What Ever Happened to American Ingenuity??

Adapting to a new situation

"People are dying and that’s a horrible thing but we can’t just shut down the country."

Why Can't We Find a Middle Ground?

There seem to be two sides to the COVID19 crisis, the ones who want to open the country regardless of the infections and deaths, and the other ones who want to close everything. What we should be doing is two fold.

First, things will never be the old normal. COVID19 is only one of the thousands of up and coming viruses we will face in the future. Normal as we knew it is history.
Second, let’s start looking for ways to adapt to the new world in which we are now living.

We seem to have lost our ability to be creative. I have noticed some businesses have accepted the reality of the new world and started looking for ways to live in it. Those are the businesses that will survive; the others will become part of history with the old normal.

A large part of the problem is the current divisiveness in the country created and supported by a self-serving child bully bent on destroying the country. But the real problem is the so-called leaders who sanction this child’s actions over the good of the country.

Having the Right Leadership Is Everything

In a month, we will all have an opportunity to shift the current stale thinking leaders to those who have fresh ideas that can help all of us visualize and implement the new normal, hopefully one without all the -isms that have plagued the country since its founding. White is not right; justice, equity, and equality are characteristics of what is right.

We will either get back on the right path or we will cease to exist.

When the Roaches Emerge

When Roaches Emerge…

I remember those sweltering summer nights when the air was dank and heavy. Walking into the yard at night, I was greeted with crunching sounds as I stepped on the mass of roaches creeping out of the sidewalk cracks and house walls to eat. They only came out of hiding at night, afraid to venture into the light and be seen.

No matter what I tried to eliminate them, the crunch was always there to greet my evening walks. Roaches are survivors and nothing we can do seems to remove them. Some say they will be the long term survivors as the environment tightens its noose around our necks.

I have always hated the sound of crunching roaches. It reminds me of my futility, my unavailing efforts to eliminate them; they will never be gone despite all I may do.

When I read the news, I remember the roaches and their viscid presence, no matter what I do. The nauseating sound of hatred spewed from the mouths of those who are supposed to be our leaders will endure, just like the roaches. We have always suffered through the human roaches. They feed on all of us. Like spoiled but powerful children, all we can do is limit their destructive impact until they slink back into the cracks and crevices of their putrescent existence. We can only go about our daily lives as best we can. Remember these “roaches” only thrive in the secret dark created to hide their true selves, but a roach is a roach no matter what you call it.

Disgusting? Yes.

Persistent? Yes.

They thrive on garbage. Maybe someday we can find a use for them that serves humanity…

The Freudian Slip or as Bubba Would Put It: A Good Ole Boy Done Screwed Up!

We are in a new era of colorblind racism. Racists, sexists, and other -ists try to hide their true feelings but if you listen, you can “hear” those feelings. For example, here is a quote from a Fox and Friends blatherer, Brian Kilmeade:

And on Friday morning, "Fox and Friends" co-host Brian Kilmeade expressed that lack of compassion remarkably clearly. Here's what he said (per Mediaite):

"Like it or not, these aren't our kids. Show them compassion, but it's not like he is doing this to the people of Idaho or Texas. These are people from another country and now people are saying that they're more important than people in our country who are paying taxes and who have needs as well."

Truth Revealed in the Heat of the Moment

White racists use a type of sentinel behavior to check the status of new White acquaintances. This “sentinel behavior” is a process White racists use to test a newcomer’s loyalty to Whiteness. Conversations start with innocuous subjects and progress to “party line” topics. If the newcomer continues to agree, a sensitive topic is presented. In this way, the White racist can “test the waters” to decide if this is a comrade or someone to be ostracized and excluded.

Forgetting the broad distribution of news media— duh, it is “broadcasting” —Kilmeade got careless, feeling the loving embrace of his racist buddies, and broadcasted his true feelings in the heat of the moment.

Oops! Uh, I didn’t mean it…

The crawfish retreat begins:

Kilmeade later apologized for the comment via Twitter. "Of course-I didn't mean to make it seem like children coming into the U.S. illegally are less important because they live in another country," he tweeted. "I have compassion for all children, especially for all the kids separated from their parents right now."

Caught with his pants around his ankles, he fumbles for some way out of the awkward situation but it is too late. His true feelings have been exposed for all to see.

Like-minded Whites will rationalize this series of events by saying that other Fox and Friends loyalists chastised him for the comment and that makes it okay. Well, most of the chastisement was aimed at Kilmeade’s stupidity by letting others know the hidden ideology of the White racist: anyone not like us is less than us and undeserving of any of our resources. It was not about concern for the kids but about covering up the hidden agenda.

The Double Standard

So an interesting story today. Samantha Bee called the little Trumpette, Ivanka, a cunt, a phrase generally used by Trump Monkey himself for all of those women he dislikes. I am amazed at how much news coverage this incident has received yet so little about the pussy-grabbing, racist asshole who occupies the highest office in the land.

To me, the shows a lack of common sense or concerns about the state of the Union. We truly have gone to hell in a hand basket, led by a simian simpleton.

Shifting dominant ideology

Unaware and Unexpected

While in college, we had a black widow spider in a gallon glass jar on our desk. We would feed her crickets and one day, we decided to watch as the spider ate her meal.

Much to our surprise, and unexpectedly, the widow came slowly from the top of the jar down to the cricket, tossed a silk lasso around one of its legs. The cricket did not move, unaware of the impending danger. She repeated this process until the cricket was nothing more than a silk cocoon. She then slowly hoisted it to the top of the jar, where she drained it of all its fluids, leaving a dried-up shell.

Since the founding of the United States, politicians and pundits have warned that partisanship is a danger to democracy. George Washington, in his Farewell Address, worried that political parties, or factions, could "allow cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men" to rise to power and subvert democracy. More recently, many political observers are concerned that increasing political polarization on left and right makes compromise impossible, and leads to the destruction of democratic norms and institutions.

A new study, however, suggests that the main threat to our democracy may not be the hardening of political ideology, but rather the hardening of one particular political ideology. Political scientists Steven V. Miller of Clemson and Nicholas T. Davis of Texas A&M have released a working paper titled "White Outgroup Intolerance and Declining Support for American Democracy." Their study finds a correlation between white American's intolerance, and support for authoritarian rule. In other words, when intolerant white people fear democracy may benefit marginalized people, they abandon their commitment to democracy.* --Noah Berlatsky

This is for all who think TrumpMonkey has had no effect on overt displays of racist, sexist, White Supremacist behavior. We are facing the same patterns the German people did when Hitler took power from them. ”Different” becomes unacceptable and antisocial behavior to be eradicated or at least suppressed. All.the signs show this path.

A More Dangerous World… Some Thoughts

While we have always lived in a society that favors a normalized, white model, one that reserves power and privilege to those who fit that norm, acts reinforcing -isms have been covertly perpetuated. There have always been open acts but limited in scope. The majority continued to hide their true natures…until now.

A major shift in the political structure is now occurring. A person who has proclaimed himself to be racist, sexist, classist, exhibiting other disparaging behavior toward those different from him will soon lead us. While he denies these behaviors, there is now a public record that invalidates those denials.

The shift in political structure is more about institutional -isms than about political ideology. The frame is the norm of whiteness which leaders validate as acceptable and desirable. Politics and power are inseparable because human beings write and pass legislation. Other human beings feed their needs by reinforcing the actions that perpetuate Whiteness.

The overt behaviors of the leaders of the country have given license to those less powerful to broadcast their -isms through both words and actions. This is now happening at all levels. Schools are reporting an increase in racist, sexist acts of violence toward those students considered “different” and therefore, inferior and a threat. There is an increase in violent acts toward non-Christians, especially Muslims, deemed as the “enemy.” It is more common to see whites in coffee shops, stores, and other public places glaring at anyone who looks or acts differently.

Why are there -isms?

Why do we have -isms? That is a complex problem that has many possible answers depending upon one’s philosophy. For example, a psychologist might say -isms result from an inferiority complex; individuals project their inadequacies on others rather than face who they are. School children demonstrate this behavior as they tease or even bully other students. It becomes life-threatening when done by adults. An economist would see this as behavior to protect individual wealth and property by excluding others from access to it. There are many ways to explain the phenomenon but the result is always the same. The dominant person continues to benefit from the behavior while the recipient suffers the consequences.

World History is Rife with Injustice and Oppression

Social injustice is not something unique to the “New World.” People fleeing Europe did so to escape those conditions. Societies have always evolved into systems of power, privilege, and domination, excluding those redefined as the Others. Pecking orders seem to be inherent in social structures of all kinds, at all levels. I am not saying this to justify such structures but to draw attention to the need to have a plan in place if those structures are removed. Again, history is replete with revolutions, coups, and assassinations that created a power vacuum soon filled by another often worse group of leaders.

Whiteness and Dominance

Whites are so immersed in whiteness that the effects of their own privilege slip past their consciousness, never to be considered as contributing factors to the skewed distribution of resources and opportunities that have placed white males in most positions of decision-making. They can consider the troubles of others while remaining aloof and unaffected by them. They can perform a beneficent act to assuage any hint of guilt that may somehow find its way to their awareness. All the while, they move through my life, attributing their unearned privileges to personal hard work and achievement. The common denominator of dominance and hegemony centers on elite, rich, white men as the model on which to base normalcy. Others elaborate, describing it as a paternalistic, elitist, capitalist, white supremacist power structure. However worded, the ultimate gatekeepers are the same group. This is the whiteness that allows domination to run rampant, perpetuating itself with a vengeance exacted upon the Others, primarily people of color, who somehow remain at the "bottom of the well" of society. Clerks in stores watch Black people while white people steal them blind; a tag team of shoplifters that uses White storekeepers’ racism against them. In a peer group composed of women and people of color, the group almost always considers white men to be the authority figures although they may have done nothing to show that. Beverly Tatum (1999) called racism a smog we all breathe, but white people seem to have invisible gas masks because few ever confront whiteness. Perpetuation of structural whiteness has been accomplished by establishing a "normalized" model that is elite, rich, white, and male. Media representations, schooling, and legislation all support this model that portrays a strange, commonsense, "white as right" epistemology. Since this white epistemology permeates every aspect of life, it is reasonable to assume that it also normalizes both feeling and emotive expression (R. Turner, 1976).

The only true beneficiaries of whiteness are white men although other groups—white women, lighter-skinned groups, and even well-to-do people of color—are superficially included. In this dominant and hegemonic system, those whom it favors have the privilege to ignore the life-threatening effects that others experience daily. White men continue to ignore or suppress this paternalistic, white supremacist power structure because it showers them with unmerited power, privilege, and advantages. Thus, they continue to consciously and subconsciously support this oppressive system. In a similar manner, the normalized model, reinforced by media, schooling, and other social structures, often assimilates people of color. By playing their roles in the dominant system, they may also support the system that oppresses them or at the least, be complicitous in it by not confronting it. There is no assurance that anyone in these groups will work for social justice even when confronted with their positions. However, until reaching that initial awareness, there is no chance for further change. For the critical pedagogue, leading the student to a new awareness becomes the crucial first step to learning and change.

Summary

This is a complex, convoluted issue that may never be fully resolved. Meanwhile, it grows more menacing with sanctioning from the country’s leaders.