Oops, I Did It Again

For the last four years or so, I've done my best to avoid getting into social media spats over politics. That was made easy since the last presidential election, as I either de-friended or have been de-friended by most of the social media "friends" with whom I've had shall we say, heated political disagreements. 

Like banging my head against the wall, it felt so good when it stopped.

I didn't jettison all of my friends with alternative visions of the universe. 

Yet for my part, since the 2020 election, I've kept political commentary to the minimum on my own posts (saving it for this blog), and have bent over backwards to avoid commenting on others' posts when they rubbed me the wrong way. 

But one post the other day was particularly aggravating, and I simply could not help myself. The post was, as are so many of them are, not original, but the repost of a meme. The meme said: "Run on your record. Not your race. Not your gender." signed: "America."

As you can see it was not explicitly addressed to any particular candidate, but you can probably guess who the intended target was. Taking advantage of the ambiguity, this was my response:  

Oh I don't know, if you have a record that includes dozens of criminal indictments, thirty some felony convictions, two impeachments, trying to overthrow the United States government because of not liking the outcome of an election, having Orban, Kim and Putin as BFFs AND total incompetence in handling the one real challenge (COVID) of his administration, what else does he have to run on besides being an old white guy?

I had a flash of Deja vu when I read the comments from total strangers to my response which were posted within minutes of my comment. I learned that I'm drinking the Kool Aid, that I'm delusional, that I don't have an open mind and that I need to stop paying attention to the "mainstream media."  

What they don't know about me (as I said they're perfect strangers so how could they?), is that I stopped drinking Kool-Aid when I was about seven, never really liked the stuff. For much of my adult life and then some I've prided myself on having an open mind, seeking out sources of information from all sides of the political spectrum, especially those with whom I disagreed. After all what can you learn if you just read things that confirm your own biases? Yes, I do get information from the dreaded "mainstream media" as well as from other sources, including Fox "News".

Until eight years ago, I considered myself to be politically moderate, even right-of-center on certain issues.

What they also don't know about me is that no, my opinion of Donald Trump has not been shaped by the MSM or any other political commentary, but rather by observing and listening to the man himself.  I've been following Trump's career for the past oh, forty years or so and can honestly say that for all that time, I never found him to be anything more than an attention grabbing, self-serving crook, a conman and a grifter. And that was back when he called himself a "liberal, very pro-choice Democrat." Needless to say, my opinion of the exPOTUS has not improved in the last eight years. 

As for the delusional part, well in some circumstances, I have to plead guilty as charged. But judging by the words of my comment published in its entirety above, one would be hard pressed to deny anything I wrote; yes friends, Donald Trump is responsible for all that, and so much more.

Fittingly, none of the responses to my comment tried to deny any of what I said. Instead, they dwelled upon what a great president their man was, how the country was so much better off under Trump and what a disaster it has become under Biden. According to them, Trump may have done some bad things, but nothing that the Democrats haven't done.

Well, I beg to differ. 

If you've been reading this blog for the past eight or so years, you've heard it all before so I'm not going to rehash it here. In a remarkable bit of self-restraint, I let it go with my original comment, choosing not to get into arguments over politics with complete strangers. 

I did type out a response to my friend, an actual friend by the way, who made the original post. Basically, she pointed out the predictable: prices are too high, too many immigrants, two wars waging in Europe and the Middle East, and more. 

How much those things are attributable to the current administration is very debatable, which is what I wrote. But I never posted it, seeing no point in arguing with my friend either, since she's as set in her opinions on the subject as I am in mine. 

However debatable though, hers are valid concerns and if the Democrats are going to have any chance of winning in November, they're going to have to address them honestly. 

As far as I'm concerned, they can dump on Trump all they want but they're also going to have to give up demonizing Trump supporters as Hillary Clinton did with her infamous "basket of deplorables" comment eight years ago. That alone I believe, is what doomed her campaign more than anything else. 

Interestingly enough, I listened to an interview with Tim Walz a couple weeks ago. He spoke passionately about all the folks we still see wearing the red baseball caps at Trump rallies and how they're not all that different from folks like us who turn our noses up at them. The Democrats aren't going to reach all of them, probably not even most of them, but the truth is, deep down, most of these folks have by and large the same needs, the same hopes and dreams for themselves and their families as the vast majority of Americans. (Yes there are the dyed-in-the-wool racists too who I'd say comprise a small minority of the MAGA crowd.)  

I was so impressed by Walz and especially his comments about unifying the country, that I became convinced Kamela Harris should choose him as her running mate. Two days later, she did.

Trump was clearly aggravated when President Biden announced that he would not seek reelection and would throw all his support to his vice president. So too were Trump supporters who like their man, were beginning to see a slam dunk victory in November, especially after (for Biden) the disastrous debate performance, the assassination attempt against Trump, and the rousing, bullshit laden RNC in Milwaukee. 

In stark contrast, those of us who wouldn't vote for Trump if our lives depended upon it, were in a state of depression at the thought of the man who waged an insurrection against the United States government on January 6, 2021, returning to office. So, the timing for Biden's announcement, coming just days after the MAGA Convention, could not have been better for the Democrats and anybody who thinks a redo of the Trump presidency is the last thing this country needs.

I'm not often right but I made the right call two posts ago when I said that there were only two legitimate options for the Democrats. Either Joe Biden would have to voluntarily withdraw from the race and get behind Kamala Harris (and no one else), or stay in the race and deal with the ever-growing scrutiny of his mental and physical condition. In either case, the Democrats, if they wanted any chance of beating Trump, would have to be all-in in supporting their candidate, whomever that may be.  

Well, much to Donald Trump's dismay, they chose option A, and it seems to be working out pretty well for them, up until now at least. 

The double whammy was Harris's pick of Walz, who couldn't be farther from the MAGA concept of the wealthy, elitist, Ivy League educated coastal Democrat who has zero connection to or appreciation of Average Americans and their values. 

For the record, both Trump (Penn) and his running mate J.D.Vance (Yale) are in fact, Ivy Leaguers while Harris and Walz both are not. 

That little tidbit in a normal world would be quite irrelevant, as all four have advanced degrees from respected universities. But if the Trumplicans are going to paint a picture of themselves as being more in touch with the lives of average Americans, as you can see, that simply isn't so. 

Harris and Walz would do well to remind folks of that. But it's also important that both candidates don't spend all their time reminding us that they're not Trump and Vance, we already know that. As I said, they're going to need to get substantive and address those bread and butter issues mentioned by my friend in her response to my comment on her post.

Because at some point, as everyone keeps reminding us, the honeymoon will eventually be over with the Harris/Walz ticket and the voters who will determine the outcome of this election, will be a relatively small number of people in a handful of states who will show up to vote, based upon whether or not they feel Harris and Walz are worth the effort. The Democratic candidates need to do everything in their power to reach out to these folks, even some of the ones in the red caps. 

Trump of course will always be Trump, a man who cannot resist the impulse to be a jackass and a bully, no matter the cost to himself. While his base has shown they will support him no matter what he does, his Achilles heel is that he will never lift a finger to reach out to anybody who doesn't already adore him. His choice of running mate proves that in spades. That weakness provides the Democrats with a tremendous opening, if only they'll take the opportunity to run with it.

Well, so far so good.

So, what was it about my friend's post that irked me so? 

Well, you may recall four or five of my posts which address the issue of "colorblindness" that seems to be an obsession with the MAGA right. They just love to brag about how they don't notice race and how inspired they are by the line of the "I Have a Dream" speech where Martin Luther King dreams of a day when: "his children would be judged by their character rather than the color of their skin." When you're reading a rant about race by a MAGA writer, you can set your watch by when that line will come up.  

And how did these same folks react when it was announced that Kamala Harris, a woman of Black/Asian ancestry would be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States? 

They called her a "DEI" hire, implying that she was picked not because of her qualifications but because of her race and her gender. Never mind that she served as Vice President of the United States for four years, a senator from the largest state in the country before that, and the top law enforcement official of that state before that. Before that she was a prosecutor.

And remind me, what exactly were Donald Trump's qualifications before he was elected president in 2016? Oh yeah, he was a talk show host and a businessman who went bankrupt a half-dozen times.

So, if anyone is running on race and gender in this election, it is the Trumplicans. 

That point was made crystal clear during last week's Democratic National Convention here in Chicago, where the milestone of Harris possibly becoming the first woman president of the United States was not lost on many of the speakers, but practically ignored by the candidate herself. 

Meanwhile the exPOTUS is working overtime to portray Kamala Harris with references filled with piggish male chauvinist stereotypes of women, portraying her as weak, frivolous and stupid, someone who will not garner the respect, nor inspire fear in the minds of our adversaries. 

Well, anyone who has ever seen her in action, such as when she grilled the likes of former U.S. Attorney General William Barr, and Supreme Court candidate Brett Kavanaugh. understands that Harris, a former prosecutor, senator and vice president, is as serious, intelligent and tough as they come. 

On the other hand, her current opponent, the exPOTUS, extremely vulnerable to attention and flattery, has proven himself to be easily manipulated by our adversaries. His shameful performance in Helsinki with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, is the most but certainly not the unique example of this. 

Of course none of this should come as a surprise, Donald Trump is a master of projection, casting his own faults onto his opponents, only more so with those he truly fears. 

From his unhinged rants on Kamala Harris, we can gather a few things. He's really scared of her and he's the unserious, weak and stupid one.

And how.

How Low Can We Go?

My heart sank the other day after I saw a meme re-posted on social media by a friend, someone whom I like and admire, well at least thought I did.

Like much of the rhetoric coming from the far right today, the meme is a troll to promote the culture wars, all the fashion it seems, by pissing off a large portion of the populace or as they like to say: "sticking it to the Libs". Well it certainly worked on this lib, by their definition of a lib anyway (that is to say anyone to the left of Attila the Hun); as it made my hair stand on end.

This particular troll employs a logical fallacy by expressing an opinion that while not altogether incorrect, (I'll get to that in a minute), was nonetheless outrageous because of its comparison of two disparate events taking place on opposite sides of the planet. 

This particular fallacy, one I didn't cover per se in my post last year on the subject, is called a "false equivalence fallacy". 

And boy is it ever.

In case you missed the post, you can read it here.

The meme presented a sentiment that to me anyway, expresses either remarkable ignorance, unconscionable indifference, or both.

Verbatim, broken up by some comments of mine in parenthesis, this is what the meme said:

If 10 thousand Russians (a number underestimated by about twenty-fold) crossing the Ukranian border is called an invasion, then why isn't the 2 million people crossing the American southern border not (sic) called an invasion?

My friend's only comment to the post were three "thinking face" emojis, as if to say: "hmmm... maybe this person has a point."

No, the person does not have a point. As any half-way intelligent five year old could point out, there is a world of difference between soldiers armed to the gills, entering a country in armored vehicles, tanks, fighter jets and other vehicles of war, with the intent of, in the words of Merriam Websters' first definition of the word invasion, "conquest or plunder", and individuals entering a country carrying little more than the clothes on their backs, with the sole intention of hopefully improving their lives. 

On the other hand, there is another definition of the word "invasion" that goes something like this:

An incursion by a large number of people or things into a place or sphere of activity.

By that definition, the two million (an only slightly exaggerated number) people crossing the U.S. southern border could in fact be called an "invasion."

So what?

If you're old enough to remember, so too was the phenomenon in the sixties of musical acts from Great Britain becoming famous upon these shores appropriately referred to tongue and cheek as the "British Invasion." 

Well that invasion had exactly as much in common with Vladimir Putin's degenerate war as does the current situation on our southern border.  

So what exactly is the point of that moronic comment?

Besides propagating the culture wars, it conveniently ties together two of the MAGA crowd's favorite talking points, opposition to immigration and opposition to this country's support of Ukraine in their ongoing battle for the survival of their nation. 

There are legitimate arguments one can make on both sides of the immigration issue, less so on the issue of Ukraine, but comparing the two is not legitimate. The one thing that unites the two issues is human rights, an issue that at least in my opinion, trumps all others. In the case of immigration, the current situation is untenable and while we must do our best to look out for our own interests, it is at least as important if not more to be compassionate to the struggles of our brothers and sisters, whatever country they come from. That said, solving the immigration issue is certainly not an easy task with a simple solution. 

To my mind anyway, the situation in Ukraine is far less complicated. Putin's war is illegitimate, there is no valid argument a sane person can make for it that could not be refuted by that same half-way intelligent five year old.

Lumping Russian soldiers and soldiers of fortune from other parts of the former Soviet Union sent by Putin to plunder, pillage, rape and murder innocent civilians in Ukraine together with immigrants crossing the U.S. border is beyond belief. And making the comparison between the Ukrainian victims of Putin's war to the "victims" of the immigration issue, i.e.: the American people, is heartless, cruel and downright stupid. 

Which shouldn't be surprising as this is what we have come to expect from these MAGA folks.

Have a nice day.

Sensitive Skin

The latest brouhaha in our ongoing culture wars is over believe it or not, a commercial for razors. As a response to the #MeToo Movement, the Gillette Company has released a new ad putting a twist on an age-old theme, by putting the words "Is this..." in front of "...the best a man can get" followed by a question mark. The ad addresses what has been referred to in the media as "toxic masculinity" which includes bullying, hyper-aggressive behavior, and disrespect of women, among other shall we say lapses of common decency, to put it mildly.

One might think that no one in their right mind would openly support bullying, the mistreatment of women and general bad behavior. Given that, it's hard to imagine that anyone could seriously have a problem with this commercial. But opponents of this ad, and there are many, claim to be truly offended by the "man slamming" they infer from it. Not surprising is that most of the words of protest over the ad can be found in venues that can depended upon to air unquearioning support for a certain president. Borrowing vocabulary from the other side, the offended parties, including some women such as Karol Markowicz of the New York Post, claim that the commercial is filled with stereotypes which unfairly use a broad brush to paint all men as degenerate bullies and sexual predators. She goes on to compare the objections to this ad to objections of "body slamming" several women had a few years ago to a print ad for a dietary supplement showing a trim, bikini-clad woman accompanied by copy that read: "Are You Beach Body Ready?" For the life of me I don't get the connection between the supposed "man-slamming" of the Gillette ad and the very real "body-slamming" of the vitamin ad as there is a world of difference between admonishing reprehensible behavior and admonishing not having an ideal body.

Funny but as a man, after having seen the Gillette commercial, I did not get the impression that the company is implying all men including me are slime, far from it. The truth is, being a member of the male persuasion, I am not in the least bit offended as I know from personal experience that the negative portrayals in the commercial are based upon reality. Self-reflection is a good thing and while I don't particularly consider myself a bully or a sexual predator, I readily admit there are a lot of things I could do better, and I don't have a problem being told as much, yes even by a razor ad.

You hear the word emasculation used quite a lot these days. I find that word poignant whenever I hear it. To me emasculation when used sincerely, says to me that the utterer of it, if it is a male which it usually is, has an irrational fear of something, perhaps a problem being comfortable in his own skin. I can't help but believe that people who use that word without irony, must have deep down issues about their own manhood, just as those who participate in gay bashing must have issues with their own sexual identity.

One particularly offended commenter refuted the popular idea that bullies are cowards themselves. According to him, while it takes no courage to bully someone anonymously online, in his words, "it takes balls to bully someone face to face."

Well that might be true if the bully picks on someone stronger, more self-confident, or belongs to a group that outnumbers his own. But how often does that happen? In my experience, never. Bullies rely upon safety in numbers, and they never, and I mean never pick on somebody their own size.

By the very definition of the word, bullies are cowards of the worst sort, preying on people they perceive as vulnerable, pumping up their self-esteem at somebody else’s expense. acting out a pathological need to feel better than someone else. So why defend this deviant behavior? Well to quote the character Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof, "I'll tell you, I don't know."

I've also heard moans that men, especially white men, are being lumped into a group that is considered unworthy by today's standards because of the sins of a small minority of us. Sounds to me like a classic case of what goes around, comes around, as historically, every demographic group with the exception of white men, has been subject to being stereotyoed in one way or another. Hey, nobody ever said life was fair. Face it companeros, it;s comeuppance time for us white guys, the only question is this: are you man enough to take it?

What seems to be apparent is that there is an outbreak of hyper-sensitivity going around among members of a group of folks of a particular political bent, which inspired a quip I heard that went this way: "It appears that Gillette is just not good for sensitive skin."

Quite right.

What’s the word they like to use for so called “politically correct” people who are easily offended? Oh yes, snowflakes.

Well if the shoe fits...

The bottom line is that Gillette, like Nike who also ran a commercial that displeased the MAGA crowd, is a very successful company not because of their egalitarianism or their passion for social justice, but because they understand their market and above all, the bottom line. Their critics like to huff and puff that by running this ad, Gillette is cutting off their nose despite their face (a truly apt metaphor given their product don't you think?) by offending a large portion of their market.

But it seems to me that by airing an ad imploring its customers to do the right thing, Gillette is telling those who might happen to be offended, as Nike did before them, that it's just too bad, they and like minded peoplein the long run are simply irrelevant.

Given the conservative nature of large corporations and the advertiaing that supports them, most likely they are right.