I treat you with respect. I demand fairness. Clear and simple.

At times my selfishness turned into pettiness. At that point, I needed to reevaluate myself. Selfishness has its good and bad. I am just trying to get rid of the bad parts. How do I figure out the difference? Look at the president of the United States. He is an example of the worst type of selfishness. He puts himself first at the time of the pandemic and puts everyone else at risk. If he could admit his selfishness, he could have had the coronavirus under control and he could save lives. Like a selfish person always says, “It is what it is.” Let’s hope this selfish president will be done with his job in one week.