Should DEI Be For Everybody?

 

I live close enough to Oxford Michigan to be indirectly impacted by the acts of young Mr. Crumbley. Now, the whole Crumbley family is in it together. If you've been watching this story unfold, you know that "someone" helped the parents hide (by the time you read this, the authorities may have rounded them up, too).

You may be wondering who would want to help them? If you pause to think about it, you probably already know. There are a considerable number of Americans who have become very disenfranchised from official society. Their de facto leader is Donald Trump. They are "his people" and he knows it.

Here's the thing: "we" had better decide soon whether we want to work to bring these people into the tent, or continue the current escalation of what is evolving into a civil war. Shootings like Oxford aren't going to go away. It's time to wake the fuck up and see what's happening. Put your hindsight glasses on and ask yourself, "if things turn ugly, what would I have been willing to do to prevent it?"

At no time in modern history has a war been won outright in battle. Ultimately, both sides have had enough and dialog puts an end to it. So, how about we skip that battle bit? What kind of dialog are we willing to have with our free spirited, nationalistic, and gun toting, fellow Americans? Are we willing to listen? I mean REALLY listen with your curiosity hat on, not your "I'm going to prove you wrong" hat?

One thing I have observed is that most often, there is some truth in any position. For example, here's some truth (at least as I know it). The Second Amendment was put in place because the colonists had just used their personal armory to overthrow their sovereign leadership. They recognized that when the citizens become so disenfranchised from their government, they must have the means to take back control.

So, we can sit here and call all these people, who are showing up in public with automatic weapons, criminals and keep trying to lock them up. Or, we can figure out how to reach out now and avert any further escalation. de Klerk and Mandela had it right: truth and reconciliation is the best path forward. In your heart, you know this.

So, I ask you to start by looking into your own heart and see your hatred for what it is. Can you let go of it? If not, don't be surprised when the people you hate, hate you back! We're all capable of love. We just need more of it.

Okay, so why that title? Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion can't be selective. If one group co-opts the definition of these words to exclude a group summarily, they have missed the point. DEI is hard. Really hard! If you want to actually practice it, then EVERYONE gets a seat at the table. If there is real hatred between people for one reason or another, we must start with tolerance and empathy on the road to acceptance. I guess it's the struggle. Hopefully, we shall overcome one day.

Life Is Too Good

 People are always complaining about how screwed up the world is. Politics! Global warming! Plastic in the oceans! Too many people! To be certain, there is some really serious suffering going on in the world right now. I mean, as you sit and read this on your fancy electronic device, there are some peeps out there that are fucking dying!

Here's the thing: you don't know those people. You probably don't even speak their language in a lot of cases. They're probably not even on your continent. So, maybe you cut a monthly check for them. Then, you go about your daily life, totally unaffected.

This is the problem. Life is too good for you. You, who have the means to do something about the problems in this world, don't really feel it. That's a problem because humans, and I'm assuming that you are one of these, are great problem-solvers and horrible problem-avoiders. Like right now if your TV remote broke, you'd be all over that! If the brakes were a little soft in your car, you'd be on the phone to your favorite mechanic within the hour.

Let's say the fish are dying in the river near your house. Would you be doing anything about it? It's near your house, but do you care? Probably not unless you fish in that river. Then, you'd be on the phone to the DNR asking what they plan to do about it within the hour. What if a river in India is polluted and dead? Send a check! Right? And, that's if you're thoughtful. You might just say "fuck em if they didn't take care of their river!"

So, what is it going to take for some of the big problems that the "world" faces to become YOUR problems? California has always had a fire season, but now it's every year and the fires get larger and more complex (meaning multiple fires are so close together that they merge). Here's some light reading about how it is. The good news is, if you live three or four states away, you hardly even need to worry about all the smoke. So, that aspect of climate change isn't YOUR problem unless you live out west.

Whatever problems exist out there, as long as YOUR life is good, you probably won't be changing your plans much. Here's THE THING: some problems get so big, that they can't be fixed by the time YOU are affected. So, while you're watching OTHER people's problems get worse, their problems are gradually becoming YOUR problems...and by the time they do, THE problems will be a lot worse than they are now. Maybe we will be able to fix them before mass chaos sets in. Or not.

Why We Need to Revive the U.S. Labor Party

 

The Democratic party used to be pro-union and support workers' rights. If you are a member of the labor class in this country, do you still feel like they do? I don't. If you're like me, you work for an employer that pays you well enough to have a reasonable lifestyle and provide sufficient benefits to keep you out of bankruptcy if you get sick.

However, the majority of Americans struggle with balancing the demands of family life with economic requirements. If you are one of the people I'm talking about, you know what I mean. First, you have to put food on the table. At the same time, you need to have a table to put the food on and that requires a roof over your heads. After that, you need to have some means of transportation to get around, whether that's a car or public transportation.

Do you need healthcare insurance? Do you need automobile insurance? Do you need to upgrade your education in order to gain access to income opportunities beyond your current situation? Well, if you can afford them, you probably do need them, but what if you can't? Do these things become luxuries? No! They don't.

Our political system is broken. Everyone knows this, but we keep expecting the foxes, who are guarding our current hen house, to take care of us chickens. They have no interest in it. They want to keep things going just enough so that they can keep eating us. The incentives in our political system no longer favor the working class citizens in this country. Both parties claim to care, but their actions continually demonstrate that they don't.

The fix is simple: introduce a Labor Party. A Labor Party would represent working class Americans. It would fight for living wages, educational opportunities, and a healthcare system that doesn't bankrupt people without employee sponsored insurance. While the party would need to have positions on other national issues, those issues would not be a central focus.

Even if candidates for the Labor Party don't win elections at first, they would force Democratic and Republican politicians to address these critical issues...because if they don't, we may just elect politicians who will focus on these issues. Even though the Labor Party may not get a majority in Congress, they could take a majority away from both Democrats and Republicans, thereby forcing those parties to compromise in order to gain their votes.

Eventually, a Labor Party could gain enough strength to wield real power, but even before then, they could gain enough influence to bring the old parties to the table. We need to fix these real problems in our country. They unlock the economic prosperity that has make the United States the great nation it has become. While we sit here debating, the Chinese are busy building their middle class. With 1.2 billion citizens, even without wiping out the horrific poverty that exists in China, they can easily become the globally dominant economic power.

If we don't fix these problems, and fix them soon, China won't need our markets to sustain theirs. On that day, we could be in a world of hurt. Imagine what would happen if China just stopped shipping products to the United States. Go ahead, I'll wait. Done yet? Did you picture a world with no smartphones? No appliances? No cars? No electronics? No toilet paper? The list just goes on as long as you can imagine. Put bluntly, we would be totally screwed. 

Not only do we need the stuff China makes, but they've been busy locking up deals to control much of the world's remaining sources for raw materials like minerals and ores. You can't make things without these materials, even if you did have the manufacturing capacity. A Labor Party would be focused on creating the working class jobs like those in manufacturing.

So, we could start electing Labor Party candidates that will turn this situation around. Or, we could just wait until the USA is just an empty shell of the country it once was. If you're wondering what a washed up world power looks like, check out Iraq. The Ottoman Empire once ruled the world. I doubt you'd want to live there now.

Belief in Facts Doesn't Make them So!

 

In the last 30 years, the world has make a fundamental shift. The shift was so subtle, you may not have even noticed it. Let me net it out for you. If you are much over 30, you probably remember a time when if you wanted to know something, your sources for knowledge were: books, magazines, radio, and network TV (usually three channels).

So what, you ask? Here's what. Every one of those sources had a responsibility to do research into facts before reporting their findings. When your reporting is scrutinized by thousands or millions of people, it behooves you to get it right, so these providers of information go directly to the best sources available. If they are writing about a train wreck, they will talk to people who where there to gather first-hand evidence of what happened. They will talk with multiple such sources in order to corroborate information to make sure it is consistent. This type of research is painstaking and time-consuming, but the professionals we entrust to do it are paid to do the work.

What this meant is that we all gained our understanding of the world through the same lens of knowledge. We had fundamentally different views of how we should proceed then as we do today. I'm not talking about political or social philosophy here. I'm talking about the factual foundation upon which we build our beliefs.

Fast forward to the birth of social media and blog posts. Now, almost anyone on the planet can become a reporter of information. They have no professional guidelines. They have not professional training in reporting facts. They may not even have any interest in facts at all. Yet, their voices can be just as loud as that of network TV news (even louder when all then networks pick up their story and rebroadcast it).

What Can You Do?

What saves us is that there are still people and sources out there that have publicly committed themselves to doin the research and getting the facts from the source, just like in the good old days. Some of these sources may have a political bias and the spin they put on the facts they report might not agree with your philosophy. Fine! But, look at the facts. Learn to distinguish a fact from some unsubstantiated statement with no supporting evidence behind it.

I leave you with a classic example: Youth vampirism by Hollywood elites. Do you know where this rumor came from? Do you believe it? Might it be true? The answer is: I don't know if it's true or not and neither do you. You can either choose to believe it or not. However, before you decide, you might want to gather some facts. One site I like to use for checking on conspiracy type theories like this is Snopes. What Snopes will tell you about this particular example is that it started with an article containing a completely fabricated quote by Keanu Reeves. This is not to say there isn't evidence that the practice exists. There is. In fact, there was a company called Ambrosia that offered teenage blood transfused into people over 35 for large amounts of money. 

This story was reported in Huffington Post. They did the type of professional research that I've been talking about here and demonstrated that the guy that started this company is a "snake oil salesman" of the first degree. Read it for yourself. 

Get the facts! Learn what a real fact looks like and how to separate it from all the BS that comes your way. In our internet connected world, it is an essential skill.