Coming Out

Posted on by Tim

Let’s start the upcoming weekend off with a #culturalinertia article by Jessi Hempel for Time Magazine about “coming out” that reminds us of a few important things.

The first is that while we normally, and rightly, use the term in reference to people who are not cisgender “coming out of the closet” it can be much more than that. It can be no longer keeping any important aspect of your identity secret; whether you are hiding it from your family, friends, social groups, coworkers, employers, neighbors, the public in general, or even yourself.

Generally, people keep these aspects secret to prevent ridicule and rejection, whether the secret is innocent and harmless to others or not. Sometimes it is done out of a concern for self preservation. Those who disapprove of the secret aspect of your true identity might react violently. Many parents have been known to kick their own kids out of their homes or worse, drive them to either runaway or commit suicide to escape. Violent hate crimes are committed all the time for people who openly display their non-traditional gender identities, sexual identities, or religions.

But these aren’t the only aspects we hide.

We may hide some talents or skillsets, we may pretend to be smarter or less intelligent in order to fit in or not be intimidating, we may be afraid to talk about the hobbies we enjoy or the genres of entertainment we prefer. It could be we are hiding a polyamorous relationship, or a romantic couple could hide their own mutually chosen power dynamic from others.

The advent of social media has made it easier for adults and even some teens to at least partially come out with their secrets. And for the most part that can be a good thing. Suppressing a key aspect of your identity is often toxic for our mental health.

However, it has also opened the way for many to come out with the toxic and harmful aspects of themselves. I contend that this is also good from a #Culturalinertia aspect.

When these people self-identify and begin to live their own lives out loud it shows us who needs to be disempowered, and which people and businesses to avoid or cut loose from our own lives.

Ultimately, coming out is about choosing to accept whatever personal consequences there may be for freely being your authentic self in all situations.

When doing so causes no personal harm to any other person, there should be no consequences.

50 Days

Posted on by Tim

In 50 days the members of the 2022 to 2024 congress will be determined.

As a result of Trump’s efforts with the 2020 census to undercount minority and immigrant communities, Republican states have greatly increased their gerrymandering efforts, and the Trump tainted Supreme Court bench has allowed those efforts to remain in place for this midterm election cycle, even while declaring many of them unconstitutional.

This means the House is likely to flip back to a Republican majority led by Kevin McCarthy as speaker, if the Republicans don’t go completely nuts and give it to someone like Marjorie Taylor Green or Matt Gaetz.

The Senate is a different story.

Democrats currently hold a tie breaking majority, on paper. But that majority is greatly hindered by Senators Manchin and Sinema. Both of whom will remain in place until after the 2024 elections.

This means they actually need to win at least 2 seats to hold a real, effective majority.

Meanwhile, the Republicans only need to gain a single seat to reinstate Mitch McConnell as Senate Majority Leader. I guarantee that one of his first steps as leader will be to eliminate the ability for Democrats to filibuster any bill he wants to pass.

If Republicans, due to that gerrymandering that will likely secure the House for them, also gain a supermajority then they will be able to override any veto Biden attempts

There are also more than 35 gubernatorial seats up for election this cycle, along with an equally staggering number of Lt. Governorship, states’ Attorneys General, and Secretaries of State, and school board seats.  The importance of these offices cannot be overstated with the recent Supreme Court rulings on “States’ Rights” to religious oppression, election gerrymandering, denial of womens’ rights, and limiting/restricting health care access.

Do not let any of the hype about a “Blue Wave,” or “Roevember,” or insurrection backlash creating an enhanced turnout lull you into a sense of overconfident complacency.

Make a plan now.

Make sure you are registered. Make sure you cast and submit your ballot properly, whether in person or absentee. Make sure to help at least one other person do the same.

The Republicans have made it clear that the future of our democracy, all of our rights, all of our health, all of our education, many of our marriages, and quite a few of our lives are actually on the ballot this year.

Act accordingly.

You have 50 days.

The Rising Cost Of Greed

Posted on by Tim

Inflation isn’t at record heights because of an increase in production or distribution costs or even pay raises for what were considered menial jobs prior to a global pandemic teaching us who the real essential workers actually are.

Inflation is rising at record paces because the leaders and shareholders of multinational corporations are greedy and price gouging.

Already Americans are paying about $250 more per month, per household, for the same goods than they were before the pandemic according to a study by Moody’s Analytics.

If it were true Inflation the corporations behind it would be, at best, breaking even.  Especially, if production and supply chain delays are preventing them from meeting demand.

However, while many local small businesses are failing — some because they didn’t have the resources or capital to adapt to pandemic business needs — the megacorporations are raking in record profits, undertaking massive stock buybacks, and buying up the resources of the failing local businesses.

What the federal reserve is doing in response to it is; therefore, exactly the wrong solution.

Increasing interest rates now will make loans for individuals and new small business startups with new post-pandemic market strategies even harder to obtain.

As a result people will curtail purchases of non-essential goods and services and be even less likely to invest. It will also curtail new home and vehicle purchases.

The real solutions are easy to identify. They would also be easy to implement if we had a majority of members in Congress working for the people instead of lobbyists.

1.  Establish a minimum wage that is no less than a true living wage.

2.  Tie that minimum wage to true inflation so it remains a living wage.

3.  Establish a national single payer health care system that is completely separate from employment. 

4. Close the corporate tax loopholes.

5. Create a tiered wealth tax on those whose wealth exceeds $3M.

The combination of these things would free employers from the need to pay the employer portion of health care plans. It would free people from the leading cause of bankruptcy in our nation, medical expenses. And it would eliminate the vast majority of the government’s need for public assistance programs like SNaP, CHiP, and others that are currently actually used to subsidize the shortfall between employer wages and living wage requirements.

People would be free to pursue the careers that would interest them most and which they would he best at doing, without fear of losing their health care.

This would stimulate the economy more than anything else we could do.

It would also stimulate the creation of more new innovative small business and free market competition than anything else we could do.

Ultimately, the problem with the Federal Reserve’s approach is that it will punish average consumers even more instead of those driving prices up with their boundless greed.

This Is Our Fault.

Posted on by Tim

When I was in Jr. High School in Gaithersburg, MD a classmate walked up behind me and held a knife to my throat during a multi-class science lab experiment.

He said he was going to kill me because of something one of his friends told him I had said about him. I had not said it.

Three teachers pretended not to see this happening because they didn’t want to get involved in an altercation with this known troublemaker.

I managed to survive the encounter.

When we were brought before the school principal, this kid was told to dispose of his illegal switchblade knife and was suspended for two days.

My parents were not informed by the school, they did not find out until I told them.

That’s when we got the police involved for aggravated assault charges.

At different points during their investigation this kid tried to kill his mother, himself, and at least one cop. He would spend several years receiving mandatory inpatient psychiatric care.

Meanwhile, his friends decided to jump me one day after school for “ratting on him.”

I did not win that fight.

I also did not lose it.

As a result, the school administration thought my own use of extreme violence in self defense — thanks to martial arts training — against multiple attackers who were close friends with someone who had already tried to kill me warranted the necessity of me receiving psychiatric counseling in order to be allowed to stay in school.

To this day, 4 decades later, I still cannot sit comfortably with my back to a room and ever vigilant threat assessment is automatic.

Thankfully, this — and extreme discomfort wearing a tie with the knot pressing on my throat — is the extent of my PTSD from these attacks which I endured in the 7th grade.

Today, we train preschool kids to look for their emergency exits on playground areas and to not only know, but practice, what to do when bullets start flying on campus.

There is no point in their public lives from that moment on that they are not dealing with the same situational combat awareness stress that makes it difficult for war-time vets to readjust to normal day-to-day life when returning home.

This is our fault.

Because we refuse to reasonably regulate the right to bear arms.

If that boy had a gun instead of a knife, I would have died in a 7th grade science class.

And now we also add the trauma of complete strangers attempting to harm them through anti-public safety protocols — refusing vaccines, social distancing, and masks — during a pandemic health crisis as they cough and sneeze on grocery produce and in small spaces with recycled air. They assault retail and food service workers and flight attendants for trying to enforce the rules. They stand outside elementary schools and scream profanities and threats at educators and kids who are just trying to survive the day.

It’s a miracle any of these kids remain functional.

Some days, I think it’s a miracle I do, and I had it much easier than these kids today.

Georgia demoted McConnell; what comes next?

Posted on by Tim

Joe Biden will begin his presidency with a legislative majority in both the House and Senate for the first two years of his presidency.

Democrats need to take a lesson from the Republicans who have proven themselves wholly unfit to govern, and use that majority to its full effect to put out a full and complete repudiation of McConnell and Trump’s legislative policy.

First priority, after correcting the COVID Vaccination rollout, should be appointing an Attorney General who will investigate and prosecute the crimes committed by the Trump administration.

Second priority should be addressing their assault on the judicial branch of government through impeachment, where possible, of his appointments and by adding seats to the Supreme Court bench to eliminate the Republican majority and the power of the three Trump appointed Justices.

While all that is happening, rebuilding the CDC, reconnecting with the WHO and UN, treating white supremacy militias as domestic terrorism cells, releasing the caged immigrants and returning their abducted kids back to them, rejoining the Paris Accords, police reform, and ending funding to the border wall should all be taken care of.

Improving the ACA and working toward a single payer health care system needs to begin. 

A national minimum wage that provides a living wage, tied to inflation rates needs to be established.

And, the government needs to make a massive commitment to national infrastructure including job training and placement programs to create and fill the jobs necessary, not just to repair and maintain the current infrastructure, but to also upgrade it for the future.

Biden may not be the progressive I wanted, but he is an improvement over Trump, he will assemble a competent cabinet and empower them to lead without heavy handed micromanagement, and he will sign the bills put in front of him by a Democrat majority congress.

This means he will be as progressive as the Congress we, as voters, give him.

So, while we expect him to get to work on repairing the damage of the McConnell/Trump era, we need to get to work on the 2022 midterm elections to provide him an even stronger congressional support system to write the policies and create the budgets we want signed by the President.

The incredible work to drive record breaking voter registration and turnout to defeat Trump and flip the Senate was just the first step, not the end game. Don’t sacrifice the momentum. This is our opportunity to truly start checking and correcting our #Culturalinertia.

A Field Guide to Changing the #Culturalinertia – Part 1

Posted on by Tim

This is not about the candidates for President this election cycle, but the people voting in the election.

Over the years, this blog, and the accompanying Facebook discussion page, have contained an ongoing theme of identifying and discussing ways to address the aspects of our culture we cling to consciously or subconsciously to hold us back. We have been calling this our Cultural Inertia.

An evaluation of the current election results so far has proven to me that I need to approach discussing our #Culturalinertia a bit differently. Over the next several months, I will be posting an ongoing, and cumulative guide on how we need to start dealing with this. Each post will give us the next step to begin working on to make dramatic overall shifts.

As of the time of this writing, 68.6 million people, and counting, have voted for at least four more years of malevolent incompetence, lies, criminality, fascism, racism, sexism, religious bigotry, and weaponization of faux (and real) Christianity through legislation. That’s over 5.5 million more than voted for Trump in 2016.

We can’t not have a serious talk about this.

We cannot truly have freedom in a multicultural society while any of these people remain in positions of power and influence over the lives of others and adhere to these belief systems. Whether that power and influence comes from the office of the presidency, elected or appointed members of government, judges, doctors, nurses, police, first responders, loan approval officers, Neighborhood Watch groups, Home Owners’ Associations, or anywhere else is irrelevant. What matters is that the power to oppress must be removed from the people that would take advantage of it.

Which brings us to:

Step 1

Stop watching what’s happening and passively saying and thinking that “This isn’t America” or “This isn’t my America.”

Because this is America.

This is the America we have always had.

Trump didn’t change the hearts and minds of half of American voters. He simply gave them permission to be open about it to others.

Some still cannot bring themselves to openly admit their believes, so they lied to the poll takers, and their friends, and their family and said they would vote against him. Then they went in the voting centers and pulled the levers, punched the tickets, placed their mark, and pressed the buttons to select his name on the ballot anyway.

As Jim Wright of Stonekettle Station recently stated:

This is the America people of color have been telling us we were part of since its founding.

What Trump has done for the rest of us is remove the blinders so we can no longer pretend we don’t see it happening all around us.

We now know we have neighbors and family members who are among those who adhere to these abhorrent ideologies.

So, what can you do about it?

Start telling yourself, “This isn’t the America I want in the future,” and start actively working to change it by aggressively standing up and calling it out every single time you see it.

No matter who is doing it.

Be Bold. Be relentless. Be uncompromising.

Do not back down.

Do it online and offline, in public and in private.

Don’t fall into the trap of maintaining negative peace. Don’t avoid the necessary conflict to resolve a problem at the expense of allowing the problem to fester, spread, and worsen.

Do not agree to disagree on matters of human and civil rights.

Do not accept that we are all entitled to our opinions when challenging an opinion that is harmful or detrimental to others.

“Get in good trouble.” ~U.S. Rep. John Lewis

Focus on that step for a while, and then I’ll give you Step 2.

Looking To The Future Through A Hindsight Filter

Posted on by Tim

We are now in our 8th month of dealing with COVID-19 in the US and the 11th month since China first began publicly acknowledging their outbreak and taking large scale preventative measures.

While we don’t, yet, have a cure or reliable vaccine ready for mass distribution, we do have a pretty clear understanding of the science outlining how we can minimize its infectious spread.

This along with the material leaked by various congressional and White House staff members (current and former), the rhetoric and sources being disproved by those leaks, and the physical confessions of criminal intent Woodward suppressed for half a year offer us the wisdom of hindsight.

What is clear to anyone looking at the whole picture is that Republican politicians bet big on the hope that refusing to allow the proper steps to be taken in time would kill off a massive segment of the already elderly, infirm, impoverished, and marginalized minority community members in a natural biological warfare eugenics scheme before it could reach their cloistered and fortified ranks.

They weaponized the willful ignorance of their racist supporters to hasten the process and used #StochasticTerrorism to whip them into a frenzy.

They did this while accelerating their long term efforts to strip access to health care away from the millions they want to eliminate.

They even managed to fabricate an economic crisis that escalated the risk to those lower income workers in societally essential, but underappreciated and underpaid jobs. Making them choose a death by pandemic illness or homelessness due to loss of income.  And they created an imbalanced stimulus package to benefit the employers and companies that were abandoning their workers by the 10s of thousands.

All to eliminate a huge segment of their opposition voting base and protect their dying grasp on the levers of power in our nation.

Horrifically, they were largely successful. A quarter of a million Americans died, millions more fell ill – many permanently, and tens of millions dropped further into poverty and face homelessness in their near future.

But they weren’t successful enough. The people were galvanized instead of broken. We began using social media to organize large scale resistance and defeat the propaganda spin. They prepared en masse to reclaim democracy.

This increased resistance threatening the decades of work the Republicans spent gerrymandering and redlining districts and suppressing votes by every legal and illegal means possible, forced them to take larger, faster, more obvious steps toward establishing a fascist kleptocracy under the influence and control of an adversarial foreign power.

If they had managed to kill more, and crush the resistive spirit of enough of the rest of us, faster, they would have immediately adopted the necessary protocols to stop the spread of the disease to save themselves.

But, we persevered for too long, and the illness reached them before they could secure victory over their own citizenry and constituents. Now it is too late to admit their intent openly without their own violent supporters being forced to realize how they were being used and being disregarded and discarded along with everyone else in the process.

So they have to maintain the lie at any and all costs, even as they begin to suffer the same detrimental health effects and possible deaths within their own gilded halls sequestered from the masses.

And that is where we are now.

The only way we begin to recover is to sweep everyone who has supported, protected, enabled, and emboldened this presidential administration from every level of our federal, state, and local governments.

Then we can work on passing some new laws, abolishing some old ones, and begin correcting the course of our #Culturalinertia. It will be generations before we are done, especially if Trump and McConnell secure a 6-3 imbalance on the Supreme Court.

We will never complete the journey unless we decide right now to take every possible step necessary to begin it.

The first step is making sure your ballot is properly submitted between now and November 3rd.

Pluralistic Ignorance – Overcoming #Culturalinertia Part 7.

Posted on by Tim

A recurring theme on the blog, the corresponding Facebook page and Twitter feed, over the course of the year has been exposing #Culturalinertia and discussing how it affects us.  You can read those previous entries here:  Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6.

Today, as the year nears its end, I’d like to put forth for specific consideration a slightly different type of message.

Instead of looking at specific examples of the phenomenon, let’s look at the major cause of it and the best tool available to us to over come it.

One of the major causes of Cultural Inertia is termed “Pluralistic Ignorance.”

 

Pluralistic ignorance occurs when people erroneously infer that they feel differently from their peers, even though they are behaving similarly.

 

This ignorance can be reinforced or overcome by properly applying the concepts of “Social Proof.”

 

Social proof is based on the idea of normative social influence, which states that people will conform in order to be liked by, [people] similar to [them] or accepted by the influencer (or society).

 

The combination of these concepts indicates that people, when unsure of how to behave, will look to those around them who are similiar to them, or people they respect, and mirror that behavior.

The need to conform to the social proof can even force a behavioral change in someone who knows the actions they are observing to be morally incorrect so as not to be seen as different and made an outcast.

Now, consider a Person of Color being verbally abused by a White racist, if nobody stops to intervene, the social proof for those walking by is that the behavior is acceptable enough that they are not supposed to do anything about it, even if they disagree with it.  Especially if they are physically similar in appearance to the attacker instead of the victim.

If there are mutliple attackers the social norm could drive enough pluralistic ignorance to compel those passing by to join in the attack instead of help the victim, even if they themselves would not normally initiate such an incident on their own.

However, if another similar looking White person stops to intervene, another will follow their lead instead of that of the attacker.   This proof of proper behavior will spur more to choose the role of protectors.

When it comes to this bigotry and racism, we need to change the social proof to indicate without question that such behavior is unacceptable.   We cannot allow the normal accepted response to such behavior to be apathetic indifference or a mob mentality attack.

Until we do so, we condemn ourselves to having to constantly wonder why this is still continuing, why we must keep having the same battles.   And worse, we condemn those victims of it to the choice of either remaining victims or aggressively reversing the situation on their own, and then we’ll complain about their methodology instead of helping them specifically because they violated the social norms of acceptable behavior themselves.

The social proof of pluralistic ignorance becomes even harder, but more vital, to overcome when those in positions of great power and authority are openly displaying and calling for behavior we know to be abhorrent and unacceptable.

When that happens admissions of sexual assault become “locker room talk,” and secretly conspiring with adversarial governments to undermine and overthrow our own becomes “partisan disagreement.”

If you want to break the momentum of this, or any, Cultural Inertia, you must be willing to be an agent of change.  You must step up and help provide the social proof that the behavior you want to see is behavior that others should mirror.

You need to be the shining light allowing those lost in the dark to see.

If you aren’t willing to do that, you have become one of those lost to the pluralistic ignorance, reinforced by the social proof you see around you, that has led you to believe that it is too late to do anything or that anything you do won’t be enough.

As long as enough people believe that, they’ll continue to be right.

It is time to change the norms.

We must, each of us, be willing to be the one that makes the change.