Fairness - The Commentary

If the Trump presidential campaign’s success didn’t convince people, then nothing will. Liberal people want to cling to the belief that just rationally explaining something to a right-winger and reciting policy proposals ought to convince them. We have an undying faith in education as the presentation of information. We really want to believe that if human beings just hear the facts, they’ll come around. We think that it’s some misunderstanding or failure of logic that causes people to “vote against their self-interest.” And we’re aghast that people actually accept that we’re in a “post-fact” world. It’s easy, then, to conclude that people who vote for those who use them are just ignorant of something they should know. So, we expect that enlightening them to their lack is the solution. There’s a moveable middle that will actually listen to such argumentation, a middle, by the way, that seems to be shrinking because of decades of Republican right-wing consultants’ work to fram...

The fact that our president-elect appealed to both class and white racism in this election is beyond any doubt –  it’s all on video . Yet, there are those who want to defend him as if the way he used race is somehow separate from the question of whether or not he really is a racist. They’re really actually defending themselves – they don’t want to admit that they’d vote for an open racist. They don’t want to accept their personal responsibility for the resulting  rise in crimes  against Muslims, people of color, and LGBT people that has followed the permission their chosen candidate has thereby given for people to act as open bigots. They'd prefer to deny that they themselves hold enough racism to give someone who appeals to white racism a pass, as if playing on racism, xenophobia, and homophobia isn’t important to them. They don’t want to think of how their votes evidence their lack of empathy for anyone but themselves. Both class and race figured at a basic leve...

The Big Con on America worked. A perfect storm of  many  failings (pick your favorite whipping boy) allowed the candidate who won over two million more votes to lose to a bigoted, offensive, failed businessman. Because consistency isn’t characteristic of this president-elect, we can’t know what’s in store. Whatever it is, it’ll  fatten his pocketbook  and ego - his pathological narcissism means the next four years look insecure. Because right-wing Republicans control Congress, their radical agenda with that of their Koch-brother-class owners will likely move forward. Without robust Democratic opposition, given the history of mainstream elite Democratic attempts to make nice, we could witness a major reactionary rightward shift. If those who object shun the 2018 election, as is their habit, these four years look like hell for America’s most vulnerable. Oh, the privileged, especially well-off white males, will do just fine. So, it’s time to do everything it t...

Some often well-meaning folks are calling for all sorts of attempts to forgive and make nice. Here are some of my controversial thoughts about forgiveness (I'm not a religious thinker but a historian of religion): (1) Forgiving people who have not asked for your forgiveness is an assertion of a superior moral position over them. It's passive-aggressive. (2) Forgiving people for what they have done that hurts and continues to hurt others is to assert I am god. (3) Forgiveness is not a requirement for personal closure no matter how people say it is. It takes real counseling or the equivalent. It takes feeling one's feelings fully through them (like the 7 stages of grief), though not thinking, acting or deciding on them. I am with those therapists who say that rushing to forgive without doing previous personal work is actually emotionally harmful and an act of denial. (4) Telling people they should forgive someone who hurt them is preaching at them and minimizing t...

There are couples and friends who get along well when they disagree about politics. This political season, however, has even strained some of those relationships. Again and again we hear how arguments over especially the presidential candidates in both the primaries and the general campaigns have actually destroyed friendships and driven couples into silence when it comes to discussing how they’re voting just among themselves. Whether or not a relationship can survive political disagreements depends upon what isn’t actually the political disagreement. It depends upon both why someone holds the political positions they do and what being right about ones politics means to their ego. We’ve heard that if we want to get along we should never discuss politics or religion. Yet it’s these two things we need to discuss with each other - not to convert our friend or partner to our position but to get to know them better. Just as relationships can work when members hold different...

No, all our boys and men don’t talk like this. But, when anyone thinks that  the justification for offensive remarks about women  that amount to sexual harassment and are uttered by a presidential candidate is that they’re merely the “locker room” banter boys indulge in regularly, it’s clear that they believe that it’s an effective excuse expressing their view of American culture. Even Pat Robertson who claims to represent Christianity  dismissed the words as “macho” talk . If this justification is even used for lesser banter, it abandons our boys to the untruth that this is just how they are – “boys will be boys.” It surrenders our girls to having to just cope with a macho gender role that treats them as less than human. If this were how things just are or must be, it would mean giving in to the meme that to get their man, women will have to live down to such objectifying expectations. It would mean that our boys must forgo their humanity to get in line with trea...

What must a woman endure to become president of the United States? The office of president has been defined for generations in terms of white, male gender roles. That definition requires someone to live their gender as if they’re members of America’s repository of manhood expectations, the military. “Commander in Chief,” a title applicable only to the president’s role over the military, not the citizenry in general, is now used far beyond the duties of president as leader of the armed forces. Though he’s our president, not our commander, we succumb to its use in acceptance of the expectation that he be a male warrior, for we define ourselves as a warrior state with teamwork defined as a group of men ready to beat, defeat, or kill other men. What this national model does to our young boys is itself inhuman. When my fifth grade son began his first season of football, he hadn’t yet been fully conditioned in masculinity. He came up to me before his first game and said: “Dad. The ...

Who’s actually setting the agenda for this election cycle so that even those who oppose them spend most of their time responding to their agenda and actions? It’s the authoritative personalities, the religiously addicted, and the politicians who court them. Approximately 20-23% of Americans fit the definition of being authoritarians according to researchers who’ve studied these personalities since World War II.  Authoritarians value obedience to authority as the most effective way to deal with their fears, can’t live with ambiguity, need clear structure and certainty, perceive threats all around them, and believe that domination of others is a way to control reality. In addition, the overwhelming conclusion of 70 years of research is that authoritarians are consistently followers of right-wing, but not left-wing, ideology. Those who score highest on  its authoritarian scale  are by and large right-wing conservatives because authoritarian personalities are those who subm...

The Republican Party is in trouble and LGBT people will continue to be targeted as symbolic sufferers for it.  As argued here in February  , no matter how the country is going in a more accepting direction, the right-wing is going to use discrimination as long as it works to rile up the funders and voters that make up their base. It doesn’t conform to the Republican gay group’s, the Log Cabin Republicans,’ ongoing fantasies about the Party and its presidential nominee treating LGBT people as equal human beings. Instead it provides the Log Cabiners with what they value more - the comfort of continuing their economically privileged status. So these gay loyalists must watch as their beloved Party continually rejects them in front of the world.  Tellingly, in July it approved what even the Log Cabiners call “ the most anti-LGBT platform in the Party’s 162-year history .” In an email from Log Cabin President Gregory T. Angelo, he explained - as if shocked that Republic...

America’s most deadly mass shooting at an Orlando LGBT nightclub on another American day that will live in infamy almost half way through Gay Pride month was a national tragedy at so many levels. And the responsibility for it falls at the feet of every right-wing religious and political leader who has publicly spoken out in their nationally orchestrated campaign to demonize, dehumanize, and threaten LGBT people with punishment in this life and the next.  Words matter, and words spoken publicly echo and reecho in the hearts and minds of those who will act on them.  In this case  they may have produced the kind of self-hate LGBT people internalize so they come to despise who they are and those who remind them of it. And of all people, right-wing preachers and televangelists who spend their time minutely parsing every word in their bibles because what they say it means is so important in confirming their prejudices, know what the impact of their words is. They’re respo...