Yes, we could always do better, but to often the rhetoric implies that in “The West” women have it worse than in other parts of the world. That is simply not true. Yes there are tiny societies where women are treated as well as in Western democracies, but compare the status of women in the most populous nations: China, India, Pakistan, Nigeria & Bangladesh. This list represents 6 of the 8 most populous countries and nearly half the world’s population. Take a look at women’s political power, women’s economic power and women’s social status, then compare them to the status of women in North America and Europe.
So it is down to a choice between The Donald and Hillary.
As I wrote back in the fall, Trump is not fit to be a small town mayor, let alone president of the United States. His actions since then have only reinforced the fact that he is driven by vindictive, narcissistic, capriciousness; but he seems to have not the slightest regard for the damage his words have. Just as bad, he doesn’t seem to have a clue about the complexities of the issues. He has taken the Obama template of “Hope and Change” from eight years ago and simply changed the words to “Make America Great Again.” Neither campaign actually said anything about real policy. Sadly Americans seem to like vague catch phrases over real plans. Time and time again I’ve listened to him speak at length only to ask myself “Do any of his supporters actually listen to what he is saying?” I recall his daughter in an interview point out that her father says what he thinks his audience wants to hear. This is what a good salesman does, and Donald Trump is simply a big dollar salesman. With this in mind, no one should be surprised that he never seems to feel bound by what he says. Be sure those Republicans who are now supporting their party’s candidate have no idea what Trump will actually do if he is elected.
Now the line I’m hearing from die hard Republicans is that he is better than Hillary. I ask if you took away your tribal loyalty would you come to that conclusion. Yes, Hillary is corrupt in the classical sense. Yes she gave favors to people who gave her foundation money. Yes, even before she took the Secretary of State’s office she began the process of creating a private network to evade the Freedom of Information laws. In her approach and personality she seems to be Richard Nixon come back to life. Significantly the laws she worked to evade were mostly created by Democrats in response to Nixon. She is very far from the kind of person I think should be president. I still think John Kasich was the best candidate, in either party, in the race.
To me the choice is clear: the center-left Hillary Clinton would be far less likely to do the country catastrophic damage than Donald Trump who doesn’t seem to have any guiding principles. Yes, she will have ethics problems. Perhaps she will, like Nixon, self-destruct. Yet, compared with Donald Trump’s utter lack of suitability to be Commander-In-Chief or the spokesman for the nation, I can do nothing else.
If we look at the history of our country morality is not necessarily the hallmark of an effective president. Both Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush are good moral people, but neither was a particularly effective president. Certainly this year we no longer have a choice of voting for a good moral person in the fall. What we have to choose between are two different brands of self-serving amoral people. And choose we (as a nation) must. Wishing for the perfect candidate and not voting at all is the cowards way out. Following tribal party loyalty is the sheep’s path. I for one will not be a coward or a sheep. Though I have never voted for a Democrat in a presidential election before, with eyes wide open to her faults and failings, I will vote for Hillary in the fall.
Last night I became a grand-father. Just like when our daughter was born it is a moment to reflect on what is important in life. In the end all that really matters is family. So let me introduce my grandson Rune. 
Years ago, in one of my group psychosocial sessions I had decided the group needed an introduction to ethical decision making, so I asked who could give me a definition of ethics. No one offered an answer. I asked again. I got a couple of answers that were not even remotely connected. This was not good, I had assumed (wrongly) I would have some foundation on which to begin a session.
With that in mind, I have decided to mention ethics to my little group of readers.
Ethics is defined as: 1) study of morality’s effect on conduct: the study of moral standards and how they affect conduct 2) a system of moral principles governing the appropriate conduct for a person or group.
Ethics is not a list of rules for what to do our not to do. It appears that most people like lists of rules, clear bright lines saying “don’t do this” or “do this” to be morally sound. It absolves them of making difficult moral choices. Leaders also like rules because it allows them micromanagement powers over their followers. Rules are the hallmark of the world’s mono-theistic religions, even when their founders apparently opposed such rules. Jesus was very clear in his denunciation of the rule makers in favor of an ethics based on “love thy neighbor as thyself”; however, the first thing his cadre of disciples did once he was gone, was to start imposing a list of rules. Continue reading “Of Ethics”
We are all prisoners of our own life experience. Even the fairest minded person interprets the world as if their own experience in life is a universal life experience. This is not a moral deficiency as some would assert, but rather it is an inescapable reality of our existence. Sure, it is easy to throw rocks at people who have a different life experience and say they should be able to see things your way. But realize as you do so, you are in fact admitting you cannot see the world through the eyes of the person receiving your rocks. Not having lived that other person’s life however, is not an excuse for not trying to imagine how things look from the other side of the rock you are throwing.
I say that in introduction to the “minimum wage” issue that has been simmering for about two years but has not raised to a level of even a soft boil. Over the past few years a string of news stories declare that the US middle-class continues to slip in relation to the last generation, not just that, but are slipping behind the rest of the industrialized world. Something is fundamentally wrong, but neither political party has a real commitment in actually doing something about it.
It is simply a fact that over the past 40 years the purchasing power of the minimum wage has steadily declined as the minimum wage does not automatically increase to keep pace with inflation. No one is disputing that. Also no one disputes the fact that as our manufacturing base has declined, the percentage of the workforce in very low or minimum wage jobs has increased.
When I was a teenager there were jobs that were effectively “kids jobs” because only students like me would work for the minimum wage being offered (which was worth significantly more than it is today). Fast food, grocery store check-out clerk and such jobs were entirely the province of people under 21. But during the 90’s something began to change, you began to see adults who once worked as unskilled labor in factories and warehouses began to be pushed down the economic ladder into low/minimum wage jobs.
Continue reading “The Moral Imperative for a Livable Minimum Wage”
This is a terrific article. Here are two excerpts.
“The National Review, a conservative magazine for the Republican elite, recently unleashed an attack on the “white working class”, who they see as the core of Trump’s support.
The first essay, Father Führer, was written by the National Review’s Kevin Williamson, who used his past reporting from places such as Appalachia and the Rust Belt to dissect what he calls “downscale communities”.
He describes them as filled with welfare dependency, drug and alcohol addiction, and family anarchy – and then proclaims:
“Nothing happened to them. There wasn’t some awful disaster, There wasn’t a war or a famine or a plague or a foreign occupation. … The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles.”
“The differences are manifest in education. The pathway offered out of the working class is to get a college education. Yet at the best colleges there are veryfew low-income students, except for a few lucky enough to grow up in New York City, Los Angeles or Boston.
Differences are also stark around health issues, as well as social issues such asmarriage, family and where people live. The growing differences have made it easier and seemingly acceptable to ridicule the white working class, further marginalizing and isolating them. Go into an office in New York City (I worked in them for 20 years) and you will hear people joke about “white trash”, “trailer trash”, “rednecks”, “round people from square states”. Turn on the TV and you hear more cheap jokes about how they dress, talk and behave.”
My thoughts:
The author is quite right in how the Republican elites attack working class whites, but he is remiss in not pointing out that the Democrat elites do the same.
I spent over a decade as a social worker in Appalachia. I know full well how these people feel utterly abandoned and powerless. As a social worker I found that all of the activist and advocacy groups were based on race not income. The Urban League, NAACP and La Rasa are all good groups that do a lot of great work. However, there is no comparable group advocating for the working poor whites, especially rural and suburban whites. It is hardly any wonder why they feel marginalized and are easy prey for those advocating white supremacy.
These are the Donald Trump voters. I am seeing and hearing increasingly virulent attacks on these low income white supporters calling them neo-NAZI’s and such, but in fact they are not; however, it is easy for them to be convinced the problem is caused by foreigners when no other easy answer is given. You will notice that working class whites are also flocking to Bernie Sanders. He also gives the working poor whites a simplistic scapegoat (Wall Street bankers); but in reality he, just like Trump, sidesteps the larger problems facing the working poor.
To make matter worse, the working poor whites are increasingly hearing attacks on them because they are white. Poor blacks and Hispanics are being taught to scapegoat whites in general, not just rich whites, but all whites. Talk of “White Privilege” coming from rich kids at elite universities does great harm to impoverished whites who would love to trade places with their accusers. The effect of this is to divide the working poor and further dis-empower all of them.
It seems the white working poor no longer have any political friends and are consequently easy targets for the elites of both parties. Not only is this immoral, it is a ticking time bomb in the US.
The Cognitive Dissident 
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