tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24518713418935522362024-02-19T02:31:45.294-05:00Out of the WoodsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger522125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2451871341893552236.post-18589671945371498652023-02-20T11:16:00.003-05:002023-02-20T11:16:33.449-05:00<pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "Liberation Mono", monospace; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 26.6667px;">The Sunday paper tells us of an odd phenomenon: a number of young people report</pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "Liberation Mono", monospace; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 26.6667px;">falling deeply in love with their chatbot-- an imaginary person taught to talk by </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "Liberation Mono", monospace; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 26.6667px;">Artificial Intelligence (AI). These reports include the admission that the chatbot </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "Liberation Mono", monospace; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 26.6667px;">is not a real person but one that is animated by the person who loves them. The </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "Liberation Mono", monospace; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 26.6667px;">attraction is often also sexual even though a sexual relationship is not a possibility.
<br /></pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "Liberation Mono", monospace; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 26.6667px;">These lovers of imaginary persons acknowledge that they are unable to have loving </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "Liberation Mono", monospace; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 26.6667px;">relationships with real persons. This is not an unusual experience. I remember as </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "Liberation Mono", monospace; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 26.6667px;">a young person being so needy that I could never give a new relationship the time </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "Liberation Mono", monospace; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 26.6667px;">it needed to grow and develop to see whether a deeper friendship was possible. </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "Liberation Mono", monospace; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 26.6667px;">Having met a person who seemed interesting, my next thought was of marriage and a </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "Liberation Mono", monospace; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 26.6667px;">lifetime commitment. I could not even wait for another encounter to see whether </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "Liberation Mono", monospace; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 26.6667px;">the person remained interesting after meeting more than once.</pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "Liberation Mono", monospace; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 26.6667px;">The neediness of those falling in love with their chatbot manifests their lack of </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "Liberation Mono", monospace; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 26.6667px;">self-esteem, their sense that they cannot live a successful and enjoyable life </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "Liberation Mono", monospace; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 26.6667px;">without an intimate relationship with someone else. Their worth as persons derives </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "Liberation Mono", monospace; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 26.6667px;">from being loved completely and unconditionally. Their lives, by themselves, are </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "Liberation Mono", monospace; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 26.6667px;">barren and filled with sadness. Somehow they seem empty and pointless. They need </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "Liberation Mono", monospace; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 26.6667px;"><br /></pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "Liberation Mono", monospace; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 26.6667px;">For myself, I was fortunate to grow up and to learn to enjoy a life not enveloped </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "Liberation Mono", monospace; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 26.6667px;">in an intimate relationship but rendered enjoyable by different friends and </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "Liberation Mono", monospace; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 26.6667px;">different sorts of friendships. Perhaps that will also happen to the people who </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "Liberation Mono", monospace; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 26.6667px;">today console themselves with loving imaginary beings. But now they think they need </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "Liberation Mono", monospace; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 26.6667px;">to depend on loving a creature of their own making with the help of their computer.</pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "Liberation Mono", monospace; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 26.6667px;">
But what, if anything, does the story tell us about life for young people in our </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "Liberation Mono", monospace; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 26.6667px;">society? Is our culture failing them by leaving them without robust confidence in </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "Liberation Mono", monospace; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 26.6667px;">their own being, potential victims of the self deception of loving an imaginary </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "Liberation Mono", monospace; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 26.6667px;">creature? Are we leaving them isolated , unsure of themselves without a solid </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "Liberation Mono", monospace; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 26.6667px;">confidence of their worth and how they deserve love and affection? </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "Liberation Mono", monospace; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 26.6667px;">
These are questions that need to be taken very seriously.</pre><div id="70DE18D9_5640_0D7C_7431_3DEDE997D56E"></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2451871341893552236.post-41217833563606633482023-02-07T14:34:00.001-05:002023-02-07T14:34:10.437-05:00<p> <span style="font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">Environmental Ethics </span></p><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">This should not be a strange topic. Everyone knows that the environment is in </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">trouble and the victim of many threats. Environmentalism is the concern of many. </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">There are only too many questions about methods of saving the environment. </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">In the western states such as California or Washington there is a real threat </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">of wildfires every summer and, at the same time, there is a serious shortage </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">of water to put out those fires, to irrigate farmland, and to maintain </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">astonishingly green golf courses. Different parts of the country face different </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">threats but nowhere is the environment safe.
But are these problems problems in ethics? Everyone, whether they live in houses </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">or in apartments or in rooms are admonished about the safety of the spaces they </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">live in. They need smoke alarms; the windows need to open easily and, in the winter,</pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">they need to shut very tight. Would you think of these as ethical commandments? </span></pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">No, they are just reminders of what safety requires. It is in everyone's best </span></pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">interest to obey rules like this. </span>Ethical rules tell us what we must do, whether </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">it is in our immediate self-interest or not. </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">Suppose your car scrapes the fender of another car as you leave the grocery store </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">parking lot. Should you just leave, or leave a note on the other car with your </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">name and telephone number? What is in your self-interest? What is the morally right </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">thing to do? You could just leave and hope that no one sees you. Or you could </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">leave your address, name, and telephone number so that the owner of the damaged </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">car can be in touch.
Often what ethics demands is that you do something that is not in your immediate </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">best interest, that you would rather not do. If you try to sell your house, </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">ethics demands that you not misrepresent it to potential buyers. If you make an </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">offer of marriage to a person, you must not lie about yourself, your past, about </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">possible reasons why you would not be a good marriage candidate. Don't forget </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">to mention that you spent years being addicted to alcohol or that you have been </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">married and divorced three times before. </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">You must not misrepresent who you are.
It is clearly in everyone's interest to reduce how much coal or oil we burn </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">to generate electricity. But if you have money invested in a coal mine or an oil </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">company, it is in your interest that this company make a sizable profit by selling </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">more coal or more oil. Taking good care of the environment is not in the best </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">interest of many citizens, such as all the elderly whose savings, that now support </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">them, may well be invested in coal, or oil, or natural gas.
Environmental ethics tells us not to profit from products that further damage our </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">environment, already threatened by excessive heat in the summer, by major droughts, </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">overwhelmed by rain storms and floods. Around the planet farmland loses its </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">fertility and the families it once supported are now moving to countries that </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">are very reluctant to accept them. Millions of persons are on the move because </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">their homeland is no longer able to support them.
This situation confronts us with a serious ethical dilemma: Shall we withdraw our </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">money from investments that further damage the environment? What shall we do with </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">our life savings that must support us for our waning years? Or shall we ignore the</pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">terrible damages these investments do to millions of persons in Africa and Asia? </span></pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Environmental ethics tells us clearly that we must do everything we can to minimize </span></pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">the damage we do in many countries because we burn so much coal and oil. </span>Self-</pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">interest tells us to maintain our investments in those damaging industries. </pre><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 10pt;">How will we respond to the demands of environmental ethics?</pre>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2451871341893552236.post-79775068590784337762023-01-28T16:25:00.000-05:002023-01-28T16:25:29.403-05:00<span style="font-family: times;">Mass Shootings-- What do they teach us?<br /><br /> Mass shootings are a familiar phenomenon but in the last month they have become terribly common. Questions about the causes of all these frequent murderous attacks on a number of people have become more pressing. We want to know the causes of mass shootings. What is the matter with the persons committing these crimes? When we ask that question we are likely to receive different answers. A number of them are obviously self-interested. Religious leaders will blame mass shootings on the decay of religious institutions in our country. Pro-life advocates will point the finger at the moral decay that allowed abortions to be legal for 50 years.</span><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /> Neglect of their favorite values will be offered as explanations of mass shootings by other groups. But these answers are made up to promote a particular outlook or institution. Much more interesting are the answers provided by persons who have studied this phenomenon of mass shootings and have looked closely at the persons who committed them. They have been looking for facts. The common bond they find among Mass Shooters is despair: the shooters feel threatened in their relationships or perhaps are all alone. They have financial problems; their boss fired them. They have no friends and have not talked to their family in a long time. Their lives are miserable; they have nothing to look forward to, to accept putting one foot in front of the other and trying not to cry in public.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br />Mass shooters, of course, often die in the course of the massacre. They may turn their gun on themselves. But if they die, they are not the only one, they go having taken revenge on their society by often killing people they don't even know.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br />Their sadness converted to anger, they are able to act, and able to kill several persons, often including themselves.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br />The next question is unavoidable. This is America, the richest country in the world, the home of free institutions where it depends only on the effort of the individual to reach the life they have chosen for themselves. " Home of the free .…", how does our wealth and our freedoms create a world of sadness, of despair, of persons whose lives are dev</span><span style="font-family: times;">oid of hope, of persons for whom the future holds boredom at best and at worst desperation?</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br />The answer to these questions is not hard to find, but many Americans resist that answer because it forces us to stop deceiving ourselves with the sappy misrepresentations of what it means to live in the United States today. Not everyone is wealthy. For those earning the minimum wage life is difficult because their earnings don't always last to the end of the week and feeding their children is a major challenge, never mind eating themselves. They solve the problem of extortionist rents by moving frequently. It is not difficult to imagine the humiliations felt when you are never able to pay what you owe. Being unable to pay your debts, let alone have money left over to provide yourself with reliable transportation, in spite of working really hard, cannot fail to make a person feel that they are the victim of many injustices. Moreover they are the innocent victim and as a consequence they are a very angry victim. Can you blame them?<br /> <br />It requires an impartial look at the society in which we live and which takes shape according to our decisions. There are many people whose hard work does not produce a comfortable living but leaves them at the margins of the economy and therefore at the margins of the society. Once we recognize that, it is not quite as puzzling why elderly men (as in the last few shootings) should aim their guns at people they work with or perhaps at utter unknowns. Too many years of feeling humiliated by their life at the margins finally explode in wordless rage costing the lives of equally marginal victims -- workers who have also been at the margins for many years, who's hard work was not recognized, who were not acknowledged to be upstanding citizens but were humiliated by a less than living wage.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"> <br />Why do they pass a lifetime without earning a living wage? Your own work experience enables you to give an answer. Think of the unearned advantages--your parents' wealth, social standing and connections to persons with influence, your early educational experiences and advantages that allowed you to set goals for yourself--medical schools , law school--which are not realistic goals for many other children. Hard work will move some people ahead in our society and confine others to minimum wage jobs.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br />You can now understand why there are frequent mass shootings.</span><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><pre class="western" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"><div><br /></div></pre></blockquote></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2451871341893552236.post-41103394030063037342020-09-01T17:02:00.000-04:002020-09-01T17:02:34.962-04:00<p>
</p><p align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: DejaVu Serif, serif; font-size: x-large;">White
Supremacy: Who Controls the News?</span></p>
<p align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: DejaVu Serif, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Long
before the Coronavirus Pandemic and the national uproar over racism
in the US our local schools came under fire for disproportionate
punishment, suspension and expulsion of children of color. The
superintendent of schools replied to all these criticisms by
asserting that her School Department had no problem of racism.</span></span></p>
<p align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: DejaVu Serif, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> It
is now a year later and Black groups in our town have been
complaining about racist and unequal police practices. Following the
shining example of the superintendent of schools, the police chief
insists that there are not and never have been racist practices in
our Police Department.</span></span></span></p>
<p align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: DejaVu Serif, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Members
of the Black and Brown community complained about unjust and racist
treatment of their children in the schools; members of the same Black
community are complaining about racist behavior on the part of police
officers. The leaders of the schools and the police deny that any
such thing is true.</span></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img class="image image-thumbnail" height="263" src="https://www.startpage.com/av/proxy-image?piurl=https%3A%2F%2Fencrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com%2Fimages%3Fq%3Dtbn%3AANd9GcTFfmu_C-gBKT3dhTf-wgLTHPuBonePLl3i35s3IZStx7WlrZg%26s&sp=1598993933Tc53bb0dbfbe28f54ce29f423166312b4223d4c1df3f76273999dd04b7cb8eb23" width="468" /> <br /></span></div><p class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 80px; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: DejaVu Serif, serif;"></span></span></p>
<p align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: DejaVu Serif, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> The
town's leadership, the mayor, the city manager and the City Council
could have responded in a variety of ways to this controversy. </span></span>
</p>
<p align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: DejaVu Serif, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> They
could have proposed an inquiry where each party to the controversy
was given a chance to tell their side of the story and make some
effort to find what is most likely closest to the truth. </span></span>
</p>
<p align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: DejaVu Serif, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> They
could've appointed an independent citizens committee to try to find
out how we should think about fairness in the schools and in
policing. </span></span>
</p>
<p align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: DejaVu Serif, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> They
could have encouraged public or private conversations between the
leadership of the schools and the police and representatives of the
people of color. </span></span>
</p>
<p align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: DejaVu Serif, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> They
could have appointed a group of religious leaders to encourage and
manage such conversations.</span></span></p>
<p align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: DejaVu Serif, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> There
are many different ways in which the city leadership could have given
every party to this disagreement the chance to tell their story and
to make an effort to bring to light what is actually happening in our
town. All of these would have been different ways of opening up
important conversations about issues of race. They would have been
genuine contributions to peace among all citizens.</span></span></p>
<p align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: DejaVu Serif, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Instead
the leadership of the town chose to do nothing whatsoever. The
complaints of people of color in our town have been rejected as
baseless by the leaders of the town – the Chief of Police and the
Superintendent of Schools two of the most powerful persons running
the town, </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: DejaVu Serif, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>both
of them white.</i></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: DejaVu Serif, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">
The Mayor, City Manager and City Council implied that the
spokesperson for the Community of Color are malcontents, persons who
exaggerated or even misrepresented actual events. They took it for
granted that the stories told by White members of the city leadership
were more reliable than any of the critics. No attempt was necessary
at finding out whose story was correct. Of course the White story was
the true one.</span></span></span></span></p>
<p align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: DejaVu Serif, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> Here
is one more example of systemic racism and of White supremacy:
wherever there is disagreement about facts, White leadership will put
their full confidence in narratives provided by Whites. The story of
people of color has intrinsically less credibility.</span></span></span></span></p>
<p align="left" class="western" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: DejaVu Serif, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Whites
reassert their power by controlling the news. Their view of the world
is the correct one. Their message is clear: "We are still in
power. We do not need to listen to your complaints. We may pretend to
do so, but we do not need to take them seriously."</span></span></p>
<p align="left" class="western" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: DejaVu Serif, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Nothing
convicts officials more decisively of being racist than their denial
that racism exists in their organization.</span></span></p>
<p><style type="text/css">
p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; direction: ltr; color: #000000; line-height: 115%; orphans: 2; widows: 2 }
p.western { font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; so-language: en-US }
p.cjk { font-family: "NSimSun"; font-size: 12pt; so-language: zh-CN }
p.ctl { font-family: "Arial", sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; so-language: hi-IN }</style></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2451871341893552236.post-90806098255551635552020-08-18T12:18:00.000-04:002020-08-18T12:18:51.421-04:00<h2 style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;">Systemic Racism</span></span></h2><p align="left" class="western" style="direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">In the last two weeks we have witnessed the astonishing phenomenon of one very large, very rich corporation after the other announcing their commitment of millions and millions of dollars to an effort to combat systemic racism. In their statements the leaders of these corporations suggest that they have been enemies of systemic racism forever but I think we are allowed to be somewhat skeptical of that claim.</span></p><p align="left" class="western" style="direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">This sudden commitment to antiracism is surprising and, we should of course add, welcome. Also surprising is the commitment to oppose </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i>systemic</i></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> racism. This is a relatively new term and it is worth a bit of time trying to figure out what it means.</span></span></span></p><p align="left" class="western" style="direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">What makes racism systemic?</span></p><p align="left" class="western" style="direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">The phrase suggests that the injuries black Americans complain of are not inflicted by individuals but by systems – social, economic and other systems. That sounds as if racist injuries are not perpetrated by individual persons, by you and me, but by this whole other kind of entity, a system. If that is true I do not have to feel guilty about racism because I am not responsible. It's the system, stupid.</span></p><p align="left" class="western" style="direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">But what are these systems?</span></p><p align="left" class="western" style="direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">Perhaps if we look at a concrete example, we can figure this out. In the town where I live, sociologists at a state college studied the rates at which children of different backgrounds are punished and are sent home from school. They found that black children and Latinx children were suspended at a much higher rate relative to their numbers in this school population, than the white children.</span></p><p align="left" class="western" style="direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">Clearly the suspensions were imposed on specific students by specific teachers. So far the racist situation – that children of color were suspended much more frequently than white children – was brought about through the action of individual teachers. We have not found the system yet.</span></p><p align="left" class="western" style="direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">We encounter the systemic nature of this racist situation only when we look at the entire school department, the popularly elected school committee and their reaction to this crisis. It turns out that both the school administration and the elected school committee are not troubled by the uneven rates of suspension of children of color and white children. They accept this as perfectly normal.</span></p><p align="left" class="western" style="direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">The standards for punishment and specifically for suspension from school applied to different groups of children are different for children of color than for white children. The educational system – the School Department and the elected School Committee – accepts racial inequities as fair and normal. Racist disadvantages are built in to the educational system in our town. The actions of individual teachers in applying these unequal standards are simply executing the disadvantages the educational </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i>system</i></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> imposes on children of color.</span></span></span></p><p align="left" class="western" style="direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">These individual teachers are, of course, responsible for following the racist rules set by the educational system. They cannot deny their responsibility. They are responsible for not seeing the injustices they perpetrate, for not speaking up, and resisting. But they are only partially responsible. They say "I don't make the rules--I just work here."</span></p><p align="left" class="western" style="direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">In order to address the systemic racism, the rules of the system need to be addressed and changed. Most likely the process by which the rules are produced also needs to come under scrutiny and be improved.</span></p><p align="left" class="western" style="direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">But where do these systems come from? We have schools, we have businesses. Cities must be run and for each of those there are administrative systems. What makes them racist? Why are there so few teachers of color in our schools? Why is City Hall lily white? Why do our businesses have so few leaders of color?</span></p><p align="left" class="western" style="direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">Why are rules applied more harshly to children of color than to white children? Why are black children perceived as threatening where the same behaviors of white children are not? White teachers and administrators read black children differently from how they interpret stances and attitudes of children of color. Whites share a subtle and complex method of interpretation specific to children of color which they often are not fully aware of.</span></p><p align="left" class="western" style="direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">Our present situation is remarkable because white people – some white people – are beginning to be willing to give a frank answer to all these questions: it is because white people believe that they are superior, that they are entitled to privileges that most persons of color do not deserve. Because white people are superior, they should have the leadership positions, they should have the jobs you can do from home, and people of color should have the hands-on jobs and should be the people who are ordered around by white supervisors. Given their beliefs in their superiority, white people – </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i>all</i></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> white people – support racist rules in their different institutional systems.</span></span></span></p><p align="left" class="western" style="direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">The members of each of these systems need to reflect carefully about the ways in which they have supported in the past and still support rules that are clearly unjust and that do not acknowledge the full equality of all citizens regardless of the color of their skin or their origin from different parts of the globe.</span></p><p align="left" class="western" style="direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">From the very beginning of our history, we have </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">been officially committed to the equality of all persons. At the same time</span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">w</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">e have treated persons with dark skin as inferior. They have with admirable tenacity gained a certain amount of recognition for their full humanity. White people have been persuaded to see the justice of their cause. We need to continue the work to</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: DejaVu Serif, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> make real our guiding principle that "all men [and women] are created equal."</span></span></span></p><p align="left" class="western" style="direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">In the last two weeks we have witnessed the astonishing phenomenon of one very large, very rich corporation after the other announcing their commitment of millions and millions of dollars to an effort to combat systemic racism. In their statements the leaders of these corporations suggest that they have been enemies of systemic racism forever but I think we are allowed to be somewhat skeptical of that claim.</span></p><p align="left" class="western" style="direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">This sudden commitment to antiracism is surprising and, we should of course add, welcome. Also surprising is the commitment to oppose </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i>systemic</i></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> racism. This is a relatively new term and it is worth a bit of time trying to figure out what it means.</span></span></span></p><p align="left" class="western" style="direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">What makes racism systemic?</span></p><p align="left" class="western" style="direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">The phrase suggests that the injuries black Americans complain of are not inflicted by individuals but by systems – social, economic and other systems. That sounds as if racist injuries are not perpetrated by individual persons, by you and me, but by this whole other kind of entity, a system. If that is true I do not have to feel guilty about racism because I am not responsible. It's the system, stupid.</span></p><p align="left" class="western" style="direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">But what are these systems?</span></p><p align="left" class="western" style="direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">Perhaps if we look at a concrete example, we can figure this out. In the town where I live, sociologists at a state college studied the rates at which children of different backgrounds are punished and are sent home from school. They found that black children and Latinx children were suspended at a much higher rate relative to their numbers in this school population, than the white children.</span></p><p align="left" class="western" style="direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">Clearly the suspensions were imposed on specific students by specific teachers. So far the racist situation – that children of color were suspended much more frequently than white children – was brought about through the action of individual teachers. We have not found the system yet.</span></p><p align="left" class="western" style="direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">We encounter the systemic nature of this racist situation only when we look at the entire school department, the popularly elected school committee and their reaction to this crisis. It turns out that both the school administration and the elected school committee are not troubled by the uneven rates of suspension of children of color and white children. They accept this as perfectly normal.</span></p><p align="left" class="western" style="direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">The standards for punishment and specifically for suspension from school applied to different groups of children are different for children of color than for white children. The educational system – the School Department and the elected School Committee – accepts racial inequities as fair and normal. Racist disadvantages are built in to the educational system in our town. The actions of individual teachers in applying these unequal standards are simply executing the disadvantages the educational </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i>system</i></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> imposes on children of color.</span></span></span></p><p align="left" class="western" style="direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">These individual teachers are, of course, responsible for following the racist rules set by the educational system. They cannot deny their responsibility. They are responsible for not seeing the injustices they perpetrate, for not speaking up, and resisting. But they are only partially responsible. They say "I don't make the rules--I just work here."</span></p><p align="left" class="western" style="direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">In order to address the systemic racism, the rules of the system need to be addressed and changed. Most likely the process by which the rules are produced also needs to come under scrutiny and be improved.</span></p><p align="left" class="western" style="direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">But where do these systems come from? We have schools, we have businesses. Cities must be run and for each of those there are administrative systems. What makes them racist? Why are there so few teachers of color in our schools? Why is City Hall lily white? Why do our businesses have so few leaders of color?</span></p><p align="left" class="western" style="direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">Why are rules applied more harshly to children of color than to white children? Why are black children perceived as threatening where the same behaviors of white children are not? White teachers and administrators read black children differently from how they interpret stances and attitudes of children of color. Whites share a subtle and complex method of interpretation specific to children of color which they often are not fully aware of.</span></p><p align="left" class="western" style="direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">Our present situation is remarkable because white people – some white people – are beginning to be willing to give a frank answer to all these questions: it is because white people believe that they are superior, that they are entitled to privileges that most persons of color do not deserve. Because white people are superior, they should have the leadership positions, they should have the jobs you can do from home, and people of color should have the hands-on jobs and should be the people who are ordered around by white supervisors. Given their beliefs in their superiority, white people – </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i>all</i></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> white people – support racist rules in their different institutional systems.</span></span></span></p><p align="left" class="western" style="direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">The members of each of these systems need to reflect carefully about the ways in which they have supported in the past and still support rules that are clearly unjust and that do not acknowledge the full equality of all citizens regardless of the color of their skin or their origin from different parts of the globe.</span></p><p align="left" class="western" style="direction: ltr; font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">From the very beginning of our history, we have </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">been officially committed to the equality of all persons. At the same time</span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">w</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">e have treated persons with dark skin as inferior. They have with admirable tenacity gained a certain amount of recognition for their full humanity. White people have been persuaded to see the justice of their cause. We need to continue the work to</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: DejaVu Serif, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> make real our guiding principle that "all men [and women] are created equal."</span></span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2451871341893552236.post-3482914417717501282020-01-21T10:18:00.000-05:002020-01-21T10:18:37.686-05:00
<style type="text/css">
@page { margin: 0.79in }
p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; direction: ltr; color: #000000; line-height: 115%; orphans: 2; widows: 2 }
p.western { font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; so-language: en-US }
p.cjk { font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; so-language: zh-CN }
p.ctl { font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; so-language: hi-IN }
a:link { so-language: zxx }
</style>
<br />
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZmD730JEQhgUHhZLQ_khn-aIbkgoY9H7SarqyD0O3uLQvzl4h5pca7TuibAKdD9VI4azTGZDpaF0L1GpVftW6Zss3SxmkmMkLauqrjerzaAp3QYKeJ11oWDFlpgB-wTRvi78hQWWOeu8/s1600/Carlisle+Apache+students.png" imageanchor="1" style="font-size: 12pt; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-indent: 0.73in;"><img border="0" data-original-height="261" data-original-width="685" height="151" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZmD730JEQhgUHhZLQ_khn-aIbkgoY9H7SarqyD0O3uLQvzl4h5pca7TuibAKdD9VI4azTGZDpaF0L1GpVftW6Zss3SxmkmMkLauqrjerzaAp3QYKeJ11oWDFlpgB-wTRvi78hQWWOeu8/s400/Carlisle+Apache+students.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="text-align: center; text-indent: 70.08px;"> The Pot calling the Kettle black</span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
In the north of China live the Uighurs, an ethnic minority different
from the dominant Han. Uighurs speak their own language; unlike the
rest of the Chinese population, they are Muslim. Since 2016 the
Chinese government has retained large numbers of Uighurs in
re-education camps. Inmates are said to be forced to speak Mandarin
instead of their native Uighur language. They are being indoctrinated
into Chinese Communist ideology to replace their own traditional
beliefs and religious commitments. It appears that the Chinese
government has mounted a brutal campaign to eradicate one of the
minority cultures in their country.</div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
Western media criticism has been loud. Interestingly, media in the
Middle East Muslim countries as well as in Turkey have noticed the
internment but have not condemned it. Muslim countries do not seem to
perceive the treatment of the Uighurs as a frontal attack on Islam.
Perhaps Western media exaggerate to score propaganda points; perhaps
Chinese influence in Muslim countries is more powerful than we had
thought.</div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
The well-being of the Uighurs seems to be seriously threatened. US
media such as the New York Times are very critical of China for their
treatment of the Uighurs. The Times regularly runs articles about the
efforts of the Chinese government to destroy the Uighur language and
culture and to produce instead a nation of committed adherents to the
official Communist culture. Western media consider this campaign
barbarous, violating human rights to the culture one is born into. In
the background of the articles about the Chinese internment camps one
can hear the boast that in the West such re-education campaigns are
recognized for what they are: inhumane treatments of minority groups.
Western government would not inflict such brutality on its minority
groups.</div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
No doubt these mass internment projects are deplorable, but Western
governments have not hesitated to use similar techniques in order to
destroy indigenous oppositional cultures. The public criticisms of
Chinese maltreatment of the Uighurs are hypocritical. They are only
reflections of techniques used by the US government and military in
the 19<sup>th</sup> and 20<sup>th</sup> century to try to assimilate
American Indians to the dominant White Anglo-Saxon culture of the US,
attempting to make distinct indigenous cultures disappear.</div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
In the 1830s, General Jackson, later to be elected president, moved
American Indians from fertile lands to what were then remote areas on
the United States. Thus the Cherokees were forced to walk from North
Carolina to what today is Oklahoma but was then an unknown
wilderness. Fifty years later, by 1879, wild land not desired by any
Whites had disappeared, but the American Indians were still here and
continued to be in the way. The government and military invented a
new technique for making the Indians disappear. Children were forced
to attend boarding schools, often a thousand miles away from where
their parents lived. Fathers who refused to give up children to these
Indian schools were deprived of government distributed rations.
Families who resisted were punished in other ways. They were forced
to surrender their kids.</div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
The first of the schools was established in Carlisle, PA by Col.
Richard Pratt who is reputed to have described the schools mission as
“kill the Indian in him and save the man.” To that end children
arriving at one of the many Indian schools immediately had their hair
cut, a shameful experience for many youngsters from different tribes.
They were forbidden to use their own or any other Indian language.
Failure to use English was punished severely. Children were taught
that their parents and other members of their tribe were “savages”
and the Americans “civilized” notwithstanding the inhumane
treatment the children received including abuse, sexual,
psychological and physical and the frequently filthy conditions in
the schools. Children died of ill treatment and disease. The Carlisle
school operated between 1879 and 1918–39 years. 200 children died
in those years; their remains were shuttled from one place to another
by various administrators so as not to be buried in the vicinity of
Whites, until some of them finally found a resting place near their
families.</div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
By 1978, the last Indian schools closed but the policy of destroying
tribal cultures and Indian families did not end. In fact, it is still
continuing. But the techniques used today were not those invented by
Col. Pratt. Today Indian children are given out to adoption by White
families at a much higher rates than children of other ethnic groups
in the United States.</div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: #181818;"><span style="font-family: open-sans, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Racially-based
separation of children from their parents is still a problem. The
Department of Health and Human Services </span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: open-sans, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">a</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: navy;"><span lang="zxx"><a href="https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubPDFs/racial_disproportionality.pdf" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">cknowledge</span></span></span></a></span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: open-sans, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">d</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: #181818;"><span style="font-family: open-sans, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> in
2016 that black and Native children were </span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: navy;"><span lang="zxx"><a href="http://www.ncsl.org/research/human-services/disproportionality-and-disparity-in-child-welfare.aspx" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">overrepresented</span></span></span></a></span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: #181818;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"> </span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: #181818;"><span style="font-family: open-sans, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">in
the child welfare services. Many more American Indian and
African-American children, than children belonging to other groups,
have been adopted by white families even where functioning families
existed and were ready to take in the children.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: #181818;"><span style="font-family: open-sans, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Whites
first took the land and then took the children.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: #181818;"><span style="font-family: open-sans, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">US
media must cease claiming that we respect human rights more seriously
than the government of China. Both the US and China have not
hesitated to try to rid themselves of populations they found
inconvenient. If the US government wants to claim superiority over
China, it must acknowledge its brutalization of American Indians, it
must acknowledge its past and present inhumane practices and make
belated efforts at reparations.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.07in;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.07in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2451871341893552236.post-37394012671324345822019-12-24T16:42:00.000-05:002019-12-24T16:42:35.349-05:00
<style type="text/css">
@page { margin: 0.79in }
p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; direction: ltr; color: #000000; line-height: 115%; orphans: 2; widows: 2 }
p.western { font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; so-language: en-US }
p.cjk { font-family: "NSimSun"; font-size: 12pt; so-language: zh-CN }
p.ctl { font-family: "Arial", sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; so-language: hi-IN }
</style>
<br />
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: x-large; text-indent: 0.5in;">Reconsidering
Thanksgiving</span></div>
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisNgdChCTcuAzr4pnUf21iPcMn6i9viBNNNLJlghirj0lYjMxCElss5dCou6HmUb3sAW3paHduMefkyH84-NxU4VNwmW1NiIjIMEVkYn4Q3zrv4wzeHR5HMUJOY69oKLbA2zbnzS-qMgk/s1600/pequotmassacre.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="480" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisNgdChCTcuAzr4pnUf21iPcMn6i9viBNNNLJlghirj0lYjMxCElss5dCou6HmUb3sAW3paHduMefkyH84-NxU4VNwmW1NiIjIMEVkYn4Q3zrv4wzeHR5HMUJOY69oKLbA2zbnzS-qMgk/s320/pequotmassacre.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Middle-aged,
or older Americans remember their Thanksgiving celebrations in the
early grades of grade school when some of the students dressed up as
pilgrims, in pointed hats made of cardboard, and others dressed up as
Indians with a feather or two in their headband and otherwise scanty
clothes, enacted a peaceful and shared Thanksgiving dinner.. They
often express surprise when they hear that seven and eight year olds
in our schools today are subjected to the same pretend Thanksgiving
rituals. </span></span>
</div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">These
celebrations were meant to convey a sense of our history, of the
positive relations between the pilgrims and the American Indians
living around Plymouth, MA. What happened in the years that followed
between the inhabitants of the Eastern shores of this continent and
the different tribes who had lived there for perhaps 12,000 or even
20,000 years was not discussed further. The meeting of the cardboard
pilgrims with two-feather Indians in second grade often is the only
mention of Indians in American history taught in our schools until
the Indians reappear as they attack innocent whites trekking across
the prairie in their covered wagons. No one asks what those wagons
were doing there in the first place.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
colonists coming over from England regarded American Indians as
primitive savages for no other reason than that they did not speak or
read and write English, that they preferred to live in tents rather
than in houses, that their understanding of ownership and possessions
differe</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">d</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
from that of the English (and perhaps that they were not
Protestants). Ownership for the English meant that you had the right
to dispose of, for instance, a piece of land as you pleased. You
could farm a piece of land or let it lie fallow; you could sell it,
burn everything that grew on it or turn it into a formal garden –
what ever you chose. After all it was yours. For the Wampanoags land
could not be owned in that sense. Some family or band of families
occupied a particular piece of land for a time. They had possession
of it--that excluded use by others without permission--they farmed
it, fished its rivers, or ocean shores. But the land of course was
not theirs, it was not anybody's because it was everybody's. </span></span></span>
</div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">When
colonists acquired ownership of a particular piece of land, often as
a consequence of deceptive practices, all the Indians were giving
away was possession, the ability to use a piece of land for a certain
period to farm, to fish, to hunt, to do whatever was needed to
sustain a group of people. This ownership lasted for a certain period
presumably agreed on. It was certainly not permanent. The English,
for their part, thought that they now were owners of this piece of
land forever and had total control over it; they did not just possess
it for a limited period. They could exclude all others—including
American Indians from passing over, let alone make use of the land.
Many bitter conflicts arose from these misunderstandings.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">These
profound cultural differences inevitably lead to terrible
miscommunications however well-meaning the parties on both sides may
have been. But both parties regarding the others as ignorant and
incompetent – the Wampanoag did not possess a written language, the
colonists would have starved during the long first winter (when many
of them did die) if it had not been for the generous assistance of
chief Massasoit of the Wampanoag. Both sides appeared to have reasons
for looking down on the others; both sides were terribly mistaken.</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">After
chief Massasoit died, about 55 years after the colonists first set
foot on the New England shore, the son of Massasoit, Pumetacom, also
known as King Philip, started a war against the English colonists
which the American Indians lost. The colonists massacred several
hundred Pequot Indians at the conclusion of that war. They cut off
Pumetacom’s head and displayed it rotting away for twenty years
outside the walls of Plymouth.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Whereas
the first Thanksgiving celebration, so faithfully commemorated by our
grade school children, did not start a tradition, it was not
repeated; it was not significant, at the end of King Philip's war, in
August 1677, the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony declared a
holiday of Thanksgiving for the colonists’ success in massacring
the inhabitants of the area. From the American Indian perspective,
this was the first Thanksgiving—a celebration by White Americans of
their destruction of American Indian lives, peoples and cultures.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">White
Americans celebrate Thanksgiving as a family holiday and to give
thanks for thriving on this continent. For American Indians
Thanksgiving remains a lasting symbol of the widespread killing of
original inhabitants of these lands that opened two centuries of
having land stolen from them or taken by military expeditions that
killed the people who </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">had</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
lived there long before we white people arrived.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">For
the last 50 years American Indians have gathered in Plymouth MA on
Thanksgiving day as a Day of Mourning. White persons are allowed to
attend this ceremony. But they are not allowed to speak. They are
asked not to eat where there are American Indians who may be fasting
on that day.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">When
white persons gather for Thanksgiving feasts in the coming year, we
should also remember the intense grief and suffering our presence in
America has brought to the people who have lived here for mil</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">l</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">enia.
Even better, well-meaning whites should inform themselves about the
history of American Indians on the American continent. We need to
find out how ordinary American Indians live today. We should find
the remaining Indian tribes where they live and try to arrange
meetings to sincerely apologize and to explore ways in which white
Americans can today try to repair at least a small part of the damage
we have done over several centuries.</span></span></span></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2451871341893552236.post-49596691845624306812019-11-29T18:00:00.000-05:002019-11-29T18:00:32.863-05:00
<style type="text/css">
@page { margin: 0.79in }
p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; direction: ltr; color: #000000; line-height: 115%; orphans: 2; widows: 2 }
p.western { font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; so-language: en-US }
p.cjk { font-family: "NSimSun"; font-size: 12pt; so-language: zh-CN }
p.ctl { font-family: "Arial", sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; so-language: hi-IN }
</style>
<br />
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: x-large;">Reparations
2: What are Reparations?</span></div>
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjcxijYN0uProaLBbOlJqzZ1zkSzXE78oyxBM3GMt9ioeRGv3fXaOtqNcKiZVyfxMTbdEhoOMRL0jQD3x58-D6bIOKxMK3R5ZLcAfgjg1kPGZbIlb8mANkyERsFoN7BTj81pm2zCztN2U/s1600/depression-era.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="716" data-original-width="950" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjcxijYN0uProaLBbOlJqzZ1zkSzXE78oyxBM3GMt9ioeRGv3fXaOtqNcKiZVyfxMTbdEhoOMRL0jQD3x58-D6bIOKxMK3R5ZLcAfgjg1kPGZbIlb8mANkyERsFoN7BTj81pm2zCztN2U/s320/depression-era.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">By
some accounts the United States is the richest country in the world.
But it's population clearly is not similarly the richest. The
official US poverty rate for 2017 is 12.3% 1 out of roughly </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">8</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
Americans is poor. The homeless are not included in this number,
neither are persons in the military or in prison. In 2014 more than
20% of children lived in poverty. For families headed by a woman the
poverty rate was 33%. </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
rate for American Indians is sightly higher. </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">More
than half of the poor adults worked, often part-time because
full-time work was hard to get; the work they </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">did
have</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
paid really poorly.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Are
these poor Americans whose poverty is the result of not obtaining
full-time work and/or being paid properly called "poverty
wages"entitled to reparations?</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I
raise the question in order to ascertain what we mean by the term
"reparations."</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Currently
reparations are under discussion for African-Americans who have
traditionally been and still are over represented among the poor in
America. But reparations for African Americans are called for not
just because they are often poor in spite of working, frequently more
than one job, but because African-Americans were enslaved between the
middle 1600s and the end of the Civil War. Being the property of
white plantation owners, they could be bought and sold at the whites'
will. Husbands were sold away from wives, wives from husbands;
children lost their mothers and fathers when their owners sold them
to a different plantation, often far away. Black family ties were not
regarded as valid or important.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Slave
children were not only not entitled to an education; it was illegal
to teach them to read and write. When the wife of the owner of
Frederick Douglass taught him his letters, she was breaking the law.</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Legally
liberated at the end of that war, African-Americans were subjected to
the so-called Jim Crow regime. Southern states passed the properly
named Black Codes – laws that applied only to African-Americans,
that made them liable to be arrested for "vagrancy" if they
were not working, or subject to arrest for not yielding the sidewalk
to white persons, or </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">for</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
looking white persons in the eye. Convicted under any of these laws,
they were imprisoned. </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">P</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">risoners
were rented out to white enterprises where once again they worked
without getting paid – the condition of slaves. Other "freed"
African-Americans worked as sharecroppers where they were regularly
cheated out of the pay they had earned for a year's crop of cotton.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Why
did African-Americans put up with these gross forms of maltreatment
and disrespect? In the period after the end of the Civil War they
were the targets of a concerted terrorist campaign. Random
African-Americans were grabbed, tortured and hanged. A sizable white
audience gaped at their killing; no one reached out to help. Sheriffs
and police often were in the audience. No white person was prosecuted
for murdering an African-American. This terror campaign has not ended
to this day. The murderer of Trayvon Martin was prosecuted but
acquitted.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Poor
Americans deserve help. They deserve living wages, access to good
housing, good healthcare and good schools for their children. After
almost 365 years of being treated as barely human, African Americans
deserve reparations, compensation for centuries of ill-treatment and
insult.</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">But
what form should these reparations take? There are different
proposals: Some imagine that every qualified African-American would
be paid a certain, probably substantial sum of money. Other projects
involve affirmative-action measures which enable African-American
students to enroll in good schools, even if they might not be well
prepared or if they cannot afford the cost which it would be up to
the (white) public to defray. African-Americans are much less likely
than whites to own their own home, their wealth is a small fraction
of the wealth of average white American families. Reparations might
be used to remedy these stark differences. White supremacy that
forces young black men and women into unemployment, educational
underachievement and poverty makes it extremely difficult for them to
develop proper self esteem. Reparations might mean programs to enable
these young people to learn to value themselves as they deserve to be
valued.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">But
all of these proposals miss the central requirement. As long as
whites can construe reparation programs as white
people-helping-African-Americans who are unable to succeed by their
own efforts, such operations simply continue poisonous racist
thinking. Reparations must repair relations between black and white.
</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Repairing
Black-White relations means that White people have to change. They
must no longer think that being white means being inherently superior
to persons whose skin was darker or who have been accepted as white
when earlier their status was, at best, in doubt ( and the decision
about their status was, of course in the hands of white</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">s</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">.)
</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Reparations
must involve the acknowledgment by whites of their brutality towards
African-Americans for more than three centuries. If relations between
whites and African-Americans are to be repaired, whites need to
change. </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">They
must surrender all traces of white supremacy. </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">That
is the ultimate goal of reparations.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">A
five or 10 year program will not accomplish that. Racist thoughts and
attitudes are deeply embedded in white consciousness even of </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">those
</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">people
who mean well, who try to inform themselves about the history and
suffering of African-Americans and to try to remedy its effects. It
will take generations of efforts to make the line of distinction
between whites and African-Americans go away, fade and disappear.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In
the meantime the House of Representatives needs to vote on House
Resolution 40, offered for many years by Representative Conyers to
set up a committee to study the question of reparations, to allow
everyone to testify as to what reparations might look like. What
would African Americans ask for? What would whites – well-meaning
and/or racist – be willing to pay for? The process must begin with
a public discussion of the question about the nature of reparations.</span></span></span></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2451871341893552236.post-82123622951165666462019-11-16T18:44:00.000-05:002019-11-16T18:44:41.560-05:00<div align="center" class="western" style="font-size: medium; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: x-large;">“<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">I Never Owned Any Slaves”. Who owes reparations?</span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaghW5zSt2pkEOJe4OxK0az-dMGjvReLFRKsrym9ZjKR4gxgn45Ua0z-f5SLxpRW1e0S87nuBQOY_z5S9oVHpLiuzQHVwO8PcwCKJIncRK8lmJ-Bym3sqrNgeUtK1q8MD7k2U72rr6m10/s1600/slave+gang.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="355" data-original-width="473" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaghW5zSt2pkEOJe4OxK0az-dMGjvReLFRKsrym9ZjKR4gxgn45Ua0z-f5SLxpRW1e0S87nuBQOY_z5S9oVHpLiuzQHVwO8PcwCKJIncRK8lmJ-Bym3sqrNgeUtK1q8MD7k2U72rr6m10/s640/slave+gang.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<style type="text/css">
@page { margin: 0.79in }
p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; direction: ltr; color: #000000; line-height: 115%; orphans: 2; widows: 2 }
p.western { font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; so-language: en-US }
p.cjk { font-family: "NSimSun"; font-size: 12pt; so-language: zh-CN }
p.ctl { font-family: "Arial", sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; so-language: hi-IN }
</style>
<br />
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In
recent months there has been a good deal of talk about reparations
owed to African-Americans and, perhaps and to Native Americans.
Advocates point to reparations paid to Japanese-Americans who were
interned during World War II and to had to sell their land and
businesses, homes and belongings at bargain basement prices as they
were hustled into the internment camps. Reparations, advocates point
out, are not an unheard of event.</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">But
many Americans regard the idea of reparations as completely
ridiculous. They cannot understand how anybody in their right mind
would ask white Americans to provide reparations to anyone. Last June
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate majority leader, was
quoted as saying: </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">"none
of us currently living are responsible" for what he called
America's "original sin." </span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Slavery
he said ended 150 years ago. “W</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">e’ve
tried to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a civil
war, by passing landmark civil rights legislation. We’ve elected an
African American president.” </span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">At the same time various news outlets
reported that genealogical research showed two of McConnell's
grandfathers to </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">have
</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">be</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">en</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
slave owners who owned 14 slaves, primarily women. That suggests that
the family wealth of the McConnell clan derives in part from the
unpaid labor of these 14 slaves. If that is the case, if McConnell's
family has not in the meantime squandered the wealth derived from
these slaves' labor, it is hard to see how McConnell can disclaim any
responsibility for the suffering of slaves.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> This
story is instructive because it points us in the direction of looking
at historical responsibilities. There are many Americans who want to
claim innocence of slavery whose property and wealth, and the
accompanying well-being, does in part derive from the slaves their
ancestors owned. </span></span>
</div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">What
is more, many American families who did in fact not own slaves
nevertheless profited from the institution. Slaves were mainly
employed in the cotton fields. Cotton was a precious product that
needed to be transported and traded, that </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US">required
cleaning and transformation</span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
into cotton thread to be then woven into cotton material </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US">and</span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
tailored into shirts and dresses, sheets and curtains, and many other
products. Slaves produced the raw material for a large and complex
textile industry. </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
work of slaves created industries that gave employment and a living
to many Americans.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
textile industry was founded in England and grew rapidly thanks to a
number of industrial inventions that made it possible to transform
cotton into cloth in large factories. Around 1800 some of these
techniques were brought to the United States and very soon textiles
were the largest industry in the United States. A significant number
of whites found work and sometimes became very wealthy thanks to the
unpaid labor of black slaves in the southern states. Not having owned
slaves does not get any families in the United States or in Great
Britain for that matter off the hook as far as responsibility for the
exploitation of slaves goes.</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">What
happened to African-Americans once the Civil War Amendments to the
Constitution were passed? Many Americans do not know the answer to
that question. The older among them experienced the civil rights
movement. Younger ones are most likely growing up in cities and towns
that have a Martin Luther King Blvd. somewhere or some other
commemoration of Martin Luther King. But why were they demonstrating
and exposing themselves to the violence of southern Sheriff's and
attacks by racist gangs?</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
answer to that question is complex. Here are some of the pieces. The
13th Amendment outlaws slavery "except as punishment for crime."
The Civil War and Reconstruction were barely over when former slave
owners used this exception to the 13th amendment. They passed a
number of laws, most of which applied only to black Americans. These
laws required, for instance, that all African-American men had to
have a job. If they were not employed they could be convicted of
vagrancy. According to these laws, black persons could not assemble
without a white person present. Preaching or speaking to groups of
people was not allowed. African-Americans needed to be employed by a
white person or "a former owner"; they were not allowed to
rent a home in the town where they worked. It went on and on. It gave
the sheriff plenty of leeway for arresting and imprisoning black
persons. Black prisoners once again were made to work for nothing.
Frequently states rented out groups of prisoners to private
companies- a practice that still continues in prisons today. Once
once again black people were virtual slaves.</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In
the years after the Civil War thousands and thousands of
African-Americans were tortured by white mobs and then lynched. The
local sheriff or police looked on and perhaps participated. No one
was ever arrested for what was clearly brutal murder. Whites
conducted a deliberate campaign of intimidating black persons.</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Only
against the background of this deliberate campaign of terrorism –
because that is what it was – an intentional process of putting the
fear into the hearts and minds of persons of color – can one
understand what happened to the black sharecroppers. They worked
their land all year and at the end of the year they brought the bales
of cotton that they produced to the proprietor of the land, of course
a white man. They might have brought in six bales and the proprietor
counted only four and paid them a small price for them. Year-by-year
white people stole from the black farmers and they were too scared of
being lynched or their family harmed to object. Once again black
labor was not compensated.</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">White
people became well to-do by consistently stealing from persons of
color. Those practices did not end until the 1900s. Many white people
are comfortably off today because their grandparents cheated
sharecroppers or rented black convicts from the local jail.
Thoroughly fed up, millions of African-Americans fled the South to
move to Northern cities in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Life up
north was still very difficult and remains so to this day. I will
cite two brief examples.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> At
the end of World War II a grateful nation passed legislation which
promised low cost mortgages to veterans and offered to pay the cost
of the education. When black veterans took their offer of a
government backed mortgage to the new suburbs and Levittowns, they
were turned down. No one was going to sell them a house in a white
suburb and black suburbs did not exist. Banks would not lend to black
applicants; real estate agents would sell houses to Blacks only in
specific, mostly urban and decaying neighborhoods-- a practice known
as “red-lining.” When black veterans applied to college, southern
colleges and universities would refuse to admit them. Schools that
would have them mostly lacked any advanced engineering or doctoral
programs.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Their
unpaid labor built the Capitol in Washington DC. It built a thriving
industrial nation. But they were excluded from sharing the wealth
they produced. This Civil War did not bring them freedom or
citizenship. The struggle for black liberation still remains to be
won.</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">There
are no white Americans who are not complicit in the oppression of
African-Americans.</span></span></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2451871341893552236.post-79450019938010996772019-11-04T11:57:00.001-05:002019-11-04T11:57:23.789-05:00
<style type="text/css">
@page { margin: 0.79in }
p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; direction: ltr; color: #000000; line-height: 115%; orphans: 2; widows: 2 }
p.western { font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; so-language: en-US }
p.cjk { font-family: "NSimSun"; font-size: 12pt; so-language: zh-CN }
p.ctl { font-family: "Arial", sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; so-language: hi-IN }
</style>
<br />
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif; font-size: x-large;">PTSD</span></div>
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio-9D8nrv0jcQeW55ulq3bx_zoXCz_IBYHGR3jzK8m5VYtGwb257zLIte2sDgTc8qzR-ZsMFva1DAtrkfdwTXhK7T1gt_RmO7GmXwUYjP-lT2BAAobvKAv3cDjwbJXYZiUR4PA3vAyZ54/s1600/PTSD.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="875" data-original-width="1400" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio-9D8nrv0jcQeW55ulq3bx_zoXCz_IBYHGR3jzK8m5VYtGwb257zLIte2sDgTc8qzR-ZsMFva1DAtrkfdwTXhK7T1gt_RmO7GmXwUYjP-lT2BAAobvKAv3cDjwbJXYZiUR4PA3vAyZ54/s320/PTSD.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Human
beings are capable of unspeakable brutality to one another. The
survivors of combat, of sexual and other assault carry the scars of
these experiences for the rest of their lives. In our time, there are
victims of ethnic cleansing, of racial and ethnic prejudices.
Innocent bystanders to incurable hostilities between groups flee the
violence. As refugees they live for years in camps, often under
barely sustainable conditions.</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Ineradicable
scars are borne by persons caught up in natural disasters--the
victims of wildfires in California and elsewhere, those affected by
earthquakes or floods, and now the terrible effects of climate
change.</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Many
of them never quite recover from their dreadful experience. They
never quite believe that they are safe. In dreams and in waking the
memories of their past fright, of barely escaping when family or
friends died – killed, starved to death, succumbing to a disease
that could have been cured. They are difficult to live with because
part of their horrifying experience is always present; the
unspeakable is always happening. They are always sad, they are often
self-destructive, some talk about suicide, some actually attempt it.
For their family or friends or lovers whose lives have been less
burdened they remain incomprehensible and not reachable. Their pain
disturbs not only them but their families and friends.</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">My
father who served in World War I only once talked to me about being
terribly frightened under fire. But he was depressed, sad,
uncommunicative for most of the time. There was then, when I was a
young person, no name for his condition. It was just who he was.
People either avoided him or put up with how he was.</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Today
there is a name for his condition and the condition of very many
people whose experiences exceeded human tolerance. They are said to
suffer from PTSD (Post – Traumatic Stress Disorder). It is regarded
as an illness. Persons displaying symptoms of the illness are told to
talk to a medical person. They should talk to the doctor. It is worth
thinking about the implications of classifying the suffering of the
bystanders or survivors as a medical illness.</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">If
PTSD were not classified as an illness, the sufferers of PTSD might
instead be regarded as odd and more or less annoying individuals who
were best ignored and avoided. Or one might subject them to criticism
saying: "Look at these young men and women, they returned from
the war, the concentration camp, the ethnic cleansing or what have
you and they seem to be perfectly okay, they have families, they have
work. Why can't you be like them and stop fussing about the past?
Everyone has problems, everyone goes through hard times, we are tired
of hearing about yours." We could call them self-indulgent, weak
and expose them to general scorn.</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Instead
we treat them as persons suffering from a serious disease. We express
sympathy for their continued pain and we try to help them lead as
good a life as they can. That seems to be a definite victory for
humanity. We avoid the temptation to be incomprehending, judgmental
and cruel and, instead, we extend ourselves with kindness and
resources to try to help to make up for the brutality of our fellow
humans and often ourselves.</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">It
is important to pay attention to these last words. A good deal of the
suffering that afflicts participants with PTSD, that leaves fellow
citizens of ours suffering gravely is caused by us. It was our
government who sent our soldiers to Afghanistan and Iraq and still
leaves them there after many years of utterly futile and
unjustifiable warfare. It was our government that sent our soldiers
to Vietnam to die in a humiliating defeat. It was our government that
sent Native American children to schools where they were supposed to
forget their own culture, their language, their families and their
people. It was our government that overthrew properly elected
governments in many Latin American countries, in Iran and elsewhere,
replacing them with often murderous dictatorships. It was our
government who refused to destroy the train tracks that led to the
extermination camps of the Holocaust.</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">These
are important facts to remember but treating the suffering that the
survivors of these actions still bear every day as a disease tends to
make us overlook our own complicity in these events. We do not ask
about the people responsible for people contracting a disease. If I
come down with a tick-borne illness no one is going to blame me for
dealing with the leaves in the fall where the ticks wait to attach
themselves to my skin. Whose fault it is is rarely asked when we talk
about the illnesses people come down with every day. This person has
high blood pressure, that person walks with a limp, another has
cataracts or is hard of hearing. People have colds, the flu, and many
other illnesses and no one asks why do you have that?</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">But
in the case of some illnesses that question is important. Why do
children in Flint Michigan have an elevated lead content in their
blood? Why are many children in poor parts of our towns obese? Why is
the suicide rate among veterans higher than among the population in
general?</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">And
with that question and the realization that the veterans suicide rate
in the United States in recent years has been twice that of the
population as a whole we return to our question about the causes of
PTSD and who is responsible for it.</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">There
are persons who are directly responsible for the incredible pain
suffered in the aftermath of experiences that the human nervous
system cannot sustain. Immediately they are our leaders –
presidents, generals, industries that profit from wars, from
incarceration, from climate change, the persons who sent soldiers off
to war or the persons who agitated for a war from which they
profited. In the end each of us is responsible if we voted, or
perhaps did not vote for these leaders or did not oppose with
sufficient force their election and selection as leaders.</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Everyone
knows that we are all connected and here is one more way in which the
life of each of us is affected by everyone else. Everyone is
responsible in more or less indirect ways for the lives and
experiences of everyone else, as they are responsible for ours. We
need to step with incredible care through our lives and consider the
effects we have on persons often far away, of persons we will never
know. We need, where we can, to remedy the harmful effects of our
choices or our inaction. Passivity, inaction, excuses are not
permitted. It is immoral to witness the suffering of fellow citizens
and to turn our backs claiming that we are not responsible.</span></span></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2451871341893552236.post-67694774833396591202019-10-17T16:28:00.000-04:002019-10-17T16:28:07.002-04:00
<style type="text/css">
@page { margin: 0.79in }
p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; direction: ltr; color: #000000; line-height: 115%; orphans: 2; widows: 2 }
p.western { font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; so-language: en-US }
p.cjk { font-family: "NSimSun"; font-size: 12pt; so-language: zh-CN }
p.ctl { font-family: "Arial", sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; so-language: hi-IN }
</style>
<br />
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Mirror
mirror on the wall, who is the most corrupt of all?</span></span></div>
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX9lCqMP-Bpr9PAQhz3FJRdB9fuEE4iNH_6qDQ-iaS-fl6h6G0-QIj3HvHun9mUSrLxn9pppqewDTUoc8zELL3l_2uf2cGKg-G7VyeFEIeUbYuXb4RKF9PLTHmAp6RjvGiIrz8OL_-5L0/s1600/corruption.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1099" data-original-width="1600" height="219" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX9lCqMP-Bpr9PAQhz3FJRdB9fuEE4iNH_6qDQ-iaS-fl6h6G0-QIj3HvHun9mUSrLxn9pppqewDTUoc8zELL3l_2uf2cGKg-G7VyeFEIeUbYuXb4RKF9PLTHmAp6RjvGiIrz8OL_-5L0/s320/corruption.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Americans
pride themselves on being different from other nations and of course
they are. But so are other nations different from each other and from
us. Each has a language, a culture, a history. Each has an official
story about itself that is most likely pretty mendacious, and a more
honest story that is not often heard. Our being different from others
does not make us different from them.</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> But,
of course, we also think that we are better, although in many ways
that is not true. Other countries provide better healthcare for less
money than we do. Other countries do a better job educating their
children. Other countries have made greater strides in the treatment
of indigenous peoples or in reducing greenhouse gases. We are not as
good and certainly not as superior to others than we keep telling
ourselves.</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> These
observations come to mind in connection with a great deal of
publicity of corruption in Ukraine. A colorful collection of
Americans of the impressive moral caliber of Rudy Giuliani go back
and forth to Ukraine ostensibly to help them overcome the threat of
corruption. </span></span><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 12pt;">That's
worth a chuckle or two, not only because Rudy Giuliani is not a model
of the upstanding citizen with remarkable integrity, but more
importantly because corruption pervades transactions in our country
just as it does in the Ukraine.</span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Corruption
may be different here. It has certainly changed. 50 years ago when a
Chicago policeman stopped you for a traffic violation you would hand
him your driver's license wrapped in a $20 bill and that would take
care of it. Petty bribery – and not so petty bribery – were daily
events. Corruption today is somewhat more sophisticated and not quite
as blatantly public. But corruption is a problem here as it is in
most, if not all, countries of the world.</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Our
court system employs judges, and magistrates who deal with lesser
problems. Both of them are appointed by the governor of each state
assisted by a Governor's Council and appointments do not only depend
on the merit of the candidate. Being the friend of the governor or of
the Lieutenant Governor definitely helps. In some cases it is said to
be more important to be well-connected than to be a competent lawyer.</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Local
government, state government, and the federal government all spend
large amounts of money purchasing supplies from pencils and erasers
for the schools to battleships and sophisticated military planes that
cost multiple billions of dollars. Often these purchases are made
without proper bids from competent suppliers. A friend of the city,
the county, the state, or the Feds gets the contract. There is good
money to be made by connecting suppliers to buyers. Multiple
suppliers will rig their bids so that everybody will get a part of a
lucrative contract.</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> In
the United States approximately 160 million people are in the
workforce. Full-time or part-time, they go to their jobs and get paid
by the hour or by the job. Merit alone does not determine who gets
hired or fired from a job. Recently a story circulated of a person
who had worked in a funeral home for 20 or more years before she came
out as a transgender woman. She was promptly fired in spite of having
done an outstanding job for many years. The customers, according to
the employer, would not have patronized a funeral home where they
negotiated caskets and wakes with a transgender woman. </span></span><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; font-size: 12pt;">The
employment history of African-Americans is a more striking example of
how little merit matters in getting a good job. The same of course is
true of all women who are still being excluded from many excellent
jobs.</span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> In
many countries it is well known that corruption is a serious
hindrance to economic development but the government does not take
action, presumably because it is complicit in the corruption. The
United States is no different. Goldman Sachs and other banking firms
are widely considered responsible for the 2007 – 2008 economic
crash that did enormous damage to many working families who not only
lost their jobs but also their houses and what little wealth they had
managed to accumulate over many years of hard work. Goldman Sachs and
the complicit enterprises have been investigated by the government.
But nothing ever happened. They have been investigated since then for
domestic and international suspicious dealings but nothing ever
happened. If your financial transactions are complex and large enough
and if members of your firm circulate in and out of government, you
can operate pretty much with impunity. The many families who lost
their homes were not responsible for the crisis. The financiers who
were received bonuses from the banks where they worked.</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">We
could go on and on pointing to corrupt practices. Healthcare of poor
people, of people of color is not as good as healthcare of people
with money. The education offered to poor black or Hispanic children
is not all of the same sophistication and excellence as the education
of white above middle-class children. Opportunities are not
distributed equally. The oft repeated claim that our society is a
meritocracy is a blatant lie and everyone knows it.</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Patriots,
or better pseudo-patriots, will insist that corruption in the United
States is not as profound as in, say, India. That may well be true
but is surely totally irrelevant. Are we really going to continue
tolerating and encouraging corruption on all sides in the US until
the people in India clean up their act? Are we going to keep bragging
about our meritocracy, which does not actually exist, until all
transactions in the Ukraine are beyond reproach? That is obviously a
silly question. </span></span>
</div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Whether
we are more or less guilty of corruption is not interesting. What is
worthy of being said loud and clear is that integrity in politics, in
business, in many other areas of our society is sadly lacking. The
problem is in some ways more serious than it is in Ukraine or India
where the existence of corruption is generally accepted. Our
political leaders, our candidates for public office, rarely if ever
target corruption. It has not become a public issue yet except in the
polemics between opposing political parties.</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">There
is no hope for ever cleaning up our economy or society so that
everyone will truly have an equal chance as long as we are not
willing to acknowledge how corrupt our current practices are.</span></span></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2451871341893552236.post-26708798500396943882019-09-30T09:16:00.000-04:002019-09-30T09:16:02.963-04:00
<style type="text/css">
@page { margin: 0.79in }
p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; direction: ltr; color: #000000; line-height: 115%; orphans: 2; widows: 2 }
p.western { font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; so-language: en-US }
p.cjk { font-family: "NSimSun"; font-size: 12pt; so-language: zh-CN }
p.ctl { font-family: "Arial", sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; so-language: hi-IN }
</style>
<br />
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book-PS-CE;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">He,
She, They</span></span></div>
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book-PS-CE;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh41W2hVj0OxOzEO3C3CyWUXOxGy7idDAZYnWvbGzphFUtiH2YAFKi6PIeA8mN2torl8oDSm0d8WmGfzyerVtb_-96d92FF9OOv4UUKhLuk4LMHEs5r5ZpJBfq2d944elIj_SUNMqJv5As/s1600/male+supremacy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1500" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh41W2hVj0OxOzEO3C3CyWUXOxGy7idDAZYnWvbGzphFUtiH2YAFKi6PIeA8mN2torl8oDSm0d8WmGfzyerVtb_-96d92FF9OOv4UUKhLuk4LMHEs5r5ZpJBfq2d944elIj_SUNMqJv5As/s320/male+supremacy.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book-PS-CE;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book-PS-CE;"><span style="font-size: small;">Many
especially younger persons insist that we not refer to them as he or
she but as "they.” Never mind the grammatical oddity of using
a plural pronoun to refer to a single person, calling a person "they"
is an important way of opposing the dominant idea that there are two
genders only and that every human being belongs to one or the other.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Book-PS-CE;"><span style="font-size: small;"> This
seems to be a very odd and eccentric conflict but it is not. At issue
is the dogma that many, especially evangelical Christian Americans
cling to that every human being is either a man or a woman. One
significance of that insistence comes to the fore when we face the
inevitable follow – up question: what kind of man are you and what
sort of woman are you? It is not enough that I am classified as an
unambiguous man but that classification places me under pressure to
be a particular kind of man because all the alternative versions of
manhood are considered unmanly or “not a real man.” Am I the one
who makes decisions in my family, does my word stand and is not to be
questioned? Am I the one who deals with mechanical things and mows
the lawn where as the females in the family not only have to do the
housework but also are in charge of emotions. They have to bring a
casserole to the neighbor when their parent dies or their child is
injured. They have to maintain social relationships. I don't do
either of those things; it is not manly to do them. (Obviously, this
is an extreme version of the patriarchal family.)</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Book-PS-CE;"><span style="font-size: small;"> To
put this bluntly: the insistence that every human being belongs to
one of two genders is an unvarnished defense of male supremacy, of
the role of man as more powerful, as in charge, as the person who
wears the pants in the family.</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book-PS-CE;"><span style="font-size: small;">There
have always been gay people. In classical antiquity they were openly
acknowledged and, at least, men loving men was ordinary and accepted.
Then for a long time homosexuality had to go underground persecuted
by Christian churches whose Christianity happily persecuted different
groups, homosexuals among them. </span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book-PS-CE;"><span style="font-size: small;">In
recent years homosexuality has come into the open once again and with
it the conflict about its legitimacy has reignited. It is not
difficult to see how homosexuality is a threat to the patriarchy.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Book-PS-CE;"><span style="font-size: small;"> If
my wife, who plays second fiddle to me in the family and whose sexual
needs and desires are not as important in our marriage as are mine,
can find sexual satisfaction in a relationship to another woman, it
turns out that I am unnecessary and my claims to dominance are empty,
even slightly ridiculous. If women can have marriages and can raise
happy and promising children, I am not needed at all. Patriarchy
crumbles.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Book-PS-CE;"><span style="font-size: small;"> If
my son can live lovingly and become a generous father in relationship
to another man, all the lessons I tried to teach him about being a
real man turn out to be irrelevant. The ideology which I followed and
wanted him to follow of true manhood and male domination suddenly has
become pointless. No wonder that ‘real men’ are extremely hostile
to homosexuality in whatever form it may manifest itself.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Book-PS-CE;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Being
man or woman takes many different forms and young persons as they
grow up must find the kind of man or woman they are suited to be or
they may be the kind of person whose gender is variable and expresses
itself in different forms in different situations, and different
company, at different stages of their life.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Book-PS-CE;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Every
person should be as fully as able to be the person that it suits them
to be. Every person should be accepting of the choices about their
gender identity and their sexuality made by other persons and the
reasons they might give us for those choices.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Book-PS-CE;"><span style="font-size: small;"> The author of Genesis
who decreed that the first two members of the human race where one
man and one woman got it quite wrong. </span></span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Book-PS-CE;"><span style="font-size: small;"> (That
author also got the gender of God quite wrong. Gender identity is
always a limitation. If God were a male would he not be limited in
his sexual expression?)</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book-PS-CE;"><span style="font-size: small;">It is
high time that we stop to tyrannize ourselves and others by demanding
prescribed forms of sexual expression. What matters is that we avoid
harming others and defending patriarchy by, for instance, voting in
laws that define marriage as a union of one man and one woman.
Without any doubt that does serious harm. End sexual oppression by
trying to legislate gender and sexual identity!</span></span></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2451871341893552236.post-56177259345721404302019-09-12T12:01:00.000-04:002019-09-12T12:01:47.272-04:00
<style type="text/css">
@page { margin: 0.79in }
p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; direction: ltr; color: #000000; line-height: 115%; orphans: 2; widows: 2 }
p.western { font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; so-language: en-US }
p.cjk { font-family: "NSimSun"; font-size: 12pt; so-language: zh-CN }
p.ctl { font-family: "Mangal"; font-size: 12pt; so-language: hi-IN }
</style>
<br />
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Neighbor
Love an<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">d Punishment</span></span></div>
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWF_gBzrZGdBzm4yn4MArnh0iWvrq3NGXo0RPjAUT_7oTnBPkyQP7vfZNtKRONBaHFCah8UCF3f4Tqm7KJ1dg3CSOme2wyG9plx79O2Uy-eqqYqZ8zwNMa89FFCzrZjR0U9x2pmTeILl4/s1600/Forgiveness.tif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="533" data-original-width="800" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWF_gBzrZGdBzm4yn4MArnh0iWvrq3NGXo0RPjAUT_7oTnBPkyQP7vfZNtKRONBaHFCah8UCF3f4Tqm7KJ1dg3CSOme2wyG9plx79O2Uy-eqqYqZ8zwNMa89FFCzrZjR0U9x2pmTeILl4/s400/Forgiveness.tif" width="400" /></span></a></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Christianity, Judaism and Islam the faithful are enjoined to live in peace with their neighbor, to treat them kindly or even to love them. This command has its secular equivalent when a peaceful world, a world free of war and cruelty is set as a goal of political action.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 18.4px;">
</div>
<br />
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This
injunction to universal kindness is pulled up short in the face of
cruelty when neighbors oppress neighbors. We are reminded that this
is the hundreth anniversary of what is known to historians as the
"Red Summer" when white mobs burned black churches, often
with their congregations still inside and then went on rampages of
lynchings in which hundreds of African-Americans died. One of those
burned churches was rebuilt. It was burned down the gain in 2014. In
2016 several black churches fell victim to arson attacks in
Louisiana. The cruelty of 100 years ago continues to this day. The
advocates of peace and reconciliation are facing serious challenges
today.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">Dedicated
to a world of peace, whether for religious reasons or following
secular political principles, how shall we treat the arsonists, the
lynch mobs, the murderers?</span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"> At
this moment, in Togo, a small African country that only very recently
emerged from a brutal dictatorship, maintained by murdering often
innocent citizens, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission encourages
citizens to confess whatever terrific part they played in the past
and for the victims to try to reconcile with the guilty parties. The
assassins will not be tried in a court of law, they do not face long
periods of incarceration or even death. The goal of the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission is to reunify a population divided for many
years between the henchmen of the dictatorship and the victimized
population at large. Here is one way in which the religious and
secular political injunction to practice kindness to all is actually
being applied.</span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Not
everyone is satisfied with this interpretation of neighborly love.
Surely, they say an important part of loving your neighbor is to
respect them. One form of paying respect to human beings is to hold
them responsible for their actions. You disrespect them if you do not
pay attention to their actions, may those be acts of heroism or
self-sacrifice or maybe they be deceitful acts or acts of violence.
Refusing to acknowledge what a person has done, how he lived his
life, whether she contributed to the well-being of our community or
acted to destroy it is to deny respect to the perpetrators of civil
oppression and war, the recognition that is an important element of
respect. If you forget how a person has lived his life, how he
injured neighbors he did not even know, you refuse the person the
respect and thus the kindness or love you are professing.. The
forgiveness of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission denies genuine
respect to the persons offered forgiveness.</span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Can
one forgive and respect a person guilty of exceptional cruelty? It is
a question that is not easy to answer. The truth is that forgiveness
may be respectful, fully horrified by the action of the person before
us, or it may be as it were absent-minded, unthinking and more or
less mechanical. In that case it clearly denies the person forgiven
the respect they are entitled to. Respectful forgiveness makes
difficult demands on the person trying to forgive.</span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"> But
punishment as it is demanded by the enemies of Truth and
Reconciliation Commissions continues the cycle of brutality. It
inflicts pain on those who inflicted pains on others. Now they are
aggrieved and the cycle of victimization is being continued.</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"> However
heartfelt our desire for peace and an end to inflicting pain on those
who have inflicted pain on others, that end remains unattainable
unless we practice what we preach and forgive. Punishment as the
response to breaking the peace will never allow us to restore a more
durable peace than we have accomplished so far.</span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Fully
aware of the misdeeds of those who supported and practiced violence
against their fellow citizens, we need nevertheless to allow them
back into our community in order to try to heal it and allow it once
again to come together and to create as much harmony as it can. That
is the true meaning of the injunction to love our neighbor, to
befriend our neighbors and to be genuine promoters of peace.</span></span></span></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2451871341893552236.post-45494547846420777002019-09-02T11:09:00.000-04:002019-09-02T11:09:15.160-04:00<div align="center" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">About
Elections</span></span></div>
<div align="center" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5ud0q20Tf7IjqI23NzjjyJrb_c4YGm4Vzw14GI0ARxDpgZNXJLRZtEvW1LfGabOfIhhN3h0L0jDA6aofJ_1q86LF_C5X95SioGYUCdiSjLBRIfVdYOthy4_3VEaYdHYCyVsk4bInUG5c/s1600/if-you-will-vote-for-me-i-promise-to-tell-you-what-you-want-to-hear-until-i-am-elected-then-i-pledge-to-do-whatever-in-the-hell-i-want-despite-what-ive-ever-said-188e7.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="294" data-original-width="420" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5ud0q20Tf7IjqI23NzjjyJrb_c4YGm4Vzw14GI0ARxDpgZNXJLRZtEvW1LfGabOfIhhN3h0L0jDA6aofJ_1q86LF_C5X95SioGYUCdiSjLBRIfVdYOthy4_3VEaYdHYCyVsk4bInUG5c/s320/if-you-will-vote-for-me-i-promise-to-tell-you-what-you-want-to-hear-until-i-am-elected-then-i-pledge-to-do-whatever-in-the-hell-i-want-despite-what-ive-ever-said-188e7.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<div align="center" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">We
recently hosted an event in support of one of the candidates for the
local School Committee. This young person was born in Africa and came
to the US as a child and went through the entire public school system
in my town. She knew at first-hand what it was like to be a public
school student in our town as a person of color. Since there had been
a good deal of controversy recently about the treatment of
African-American and Latinx students in our school system, run by
white persons almost exclusively, supporting her campaign seemed
important. Add to that, we came to like and respect her as we got to
know her better.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Most
of the members of our school committee have had their position for a
long time. Their names are familiar but I have never met any of them
and have a very hazy idea of any of them. I am not clear what they
stand for when it comes to educational policy and I do not know them
personally. I do not know to what extent to trust their campaign
statements and whether one could rely on them to act on the
principles they profess.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Well,
you say, that's the way it is in a large country like ours. But that
is of course totally beside the point. I have the same problem of not
knowing what candidates I vote for in the town I live which is not a
big town by </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">any</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
means. More importantly, we say that in our democracy the people have
the ultimate power over the government and that they exercise th</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">at</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
power by selecting representatives of their choice. But a population
voting for representatives they often do not know and who are, in
fact, </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">different
from the voters think</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
they are does not strike me as a population that is in control of its
government or society. </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
choices we make, most of the time, are rather </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">sightless</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">.
Rather than making thoughtful, well-informed choices, we yank the
lever of an electoral slot machine. Our choices tend to be pretty
random.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Is
there a way of remedying that problem? Suppose in each neighborhood
where people know each other or live close enough together to meet
and talk, the citizens meet to select someone who is familiar with
the school committee and knows the persons who are running to join
that committee. Perhaps that person was a member of the committee
some time ago and thus knows the personalities of the current
membership and the functioning of the body. Suppose further that each
neighborhood selects one such person well able to make an informed
choice with respect to members of the School Committee. The
representatives of each neighborhood will meet and choose the
requisite number of persons to serve on this committee. The committee
membership is picked by persons who know each candidate and have some
judgment as to who may be the best person to help the schools. In
this way the problem of citizens voting for more or less unknown
candidates has been circumvented.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">You
may object that this indirect vote for school committee members puts
a great distance between the individual citizens and the organs of
city government. But that distance exists already. There is a large
gap between me and institutions whose members are elected but are on
the whole unknown to the people who vote for them and therefore
cannot really be said represent those people. If voters under our
present system of direct elections of members of the School Board or
the City Council wanted to be familiar with the persons they vote
for, they would need to spend a great deal more time to meet the
candidates at different forums or when they volunteered to work for a
candidate or another. Most citizens do not have the time available.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Counting
up the number of votes that different candidates get from voters that
do not know them strikes me as an irrational way of electing a
government. The jobs we elect people for are important. It makes a
great deal of difference for us how well those jobs are done. We need
the best candidates available. We don't get those as long as we
respond to campaign literature written by professional campaign
strategists that often are only faintly related to the ideas and
practices of the candidate.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">We
need to elect persons as electors we know, whom we can trust that
they will do what they promise us. That means we should choose
persons in our neighborhood who are familiar with the office we are
voting for and familiar with the candidates. They can choose the one
who will do the best job for us.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">This
is, I believe, a good project. But Is it realistic? In many places in
the United States citizens do not live in stable neighborhoods where
neighbors know each other and are thus able to choose the right
electors for local as well as national elections. Many neighborhoods
are unstable in that people move in and out constantly. Think of
neighborhoods with large student populations or neighborhoods of poor
people who are regularly getting evicted because they are unable to
pay the rent. In areas surrounding military installations, families
move regularly when their members in the military are transferred.
There are parts of many towns populated by young people on their way
up </span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">who </span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">will
leave when they get promoted and their pay goes up. Others leave
because they lose their job in times of economic instability. In
short, the picture of areas with stable populations does not </span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">seem
to </span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;">apply to significant
parts of the country.</span></span></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">But
many folks in</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
these highly mobile populations may not participate in elections,
especially not in local elections because the</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">ir
ties to </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">the
locality may be very weak. They may </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">also</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
remain aloof from elections because they do not feel at all included
in the political system. Candidates do not seek them out or mentioned
there needs and problems in their campaign speeches. Feeling
overlooked by politicians they may well stay aside when elections
come around.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Choosing
the electors we do know instead of candidates</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
we don't, is a realistic project that deserves serious consideration.</span></span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2451871341893552236.post-29391516544217596512019-08-02T13:36:00.000-04:002019-08-02T13:36:24.466-04:00
<br />
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif; font-size: x-large;">Our History </span></div>
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVXR3IIgbwmc2Yy7efCTBguGy4ihuDb2WhcBHPln73QMI73YhxiljNPFfZi2zybJi2AcBkyt8X7LtwoMojtRmEybzHLUZtZQsZ_6RAoW8qrejXBSpDwmdIz1bFwMALydQDRzsOE4AcC64/s1600/no+immigration.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="401" data-original-width="450" height="285" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVXR3IIgbwmc2Yy7efCTBguGy4ihuDb2WhcBHPln73QMI73YhxiljNPFfZi2zybJi2AcBkyt8X7LtwoMojtRmEybzHLUZtZQsZ_6RAoW8qrejXBSpDwmdIz1bFwMALydQDRzsOE4AcC64/s320/no+immigration.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">Recently the </span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">P</span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">resident
traveled to Virginia to commemorate the Jamestown settlement and the
first legislative meeting held there in 1619. He was celebrating 400
years of democracy on this continent</span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">,
that 400 years earlier the first legislative meeting was held in the
Jamestown </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">colony</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
first English settlers had reached Jamestown about 10 years earlier.
Most of them had been gentlemen unused to working the land or doing
much of anything else for themselves. They were accustomed to having
others – laborers and servants – do the work of maintaining them.
One part of the workforce in the new colony consisted of what were
known as "indentured servants." These were impoverished
English people, some of them petty criminals, who were offered a
choice between going to prison or shipping out to the colonies in the
New World. Indentured servants served without getting paid from 7 to
10 or more years to pay for their passage and their food and
clothing. After serving that time they would be free and be given a
piece of land to farm for themselves.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> The
other part of the workforce consisted of black Africans who were
bound for Bermuda on a slave ship that pirates captured and unloaded
in Jamestown.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">For
the first 50 years the White indentured English and Black Africans
lived and worked side-by-side (and sometimes married) pretty much
under the same conditions as indentured servants. By 1660 legislation
passed by the new legislative assembly-- so recently celebrated by
our current president-- imposed on the Africans the status of slaves,
a lifetime condition. Once a slave always a slave. The children of
slaves were similarly enslaved for their lifetime. This legislation
created a body of workers who labored year in year out without
getting any reward for their work. Their work served to enrich the
gentlemen in the Jamestown colony as well as the wealthy investors
back in England who had financed the ships and equipment to found the
colony in the expectation of rich rewards.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Barely
hanging on for the first 10 or 15 years, the colony began to thrive
when tobacco was first planted in Virginia. The soil and climate
turned out to be favorable and the indentured servants, black and
white, could be made to do the hard work in the tobacco fields.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> The
land needed to raise all this tobacco was taken – stolen – from
the Native Americans who lived in the area. Many different tribes,
organized into a powerful coalition, lived where the English
colonists chose to settle. Initially welcomed by the native
inhabitants, relations between the English and the local inhabitants
soon soured and more than once erupted into bloody warfare. The
colonists received instructions from England to convert the native
peoples to Anglicanism and to civilize them in the ways of the
English. The authors of these instructions did not see the irony of
stealing people's land and then ordering the thieves to civilize the
victims who had been robbed by teaching them the ways of the thieves.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> This
irony has been with us ever since. White Americans have ravaged the
lives of the descendants of Black Africans and the descendants of the
Native Americans and taken their own inhumanity as a sign of White
superiority. Appropriating the land of the one and the ability to
work of the other, White Americans have become very rich at the
expense of people who are not White. They have shamelessly
interpreted their success in exploiting other human beings as a sign
of moral and even spiritual superiority.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> The
Jamestown assembly, the precursor of the US Congress and of the
varied institutions of the United States government, in passing the
first Black Codes defining slavery as a lifetime condition of utter
deprivation set the precedent for later American legislatures that to
this day, for instance by demanding picture IDs for voting, deny the
humanity and the citizenship rights of Black and Native Americans.
Successor legislatures to the Jamestown assembly have only managed to
expand the range of peoples insulted and exploited and treated as
less than human than White Americans.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> That
Donald Trump, arch racist, should celebrate that institution is not
surprising. We, on the contrary should mourn it. In Jamestown, North
America got off to a really bad start. We have never recovered from
that. The efforts of many people to overcome this terrible heritage
have only had very limited success so far.</span></span></div>
<style type="text/css">p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; direction: ltr; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 115%; }p.western { font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; }p.cjk { font-family: "NSimSun"; font-size: 12pt; }p.ctl { font-family: "Mangal"; font-size: 12pt; }</style>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2451871341893552236.post-86835762280149667522019-07-11T01:07:00.003-04:002019-07-11T01:07:40.977-04:00
<br />
<h2 align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif; font-size: x-large;">Shame! Shame!</span></span></h2>
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJXpZQw1PnWAKUwQZiai1V6ZeRuPeXe-9iANSgDkdAzC2tWcDD9NUrtBJbEYm0byByMLOMupbPArcqro6nFkFD5HFrBtR2DBzB4AYYbiJkaNE0ftqv1bbmnOZvdwC-VWMq-RmIMZ9xeb4/s1600/refugee+child.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="420" data-original-width="644" height="260" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJXpZQw1PnWAKUwQZiai1V6ZeRuPeXe-9iANSgDkdAzC2tWcDD9NUrtBJbEYm0byByMLOMupbPArcqro6nFkFD5HFrBtR2DBzB4AYYbiJkaNE0ftqv1bbmnOZvdwC-VWMq-RmIMZ9xeb4/s400/refugee+child.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">On the Fourth of July we celebrated
the United States of America and glorified our democracy.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">Two days later the </span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><i>New
York Times </i></span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">reported
on a group of lawyers visiting the Clint, TX detention facility where
our government, just raucously celebrated, detains about 300 children
ranging in age from 5 months to 17 years. Yes, you read that right--
FIVE months old. Surely an infant did not come to the US border
without a parent or some other adult who brought that child. But now
this infant is on its own. The older children, themselves seriously
distressed, are tasked with taking care of the little ones.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">I hold my seven month old grandson
and think about this story. I know how utterly dependent infants are.
I can imagine those children wailing in their misery and I weep.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">Among these children are a number of
teen mothers who gave birth very recently. All the children are
filthy. Since crossing the border they have not been able to wash.
They do not have water to wash, let alone soap or showers. They do
not have toothbrushes or a change of clean clothes. The babies and
infants do not have diapers. The government—OUR government—has
argued in court that it has no obligations to allow the children to
wash themselves or the clothes they have been wearing since coming
into the country, often weeks ago. The government does not believe
that it has obligations to acknowledge the immigrants’ most
elementary dignity.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">In
El Paso, TX. </span></span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">“</span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Border
Patrol agents told us some of the detainees had </span></span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">been
held in standing-room-only conditions for days or weeks,” the
inspector general’s office said in its report, which noted that
some detainees were observed standing on toilets in the cells “to
make room and gain breathing space, thus limiting access to the
toilets.” </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">It
is difficult not to think of Jews packed into box cars, standing room
only, on the transport to extermination camps in the East.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">One of the lawyers visiting the
Clint, TX. Reported “ “So many children are sick, they have the
flu, and they’re not being properly treated.” The same reports
from different detention sites, are available on the websites of the
American Civil Liberties Union, the American friends Service
Committee, the Mennonite Central Committee and other non-profit
organizations.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Having
been a child refugee myself, these reports distressed me deeply. I
began to think that perhaps there would be a way of fostering or
adopting one of these unfortunate children in order to save at least
one child. But all I found out was that the government cruelty
extended also to fostering and adoption. It turns out that the
government did send some of the children they had taken from families
at the border to the largest adoption agency run by very right-wing
evangelical organizations. The </span></span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Border
Patrol meanwhile was making no efforts to find the families whose
children they had taken away. But </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">videos
of</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
children </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">being</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">taken
from their parents to be given</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
out to adoption w</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">ere</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
being </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">shown
to</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
refugees </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">to
make them</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
“behave.” One woman was persuaded to retract her application for
asylum by threatening to give her children out to adoption. Adoption
has become a tool for suppressing refugees.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">All
of this happens in the context of steeply restricted availability of
children ready to be adopted. A few years ago, American parents
looking for children to adopt had children available from many
foreign country such as Russia or China. Both of these countries have
since prohibited foreign adoptions. So have many other countries.
Fewer children are available for adoption in the US today. </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">Fox
News provocateur Laura Ingraham, herself an adoptive mother, </span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">was</span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"> calling
to “make adoption easier for American couples who want to adopt
these kids.”</span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">What
can we do? The key lesson is that we are completely powerless
although we are living in a democracy. Websites promising to tell us
how we can ameliorate the suffering of children and adults at the
border have two recommendations: send money to non-profits and write
letters to your representatives in Congress. But the non-profits in
spite of feverish activities in the Courts and elsewhere have been
spectacularly ineffective. Congress after a long </span></span></span><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">time
</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
has managed to pass a bill providing more resources for the Border
patrol. But the bill provides no monitoring mechanisms. ICE and
Border Patrol can do whatever they want, as before. Congress has not
intervened on behalf of the refugee children being abused at the
border. Neither non-profits nor Congress have been able to respond to
the moral outrage of the majority of citizens. Citizens have been
unable to act on their sense of justice being violated grossly at the
border.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">In the land of the free, citizens
find themselves thwarted at every turn when they try to be faithful
to their sense of justice. They can not put their understanding of
what is right and wrong and of what they owe to their fellow humans
at the border in practice. </span>
</div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">Freedom does not amount to much when
one is prevented from being a good person because all the power is in
the hands of the morally damaged and the cruel.</span></div>
<style type="text/css">p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; direction: ltr; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 115%; }p.western { font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; }p.cjk { font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; }p.ctl { font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; }a:link { }</style>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2451871341893552236.post-54752883085699961962019-07-04T14:19:00.000-04:002019-07-04T14:19:44.407-04:00
<br />
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">
</span></div>
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif; font-size: x-large;">What is Socialism?</span></div>
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSbBxMsFB-wcgXH5NpGI5CTrn-lR9ntiwDmsM_rOkCN1o2XPlQymEyf0c_H_bLQTBKPc24QXOU7oj891oA4BX_dW7mj6v4GTR9FI9FKCYkc1FHkHjIeeTrAVrGlZF2SX7k8VJyV9d_OQA/s1600/socialism.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSbBxMsFB-wcgXH5NpGI5CTrn-lR9ntiwDmsM_rOkCN1o2XPlQymEyf0c_H_bLQTBKPc24QXOU7oj891oA4BX_dW7mj6v4GTR9FI9FKCYkc1FHkHjIeeTrAVrGlZF2SX7k8VJyV9d_OQA/s400/socialism.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif; font-size: x-large;"> </span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">The headline in the Seattle
newspaper was something like “Socialism Contested in Seattle City
Council elections.” In national contests over the soul of the
Democratic party, socialism is an important issue. A word that was taboo ten years ago, or
less, is now important in the current political vocabulary. But what
does it mean? Do you know what President Trump means by socialism, or
Bernie Sanders? Most likely they attach different meanings to that
word and when one condemns socialism and the other advocates it they
</span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">are likely</span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">
talking about very different things.</span>
</div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">I want to talk about several quite
different kinds of socialisms. The first identifies it with the
system prevalent in the Soviet Union—USSR, the Union of Soviet
</span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><i>Socialist</i></span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">
Republics where the word “soviet” is Russian for “council.”
Russian socialism, especially as represented by media in the West was
an unrelentingly brutal dictatorship which killed millions or exiled
them to harsh lives in Siberian prison camps. The essence of that
kind of socialism is a violent and coercive government that did
neither recognize nor respect any human rights. President Trump
thinks that Bernie Sanders wants </span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">that
kind of </span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">violent dictatorship
for our country.</span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">In actual fact, Sanders’ socialism
is without doubt democratic; it will have no truck with
authoritarianism, even the relatively moderate authoritarianism of
Donald Trump or of other recent Presidents who went to war without
Congressional approval and gradually extended the power of executive
orders instead of asking Congress for legislation. The target of
</span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">Sanders’ </span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">sort
of socialism is inequality. Contrary to the practice of the current
president, or of the Republican and Democratic presidents before
him, the socialism of Bernie Sanders, often called “social
democracy” will ask the rich to pay for assuring the poor a
half-way decent life. </span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">Social democracy does not attempt to equalize
the incomes of different citizens; it is content to accept the
existence of persons who earn very little and persons who earn an
enormous amount of money. But social democracy wants to make sure
that everyone has enough to eat and does not have to worry about
food. Everyone is entitled to decent housing, to the best available
medical care and to an affordable—affordable for
everyone—education. Social democracy relieves parents by providing
adequate daycare for all children and assures all children a first
rate education that begins in preschool. All of this calls for a
great deal of money. The millionaires and billionaires will pay for
that.</span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">A different kind of socialism has
capitalism as its target. In a capitalist economy, like ours, a small
number of persons owns the factories, banks, modes of
transportation—trucks, railroads and airlines—and modes of
communication—radio and tv networks, internet providers, phone
companies. Others own sources of energy, hospitals and medical
clinics </span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">and privatized
prisons</span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">. These owners hire
the rest of us. Unless we belong to a strong union and can therefore
bargain with them effectively, they pretty well pay us what they
want. They hire and fire and thus determine whether we have work or
not. They have far reaching power over the lives of the rest of us
and our families. </span>
</div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">The owners get rich from their
ownership. They can use that money to buy many houses, in the US and
abroad. They can use the money to invest in new businesses and get
even richer. They can use the money to buy their children admission
to the fanciest universities . They also use their wealth to
influence the political processes </span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">,
through lobbying, through graft, and through buying and controlling
the media.</span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"> A real democracy,
</span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">by contrast, </span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">
gives equal political power to everybody. In our democracy, the rich
have effectively many more votes than ordinary people. They pretty
well run the country.</span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">The socialism that targets
capitalism is also democratic but in a more radical way. Abolishing
capitalism also abolishes the existence of a class of people who have
a lot more political power than the rest of us. Abolishing capitalism
restores political equality and thereby restores our democracy to
some extent.</span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">There are different versions of the
socialism that will replace capitalism. Often socialism is described
in predominantly economic terms as a system where the productive
apparatus is not run by private owners—that would be capitalism—but
by the workers in the enterprise. Often socialists add requirements
for a socialist politics: the government is elected by all equally
and its task is to serve all equally. No more governments for the
rich and by the rich and of elected officials for sale to the rich.</span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">To those two requirements for
socialism—workers control of the economy and political equality for
all – some people want to add a third requirement, that a socialist
society will have different values. In a capitalist society profits
are a more powerful incentive than human well-being. Companies will
regularly pay starvation wages for the sake of their profits. In a
capitalist society that is </span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><i>morally</i></span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">
acceptable. People who get filthy rich by pay starvation wages are
held up as models to our children. They have fancy buildings names
after them. But from a socialist perspective exploiting your workers
is pure wickedness. Human flourishing is a more important goal in a
socialist society than profits.</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">In
the upcoming elections socialism will be an issue—not the
authoritarian dictatorship President Trump condemns rightly, but the
socialisms that propose different means for restoring a society in
which human lives are more important than money, and for restoring
the political equality without which democracy remains a sham.</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">The choice is yours. What will it
be: people before profits or profits above everything, even human
lives?</span></div>
<style type="text/css">p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; direction: ltr; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 115%; }p.western { font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; }p.cjk { font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; }p.ctl { font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; }</style><style type="text/css">p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; direction: ltr; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 115%; }p.western { font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; }p.cjk { font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; }p.ctl { font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; }</style>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2451871341893552236.post-29127980968807455862019-06-21T14:07:00.000-04:002019-06-21T14:07:11.802-04:00
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif; font-size: x-large;">Wake
Up, America.</span></div>
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5MaApTY38MtTA9Px8ACUfZo8nTlUd31Q88gwAuANp926UqsHabr2otX1wFIEzr7H7JNvjNfPsQSFQvJkIjZ5sTL1sOWQZZfTfeIjacvcxA6Npk8AkXwZbUK77bTf3yNgFupaJ1g7o6Fc/s1600/keep+walking+forward.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="624" data-original-width="1200" height="207" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5MaApTY38MtTA9Px8ACUfZo8nTlUd31Q88gwAuANp926UqsHabr2otX1wFIEzr7H7JNvjNfPsQSFQvJkIjZ5sTL1sOWQZZfTfeIjacvcxA6Npk8AkXwZbUK77bTf3yNgFupaJ1g7o6Fc/s400/keep+walking+forward.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">We
tend to think of ourselves not only as generally good people but also
as people who place a high value on liberty and equality. But a good
deal of this positive self affirmation seems justified because we
don't pay attention to what we actually do. I wrote about one
instance of that in a previous blog, about Jim Crow – the hundred
years from the end of the Civil War to the 1960s when American Blacks
in the southern states were subject to a daily regime of terror. That
regime of terror now continues in the form of murders of young black
men and women by police, by mass incarceration of African-Americans,
a process that begins by unfair treatment of black children in
kindergarten. Most Americans are not really aware of these injustices
because they're not paying attention.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">As
a nation we are not only good-natured and dedicated to freedom but we
are also capable of sustained brutality and gross injustice. The
latest instance of that is our treatment of people who come to our
borders from Central and Latin America fleeing hunger, unemployment
and violent cultures. We hear about that but we do not really pay
attention to take in the gravity of the condition of hundreds of
thousands of men and women and children taken by the border patrol,
CBP, and the immigration police, ICE.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">When
refugees come to our borders they frequently are held in facilities
of the Border Patrol prior to being processed. The available
facilities are completely inadequate. Adults and children have to
stand up often for several days because there are too many people for
anyone to sit down or lie down to sleep. In order to get a little bit
of room some people end up standing on toilets which are then not
accessible to their proper use.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Once
processed many of the immigrants instead of being allowed to seek out
their direct relatives or friends with whom they were planning to
stay are imprisoned in facilities designed to hold convicted
criminals where they are treated as if they were criminals. They are
made to wear a prison clothes. They are subject to prison routines
even though they have not been in front of a judge or a jury. They
have not even been arraigned for committing a crime. They are simply
interned in ways reminiscent of the internment of Japanese citizens
during World War II. They're just being shut up because our President
and his people have made hostility to immigration a signature
political issue.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Who
are these people? Why do they undertake the hard journey from Central
America through other Central American countries and Mexico –
thousands of miles – and expose themselves to brutal treatment at
the border? Story after story from the frontier documents that
refugees leave their house in their country after gangs murdered a
husband and threaten the life of the wife and the children, about
parents who are afraid criminal groups will recruit their children
and turned them into criminals, about families living in abject
poverty and seeking a better life for their children. The government
refuses to see any of that. All they see are "illegal
immigrants."</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">There
are some media accounts of the conditions in different Latin American
countries that force large numbers of people to pick up a bag of
clothes and their children and start traveling by whatever means
available to the US Mexican border. But no one wants to talk about
the causes of this wave of violence engulfing Latin America. No one
mentions that leaders in the militaries of these different countries
have been trained in the United States. At Fort Benning, Georgia what
was formerly known as the "School of the Americas" and was
then re- christened the "Western Hemisphere Institute for
Security Cooperation" they learned how to suppress restive
populations and to bolster dictatorial regimes. The violence the
refugees are fleeing is to a significant extent “Made in America.”</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
majority of detained refugees are held in private prisons owned by
either the GEO Group or Core Civic (formerly called “Corrections
Corporation of America”) -- both generous supporters of the Trump
Inauguration Fund and Trump election campaign funds. Conditions in
these prisons are truly deplorable. The detained immigrants are
mostly Spanish speakers and few have any English. Border Patrol and
ICE agents, on the whole, do not speak English. Our government and
its agents regard and treat them as lesser beings than white
Americans. The detained immigrants do not understand what is being
done to them or why. If detainees have health needs they are likely
to be ignored. Pregnant women do not get medical care. In some cases
the result is a stillbirth. A man who told the guards that he had a
heart condition was, when he alerted officers that he was having
chest pains, not sent to a hospital but to a different detention
facility where he died. Women, especially young women are in constant
danger of sexual abuse by guards. Rapes are common.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In
many detention facilities the food is inedible. Meat has been
observed to be raw or expired. Inspectors saw open packages of
chicken leaking blood all over refrigeration units and identified
slimy, foul-smelling lunch meat, which appeared to be spoiled. Bread
is regularly moldy,</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">To
add insult to injury, the inmates of private prisons are made to work
for pennies an hour. All the cooking and cleaning and maintenance in
the prison facilities is done by inmates who are paid a dollar a day
or less. The inmates are virtual slaves. The private prison companies
do not have to hire outside persons to provide the services that
prison needs to operate. The system for treating immigrants is not
only brutal it is thoroughly corrupt, a bonanza for the private
prison companies and of course indirectly their political
beneficiaries – the President.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">It
is time for Americans to wake up, to pay attention to see what our
government does in our name, how we need to be ashamed of ourselves
because the government brutalizes people in dire need. It is time to
speak up very loudly against the maltreatment of immigrants.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<style type="text/css">p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; direction: ltr; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 115%; }p.western { font-family: "Liberation Serif", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; }p.cjk { font-family: "NSimSun"; font-size: 12pt; }p.ctl { font-family: "Mangal"; font-size: 12pt; }</style></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<style type="text/css">p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; line-height: 115%; }a:link { }</style></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<style type="text/css">p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; line-height: 115%; }a:link { }</style></div>
<style type="text/css">p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; line-height: 115%; }a:link { }</style><style type="text/css">p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; line-height: 115%; }a:link { }</style>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2451871341893552236.post-39901396787441205382019-06-07T14:28:00.000-04:002019-06-07T14:28:39.978-04:00<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"> Our border with Mexico: a national disgrace.</span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY5lNk-jpTbwsYil3X1rB47tT9ZMq5phkOpIWpfgFuX5uJi4-48WK2yMSQ2UDSGEXJMFYg_OvCKDOr3Q4qFNUtuAgQtRj2F6rWw7xLwyHt23Aj6Z3v2HQpph64-lG5SiE-QsYjiTsV06I/s1600/lynching.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="806" data-original-width="1024" height="313" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY5lNk-jpTbwsYil3X1rB47tT9ZMq5phkOpIWpfgFuX5uJi4-48WK2yMSQ2UDSGEXJMFYg_OvCKDOr3Q4qFNUtuAgQtRj2F6rWw7xLwyHt23Aj6Z3v2HQpph64-lG5SiE-QsYjiTsV06I/s400/lynching.jpg" width="400" /> </a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: x-large;"> </span><br />Francisco Cantu, a Mexican-American born and raised in Arizona at age 23 joined the Border Patrol. It did not take him very long to become appalled by the inhumane treatment the border patrol meted out to people crossing the border without proper papers. Four years after enlisting he left the border patrol. Today he volunteers to visit detained immigrants to bring them small gifts and to try to help them maintain their spirits in hope as they wait for the often inscrutable decisions of the US border bureaucracy.<br />
<br /> In a recent article in the New York Times Cantu describes the fate of one of the persons he visits in one of the many privately owned prisons in Arizona. Here is a woman he calls Ysabel who presented herself at the US border after fleeing violence in Venezuela. She ends up in a detention center and after some months is told that her request for asylum has been granted. She expects to be released but that expectation is disappointed. She remains in detention in what are essentially prisons for criminals judged to have broken the law. She has done no such thing but continues in this prison.<br />
<br /> Her friend Francisco makes inquiries. After many phone calls to different government agencies he is told that the government is trying to appeal her grant of asylum. No date is set for such an appeal. If the appeal is ever considered by the Board of Immigration Appeals, there will be no public hearing. Isabel will have no opportunity to speak for itself. The board will make its decisions in private.<br />
<br /> This entire process contravenes traditional standards of justice. The immigrants are considered guilty and the burden is on them to prove that they deserve to be accepted into the United States. The hearings are secret; immigrants are not given a chance to speak for themselves. They do not have the support of lawyers.<br />
<br /> The government is very clear: the point of all these violations of traditional standards of legality is to deter people from coming to the border in order to ask for asylum. Human rights and legal rights count for nothing.<br />
<br /> Many Americans, especially supporters of the president, will reply to these complaints about government malfeasance at the Mexican American border by saying that immigrants who are crossing the border without proper papers are breaking the law and are therefore at fault. They deserve to suffer because their actions are illegal. They deserve punishment. They deserve to be sent back to where they came from.<br />
<br /> But that is an excessively simplistic way of thinking about the law and lawbreaking. The seriousness of lawbreaking depends on the law being broken. Some municipalities, for instance, try to reduce the number of automobile accidents by setting the speed limit very low. Most motorists break that law; they simply cannot bear to drive that slowly. No one thinks that their lawbreaking makes these drivers into pariahs because the law that is being broken is thought to be unjustified.<br />
<br /> In the 1920s, during prohibition, most Americans broke the law because they thought it was in error. No one thought that people who bought illegal alcohol were serious lawbreakers who deserved harsh punishment such as being sent back to their country of origin.<br />
<br /> After the Civil War, Southern states reacted to the emancipation of former slaves by passing a large body of laws that seriously circumscribed the lives of black Americans. The laws determined where African-Americans could sit on the train or the bus, where they could get a drink of water or relieve themselves. So-called Jim Crow laws imposed curfews and many other illegal limitations on former slaves and their descendents. They deprived African-Americans of the legal rights of white Americans. They deprived African-Americans of recourse to the legal systems. They were once again close to being enslaved. This was an utterly shameful set of legislative actions motivated by completely unacceptable racial prejudice. The laws were enforced not so much by police and sheriffs but by a series of public tortures and lynchings of black persons. In the 1890s a Black person was lynched every second or third day. The frequency declined in the 20th century but lynching did not end until late in the 20th century. Police shootings of Blacks have taken the place of lynching.<br />
<br /> If someone broke any of these Jim Crow laws we would not call them a law breaker who deserved serious punishment. How should we think of people fleeing violence and poverty in their country of origin? Do they deserve the harsh treatment meted out to the Ysabels of this world? There is no justice in our treatment of immigrants from South and Central America.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2451871341893552236.post-65724922408174132602019-05-27T15:35:00.001-04:002019-05-27T15:35:55.992-04:00<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">For a truly Representative Democracy</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHIXtnvFc8ISYLVN5zvTPiSW1C0RubTkAA2oP3koDceN1jZ5QL1ft9x4ezSPzk9Adv1eInWCoh8Ow27eeOaxeGlYYhrBLCrisIer0U38T-uRrhjLVCHd50rdMO79EzoVgHRPYhpXGNavA/s1600/representative+democracy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="595" data-original-width="736" height="258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHIXtnvFc8ISYLVN5zvTPiSW1C0RubTkAA2oP3koDceN1jZ5QL1ft9x4ezSPzk9Adv1eInWCoh8Ow27eeOaxeGlYYhrBLCrisIer0U38T-uRrhjLVCHd50rdMO79EzoVgHRPYhpXGNavA/s320/representative+democracy.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<br />We are once again involved in many electoral campaigns where individuals offer themselves as representatives of a sizable number of citizens. People are running for national, state and local offices, for President, or the Senate as well as for quaint local offices such as “Registrar of Deeds.” Each candidate offers to represent voters in their specific job. So it is an opportune time to reflect about representation.<br />
<br />The elected representatives have a difficult job because they are expected to speak on behalf a large number of voters who disagree with each other in many important ways. Some of the people who vote for a given representative are poor or are barely getting by, living paycheck-to-paycheck, and always owing money to the credit card company or a bank or perhaps a friend or family member. Others are, to put it plainly, filthy rich. Many of the supporters of any representative are seriously interested in sports and are willing to see public monies used to build stadiums or race tracks. Others are into books and want to spend more money for their public libraries. The academic programs in colleges mean more to them than their football teams.<br />
<br />The elected representative clearly cannot speak for all these different groups. Moreover different sets of voters have very many different interests and concerns . There are too many of them for one representative to speak to or to support by fighting for relevant legislation. In our system, it is quite unclear what I should expect from a representative I might choose to vote for. I have no guarantee that voting for one representative rather than another will advance my interests and the values that matter to me.<br />
<br />This is a real problem when a candidate runs for an office for the first time. But don’t voters know their representative who has been in office for a long time? You would think so. But the representative has an interest in getting the support of as many of his constituents as possible. He is better of if his stands in Congress are not so well known so that more of his constituents might be willing to vote for him, not knowing that he actually does not support one or the other of their interests. Unless representatives run unopposed in their districts or, if they run opposed, have little problem winning re-election, it is in their best interest to have their constituents remain in the dark about what they believe in and stand for.<br />
<br />This has a number of serious consequences for our democracy. Since I am not clear what my representative will actually stand for, choosing to vote for anyone candidate on the basis of issues is not really possible. I do not have the necessary information for making a reasonable choice. I might just as well vote for a candidate whose family is really cute or who promises to be good company at a barbecue. Not knowing what a representative will stand for encourages voters to make their choices for irrelevant and often trivial reasons.<br />
<br />More seriously many voters abstain from participating in elections because they know that casting their vote for one candidate or another may very well not make any difference to them. So why bother?<br />The representative, on the other hand, does not feel obligated to take specific stands on behalf of the voters. It was never clear quite what the representative stood for and it was always obvious that the representative could not represent all the interests or all the values of the people who voted for them. In advocating for very special interest groups—as they most often do-- the representatives are not really violating their commitments to their voters because they never made any definite commitment.<br />
<br />Other countries deal with the problem of whom the representative represents by having representatives clearly identified as members of specific political parties where these parties have more or less explicit written party platforms. When I vote in an election like that I have some reason to be confident that the persons I vote for will share my values and represent my interests. ( Obviously that does not always work. ) But in such a system you need more than two parties. Where, as in the US, there are only two major parties there is no way you can know, most of the time, what you are voting for. The person you vote for frequently does not represent you in any specific way.<br />
<br />In our existing electoral system with only two political parties representatives cannot be clearly distinguished from each other and so no one quite knows what they are voting for . The choices we are asked to make are most of the time completely irrational because we don't have any definite information about the difference between the candidates . Everyone stands for freedom and prosperity. What more specifically a candidate stands for we don't find out until after he or she has been voted in.<br />
<br />If we are ever going to repair our democracy we need to abolish the two party system. Each voter is entitled to be offered a party platform that summarizes the central concerns of this citizen. Since there is a significant number of persons who are profoundly invested in the present arrangements that is not going to be easy. But it is essential.<br />
<br />A second change that is equally important is for some sort of proportional representation. If, under our system, you vote for the losing candidate your vote will not count for anything. The promise of democracy where everyone's vote counts equally is not kept under the system of voting that we have. Under proportional representation, the proportion of voters a specific party wins determines how many representatives they will have. Above a certain minimum every political party will have some representation. Every vote is counted; every vote makes a difference. There is no such thing as wasting a vote.<br />
<br />Until we make at least these two changes in our electoral system , ours will be a democracy in name only.<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2451871341893552236.post-72075319177687377422019-05-16T07:37:00.002-04:002019-05-16T07:37:36.031-04:00<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span lang="hi-IN"><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, Helvetica Neue, serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0.73in; widows: 2;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFWZSjqhjKhtzFRX1EfKN1qtG6wYC2sAnFIooCl4v0WAUs66Gv05HyljTLIP1Xdvfl4TwtHqPJX0fREjwDOFEEF7KRJBdqs3Rej839egV7cou9pDRy6zzC17LGkggEq933hbrfK0wTSMM/s1600/electioneering+for+Bernie.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1600" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFWZSjqhjKhtzFRX1EfKN1qtG6wYC2sAnFIooCl4v0WAUs66Gv05HyljTLIP1Xdvfl4TwtHqPJX0fREjwDOFEEF7KRJBdqs3Rej839egV7cou9pDRy6zzC17LGkggEq933hbrfK0wTSMM/s400/electioneering+for+Bernie.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div align="center" class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0.73in; widows: 2;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.73in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Is
our </span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">democracy
a blessing ?</span></span></span></span></span></span></span> </span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0.73in; widows: 2;">
<br /></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0.73in; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">We
have a government that seems in many respects dedicated to
exclusion. The president spends a whole lot of time criticizing and
denigrating different groups of people - his political opponents,
immigrants to the United States, people from Mexico and other Latin
countries, Muslims and many others. At the same time groups that
demand more attention and power for themselves because they claim to
be of a superior kind –for instance white supremacists-- are
growing and becoming more powerful. Not too long ago white supremacy
was thought of as a holdover of slavery and Jim Crow - a movement
stuck in an inglorious past that was bound to wither away.
Instead white supremacy has become, once again, a serious movement.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0.73in; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Nor
is this true only in our country. Comparable groups have grown
and are in the governments of quite a few European countries.
Hysteria in the face of large numbers of immigrants from the near
East and Africa dominates politics. The main desire of large
groups of people is to exclude masses of immigrants who are poor and
looking for work. In a clearly global economy where are many
countries profit from trade and where industry is dominated by
large multinational corporations, nationalists in many countries
resist the global labor market, the free movement across
frontiers to where there is work. This resistance to folks who don't
speak your language or don't speak it well, who may have different
religions from yours and certainly bring with them different
traditions in food and family structure is a major theme in
Brexit, England's attempt to distance itself from the European
Union. The claim to national superiority of Jews over Palestinians is
the motivating force in much of Israeli politics.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0.73in; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
right-wing movements in different countries are different but they
have some common features. They have no respect for political
equality. Democracy does not seem to them to be important, neither
are political rights - the right to free speech, to political
participation, to form associations and for those
associations to meet. Police violence against critics of right-wing
governments is readily accepted as legitimate.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0.73in; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">The
frequent tendency of peoples to move away from democracy raises many
interesting questions and gives rise to many controversies. But today
I want to pay attention to one specific aspect of these occur</span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">r</span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">ences.
Very many of the right wing, ultra right-wing, or fascist movements
come to power by democratic means. The persons who end up as fascist
dictators are first elected. That was true of Adolf Hitler as well as
of the president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, or of Egypt’s
General Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and many others. The current president
of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, soon after being elected
president instituted a regime of violence against alleged drug
dealers or users. Thousands of Philippinos have lost their lives,
killed by police or vigilantes for alleged drug selling or use,
without any judicial process. It looks as if prove</span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">d</span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
very popular in the mid-term elections of this past weekend. The
thousands of alleged drug dealers and users killed by police in the
last 4 years have not made him unacceptable to voters in the
Philippines.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0.73in; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Most
commonly when we talk about democracy, what we have in mind is a
political system of regular and honest elections, civil rights and
political rights for all citizens as well as the rule of of law to
protect those rights. But it turns out that that is not enough for a
lasting democracy. In countries that have regular elections, a
functioning legal system and civil and political rights, the
electorate has more than once voted and continues to vote for enemies
of democracy. People have more than once passed referenda to extend
the term of office of the strongman whose rule spells the end of
democracy. People have acclaimed these dictators and have gladly
followed their commands and have after the end of their term been
happy to re-elect them in clean and ordinary elections. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0.73in; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">A
well-functioning and honest electoral system is not what democracy
is. A functioning democracy exists only where the people at large not
only participate at least by voting but also participate by
protesting loudly as soon as the candidates they have elected turn
out to be enemies of democracy. If the state legislature</span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">s</span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
in States like Ohio or North Carolina draw the electoral districts in
ways to deprive black voters of any political power to choose black
representatives, they show themselves to be enemies of democracy
because they exclude black Americans from the democratic system. If
voters in Ohio and North Carolina don't protest vigorously and insist
that these electoral districts be redrawn, democracy in Ohio and
North Carolina is not functioning. Without an active electorate that
will not tolerate exclusions, that will not allow elected officials
to violate the rules and spirit of democracy, democracy exists in
name only.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0.73in; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Many
prestigious political organizations continuously exhort voters to go
and cast their ballots. But that is not good advice. They should
advise citizens to protest loudly when elected officials pass laws
that in effect exclude some citizens from participation or from
making use of their rights. An example is any law that requires
picture-IDs from voters who have no possible way of procuring such
an identification. In the present situation where only half the
people vote and very few people are willing to demonstrate their
displeasure and the need for change, we can no more claim to be a
democracy than the Philippines , or Turkey, or Germany in 1933.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<style type="text/css">p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; direction: ltr; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 115%; }p.western { font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; }p.cjk { font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; }p.ctl { font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; }</style>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2451871341893552236.post-4448541676003397142019-04-06T09:44:00.001-04:002019-04-06T09:44:55.436-04:00
<br />
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.52in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype, serif; font-size: x-large;">Bribery in College
Admissions </span></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.52in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0h04jg7RQFZq5YhDkpI1JKu-jnu-4TRl1caE2jbI_DZhXgZTv1w7wytT7-0v2fp6sSmsIu6AAMyirOUvfPXBguuwIwjzxiridjAg0l3J084eOd7SgQMbldD_H3xQmQpKEPFYaAxVnd7U/s1600/joe+college.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="436" data-original-width="436" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0h04jg7RQFZq5YhDkpI1JKu-jnu-4TRl1caE2jbI_DZhXgZTv1w7wytT7-0v2fp6sSmsIu6AAMyirOUvfPXBguuwIwjzxiridjAg0l3J084eOd7SgQMbldD_H3xQmQpKEPFYaAxVnd7U/s400/joe+college.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.52in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.52in;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Americans believe
that our country is a meritocracy. Each person reaches the level in
society that corresponds to their particular accomplishments. In a
meritocracy no one gets ahead because they are rich, because their
parents are famous, or because their relatives are wealthy and
powerful. But along comes the college admissions scandal where people
spent very large amounts of money to get their children into decent
colleges even though the youngsters did not qualify to attend those
institutions. College admissions are not a meritocracy. </span>
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">
</span><div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.52in;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">These bribery
cases have produced an enormous uproar because they show very clearly
that those who believe that they live in a meritocracy are just
fooling themselves. They are, of course, also denying the grim facts
of American life where the color of your skin has a lot more to do
with where you end up in society than your hard work and abilities.
Native Americans, Hispanics, African-Americans and many other groups
most definitely do not live in a meritocracy. Neither--the college
admissions scandal shows--do whites.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">
</span><div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.52in;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">It is important to
repeat this well-known fact simply because so many people are taken
in by the drumbeat of propaganda that claims that all it takes to
succeed in America is hard work. That's clearly false and this
scandal is just one more piece of evidence.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">
</span><div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.52in;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">But the scandal
conveys other messages about our culture which deserve closer
attention. Ask yourself: what were these parents trying to do? Their
children seemed, on the whole, not interested in being educated.
Their high school performance had been mediocre or worse. And they
were apparently not interested in learning. Learning requires effort.
Without effort and work a good education is out of reach. Getting
into a good school will not provide you with a good education if you
are not prepared to work in your classes. So what were the parents
willing to spend half a million for? They were trying to build the
brand of their hapless children, to burnish their façade and make
them appear what in fact they were not. They were launching their
offspring into a world where appearances counted for everything and
reality was constantly asking to be reconstructed, reinterpreted and
even reinvented.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">
</span><div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.52in;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">"Meritocracy
does not exist" these parents tell their children. To get ahead
you need to have a record that appears impressive because, for
instance, you went to Harvard or Stanford – and hopefully managed
to graduate. The fact that you cheated your way into these schools
when your parents paid bribes to the soccer coach is of no importance
as long as it remains a secret. You do not need to be competent; you
only need to have a record that suggests competence and that record
is for sale. Integrity, trustworthiness are of no importance. No one
cares, or should care about being honest and decent. The only thing
that matters is the appearance you managed to create.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">
</span><div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.52in;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">None of this would
be of any importance if the dishonesty were the failure of a small
number of people, the few bad apples in the large barrel of honorable
and upstanding Americans. But that is unfortunately not what this
scandal represents. Valuing appearances, what you look like more than
what you really are, is a significant theme in our culture. Many
politicians are quite shameless in presenting themselves as very
different kinds of people to different groups of voters. If you write
a letter to an elected official you are more likely than not to
receive a reply protesting the officials' total agreement with you
regardless of what it is you had written. </span></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">
</span><div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.52in;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Important persons
in public life have someone who speaks for them. Their job is to make
that employer look good and to increase their popularity. If in the
course of this effort, the spokesperson misrepresents the truth, no
one is surprised or outraged. The standing of persons in public life
is not affected by their moral integrity or that of the people who
speak for them.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">
</span><div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.52in;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Making one's
clients look good regardless of what kinds of persons they are is a
lucrative profession in the United States. According to one of the
associations of public relations practitioners “At its core, public
relations is about influencing, engaging and building a relationship
with key stakeholders across a myriad of platforms in order to shape
and frame the public perception of an organization.” You can make a
living in our country by making people appear competent who are not
and make officials appear reliable who are actually quite dishonest.
Looking good is what matters. Being good is much less important.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">
</span><div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.52in;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The college
admissions scandal shows what that attitude leads to. Public life
becomes an intricate game of deception. At issue is always how many
people you can deceive into trusting , into believing that you have
their interest at heart while, in fact, all you care about is getting
elected to the next higher office, keeping your name in front of the
public, promoting your brand.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">
</span><div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.52in;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Public life,
politics, affects the quality of life of many citizens in so far as
it provides, or takes away, their chance to get a decent education,
to have good health care available, to keep a roof over their head,
and food in their kitchens. In the interest of appearing as champions
of law and order, politicians, for instance, neglect the prisons
under their control and force prisoners to live under inhumane
conditions. Children go hungry so that politicians can show that they
value hard work and do not give away tax payers money to "welfare
cheats."</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">
</span><div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.52in;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Playing the game
of appearances, our leaders not only perpetuate immorality but they
play cruel games with the lives of the citizens they pretend to value
and care for. The college admissions scandal is a reminder of the
pervasive corruption of public life.</span></span></div>
<style type="text/css">P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }A:link { }</style>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2451871341893552236.post-56787853021267095212019-03-20T22:16:00.000-04:002019-03-20T22:16:02.710-04:00
<style type="text/css">
<!--
@page { margin: 0.79in }
P { margin-bottom: 0.08in }
-->
</style>
<br />
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif; font-size: x-large;">Make America great? What a joke!</span></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-MqrFBqhim9nW8mhjhxAtLwINBi6LH1nW7X-uHnRAG9f8UCM7oNLN772fLuWnioAI3VWanDqPzoWYHN2br4bw86yCLIuYKrI1VO2nXgwKI47GKXAUcADSlK-n22eLWRTBoyN0iVa08o0/s1600/Trump+Hotel-1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="772" data-original-width="952" height="323" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-MqrFBqhim9nW8mhjhxAtLwINBi6LH1nW7X-uHnRAG9f8UCM7oNLN772fLuWnioAI3VWanDqPzoWYHN2br4bw86yCLIuYKrI1VO2nXgwKI47GKXAUcADSlK-n22eLWRTBoyN0iVa08o0/s400/Trump+Hotel-1.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Paul Manafort, the one time campaign
manager of President Trump, is facing seven years in federal prison.
If prosecutors in New York state get what they want, Manafort will
spend additional time in state prison.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">That is a well-known fact. So is the
three or more years in prison that Michael Cohen, the president's
former lawyer, is facing. Among his other services to the president,
Cohen paid out money to hush up extra-marital affairs the president,
then merely a political candidate, had with a porn actress and other
women.</span></div>
<br />
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">Today's </span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><i>New
York Times </i></span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">reports
that the current secretary of Commerce, Steve Mnuchin, is negotiating
more favorable terms for showing US films in China. Mnuchin has
property rights to a blockbuster film, about to be shown in China.
The top officials in this administration are using their government
positions to line their own pockets.</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">Another friend and confidant of the
president, Robert Kraft, has been indicted for allegedly soliciting a
prostitute for sexual favors. He insists that he did nothing illegal.
But he did peripherally support sexual trafficking by availing
himself of the services of sexually trafficked women.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">Much less well known is the
information about Li Yang, also know as Cindy Yang who is the former
owner of the Asian Orchid Day Spa where Robert Kraft was arrested. </span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">Cindy Yang and her husband own a
firm that offers public relations services, especially to Chinese
business owners. They also offer to have Chinese business men invited
to presidential social events on the strength of a selfie of Cindy
Yang watching the Super Bowl game with the president at Mar-a-Lago.
Yang is known to the president and has been invited to fairly
intimate functions at the Florida resort. She is obviously in a
position to introduce powerful Chinese business owners to the
president.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">A number of well heeled Chinese
business owners bought their way into Mar-a-Lago last December hoping
for a selfie with the President of the United States. But since the
president had managed to shut down the government, he remained in
Washington and the Chinese tycoons had to be content with a portrait
with the president's son.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">This story was published in the
</span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><i>Miami Herald</i></span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">,
</span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><i>Mother Jones</i></span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">,
and the </span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><i>New York Times.
</i></span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">These
publications also confirmed that the Florida day spa where Robert
Kraft was arrested already offered sexual services when it was still
owned by Cindy Yang. This friend of the president not only ran
several houses of ill repute but the women who worked there were
trafficked from China. They were – and are – sex slaves forced to
perform sexual services and being kept as actual prisoners according
to newspaper accounts of the whole sorry story.</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">The president of the United States
is willing to allow himself to be greeted and photographed with a
woman who is or was allegedly involved in sex trafficking. To be
sure, she and her family donated more than $50,000 to the president.
No doubt there are much more generous donors to the president's war
chest. Dare we ask what favors they received?</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">The present administration wallows
in corruption. The man who promised to "drain the swamp” in
Washington is as or more corrupt than any of his predecessors.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">We do not need the kind of
“greatness” that he brings to America.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<style type="text/css">
<!--
@page { margin: 0.79in }
P { margin-bottom: 0.08in }
-->
</style>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<style type="text/css">
<!--
@page { margin: 0.79in }
P { margin-bottom: 0.08in }
-->
</style>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2451871341893552236.post-15085682615143112862019-03-12T16:11:00.000-04:002019-03-12T16:11:58.885-04:00
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif; font-size: x-large;">Sex trafficking</span></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKKT3ZVpOth7t5mb4TMEEwzUl6t0223Pr7DeykBrOiJChZcyTRnOktGYiYj84tER0NdstoJ9SQUAED5HVmF4CHB0ATBBntbViCMQc3PUtSuOCBhy6sm__ievl8_MVOGlMC_CKp6d6eCHE/s1600/Orchids+of+Asia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1200" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKKT3ZVpOth7t5mb4TMEEwzUl6t0223Pr7DeykBrOiJChZcyTRnOktGYiYj84tER0NdstoJ9SQUAED5HVmF4CHB0ATBBntbViCMQc3PUtSuOCBhy6sm__ievl8_MVOGlMC_CKp6d6eCHE/s640/Orchids+of+Asia.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"> </span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">Robert Kraft, the owner of the
Patriots football team, was literally caught with his pants down. The
reporting of this affair, however, completely missed the serious
import of the event. You could almost hear the reporters snicker as
they retold, over and over, the mishap of a very rich and powerful
person who is caught in a raid on a tawdry massage parlor. The women
involved were apparently trafficked from China. But there was no
information about them except that they were treated as slaves. They
were not allowed to leave the premises. It was clear that they were
not well fed or well cared for. We do not know their ages or their
history. Do they speak any English or do they find themselves unable
to communicate, very far from home, forced to provide sexual services
on elderly men – a different one every 15 minutes?</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">The casual treatment of the victims
of these massage parlors, bordellos, drinking establishments with
nude dancers, and wherever else trafficked women are forced to work,
is characteristic of the offhand way in which women forced into
sexual services are usually treated. The dominant attitude towards
the victims of sexual trafficking is one of contempt and disinterest.
These women are being blamed for their victimization and therefore
are thought to be of no interest.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">Sexual trafficking is widespread.
For obvious reasons the actual number of victims are difficult to
ascertain but the estimate of the International Labor Organization of
about 40 million victims a year appears to be the most reliable
number available. 18,000 or so of those 40 million victims are
trafficked within the US alone. These are women – often teenagers –
who are born and raised in the United States—US citizens--who find
themselves forced to perform sex acts on men, often much older,
always complete strangers, often unclean, drunk and generally
unattractive. Many of these women are victims of multiple rapes over
extended periods of time. They are repeatedly exposed to vicious
beatings by their pimps. They have terrible scars as reminders of
their sufferings. Many of them end up as addicts or as
psychologically completely detached from their experience in order to
survive at all.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">The prevailing attitude towards them
is one of contempt. They are thought to have </span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><i>chosen</i></span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">
this life of sexual exploitation. But that is a serious
misconception. Each victim has her own history but often they come
from families ravaged by addiction and family violence. Frequently,
their mothers, completely occupied by feeding their drug habits. were
unable to be proper mothers. They themselves were victims of regular
beatings and violence at the hands of their husbands. They were
unable to provide their daughters the love and care they needed and
deserved.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">Pimps take advantage of those
deprivations. They pretend passionate romantic relationships to
children often no more than 10 or 11 years old. They initiate them
into sexual relations, they give them presents, they take them out to
dinner and give them flowers. The child, starved for love, misled by
public portrayals of romantic love on television and in the movies,
believes that at last they have found someone who loves them. They
refer to the pimp as their "boyfriend." They are in love
with their pimp. At some point in this process of preparing the
future prostitute, the "boyfriend" gets terribly angry and
beats the child and punishes her for some, mostly imaginary,
transgression. Thus the relationship is established between a very
young woman loving a man who is alternately affectionate and very
demanding. What he demands is that she go out and earn significant
money by providing sexual services to complete strangers.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">The world is solidly against her.
The "john's" – the men buying sexual services – have no
other concern than getting their orgasm. They despise these children
who, they think, chose to live this life. It is obviously comforting
for the john to make it look as if they had no responsibility in this
situation. If they didn't buy 15 minutes of this teenagers time,
someone else would, and, anyway, if they didn't want to be
prostitutes they could go back to school and get a regular job. The
fact is, however, that leaving a pimp and leaving the life of
prostitution is extremely difficult and, needless to say, extremely
dangerous. But the john does not care about that.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">With few exceptions, the police has
the same attitude. They do not understand that these young women are
victims of a series of gruesome crimes. They too hold them
responsible for their “choices.” They too blame the victim and
accordingly fail to protect them as they are supposed to do. Most
physicians never ask these young persons whether they are safe.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">The ill-treatment of trafficked
women is just an extreme example of the disrespect women still are
subject to in our society. Women who are supposedly "respected"
are expected to perform services that violate their integrity. Women
who are housewives and mothers frequently have to pick the dirty
clothes of their husbands and male children off the floor or bring
beers to the men watching football games. Men don't reciprocate. As
the recent disclosures of the #MeToo movement show, sexual harassment
and exploitation of women is commonplace in the workplace. The
overwhelming majority of cases of family violence involved bodily
attacks by men on women.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">The complete disregard of the
victimization of sexually trafficked women is a clear manifestation
of the persistence of very traditional, very sexist perceptions of
men about women. The persistence of sexual trafficking, the
widespread ignorance about the utter brutality of sexual trafficking,
the willingness of men to buy sexual services and the unwillingness
of police and courts as well as physicians to protect the victims of
sexual services – all are testimony to the continued conception
that men have of women as their property from whom they are entitled
to demand sexual services. </span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">As long as sexism remains a major
characteristic of our and other societies, sexual trafficking will
remain a major criminal enterprise yielding enormous profits for the
traffickers. Sexually trafficked women are clear victims.
Responsibility for their suffering lies with men who are not willing
to regard women as full equals but continue to insist on a double
standard of sexual conduct that demands complete fidelity of women
and unlimited promiscuity of men.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2451871341893552236.post-87616680830893843112019-02-26T22:31:00.000-05:002019-02-26T22:31:25.696-05:00
<style type="text/css">
<!--
@page { margin: 0.79in }
P { margin-bottom: 0.08in }
-->
</style>
<br />
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif; font-size: x-large;">Are the Rich more Likely to be
Morally Challenged?</span></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEbBln6Vz3XSNYMopv6C1JU95mHy5aRKNCqunHSFOWoQuwedj8gi5OEL68AVe_XH0Cjk5hS6J7uJggBYQJlpyObCGhQJULnaI0eJYvbaQS6SQUrxJSutYc4Lb80HAdplhjBUsFB0RH69I/s1600/super-rich-exploit-the-poor-and-middle-class.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="640" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEbBln6Vz3XSNYMopv6C1JU95mHy5aRKNCqunHSFOWoQuwedj8gi5OEL68AVe_XH0Cjk5hS6J7uJggBYQJlpyObCGhQJULnaI0eJYvbaQS6SQUrxJSutYc4Lb80HAdplhjBUsFB0RH69I/s640/super-rich-exploit-the-poor-and-middle-class.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">How pathetic for Robert Kraft, rich
enough to pay for whatever sexual services he desires, to be caught
in a shabby massage parlor in a ratty strip mall, not once but twice.
</span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">The local paper took advantage of
this embarrassment of one super rich owner of a sports team—and not
just </span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><i>any</i></span><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">
sports team-- to list some of the other instances of team owners
falling afoul of the law for fraud, for being addicted to pain pills,
for being blatantly racist. Other owners participated in major
bribery schemes or were overwhelmed by gambling debts. Without quite
saying so, the paper seems to suggest that the very rich team owners
are often tempted to act very badly and often succumb to the
temptations. </span></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">Is this just the envy of ordinary
folks speaking? We work hard and toward the end of every month we are
short of cash. So when the rich are embarrassed publicly we can't
help gloating and boasting of our—supposed--moral superiority. You
and I are not tempted to pay huge bribes to politicians or to run up
$25 million gambling debts. So we can feel morally superior when we
do not indulge in such behavior.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">But perhaps our suspicions of the
moral weakness of the very rich is not completely unreasonable. Let
us ask: how did they get to be so rich? I am not asking what it is
about Robert Kraft that makes him so much wealthier than I am. I
cannot answer that question because I do not know Kraft. Does he work
harder than I do, is he smarter, is he more interested in wealth than
I am? I have no idea. But the question is not about the character and
personality of the rich. It is about the system controlling our
lives. What does this system require of us to become very rich or
even moderately so?</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">It seems clear that competition is
at the heart of our system; the winners must be prodigiously good
competitors. The rich are better competitors. But competitions are of
different sorts. Some are completely benign; in others the outcome is
brutally destructive of some participants in the competition while
others walk away with impressive wealth.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">In some competitions, the winner
simply worked harder, worked longer hours, was more focused than all
others. The winner trained more frequently. Even at rest his or her
thoughts were wholly taken up with the upcoming competition.
Completely concentrated they win. This is a benign competition that
produces exceptional performances. But it is only one kind of
competition.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">In the early days of the personal
computer, anyone could purchase the parts and assemble a machine. I
have done so myself. As a consequence a large number of small
enterprises produced inexpensive but quite adequate table top
computers. Bill Gates participated in this computer business,
competing with many other entrepreneurs to found a profitable
business producing personal computers. According to one biographer,
Gates' style of competition was not benign. He did not try to get
ahead of the pack by being more diligent or inventive. His energy was
focused on putting his competitors out of business. His project was
clearly destructive, to reduce the competition by underselling
machines of other producers and ruining the competing business. This
kind of competition aims clearly at the injury of the competition.
Some athletes in team sports seek to injure members of the opposing
team. Here competition is intentionally destructive.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">A third form of competition injures
third parties. Tobacco companies concealed the damages done by
cigarettes. The health of consumers counted for nothing as compared
to the company's bottom line. Similar competitions injuring third
parties occur when companies pollute streams, dump toxic materials,
use fracking techniques and hide their destructive effects. </span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">Enterprises using these destructive
forms of competition do not always end in the winners' circle. The
owners of the Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter FL where Robert
Kraft is said to have enjoyed sexual services for $79 an hour are not
likely to be billionaires even though they traffic Asian women, keep
them locked up, and force them to do sex work. Here third parties are
grievously injured. The perpetrators nevertheless do not become as
rich as some of their patrons.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">Some competitors however succeed to
parlay their destruction of opponents or of third parties into
obscene wealth. Instances of their techniques are everywhere. While
the rich are rapidly getting richer, wages and salaries of common
people have barely rise in the last 50 years. Although prices have
risen steadily, the minimum wage has remained unchanged until
recently. An energetic movement to raise the minimum wage encounters
strenuous resistance from employers; they are determined not to pay a
living wage. They, often champions of family values, also resist paid
maternity and paternity leave. Their main interest is to raise their
profits by keeping wages and salaries as low as possible. They
compete strenuously and do not mind if their competition injures
large groups of their fellow citizens. Nor should we forget how, in
the past, the rich derived their wealth from keeping slaves, or
exploiting black tenant farmers violently during the era of Jim Crow.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;">Yes, the rich are more likely to be
competing with methods doing serious damage to large numbers of
Americans. Are their moral stamina more fragile than that of most of
their fellow citizens? I doubt it. The basic truth is that our
economic system, placing competition at the center, encourages
enterprising men and women to compete by doing serious damage to many
others. In so doing successfully they not only earn lots of money and
high social status but they do untold damage to citizens who do not
earn a living wage, whose drinking wells are polluted or who are
forced to work as prostitutes. That is the naked face of capitalism.</span></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0