• Economic Equality (A Goal),  World Affairs

    Why We Allow a Madman in our Midst

    May 8, 2019

    We do not have to participate in this process of government that continues to steal from the poor and give to the rich. This society is capitalism gone mad and the madmen have taken over. It’s all about power and only the wealthy get power.

    Depressed minimum wages are an instrument of the wealthy corporations. Many say that when minimum wages go up, so will cost of living. So far, in all locations that have increased minimum wage, this has not been true. What has happened in wages is not related to the cost of products actually, what is happening is that the minimum wages allow owners to be ridiculously wealthy and shareholders to profit, on the backs of the poor.

    Please note all of the latest crimes against the middle class: a tax package that promised a tax cut, but has Gold Star families scrambling to pay for a dramatic increase in taxes over last year. A system that has suppressed DEA’s ability to go after and prosecute the opioid manufacturers. A system that continues to “outsource” human service issues such as education and the care of immigrant children. The people who are on the front lines are NOT making a profit from these government sanctioned travesties. The largest corporations along with their shareholders, the banks and Wall street are taking home the wealth. Let’s not belabor the point, the question really is:

    Why do we participate? We have lost all respect for our president; he is a liar and a thief. Even his previous supporters must admit that he has helped no one but himself. He is only an instrument of the one-percenters. We have respect for the “position”, for the “president”, not the man. This does not serve us; it gets in our way of effective action.

    We are like the Christians, in that we are now worshipping the empty vessel rather than the true and authentic body of holiness. America is NOT great today.

    The well worn belief that we cannot do anything about weapons in this country is due to our love of the Constitution, yet today’s weapons have no resemblance to those weapons discussed in the Bill of Rights. So, while we love the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, we abhor the murder of innocent young children. We have done very little to prevent the murders of our children.

    Instagram photo from Facebook 5-8-19

    According to the Washington Post:

    Firearms per 100 people: 88.8
     
     Firearm homicides per 100,000: 3.21
     
     Percent of homicides by guns: 67.5
     
     While the U.S. houses less than 5 percent of the world’s population, the country has approximately 35–50 percent of civilian-owned guns worldwide, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. 
     
     The U.S. has the highest firearm related homicide rate among developed nations, continued the Council on Foreign Relations, “though some analysts say these statistics do not necessarily have a cause-and-effect relationship.”

    Why do we continue down this path? I believe there are two reasons for this mistake: one is that we believe in the authority of the position, two is that there is a war in this country for power, we are the unwitting pawns in this war.

    We must stop honoring old institutions and bring order to our country based on what is going on now. Not only must we look at new inequities (our founding fathers were considering the recent independence from England), we must reconsider everything that is outdated. We must review the Constitution and we must add a new Constitution, one that honors all that we are now.

    Bill of Rights states:

    “AMENDMENT VII

    In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.”

    We understand that twenty dollars of two hundred years ago is very different than the twenty dollars of today and so we have updated our standards in relation to Amendment VII.

    We must consider this update for every single Amendment in the Bill of rights. We must. Yesterday is not better, nor more important than today. Quite the contrary, today is more important than any yesterday has ever been.

    Donald Trump and the Republican Congress are liars and thieves, stop respecting position and treat them like the people that they are.

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  • Baby Boomers,  Psychology of Life,  Wise Words,  World Affairs

    Screams from Somewhere Else

    April 12, 2019

    WAR, What is it Good For?  Absolutely Nothing.

    War & Peace Edwin Starr, 1970

    Why aren’t we listening to the leaders that we say we admire?  Why aren’t we taking wise advice into account when we make decisions about this great country?  Martin Luther King and Dwight Eisenhower both counseled against war.  For Martin Luther King, it was a warning against a perceived evil, for Dwight Eisenhower, it was a warning against the military industrial complex that sprung up in response to World War II,

    “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.”

    “we must learn how to compose differences not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.”

    Jan. 17, 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower 

    Eisenhower has a fan in his fellow Kansan (previous) Secretary of Defense Robert Gates — who keeps a portrait of the former general in his office at the Pentagon, Bowman says: Speaking at the Eisenhower Library (2010), Gates talked about America’s insatiable appetite for more and more weapons:

    “Does the number of warships we have, and are building, really put America at risk, when the U.S. battle fleet is larger than the next 13 navies combined — 11 of which are our partners and allies?

    Is it a dire threat that by 2020, the United States will have only 20 times more advanced stealth fighters than China?

    These are the kinds of questions Eisenhower asked as commander-in-chief. They are the kinds of questions I believe he would ask today.

    In the words of Martin Luther King, Jr:

    Many years ago I read an article in Time magazine about human compassion for each other.  What I remember most about the article was the term “screams from somewhere else”.  The enduring message was that humans will often dismiss a scream from a victim, as long as the scream is coming from “somewhere else”. 

    This was an important concept that could be applied to almost any human interaction and certainly could be applied to macro human interactions such as war.  Almost always, those who make decisions about war do not have to personally, go to war.  These decisions makers do not ever send their own children to war (is an eighteen year old an adult or a child?).

    AMERICAN TROOPS KILLED

    Four Americans — including three service members — were killed in a blast in Afghanistan. Three other American service members were injured when the bomb went off. An official reportedly said the attack targeted a convoy of trucks transporting American service members. NY TIMES

    https://mailchi.mp/theneed2know/de7h9ok091?e=5559a60a57

    Decades ago, when war was fought over land (literally) and evil dictators shamelessly murdered their own, we had reason -literally- to fight and fight in hand to hand combat.  People’s lives were on the line and people needed defenders.  These situations are still real today, however, the weapons have changed dramatically.  We don’t need a gun and dead people to shut down evil dictators, it is easily done with economic and electronic sanctions.  Why do we continue putting “boots on the ground”?  Each and every one of those troops is a brother, sister, father, husband, son, daughter, mother, wife, cousin.

    We are still, sixty years later, a society that doesn’t hear “screams from somewhere else”.

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  • It is What it is...,  Management,  Psychology of Life

    Humiliation can Cure you of any Good Feelings that you have for Yourself

    April 3, 2019

    I’ve always considered myself a badass.  That’s because I managed methadone clinics for many years.  Any kind of crazy patient interaction you can imagine, was part of my daily routine.  Once a patient lunged over my desk in an attempt to choke me; once I jumped between a man and his battered and pregnant wife, he was trying to hit her again.  I once had a cop (gun and all) lean over my desk and tell me that if I didn’t give him an address I was going to jail.  I also had to fire people dozens of times over the years, and mostly I was the kind of manager that if I was firing you, you knew you deserved it.  Every once in a while, I would fire someone who jumped up and started yelling or lean in and start threatening.  It’s part and parcel of being a good manager, you don’t leave the difficult patients to staff: you manage them.  Don’t get me wrong.  Working in clinical care is tremendously satisfying.  There is nothing better than helping a sick person get well.

    At some point I got tired of it and I went to work for the “back of the house”.  I got a job at headquarters for a large company with clinical services throughout the state.  I was hired as a manager in accounting and was extremely lucky to have an excellent and professional staff.  What a gift they were.  They knew how to manage every facet of the business and had institutional knowledge about my new job.  I was so confident that I accepted a promotion, even though I would be working for “the witch”.  I had already been working for a witch, so I thought “what the hell”.

    from Unsplash

    I began with some anxiety, but only temporary stuff.  I was unsure about the job and there were some complex problems in place that I needed to resolve.  I actually enjoyed the work and my intellect started humming.  My brain gives me good strokes when I meet and resolve challenges.  Any challenge was welcome to me and I quickly became the go-to for staff.  Part of that was my helpful attitude, but the other part of it was that my boss dumped everything on me.  Supervisees were transferred to my supervision and large projects became my projects.

    When given a project, I naturally assumed that decisions about the project were my own.  After all my position as a senior manager made me a decision-maker.  I soon found that “the witch” considered me a typist and not much more.  After I made one such project decision, she decided I needed more supervision and began requiring me to meet with her daily.  She once told an entire department that they could not assist me on a project.   A few of them confided in me that they were scared for their jobs and didn’t even want anyone to know that we were talking.  (I was just wondering why everyone was acting so weird?)

    I was literally becoming sick because of the way that she treated me.  I started calling in sick too.  I had a perpetual case of nausea and soon found out that I suffered from ulcers.  I had ulcers because I was taking ibuprofen on the daily to help with the pain.  And still…

    Every morning I had to meet with this woman.  She never allowed me to meet with my staff alone.  She invited herself to every meeting.  Often, she would tell me that I was wrong.  She always sought an audience when telling me I was wrong; she said it in front of my staff and once she said it in front of the entire administrative department of the organization.  Other staff members grimaced and shook their head.  They said to me “glad it’s not me”.

    After a couple of years, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia.  No wonder I was taking ibuprofen so much, my central nervous system was back-firing.  Every bit of pain I felt was magnified.  The nausea would not go away.

    And still…I had to meet with this woman every morning.  She told her supervisor that my achievements were her own, and reported every error I made as my own.  I was presented as a problem child.  Her supervisor never figured out how incongruent her words and actions were.  I did the work, I reported in on the work and yet I was “the problem child”.  I was evaluated highly and given a raise, but those facts were not revealed to anyone else.  My boss did not want anyone to know the good work that I did.

    Kevin Grieve, Unsplash

    This woman was not adept at facing/confronting me (or anyone) on her own and so would always use a third party to communicate with me.  One such meeting occurred with her supervisor, who told me “I don’t care if she knows what she is doing (referring to designing a process), do whatever she tells you to do.”  This meeting was the beginning of the end.  I realized that my boss was very skilled politically and that no amount of me doing the job well would be good for me or give me a positive outcome.  There would always be a counter-attack to my stellar performance.  I was being humiliated often and it had affected my body so much that I was now ill.  Every day she found a way to frustrate and insult me.  Sometimes it was a sneak attack via a meeting, but often it was just a condescending email.

    I know I am still a badass; that doesn’t mean that I have to take unlimited abuse.  There was no way that I could figure out how to make this woman stop insulting me in public.  She was so calm about it.  Often, only subordinates recognized her bad behavior.  Senior management staff never even directly saw her bad behavior.  That’s how I knew what a pervasively cruel campaign she was running.  If it was just ignorant bad behavior, she would engage in it all of the time, however, no senior manager ever saw her bad behavior.  She turned it on and off like a faucet.  I do blame senior management.  It is my belief that a manager must be held accountable for their own staff.  When star performers leave an organization, it’s time for senior managers to investigate behaviors.  I have always held myself accountable for my staff and I expect all managers to do the same.  Often, senior managers hold themselves “above all that” and that is a shame.  They lose the opportunity for genuinely effective staff management.

    I never saw myself as a bad manager, but what did happen to me is that I began seeing myself as someone who could not take it.  As much as I did not want to admit it, as much as I hated it, I had to realize that I needed to get out of there.  My sanity and my physical body were giving way to the poison of her control of me.  This damaged me in ways that I could not even identify.

    Who knew that humiliation and degradation would be the key to hurting me and eventually getting rid of me?  Who knew?  (Not me.)

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  • Baby Boomers,  Personal Growth,  Psychology of Life

    For Women over 40

    March 10, 2019

    For Women over 40 and for all the Women who will be over 40 Someday

    It is totally okay.  You are beautiful.  Your body is perfect.  You don’t have to be a size 2 to think your body is attractive.  You can be a size 22, and guess what?  You are still beautiful.  You can’t change that fact. 

    It is okay if your face gets wrinkled.  It is okay to have sagging jowls.  The beauty industrial complex wants you to believe that you must stay slim and have tight skin in order to be beautiful.  And let’s face it, in our society, we equate beauty with worth.

    Stop doing that.

    Your worth is not in your face or your body.  Your worth is you.  You are worthy, you are valuable, you are you, as you are. 

    Beauty has a long and rich history.  Humans love beauty.  We make beauty and even decide what is beautiful.  It is our society’s decision that thin is beautiful, just as it is our society’s decision that diamonds are valuable.  Neither is inherently true, except that our thinking makes it so. 

    The key word is decision.  Humans make these decisions.  We make these decisions as a group, or as an individual.  We hope that the group agrees with us, but we do not set our sight on agreement.  The thing is, when we love someone, they are beautiful.

    When you look at an old woman’s face, you may think that it is less attractive.  Often men age better… This is a trick of social thinking.  We have all, simply been taught that men’s aging is positive, and woman’s aging is negative.  This affects how we see women and men.  We project this societal judgment onto how we view women and men.  It’s no wonder, as men do dominate our culture.

    If you wonder if men still dominate our culture, look at some of these societal features: men are top chefs (how did that happen? Women have been cooking since the beginning of time).  Men are leading fashion designers (did John Galliano really put women’s heads in colored saran wrap for a fashion show?).  Men outnumber women as principals of schools and yet, women dominate as teachers…

    The most effective and the best thing that we can do individually is to define ourselves as valuable and beautiful.  We stand as our own judgment and we choose to judge ourselves positively and powerfully, lending power to each other for each and every day.

    The flower “yells” its beauty at us.

    Equity, equality, it all matters.  If you want to know how to make your own individual difference, tell yourself and your world how beautiful you are.  Decide your own rules for beauty.  Always, always lend that beauty to others.

    Read More
  • Baby Boomers,  Love and Relationships,  Philosophy,  Psychology of Life,  Speaking as a Parent

    Don’t be Smug, Everything doesn’t Happen for a Reason

    March 7, 2019

    Whenever I hear this trite cliché, “Everything happens for a reason.” I want to smack a person.

    This statement is only made by people who have never had anything truly horrible happen to them, or to people who believe (erroneously) that the bad things that happened in the past brought them to the good place they are in the present.

    I am grieving a friend and companion mother who has passed away.  I have known Dolly for 17 years.  In the beginning we were close and have since drifted.  She is my granddaughter’s other grandmother so her presence has always been felt in my life.  When our granddaughter was born, we both stayed the entire night at the hospital.  We were that excited and that happy to welcome Cadence into the world.  Dolly and I are two very different women who found common ground in our love for our children and granddaughter.

    Photo by Jenna Norman, Unsplash

    When we met, I was 43 and Dolly was 42.  Dolly and I come from the same generational space, we were into the hippie culture of love and marijuana.  Dolly had three children at a very early age, and I had two.  We had both been raised in poverty and suffered from the kind of neglect that comes with being from a poor family.  It wasn’t the best beginning for either of us.  We both found good men to love, men who supported us both emotionally and financially.

    In the last 17 years, all three of her children were married and each had a child.  Since that time that I met her, her first son was murdered in a drug deal gone bad.  He and his wife were estranged and Dolly lost sight of that grandchild.  Dolly’s second son was killed by a drunk driver.  Because his child’s mother was not capable of taking care of their child, Dolly took that child / her grandson into her home to raise.

    Our kids divorced and my son got custody of our granddaughter.  For a long time, he was generous with her time and visitation with Dolly. 

    Dolly was then widowed, but not before developing cancer for the first time.  Everyone was so happy with her first remission!  After Dolly was widowed, her home became chaotic and the drug culture of her youth returned.  Dolly never used, but with her daughter and daughter in law coming and going, it became hard to keep track of the house.

    There came a time when my granddaughter’s visitation to Dolly’s home had to stop.  It was just too risky for her to be in that environment.

    Dolly contracted cancer for a second time, but again was able to beat it.  She kept her faith and her Christianity became her most important support.  Dolly’s grandson was 15 years old when his girlfriend became pregnant.  Dolly made the decision to bring that child into her home also.

    James Newcombe, Unsplash

    It was just too much, it was all just too much.  Remission was no longer; and after collapsing because of her third round with cancer, Dolly passed, surely exhausted and surely having experienced more grief than is fair for one body to experience in a life time.  So “what happened for a reason” in Dolly’s life?

    Oh, there is more to this story, much more…

    Lest you think that Dolly is an anomaly, what of the thousands of soldiers with this fate: 

    Soldier comes home from war missing his left leg.  He suffers from PTSD and depression.  His family can’t seem to reach him through the malaise of his depressed feelings.  The doctors put him on medication, he doesn’t take it.  Six months later he commits suicide.

    Unsplash

    Will you tell his grieving mother, father and family “everything happens for a reason”?

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  • Baby Boomers,  Economic Equality (A Goal),  Psychology of Life,  Wise Words,  World Affairs

    Why is Everyone So Mad?

    March 4, 2019

    Simple Facebook posts are turning into days long disagreements that often distill into name calling and facetious insults.

    Photo by Dollar Gill on Unsplash

    We seem so mad, and yes, there is good reason to be.  There is so much about life that is truly difficult.  There is so much about the world that is unfair, ugly and unjust.  It is daunting for anyone who has a healthy support system.  For those who do not have those supportive relationships, it can be so much more than daunting, all the way to disabling.

    Because American culture is rooted in the love of capitalism, so many myths have grown up around capitalism.  There is the myth that if you keep on trying by working, you will one day be successful and by successful, we mean financially successful.  The other myth is around the rugged individual who needs nothing and no one, but who is so cool (think Clint Eastwood and John Wayne) all success comes to him.  These myths make us spurn the disabled and look down upon those who have not made financial success.

    Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash
    “THE RUGGED INDIVIDUAL”

    We have wholeheartedly been betrayed by our own system of love of money.  First, those who will benefit from legislation are, in fact, writing and passing legislation.  This creates an unfair playing field for all Americans.  Tax deductions go to the highest corporate bidder, the corporation that lobbies the most and bribes the most, wins the legislative game.  How did Americans allow this to happen?  How did we allow those we trust to become those that we must not trust?

    I know how I, personally, let it happen.  I trusted.  I trusted those that I elected to take care of all Americans equally and justly.  It wasn’t until I read John F. Kennedy’s book, Profiles in Courage, that I saw that legislators were NOT to be trusted.  In fact, shockingly, Kennedy’s brief autobiographies were about exceptional people, not the average legislator.

    It wasn’t enough to convince me that community leaders might not be genuinely interested in leadership.  As a matter of fact, many community leaders have only been interested in making themselves wealthy.  No one challenged it because for a very long time (and certainly throughout the 80s and 90s) everyone thought that if you made money that it was a good enough reference for your character.  The whole country loved money and if you had it, no matter how you made it, you were admired.  This was part of the cult of success.

    For decades we Americans have been dimly aware that something is wrong with the center of our government.  An entire group of professionals (called lobbyist) grew out of our lack of oversight.  We overlooked training physicians in ethics, and it appears that we have overlooked the ethical life of our lawmakers.  We have made no demands on legislators and we Americans have not commented on the wealth and benefits that they heap upon themselves (lifelong paychecks [no matter what], excellent healthcare, etc., etc.).

    Behind this behavior by our lawmakers are the wealthy constituents who have bought and paid for a wide array of immoral and unethical laws.  We have drug companies creating the opioid crisis, we have other drug companies charging a 1000% mark up on life saving drugs.  We have health insurance companies giving people a death sentence by denying or postponing coverage for their insured.  We also have food companies putting such strong insecticides on their crops that that same insecticide is showing up in children’s cereal.

    It is no wonder that the millennials do not feel that their parents have done right by them.  The vast majority of Americans have been legislated from the middle class into the lower classes and won’t admit it.  It takes the fresh eyes of the millennials to see what we have done to the future.  They see the compromised middle class because they live it.

    Photo by Stephen Radford, Unsplash
    “THE HOUSE HAS ALREADY BURNED DOWN”

    Somehow the powers that be have almost convinced us that this is a race war, or a class war or any other type of war that you can dream of.  That is why we are so angry.  Because we know what we have lost, we know that we are in a hole that it will take decades to get out of.  The current American political system demonstrates to us how far down the rabbit hole that we have fallen.

    What we must do, so as not to destroy ourselves while we recover, is to see the truth of what has happened here in America.  Everything that can be done to take away from the middle and lower classes has been done.  We are not in a war with each other, we simply want what is ours back.  We want to live in a fair and just America, where we can trust our legislators to be true to those who elected them rather than to big money.

    We are not even in a war with corporate America, we just want what is ours back.  We don’t want to give our tax breaks to the mega faceless corporation that paid our senators a million dollars each.   We want that tax break for ourselves!  We don’t want healthcare reserved only for the privileged few, we want healthcare for all.  If pharma pulls out the boogie man of research and innovation, just know that American tax dollars pay for most of all research and innovation and Americans have never benefited from it (except to pay for overpriced medications).  We just want our tax dollars back.  We the American taxpayers want to benefit from the research and innovation that our tax dollars pay for, that’s all.  We want what is ours to be ours.

    A Storm is Coming

    So, let’s remember, we don’t need to be angry, there is no race war, there is no class war.  We just want our country back from the greed of the few.  We want our country returned to the benefit of us all.  That’s what America stands for: the benefit of us all, each and every one.

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  • It is What it is...,  Love and Relationships,  Speaking as a Parent

    It’s My Ten Year Anniversary

    March 3, 2019

    It is supposed to be our 10 year history.  David and I started out together.  I was writing my first blog when he was learning how to build websites.  Because David is the father of my grandson; I have always had this very special love for him.  For the blog, we worked our way through several years of refining how to post pictures, how to save pictures and how to back up the articles I wrote.  He installed a calendar so that I could track all of my grandchildren.  Of course, David’s work was much more difficult than mine.  He had to teach himself how to code in today’s ever-changing world.

    Then last year, we had a misunderstanding.  I said things, he said things.  I did not realize how much David’s thinking had changed.  We can’t agree on what is more important.  That misunderstanding has cut us apart. 

    What Just Happened

    We are no longer doing this blog together, and I miss him.  We are still a family: he is my grandson’s father.  I did other things, to try to find peace.

    I sent him cards and love notes, but nothing has helped.  Even my daughter (who is NOT married to him) sides with him.  She always sides against me, doesn’t she?

    Families are so complicated.  We love, we leave, we cry and we argue.  We even reconcile, sometimes…

    Now here I am, having my 10 year anniversary by myself.  I would really rather that he would be here with me, celebrating ten years.  I love you David and nothing will ever change that.

    Read More
  • Psychology of Life,  World Affairs

    How do we start thinking in a way that prizes human life above all else?

    February 25, 2019


    Photo by Shahzayb Qureshi on Unsplash

    It seems that all over the world there is a problem with this thinking.  First, we indulge ourselves in judgments.  Judgments are useful for making oneself feel better than, but they are not useful for valuing the sanctity of human lives. Judging others fools us into thinking that that there is a “better” and a “worse” human. For those in America (and perhaps in other places) this becomes a valuation.

    How do we bring recognition to how the world thinks about human life? How do we get world leaders to recognize that war that kills human life is a crime? How do we change this thinking so that all peoples, particularly those in power, understand the sanctity of human life? Human life must be held over all other values, whether it be gold or the valuation of the stock market. Nothing on this Earth equates to the value of the human life.

    “In religion and ethics, the inviolability or sanctity of life is a principle of implied protection regarding aspects of sentient life that are said to be holy, sacred, or otherwise of such value that they are not to be violated.  Wikipedia”

    Someone told me once that “Ethics is not the powerful committee, if you want corporate power, get on the process committee.”

    There it is again, ethics, not so popular and not so powerful in today’s world.  If we look at religion, we really lose authority, because of the state of religion today.  The Catholic church must review the thousands of claims of sexual abuse and must admit to the thousands of children born from these crimes. So, it is for good reason that the Catholic church has lost moral authority in the world.

    We live in a world where millions are thought to be “underclasses”.  In America, we must fight and fight hard for the rights of women and people of color.  (Not to mention the hundreds of others who are not quite upper class.)


    Photo by Gift Habeshaw on Unsplash

    How do we help humans to prize human life above all else?  How do we get from where we are to that place where each and all human life is sacred?

    1. Get all known leaders to buy into a framework of prioritizing human life as first above everything.
    2. Make war an impossible path for any nation to take.
    3. Prioritize the punishment of those who commit war crimes.
    4. Create a national conversation around the sanctity of human life.
    5. Acknowledge our human tendency to judge, but don’t allow judgment to be used to harm others.

    We cannot continue the world ways as they are now.  We cannot continue to judge each other as “less-than” or “more-than”.  We make these judgments only as a means of increasing our own egos.  It then leads to a whole host of crimes perpetrated against the “less-thans”.

    How can we stop using our judgments about others as justification for bad treatment of those others?  How do we convince people to leave judgments out of decisions about humans?

    Let’s take our judgments out of the way of our feelings for others.  Let’s not take our judgments seriously as a means of evaluating the value of humans.  Judgments serve no purpose other than to our own minds.

    How do we move forward with an undeniable respect for the sanctity of human life? We all, each and every one of us, must take a stand. We must stand for human life, our own, others and every one on this Earth.

    Read More
  • Economic Equality (A Goal),  Womens Issues,  World Affairs

    American Wealth Dedicated to War

    February 18, 2019

    So much of what our country does has a focus on war.  War is a way of thinking, being, believing and speaking.  Generals have unthinkable power and control over the resources of our nation.  We don’t talk about it, our national conversation never addresses the largest of elephants-in-the room and that is the war machine that lives in the world’s wealthiest nation, America.

    It is the easiest trap to fall into and that is: groupthink.  To be part of the group, you must think the same and agree with the same beliefs.  For the war machine those beliefs include a “never enough” strategy.  A willingness to commit deep crimes to convince America that there is this need for evermore money to commit to the deep hole that is the war machine.

    There is no threat to the United States that could not be eradicated by the United States, in less than two minutes.  And yet, we continue to send good men and women to their deaths in all corners of the world.  Make no mistake about it, war is profitable, and nothing stops change faster than the mighty dollar in the U.S.

    We have enough nuclear weapons to annihilate the possibility of living on planet earth.  No country comes even, a little bit close, to our power in weaponry and killing machines.

    We don’t need to continue to live the dream of World War II.  We don’t need human beings to be cannon fodder anymore.  We are smarter and we are stronger than that.

    The problem is, the Pentagon.  The powerful will not relinquish an inch of power.  Neither will the wealthy war contractors, those who manufacture tanks and rifles and rations, they will not give up the gravy train. Without the sale of war as a good cause to the American people, war would not be possible.  Currently we idolize warriors and this is a very good thing.  We are taking care of soldiers who have been damaged by the war machine.  It would be more than painful to tell these brave humans that the sacrifice was to profit rather than to country.  That doesn’t mean that we should continue to validate a need for war.  We do not need a war, we do not have a need for our sons and daughters to die.

    Truly, can anyone name a reason why we have soldiers in the middle east?  Are we saving American lives?  Are we saving any lives?  The product of war is death, there is no way around that fact.  There is nothing that changes or rearranges that fact.  War equates to death of the warriors and the innocent alike.

    Think of those that manage the huge war machine in the U.S.  It is the job of these to find threats to the United States.  It is the job to construct an argument that justifies the expense of dollars and lives.  It is the job of these to keep this war machine rolling forward and to keep increasing the expense, both in dollars and in lives.

    What if we said no?  No more war?  What if the American people said, we do not want to continue our nation in this manner.  What if we said not more war machine?  We would require a scientific, meaning, a data- driven formulation of meaningful information.  We would allow American mothers to have a vote, we would allow those who pay the price of war, not those who gain from war… to decide when and how to engage.  We could engage without risk to humans and engage without risk to civilians.

    What if we took the possibility of profit out of war?  What if contractors had to complete the complex accounting that Medicaid contractors must complete?  With the idea that auditors could come at any time and disallow expenses and therefor reduce the price of the product?  What if you went to jail for profiting from war?  What if you went to jail for being a war monger?

    Let’s not associate war with the warrior.  Let’s get out of group think and address war for what it really is: a living breathing threat to humanity and perverted profiteering for the few.

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  • Womens Issues,  World Affairs

    Who are these People?

    February 9, 2019


    Photo by Trym Nilsen on Unsplash

    Who are These People? And What are they Thinking?

    They take advantage of anyone and everyone to serve their own needs.  They do damage to people in order to be sexually satisfied.  In their own minds they are doing something that is quite right.  How?  How do they justify raping people, taking advantage of vulnerabilities in others, in order to have their own pleasure?  What do these people say to themselves?

    Do these people say to themselves “I am better than her, I have so much more money and she is just a peasant, why shouldn’t I take her body for myself?” or “I am better than him, he is a busboy, I am a wealthy actor, why shouldn’t I satisfy my own needs with his body?”

    And for the rapists who buy children, what do they say to themselves?  “I have bought and paid for this body, it is only an object for my pleasure.” Or, “I had sex when I was ten years old, there is no reason why I can’t have sex with this ten year old girl.”

    Or perhaps there is no awareness, nor conversation, maybe it is just animalistic instinct with no intellect to intervene.  Do people turn off their consciousness in order to perform these heinous acts on others?

    Each of the accused profess innocence loudly and voraciously.  The victim can have a video recording of the rape and still the perpetrator claims innocence.  How is this the norm for humans?  Depraved sexuality without consequence?

    Why aren’t good people more capable of stopping these activities?  Recent investigation into the Catholic church revealed staggering numbers of priests who have been accused by the faithful.  How, why and who?

    Every 98 seconds an American is sexually assaulted.

    • On average, there are 321,500 victims (age 12 or older) of rape and sexual assault each year in the United States.1
    • Ages 12-34 are the highest risk years for rape and sexual assault.3

    Studies by David Finkelhor, Director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center, show that:

    • 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 20 boys is a victim of child sexual abuse;
    1. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, National Crime Victimization Survey, 2012-2016 (2017).
    2. i. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Sex Offenses and Offenders (1997); ii. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Crimes Against the Elderly, 2003-2013 (2014).
    3. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Sex Offenses and Offenders (1997).

    Who is perpetrating these crimes?  How do they believe that it is okay to sexually assault others?  Do I know any of these perpetrators?  Do they work at the 7-11, or perhaps at the dry-cleaners?  Was my doctor a rapist?  Have I met these perpetrators?  The chances are that yes, I have met many of these perpetrators.  Most certainly, I have met the victims…

    Who are these people?  Who are the people who believe that it is ok to have sex with an unwilling participant, or worse yet, someone incapable of giving consent?  Who do you have to be, to purchase child pornography?   Who do you have to be, to have sex with a woman who is unconscious?  Who do you have to be, to take advantage of a drunk bus boy?

    What will it take to stop these criminals from acting?   As a society, what do we need to do to stop sexual assaults from occurring every 98 seconds?

    We must keep talking about sexual assault, when someone reports, listen and believe.  Support assault survivors with kindness and appropriate resources.  When survivors must testify, make it safe for the survivor.

    We must punish sexual assaulters to the fullest extent of the law.

    What we must do, if we really want to address this issue is to work hard for economic equality.  People who can afford attorneys, people who can afford life, are less likely to suffer abuse, because no one will abuse someone who can strike back.  No one will abuse someone equal to them.  Currently, those who are abused are the vulnerable and the weak.  Those who cannot strike back, those who cannot speak for themselves, they are the sexually abused.

    It is because of this, that we must make victims equal in power to their perpetrators.  We must give victims, equal say and the power to fight back.

    We must also take away raw authority.  There is no reason to teach children that they must obey authority.  By teaching children in this way, we open them to the worst of vulnerabilities and that is to teach them to agree with any who may have authority.  We don’t want a society based on these concepts.  We want a society where reasoned discussion can take place and children are taught to think for themselves.  We don’t want our children following the instructions of the Catholic priest, the teacher, the police man, unless those instructions make sense.  We must ensure that our children respect their own bodies and respect their own thinking.

    And what about the adult vulnerable, those who have less strength, or less money and power?  How do we rid ourselves of those who would assault them?  How do we get men to stop drugging and raping women?  What are these men saying to themselves?  “She deserves this, for not talking to me.”  What are these men saying to each other after they have assaulted a woman?  “Way to go, I can rape girls too.”

    I am encouraged that brave people are finally talking about the assaults and taking perpetrators to court for their actions.  I am encouraged that we are finally talking about sexual assault in the open.  I am relieved that we have such a powerful tool as DNA to stop attackers from repeating rapes over and over again.  DNA gives us the power to stop the serial rapist from being successful.

    Lastly and finally, we must change the conversation.  Whatever it is that the rapist or the pedophile is telling him or herself has to be changed.  We must have a human conversation that says it is never okay to sexually assault another human being.  And for those that are incapable of joining the conversation, those who cannot intellectually reason, we must enforce the means necessary to protect the innocent from them.  We must ensure that people are not damaged by the deranged or mentally ill. 

    Our human conversation must be clear and must be universal and it must state unequivocally that all humans have the right to protect their own body.  This right is unquestionable, whether a person has the strength, the power or the money, does not matter, each person has the right to their own body and the safety of same.

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