Category: Ethics: General

By Posted on Posted in Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Ethics in Government, Ethics: General, language, Politics, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

 From today’s NY Times email newsletter, “The Morning”:

President Trump does not seem interested in de-escalating anything in Minneapolis. This week, he said that one justification for the shooting of Renee Good might have been that she had been “disrespectful” to officers. Being disrespectful is a form of speech, though — one protected by the Constitution.

With Trump, it’s always a clue that if he accuses someone of bad behavior, he is doing/has done it himself. This is on the same day that news broke about Trump giving the finger and two F-bombs to a Ford employee who called him out as a “pedophile protector”—which the Times mentioned in that same newsletter. The link above is to The Guardian, because the Times uses paywalls.

But Trump showing the emotional maturity of a two-year-old yesterday is just the latest in a lifetime flinging insults at individuals, groups, and whole countries. This is what he said about racism in 1989  (followed by the response decades later by a Black commentator whose offer to Trump to tour Baltimore after Trump disparaged that city was declined). 1989 was also the year he ran a full-page ad in all four of NYC’s daily newspapers calling for the death penalty for five Black youths falsely convicted of rape and later exonerated.

And ever since he rode that golden escalator to announce his candidacy in 2015, it’s been a nonstop barrage. He mocked a reporter’s physical disability. He called Africa, Haaiti, and El Salvador “shithole countries” and called for increased immigration from Norway (a White-predominant country) in 2018 and—just a month ago, on December 9, 2025—not only admitted the comment (which he’d denied at the time) but bragged about it and added Somalia to the list. For years, his racism led him to deny that Obama was born in the US. If that lie were true, Obama would have been ineligible to serve as President. He repeatedly attacks and insults his opponents—Biden and Harris, of course—but even former loyalists that he drove away, including then-Vice President Mike Pence and one of his biggest loyalists in Congress, Marjorie Taylor Greene. And his history of insulting and objectifying women—individuals as well as women as a class—is just as bad as his racism and ableism.

Worst of all, the vile xenophobic anti-immigrant rhetoric of his first campaign and term has not just increased. It has morphed into something truly evil: a war against immigrants that empowers a poorly trained, poorly vetted goon squad army of ICE and CBP agents to rain terror down on immigrant neighborhoods, whose residents are snatched from cars, homes, workplaces, and even their immigration court hearings—with zero due process and extreme violence—and sent to far-away gulags in the US and in countries where these victims have no connection. The conservative Cato Institute lists a multipronged attack on immigrants and citizens, from revoking legal status of people who came here legally to multiple attacks on the Constitution and due process. This is unlike anything in US history. It’s even more extreme than the detention of Japanese immigrants and descendants during World War II—for which the US has apologized and made reparations. Many US citizens have been caught in these sweeps and illegally detained. And much of what ICE is doing is a wildly illegal expansion of the powers they are chartered with. They are not supposed to take a police role other than in matters of illegal immigration (as I document in the Appendix, below). And they are not supposed to shoot people. Yet, Time Magazine reports today that  “Immigration agents have fired at or into civilian vehicles in at least 13 instances since July.” That would include the two people shot since the murder of Renee Nicole Good last week, in Portland, Oregon. At least four of those were fatal. Add to that the 32 people who died in ICE custody in the past year.

Trump’s hypocrisy takes many other forms, too. Examples:

  1. He’s praising protesters in the streets of Tehran even as he decries them in any state that voted for Kamala Harris.
  2. Killing more than 100 Venezuelan sailors (95 as of November when this article was written), then invading the country and kidnapping its (admittedly thuggish) leader on the pretext of interdicting drugs, but pardoning the biggest drug dealer of them all, former President Hernandez of Honduras. Of course, we all know and he hasn’t tried to hide that it’s really about the oil.
  3. Claiming to be a law-and-order president but inciting the January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol and then pardoning even those rioters who physically attacked police officers.

Please let your Representative and two Senators in the US Congress know that you find this unacceptable and you want them to withhold funding from ICE until it starts obeying all relevant laws on search and seizure, delineation of responsibility, due process, and use of force. If they balk at that, defund the agency at least until Minnesota is allowed to fully participate in the investigation of Good’s murder—and then keep pressing for more accountability. And please share this post widely.

 

Appendix: Perplexity.AI Report on what ICE is and is Not Allowed to Do

I asked Perplexity, the AI engine I tend to use for serious research and factchecking, “In what situations is US Immigration and Customs Enforcement allowed or not allowed to act as local police do?” Because both AI and traditional search engines may or may not return the same results for the same search, and because AI results are not written by a human and therefore not subject to copyright, I’m copying the entire answer. Drawing on ten different sources including the BBC, the Massachusetts state government website, and the ACLU, it is quite illuminating:

 is a federal civil immigration agency, not a general police force, so it can enforce federal immigration and certain federal criminal laws but cannot simply “act like” local police enforcing state or local law. Its actions are further limited by the U.S. Constitution, federal statutes, and by how much local police choose or are allowed (under state law) to cooperate.?

What ICE is allowed to do

  • Enforce federal immigration law. ICE can stop, detain, and arrest people it has probable cause to believe are removable (deportable) from the U.S., and can place them in immigration detention and initiate deportation cases.?

  • Enforce certain federal crimes. ICE can investigate and bring cases involving immigration-related crimes like human trafficking, document fraud, and smuggling under federal criminal statutes.?

  • Make public?space arrests with probable cause. In public places, ICE may arrest someone if agents have probable cause the person is removable and likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained; they may also execute valid arrest warrants in public.?

  • Enter homes with judicial warrants or consent. ICE may enter a private home only with the occupant’s voluntary consent or a judicial warrant signed by a judge; an internal ICE “administrative” warrant alone does not authorize entry into a private residence.?

  • Conduct raids and surveillance within legal limits. ICE can conduct operations at homes, workplaces, and in communities and can use data collection and digital surveillance tools, subject to constitutional limits on searches and seizures.?

  • Request help from local law enforcement. ICE can ask local agencies to notify them when someone is being released or to hold a person briefly through “detainers,” and can enter formal agreements (287(g)) that deputize some local officers to perform limited immigration functions.?

What ICE is not allowed to do

  • Cannot enforce state or local non?immigration laws. ICE does not have authority to enforce purely state or local offenses (like routine traffic violations or most state criminal laws) unless a separate federal authority applies.?

  • Cannot enter homes using only an ICE form. An ICE administrative warrant (Form I?200/I?205) does not let agents force their way into a private home; without consent or a judicial warrant, they must stay outside or in common/public areas.?

  • Cannot force local police to act as immigration officers. Local agencies cannot be compelled to carry out civil immigration enforcement; they decide whether to cooperate, and many jurisdictions legally limit that cooperation.?

  • Cannot use detainers as binding orders. ICE detainers are requests, not mandatory orders; local agencies may violate state law or the Constitution if they hold someone past their release time without proper legal authority.?

  • Must comply with the Constitution. ICE arrests, searches, and detention are constrained by the Fourth Amendment and due process requirements, just like other law enforcement; unconstitutional stops, searches, or holds can lead to liability.?

How ICE differs from local police

  • Scope of authority. Local police are generalists enforcing broad state and local criminal laws within a limited geographic area, while ICE has a narrow subject?matter focus (immigration and related federal crimes) but nationwide reach.?

  • Civil versus criminal. Much of what ICE does is civil (removal/deportation) rather than criminal prosecution, so ICE can detain someone for immigration violations even when no crime is charged, which is different from typical local policing.?

  • Limits on cooperating with ICE. Many cities and states have “sanctuary” or similar policies that allow cooperation on serious criminal matters but forbid or restrict participation in routine civil immigration enforcement.?

When ICE and local police can overlap

  • Joint operations on crime. Local police may work with ICE when investigating federal crimes (for example, human trafficking or gang cases) where immigration issues also arise.?

  • 287(g) agreements. Under 287(g) “jail?enforcement” agreements, certain local jail officers are trained and authorized to perform specific immigration tasks (like issuing charging documents or detainers) under ICE supervision, but they still must follow constitutional and state?law limits.?

  • Information sharing and notifications. Where allowed by state and local law, police may share booking information or give ICE notice of a person’s release, even if they cannot legally hold the person longer just because ICE asked.?

Situations where ICE is more restricted than local police

  • Protected or sensitive areas (policy?based). For years, ICE policies limited enforcement in places like schools, hospitals, and churches, though recent DHS actions have rescinded some of those “sensitive location” protections; policy can be more restrictive than what the Constitution alone requires.?

  • Entering private spaces. Local police with state?court warrants for state crimes may enter a home to arrest a suspect; ICE, by contrast, often relies on administrative warrants that do not permit entering a home without consent, so ICE’s ability to mimic a home arrest by local police is more limited.?

If you want, a follow?up can focus specifically on how these rules work in Massachusetts and what they mean for day?to?day interactions with ICE.

 
 
 
 

 

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, censorship, Ethics: General, General Commentary, language, Mindset, People Helping People, Politics, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

I’m still on Facebook—but I took it off my phone. I also removed Proton and Signal, as well as fingerprint logon from both my phone and computer. Any guesses about why?

Here’s the sad and scary reason: I can no longer trust my government.

The Constitution is supposed to protect US residents against unreasonable searches and seizures. It’s right there in the Fourth Amendment. But the current government is violating that every day. US citizens are being dragged out of cars, homes and workplaces. Immigrants who followed all the rules and have the right to be here are being torn from their families. And of course, those who are here without papers—the vast majority of whom have done nothing wrong and who in many cases have been productive and contributing members of our community for decades are being thrown into gulags under extremely cruel conditions.

All of this is immoral—but it’s happening. This man calls himself a Christian, but his actions show either total unfamiliarity or total nonalignment with the words of Christ. Christ was about welcoming the stranger, helping the needy, breaking down barriers across cultures. Just think about the Good Samaritan parable, embracing the goodness of a member of a despised ethnic group or the—“he who is without sin” invitation that bought an adulteress the ability to continue living.

I’m someone who has always had a low need for privacy and a high transparency level. I strongly suspected in the 1970s when my housemate worked for an anarchist newspaper and I was doing safe energy organizing that our phone was tapped. We were low on the totem pole, so they didn’t waste a good quality tap on us. Our phone made all sorts of noises that our friends’ phones didn’t. I had two responses: One was to be sure I didn’t discuss anything confidential over the phone, including who might be planning what activities. This was easy, because I wasn’t part of a terrorist cell and wasn’t doing anything that would be a problem if the government knew about it. But still, I was careful not to mention people’s names over the phone.

My second response was to tell them I knew:  Every once in a while, I’d say something like “Hey, government agents, you must be bored. Go get a pencil. I’m going to give you my recipe for three-minute chocolate mousse.” (The secret is to use ricotta cheese instead of eggs, by the way).

But times are different now. Instead of governing, our government is trying to crush dissent. And they have tools like AI-powered social media scraping that they haven’t had before. I have been a frequent public critic of Trump and Netanyahu, and an occasional public critic of some of Trump’s other friends, like Bolsonaro and Putin. While unlikely, it’s not beyond possibility that I’ve been put on some kind of extra-screening list, and that the government might try to get into my devices even without the judicial warrant they’re supposed to obtain. Low probability, but certainly not impossible.

And just as I didn’t name names over the phone fifty years ago, I no longer tag my comrades in Facebook or show recognizable faces when I’m writing about protests unless I’ve gotten permission.

I deeply resent that all this precaution feels necessary now. We are supposed to be a democracy. Yet, it was exactly this kind of outspoken public speech that led to several high-profile arrests of Muslim foreign students in the first few weeks of the Trump II administration—including Rumeysa Ozturk in my own state of Massachusetts. Yes, I was born here. Yes, I am White. But the thing about fascism is it starts with the most marginalized and spreads to the mainstream population. And even if it wasn’t spreading, it is not okay to yank people off the street and throw them in a hell-hole for exercising their First Amendment rights. Among other things, my phone-cleaning is an act of solidarity.

Meanwhile, the president of the United States has overseen the murder of at least 69 Venezuelan and Colombian civilians for no viable cause, in multiple attacks (as of November 7). He claims they are drug runners, but evidence points to most of them being fishermen. And even if they are running drugs, you deal with that by stopping and searching the ship and seizing it if it’s true, then making arrests and turning to the courts. Not by blowing them off the face of the Earth.

He has called for execution by hanging of six courageous US military veterans in Congress who made a video reminding soldiers that they are not under obligation to follow illegal orders (such as deploying against US civilians)—and in fact are obligated NOT to follow those orders, because the allegiance they swore is to the constitution, not to any thin-skinned power-mad multiple-felon would-be dictator.

He has pressured numerous companies to make settlements that have been labeled extortion or profiteering, illegally using the presidency for personal and family and corporate financial gain, in direct disregard of the Constitution.

And oh yes, he has used the Justice Department to go after his political enemies, rather than actual criminals, wasting millions of our tax dollars for personal vendettas.

At the moment, I’m halfway through a flight from Asia to New York. If they want to look at my social media, they will have to look a little harder, because my phone and computer will be off and I will not turn them on for an agent who doesn’t have proper authorization.

I recognize that this only makes things inconvenient for them. They could easily use their own device to check my social media. They could somewhat less easily impound my devices. I also recognize that the odds are highest that they will ask me where I went and what I purchased—then simply say, as usual, “welcome back,” and wave me through.

Hopefully, by the time you read this, I will have cleared immigration control without incident and be settling down to celebrate Thanksgiving with family. But if they do try to poke into my business, I will at least slow the machinery of oppression down a bit.

POSTSCRIPT: Compared with an hour-long wait in Saigon, the passport control line at JFK Airport was only ten minutes long, we were waved through without any questions, and I’ve reinstalled FB on my phone until the next time I leave the country.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Ethics: General, General Commentary, Gratitude, language, Mindset, People Helping People, propaganda, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , ,

A friend sent a link to this short motivational video on ten sentences we need to hear at least once. I enjoyed. I especially liked #8, motivation doesn’t last—but neither does bathing so we do it every day. #4 is also good; I might rephrase it with the bumper sticker statement, “Don’t postpone joy.”

But I have issues with his word choice in #10, “Comfort is the enemy of achievement.” He’s right in some cases. Inherited wealth is often a barrier to achievement. So is walling yourself off from the things that cause discomfort. However, comfort has many shades of meaning.

I’m pretty sure he means that people need to get out of their smug, self-righteous bubbles, be willing to experience—and do something about—the suffering of others. But it will be interpreted by too many as “put on that hairshirt, dammit, you have no right to pleasure while others suffer.”

And THAT, I strongly disagree with.

Comfort, in some of its other meanings besides that smug self-superiority, is not a sin. Actually, I believe it’s a crucial element of our success in the world. We need to be able to both give and receive it.

To those who would deny the right of pleasure, I give you Emma Goldman’s famous quote, often paraphrased as “If I can’t dance I don’t want to be in your revolution”—here’s the original: “I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy.” 

Comfort, as a verb, also refers to the mitzvah (in the sense of “good deed,” rather than “commandment”) of extending a hand, an ear, a hug to those who are grieving loss, ailing, in pain. I am sure Mr McKinney would not deny that comfort to others. That kind of comfort is an antidote to bitterness—and bitterness is a cancer interfering with any healing journey, whether self-healing, comforting others, or changing the world for the better.

As I’m using the word, comfort is an attribute like gratitude. It enables us to function better, make more change in the world, and keep our sanity.

It is NOT a self-built wall to shield us from the things that should make us uncomfortable. I do not agree with the right-wing legislators who think that they can isolate their “comfortable” kids from such realities as race-based inequality by making it illegal to teach those unpleasant realities—but when introducing that level of discomfort, we need to provide the emotional and tactical support to let those kids not just handle it but figure out something they can do to make it better.

So learn to be comfortable, but not complicit. Find pleasure in the things you do, including your social change. Keep good company and do those things with friends at least some of the time.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Consumer Issues, Democracy, Ethics in Government, Ethics: General, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Media Ethics, media-general, Mindset, Politics, propaganda, Psychology Tagged with , , , , , ,

Yes, it’s true. Thursday’s “debate” was a debacle, an atrocity. And yes, Democrats have a right to indulge in some panic. But a more helpful response is to demand that the mainstream media start covering the real issue in this campaign: That American democracy is under threat by Donald Trump, who was the worst president in history according to experts and who has devolved into a raving lunatic who has openly talked about the totalitarian regime he would impose this time.

For months, much of the mainstream media has consistently painted Biden in a poor light while for the most part refusing to set the same standard in evaluating Trump. A particularly horrific example was the time one of the Washington Post’s newsletters made a chart that compared how old Biden would be at the END of a second term with how old Trump would be at the BEGINNING of a second term. They are only 3-1/2 years apart.

Yet, while the New York Times and Washington Post were going on about the need for Biden to step aside, the Philadelphia Inquirer was one of the few voices in the mainstream press saying that Trump, not Biden, is the one who should leave the race. Their reasons are not just the 30+ lies he confidently uttered during the event (you can’t really call it a debate). It’s everything he’s done in the last several years. The man is a felon, a self-admitted sexual predator, an inciter of a treasonous riot, an open bigot, a thuggish bully, and a narcissistic example of Id running amok with no Superego to rein it in. Trump is known for confidently putting out total bullshit—kind of like some AI tools that tell us to eat a rock every day. Trump wanted us to drink chlorine bleach during the pandemic, after all.

While under both the insurrection and incompetence clauses of the Constitution Trump shouldn’t have even been allowed on the ballot, he’s there. And if he leaves, we may not like the results. If, say, Nikki Haley were to replace him as the Republican candidate, she could actually win on the basis that she wouldn’t be as bad as Trump. And she wouldn’t–but she might very likely be as bad as or worse than the second-worst president, George W. Bush.

Meanwhile, as Lawrence O’Donnell points out, the Dems have no viable candidate in reserve. When LBJ left the race much earlier in the cycle, in March, 1968, Humphrey didn’t have enough time to gather accolades or dollars. He also notes that there was pressure on Bill Clinton to withdraw in 1992 and on Trump to do so in 2016, yet both men won. AND he faults the debate moderators for failing to ask important questions like what the heck Trump was doing during those three hours of silence on January 6, 2021, or to probe deeper on Trump’s nonsensical answers and outright lies, including his obvious lack of understanding of what a tariff is.

Seth Abramson says that getting Biden to exit would grant Trump’s deepest wish and wonders why nobody’s asking if this is a good idea, considering how much Trump and his henchmen are talking it up—and he doesn’t see any path to a victory by any other Democrat.

The Dems would start by attacking each other in a “circular firing squad” that only helps the Republicans. Any convention result will leave a wide swath of disaffected voters.  It just doesn’t make sense.

Mind, I’m no fan of Biden. There’s a long list of betrayals of progressives that I’m not at all happy with. But I believe that this race is much less about who we want to be president than whether we want democracy or fascism, and what the Supreme Court will look like. It’s also about who progressives would rather be pressuring, and there’s no question that we’d secure more wins under Biden than Trump.

And Heather Cox Richardson says Trump steamrolled Biden with a technique called the “Gish Gallop”:

It’s a rhetorical technique in which someone throws out a fast string of lies, non-sequiturs, and specious arguments, so many that it is impossible to fact-check or rebut them in the amount of time it took to say them. Trying to figure out how to respond makes the opponent look confused, because they don’t know where to start grappling with the flood that has just hit them.

It is a form of gaslighting, and it is especially effective on someone with a stutter, as Biden has. It is similar to what Trump did to Biden during a debate in 2020. In that case, though, the lack of muting on the mics left Biden simply saying: “Will you shut up, man?” a comment that resonated with the audience. Giving Biden the enforced space to answer by killing the mic of the person not speaking tonight actually made the technique more effective.

So instead of trying to dump Biden, let’s demand that the media:

  1. Point out every lie either candidate utters
  2. Give some space to Trump’s crazy “word salad” campaign speeches that make absolutely no sense
  3. Examine the consequences of each of his fascist-inspired policy proposals
  4. Fact-check the next debate in REAL TIME.

And let’s remind everyone we know that this election is not about choosing a saint but choosing the better opponent who will enable the most positive change.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Diversity, Ethics: General, Gratitude, language, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , , , ,

The other day, I attended a memorial service for a neighbor. I’m not someone who typically gets offended at memorial services—but one speaker—a son of the deceased—made me feel I was standing underneath an avalanche. He said almost nothing about his mother, but went on and on about the need to accept Jesus and become this man’s kind of “Christian” in order to be spared a literal eternity in actual Hell.

Listening, I grew increasingly upset and furious. He effectively created a second-class citizenship, or worse, for everyone who doesn’t follow his particular brand of religion

I am not a Christian, but I’ve read the Four Gospels. Remember the parable of the Good Samaritan? Samaritans were a despised ethnic group among Jews in Roman Palestine 2000 years ago. Jesus’ message was all about acceptance of the good in people, acceptance of diversity, and taking responsibility for your OWN behavior—attributes that seem to be in short supply amongst this man’s self-righteous and vindictive style of religious fundamentalism. I don’t even now how they can even call themselves Christians when their key message mocks and marginalizes Christ’s own virtues. And I was appalled by this man, so smug that he actually said that he would see his parents in Heaven IF they were admitted there; he had no worries about his own fitness to enter the kingdom of love. Jesus would have been just as appalled. He was far more concerned with healing the sick, with undoing the misery of the poor and bereft, than with following religious rituals without following the moral codes underlying them:codes that recognize the worth of every human being.

After the service, I was simmering with rage and felt a need to process with someone who’d been there. I called another neighbor, a friend who welcomed us to the neighborhood 25 years ago. Before I could even say more than “I need to vent about the memorial service,” she named the offensive speaker and told me that she and her husband were equally appalled, and that this man with his ugly prejudices was an outlier in his own family. I felt some closure after our call.

The next day, I mentioned in my daily public Gratitude Journal on Facebook that I was grateful for her support “helping me debrief a very uncomfortable moment in the memorial we both attended yesterday.” I didn’t give any more details than that.

And then the magic happened. I got a Facebook private message from another neighbor, a relative of the deceased. This person is my Facebook friend, but in real life, we barely know each other. Most of our contact has been a quick hello at the annual neighborhood holiday party. She sent me a deeply personal and very welcoming note of apology for the conduct of her relative, appreciation that I had attended, and gratitude for the many cultures and religions who had come together to support her family in this time of grief. We sent a stream of messages back and forth for the next half-hour, and I came away feeling like I had a new friend, even after 25 years of those superficial encounters.

And that was the silver lining—another gateway to abundance—in this cloud of ugly bigotry.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Ethics: General, General Commentary, language, Media Ethics, media-general, Mindset, Politics, privacy, Psychology, Sexuality and Gender, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , , ,

Trigger Warning: This post discusses my history as a survivor of separate instances of rape and sexual coercion.

 

Did Trump cheat on his wife with Stormy Daniels? Yes. Was it an affair? No. Does this matter? Absolutely, and I’ll explain why.

My venerable paper copy of the Random House Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged defines affair in this context as “an intense amorous relationship, usually of short duration.” Dictionary.com copies all the Random House definitions verbatim (it’s definition #6). Microsoft Word’s dictionary calls it “a sexual relationship between two people, one or both of whom are married to or in a long-term relationship with someone else.” The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as “a sexual relationship, especially a secret one.”

Note that all three definitions include “relationship” and the first says it has to be “intense” and “amorous.”

Daniels’ evening with Trump was not a relationship, and the amorousness went in only one direction. They had met casually and he’d asked her to have dinner with him. She says she accepted because her PR agent said it might be career-building and she did not have sex on her mind. Neither did he appear to at first, until she came back from the bathroom and found him on the bed, down to his undies. At best, it was a first date. At worst, it could be considered sexually harassing behavior.

It was not rape. Unlike the myriad of his other accusers, she never claimed that she didn’t consent. She consistently says that she was reluctant, was not enthusiastic, and felt so ashamed afterward that she was shaking as she got dressed again.

I would consider this interaction a coercive sexual encounter, if for no other reason than because of the power dynamics. One party is a rich and famous man in his late 50s, of towering (and intimidating) physical stature, with a bodyguard on the other side of the door. The other, a woman in her 20s and not overly familiar with the centers of power, is known only in a socially marginalized (though extremely popular) industry that has low credibility with mainstream media and mainstream morality.

He has all the power. And if she still has any illusions that he might help her career, she’s going to get on that bed even if she doesn’t really want to. For her, it was transactional; for him, it may have been notching a conquest or some kind of boost to his fragile ego. I can only speculate on his reasons, because despite the massive evidence, he denies the incident ever took place. 

I survived a rape, grabbed off the street by a stranger and dragged to a stairwell at age 10 or 11 (yes, it happens to boys—more of us than you probably think). I also survived a coercive sexual encounter at age 18 with a creepy 53-year-old man who’d made no secret of his desire to get into my pants. Like Stormy’s encounter with Trump, it was not rape because I was not in a position to withhold consent. And like that notorious encounter, it made me feel like total crap.

I had also, at that point, had a months-long actual affair with a man ten years older than me and several consensual one-nighters.

It’s not hard to tell the difference among these four types of encounters. The affair was mutual. It was delightful. It was a relationship. The consensual one-nighters were fun but did not lead to an ongoing relationship. For some of them, I wished it had continued—but that wasn’t the other person’s agenda.

The coerced encounter was not fun. It was unpleasant but in that moment I saw it as unavoidable. I have far more resources and communication skills these days and would handle it differently now, almost forty years later. While it was disgusting, it didn’t create long-term trauma. But the rape was traumatic, with consequences that lasted many decades and are not completely done yet. I couldn’t even bring myself to tell anyone for several years, and I never told my parents. It remains, after more than 50 years, the worst day of my life.

Neither being raped nor being coerced into sex is anything I would ever characterize as an affair. There is no relationship. There is not even any mutuality.

With this lens, with this history, you can understand why it has upset me since Daniels first went public that so many people who should know better, including many journalists, use the wrong term. Just the first results page from an Ecosia.org (tree-planting search engine) search for “stormy daniels affair” brought hits from the New York Times, BBC, NPR, NBC’s Chicago affiliate, and CNN. Now, with the trial verdict, it’s back in the news and I’m finally ready to call out these journalists. They are making it sound like love was involved, that these were two people who cared about it each other. But they didn’t.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Ethics: General, Mindset, People Helping People, Psychology, Uncategorized

Guest post by Bob Burg

[Editor’s Note: I’ve been a fan of Bob Burg since discovering  his “Winning WITHOUT Intimidation newsletter, about the power of being nice even when the other person isn’t, sometime in the mid’90s. He’s also known for “Endless Referrals” (how to network the right way)and the series of Go-Giver books. While he has discontinued that wonderful publication, he now offers a daily dose of inspiration called “Daily Impact,” which you can subscribe to by visiting https://burg.com/ , scrolling, and waiting for the pop-up subscription box. Being a fan for so long, I was delighted that Bob endorsed my most recent book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World. The rest of this post was taken from that newsletter and used with his graceful permission.

 

Bob Burg: The Surprising Benefits of This Powerful Trait

In his book, The Leadership Crisis And The Free Market Cure, retired longtime BB&T (now Truist) Chair & CEO, John Allison, defined “integrity” as “the harmony of mind and body,” asserting that, as a principle, it “guides us to act consistently with our beliefs.”

Notable: Named by Harvard Business Review as one of the decade’s top 100 most successful CEOs, Mr. Allison and BB&T refused to participate in the subprime lending calamity leading up to the 2007 financial meltdown, choosing to write only conventional mortgages. He stated that the decision, as opposed to the majority of his banking colleagues, was actually an easy one for him to make. Why? Because subprime mortgages were contrary to the principles upon which he and his bank stood, i.e., “making their profit through providing value to their clients.” And when the cards came crashing down, his bank was left standing, both in great reputation and immense profitability.

After a brief but brilliant explanation regarding how one cannot act with integrity if one’s values are either contradictory or not aligned with reality, Mr. Allison made what I felt was another profound point…

Important: “Many people view integrity as some form of duty. Integrity is not a duty. It is a means to improve the probability of being successful and happy.”

A powerful statement because…

Key Point: If one displays integrity *only* out of obligation to others, he or she cannot be truly happy. It’s only when one lives with integrity because it is congruent with their own values and how they wish to relate to the world that it can lead to happiness and personal fulfillment.

The *additional* benefit to living with integrity is that others respect you; they trust you more…and they are more likely to want to be in relationship with you (both personally and professionally).

Yes, living with integrity certainly makes you more *valuable* to those whose lives you touch and influence.

It affects *you,* however, on a much deeper level.

Because, when it comes right down to it…

End Result: It allows you to genuinely feel good about yourself and live with a sense of joy, peace of mind, and happiness.

And isn’t that how you want to feel and to live?

Today’s Exercise: Discuss the above premise (that integrity is about internal *self*-benefits first and external benefits second) with different groups of people: your team members, entrepreneurs, friends, your children, etc. See where the agreement and disagreement might be. Could make for some interesting conversations and deep-level thinking.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Diversity, Eco-friendly, Environmenl, Ethics: General, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, language, Mindset, People Helping People, Politics, poverty, Psychology, Sexuality and Gender, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

El Greco's painting of Jesus chasing the money changers out of the temple. Via Wikipedia.
El Greco’s painting of Jesus chasing the money changers out of the temple. Via Wikipedia.

There is a part of me that hopes the Republican Party nominates DeSantis, because when he loses the general election by a huge margin, it will be a repudiation of the entire loathsome cloak of hatred that DT and RDS both stand for. No one will be able to make a case that it was merely a rejection of DT’s criminal activity, egomania, lack of loyalty to those who stood by him, and/or incompetence.

While RDS shares and even exceeds DT’s vile politics, and has an equally thin skin, he at least appears to be rational and is not shadowed by a long list of personal scandals and accusations of criminality for personal benefit. The crimes he is accused of, such as breaking laws and misusing Florida tax dollars in deceiving immigrants to board planes from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, have been about his policies–like those of the equally creepy governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, who booby-trapped the Rio Grande to prevent an influx of immigrants, breaking maritime laws and hurting local businesses in the process.

I like to think–and maybe it’s a delusion–that the vast majority of US voters want no truck with either of these men’s open racism, homophobia/transphobia, self-defined “Christian” nationalism, xenophobia, attacks on women’s reproductive rights, love of guns more than the right not to be randomly shot, and all the rest of it.

Why do I put “Christian” in quotes? Because Christ, based on my reading of the Four Gospels, would have had no truck with their bigotry in His name. Christ’s morals were about helping the poor, the downtrodden, those disabled and ostracized because of disease. Christ threw the moneychangers and merchants–the apex capitalists of their era–out of the Temple. He blessed the peacemakers and the poor and the meek, rescued a woman about to be stoned to death for violating sexual mores, embraced people of other cultures–the Samaritans were a despised cultural group, so it was a big deal for him to talk about the Good Samaritan.

Contemporary right-wing bigots treat immigrants and refugees as subhuman, while Jesus proclaimed, “Welcome the stranger!” They demand an end to the slightest restrictions on guns, while Jesus preached nonviolence not just in offering the other cheek to an attacker who strikes your cheek, but condemning even thoughts of hating another.

If I were to flag every passage of Jesus living His life and preaching His truth in direct opposition to the intolerance, violence, and small-mindedness of these “Christians,” this post would go on for many pages. But the elevator-pitch version is simply this: If you call yourself a Christian and claim to follow the teachings of Jesus, you must be willing to accept and even celebrate values like peace, nonviolence, diversity, equality, respect for the natural environment, fair treatment of “the stranger” (immigrants, those of different races or ethnicities or gender orientation), and improving the lot of the poor and the ostracized.

And as an immigration justice, social justice, and environmental activist who has read the Gospels more than once even though I’m not a Christian, I welcome His allyship.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Business-general, Consumer Issues, Entrepreneurship, Ethics: General, General Commentary, Innovation, Technology, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , , , , , ,

Here’s the secret, buried in technobabble within this report written by an engineer at Google: the monopolists have already lost! You don’t have to understand all the jargon to get the point: Today’s chat universe is already out from under the grip of corporate control. And it isn’t going back into the box. The report compares Google with Open AI (a major for-profit competitor and the creator of ChatGPT) and with new open-source chat and AI (artificial intelligence) tools. The report concludes that the open source tools are faster, more nimble, and much faster to deploy and train, despite far less access to resources than projects at companies like Google and Microsoft:

Open-source models are faster, more customizable, more private, and pound-for-pound more capable. They are doing things with $100 and 13B params  [13 billion parameters] that we struggle with at $10M and 540B. And they are doing so in weeks, not months.

This has enormous ramifications in every aspect of society. Private profit will not be a driver toward centralization of control and limiting who can play. And that will drive enormous innovation, in ways that I at least can’t yet imagine,  let alone describe. Some of it will be monetizable, just as Red Hat monetized an open source operating system (Linux) and Google has monetized its no-charge search engine. But almost none of it will be controllable.

If you’re an investor, know that you can’t buy your way into control–but you can invest in promising developments that will leapfrog to higher good on the basis of freebie systems. And knowing that going in,  you’re much less likely to get burned. You won’t, for instance, make the enormous mistake that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp did when it bought MySpace (at the time, the dominant proprietary social network), spending $580 million on something that became relatively worthless as soon as Facebook began to hit its stride; News Corp sold it just six years later, to Justin Timberlake, for a mere $35 million. That was a loss of more than half a billion dollars.

Let’s look at a few examples of how public intellectual property has impacted us in the past:

Where might it take us next? I’m not a futurist and I won’t get super-specific, but I do see a few general trends likely to arise from this:

  • Just as  TV and Internet have converged, so will AI and 3D printing: a combination that will revolutionize tangible goods  with innovations in design, manufacturing, and localization
  • AI could lead to the next miniaturization revolution, making it easier to do things like holographically project keyboards and maybe even monitors that make it possible to use watch-sized computers and phones a lot more easily
  • With the right protocols in place, AI could do a lot of basic research and interpretation of the data o that students could concentrate on learning concepts and following them down unexpected paths to create new concepts–OR, without those protocols, it could be used to reduce learning to something meaningless
  • In a perfect world–and we can help it become more perfect–AI can help us understand and solve our most pressing problems. It could turn us from linear to circular resource use, where every output becomes not waste, but something a different process could use. It could redistribute food, housing, and shelter (and other resources) so everyone has enough and no one has 5 million times too much, using only natural materials, generating zero waste, using zero net energy, and creating zero pollution.

Regardless of how it turns out, expect any sector you’re in–for example, agriculture, manufacturing, distribution, transportation, services, tech, creative arts, nonprofit, academia, government, military, or whatever–expect your world to turn upside down.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Activism, Consumer Issues, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Ethics: General, General Commentary, Innovation, language, Mindset, Networking, People Helping People, Politics, Psychology, Science, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice, Technology, travel Tagged with , , ,

I just came across a query letter I wrote in 2020. It raises a lot of questions that are still very much worth asking—and attempting to answer.

Globe showing various crises around the world
How some people view the world—Opportunity for businesses that genuinely care



In many ways, these questions were easier to answer back then. Unfortunately, as a society, we missed the window to create those kinds of sweeping changes when the active threat of Covid made them easier—but we can still make the effort. We can still transform society, our relationship with other beings, and the planet in our own lifetime. It’ll just take more effort.

Here’s the relevant section of what I wrote back then (I’ve removed a long paragraph with my credentials, as well as my closing.)—and I’d love to get your comments:

Hi, there, 

As an experienced journalist and award-winning, best-selling ten-book author with several books on social enterprise as a profit center, I propose an article, Leveraging the Great Pivot: How COVID-19 Creates Long-Term Post-Pandemic Opportunities for Racial Justice, Economic Advancement, and Environmental Healing. Probably in the 1500-2500 word range.

The premise: For decades, activists have been told we can’t fix the crushing problems of our time, like hunger, poverty, racism, war, catastrophic climate change, etc. Yet, starting in early 2020, the entire world pivoted and everything changed. As education, many types of business, and even cultural events shifted online or reinvented themselves, we learned how resilient, adaptable, and creative we are. And that process created opportunities that could never have happened in the pre-pandemic world. 

These massive global, national, regional, and local shifts prove we can reinvent the world as the place we really want to live in–and we can replicate the shift in other areas. As a society, we have to do this pivot strategically, and it has to involve many sectors: government, nonprofits, activists, community organizations, academia—and the business community. 

Just look at how the massive expansion of the racial justice movement since May has changed perceptions around the US and around the world. And that’s one small piece of a big multi-issue cauldron of solution-driven thinking and activism; a lot of good work is going into solving those big crises, as well as protecting our fragile democracy. 
The question is: pivot to what?

Could health care coverage be shifted away from employers so the next time an emergency shuts hundreds of thousands of businesses, their laid-off employees don’t lose their safety net? Could this be the US’s chance to adopt the single-payer model most of the rest of the world uses? And to shift from treating the sick’s symptoms to maintaining wellness across the population so fewer people get sick in the first place? Can this be the moment to finally get away from fossil and nuclear, to combine clean renewable energy with massive systemic conservation so we’re no longer squandering our children’s heritage polluting and carbonizing our planet while depleting scarce resources? Is it time for decent affordable housing to be seen as a right? What are the best ways to create more housing that also protect the environment, create pleasant yet affordable neighborhoods, and avoid negative consequences like urban sprawl?

We can ask similar questions in every sector: criminal justice, job creation, transportation and shipping (moving both people and things), replacing armed conflict with peaceful conflict resolution, ensuring a pluralistic society that honors both its majorities and minorities, etc.

After four years of Trump and a year of COVID, it won’t be enough to go back to the “normal” of 2019, or even of 2015. But with the pandemic comes the luxury and responsibility of critically examining every aspect of society. We need to figure out what the goal of every institution is–and how to achieve or surpass that goal as we rebuild. Just as many developing countries skipped landlines and clunky desktop computers and went straight to smartphones, we need to ask questions like:

  • What are we *really* trying to accomplish?
  • Is this the best way to meet that goal?
  • How could we improve it?
  • How could we make it more inclusive?

Then we brainstorm with these ends in mind, using a seven-step process that opens up new thinking and lets us implement new solutions.
To make this concrete, think about spending millions of R&D dollars to create a pen that can write in zero-gravity. But the real goal isn’t to have a pen that can write in space—that’s a means to an end. The real goal is to be able to write in space. And suddenly, with that framing, the solution is obvious: use pencils—or computers! Maybe you create a pencil lead that can make a darker, easier to read impression, create a Velcro mount for your device so it doesn’t go flying across the cabin, or make other little tweaks—but you’ve accomplished the basic goal, with resources you already have.
Business has a vested interest in reinventing itself, as dozens of industries were rendered obsolete, as supply chain issues showed up unexpectedly, and as those sectors that strengthened and grew had to adapt. Small businesses can survive and even thrive, but not as it was in 2019. Whether a manufacturer switches from making luxury goods to PPE or a retailer learns how to blend online and (protected) in-person approaches, pretty much everyone has to pivot. Why not seize the opportunity to have that reinvention foster racial, gender, and class equity…green the planet while creating jobs…match product introduction and production not to advertising-created materialism but to solving real needs and getting paid for it?
In the activist world, meetings that might have had 10 local people in a room can now draw 500 from around the world—and provide digital tools to mobilize action, such as Spoke, a texting platform that can allow volunteers to send 1000 or more text messages an hour and respond individually and personally when someone replies.
 In my own professional development this year, from the comfort of my own home, I’ve attended dozens of far-away events. Some had hundreds or thousands of attendees from dozens of countries (among them a worldwide UN conference, multiple 50th-anniversary celebrations of Earth Day, and gatherings on more niched topics such as the special situation of Jews of color). I could not have afforded the time and money to go to so many conferences, and several times, they’ve overlapped. But I was able to participate in more than one at a time, or listen to what I’d missed on replay. I’ve also participated in some thinking and brainstorming calls from widely scattered groups of thinkers and researchers working on global solutions to these and other problems. As somewhat more exciting examples, local cultural performers with no previous broader following are finding global audiences—and the sound technicians who can replace awful-sounding Zoom calls with concert-quality production are keeping busy.

Even on the personal side, some of the restrictions can be reframed as empowerment—just as we can think of a wheelchair user not as “confined to a wheelchair,” but “liberated with a wheelchair,” because it allows that user to go places that would otherwise be off-limits. My wife and I hosted a Passover Seder with family and friends from three generations and 9 different states from Massachusetts to California–most of whom would never have come in person.

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