Category: Psychology

By Posted on Posted in Activism, censorship, Democracy, Diversity, Ethics in Government, Mindset, People Helping People, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Heather Cox Richardson reported today that Elon Musk publicly called Alexander Vindman a traitor and accused him of being on Ukraine’s payroll. If Vindman’s name sounds familiar, is because of his earlier heroism, disclosing Donald Trump’s attempt to blackmail Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Vindman struck right back:

“Elon, here you go again making false and completely unfounded accusations without providing any specifics,” Vindman posted back. “That’s the kind of response one would expect from a conspiracy theorist. What oligarch? What treason?

“Let me help you out with the facts: I don’t take/have never taken money from any money from oligarchs Ukrainian or…otherwise.

“I do run a nonprofit foundation. The HereRightMattersFoundation.org to help Ukraine defend itself from Russia’s unprovoked attack on Feb 24, 2022. I served in the military for nearly 22 years and my loyalty is to supporting the U.S. Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. That’s why I reported presidential corruption when I witnessed an effort to steal an election. That report was in classified channels and when called by Congress to testify about presidential corruption I did so, as required by law.

“You, Elon, appear to believe you can act with impunity and are attempting to silence your critics. I’m not intimidated.”

Let’s make it perfectly clear: Vindman is taking enormous personal risks. Trump is an admirer of Vladimir Putin, and an awful lot of Putin’s enemies “wake up dead.”

I’m not accusing Trump of killing his adversaries. But he has made it abundantly clear that he will use the entire power and might of the US government to go after his perceived enemies. And he has shown repeatedly that he has no loyalty to anyone other than himself, that everything is transactional with him, and that he doesn’t place a value on things like truth, functional government, or policies that benefit ordinary working- and middle-class people. So at the very least, Vindman faces risks of imprisonment, financial losses, tax audits, and more.

But Vindman understands something Trump’s and Musk’s apologists either don’t realize or don’t care about. When you give in to threats, you enable bullies and thugs to push for even more power and status. When you grovel at their feet, you empower them. And when you stand up to them, especially if you are putting yourself at risk, they shrink. They withdraw. They lose status.

Vindman is denying Musk, and by extension Trump, the power to make him voluntarily capitulate.

And meanwhile, when we see someone bullying someone, especially if the victim is showing fear, we are not powerless. We can intervene. If we know of people caught in immigration roundups or arrested as dissidents, we can bring visibility, tell the media, organize support. There are many resources and trainings to help with this. The important thing is to show the bullies that we do not approve and will not cooperate, that we will nonviolently defend the defenseless and withdraw support from the power structure.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Ethics in Government, Innovation, Mindset, People Helping People, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , ,

Largely missing from the wailing and lamentation and finger-pointing over the US election result is the enormous non-electoral-politics based resistance. Yes, it’s true that Trump not only won but has at least temporary control over both Houses of Congress and a majority of the Supreme Court and several appellate courts. Yes, it’s true that the next few years will be very ugly and will cause a lot of pain. But there’s still hope.

I’ve been on many “what-do-we-do-now?” calls since the election. Organizing is going on at hundreds of organizations, mobilizing tens of thousands of people. I was on one call organized by 200 organizations (including major players like MoveOn and Public Citizen) that drew an astounding 140,000 registrants.

In the era before most people had Internet access or a cell phone, and long before COVID forced us to develop new ways of organizing, Gene Sharp listed 198 different nonviolent resistance tactics, grouped under three umbrella categories: nonviolent protest and persuasion, social/economic/political noncooperation, and nonviolent intervention. We can certainly add at least 100 that have been developed since. Here’s an example that I just saw this week:

Restaurant receipt that has a printed note, circled: "Immigrants make America great. They also grew, cooked, and served your food today."
A restaurant uses its receipts to point out three relevant ways immigrants make the country great.

 

 

And during the pandemic, I participated in various actions that were designed to create a visible public presence without exposing people to the germs of strangers. One that I especially remember was a parade of decorated cars, each with only one or two people but taking up more than half a mile of contiguous and mobile visibility as it snaked through town (accompanied by lots of horn honking and shouting, of course). As a USArian, I see the Left in this country as far better organized than we were in 2016-17. I also see Trump as physically and mentally diminished, unable to even stay awake during his own criminal trial. People mobilized in huge numbers back then and were able to curb some of the worst aspects of Trumpism. And, by withdrawing institutional and personal support from institutions that betray the populace, while at the same time building our own institutions to replace the flawed ones (think food co-ops as alternatives to agribiz-oriented huge national supermarket chains, credit unions, community banks, and local currencies instead of big national banks, homeschooling networks for kids who don’t fit in at public school…) we can continue our resistance.

Even within the very government he will control, there is resistance. Already, we’ve seen the Republican Senate refusing to abdicate its oversight on Trump’s appointment—and his ridiculous, unqualified nominations will strengthen the resolve of every Republican Senator who actually cares about the country (which I believe, is most of them) to use their power of advice and consent. And career employees at many government agencies are refusing to cooperate with Trump’s transition team until Trump and his appointees sign the standard ethics disclosures.

Unfortunately, the Right is also better organized AND has a lot more sitting judges and Justices who have shown alarming willingness to make policy up out of old bandaids and spider webs–certainly not based on precedent. BUT the Right is in the unenviable position of pushing wildly unpopular policies, supporting a president who has no understanding of real policy impact, constantly changes his mind, and demands absolute loyalty—or putting their own power and positions at risk by opposing him—and at the same time attempting to keep government functional, bring government money back to their districts, etc.

Someone pointed out that Gaetz’s withdrawal (which also potentially lowers the House majority, as do Trump’s other nominations of sitting members of Congress) had a lot to do with citizen outrage AND Trump overreach in trying to bypass the confirmation process. To me, the important takeaway is that we still have power and we can still make a difference as long as we don’t preemptively abandon the effort. It will be a give-and-take. It will be very hard to live in the US for the next few years, but there will be active nonviolent response, resistance, and resilience. And yes, we will face many defeats, and real people will be hurt. But we already have victories to celebrate (not just Gaetz but the passage of reproductive rights in seven states—four of which voted for Trump—and election of progressive judges in several traditionally conservative states, plus several unexpected Congressional victories). And we will have many more victories down the line.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Consumer Issues, Democracy, Diversity, Mindset, Networking, People Helping People, Politics, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , ,
As the dust begins to settle and people are able to make room for action steps on the bench where our grief sits, and as I have been reading and listening and participating in several what-do-we-do now calls, I’m beginning to regain some faith in this country.

Wednesday morning, it felt like Donald Trump’s victory was all about rejection of the idea of a strong woman of color as president. I knew all along that this could motivate at least a quarter of the electorate, which is in fact pretty damn horrific. But on Wednesday morning, it felt like I had wildly underestimated that.
But I actually don’t think that’s true. The buzz is really about economic voters. Somehow, a whole lot of people bought into the idea that Trump could manage the economy better than Harris.
This is not based in fact, but as we all know, facts don’t always lead to conclusions and actions based on them.
Trump is really good at propaganda in the worst sense of the word. He blames his enemies for things he has done, makes promises he has no intention of keeping, and somehow gets people to believe he has all the answers.
Inflation hit the Democrats really hard in this election. That we had less of it in the post-COVID recovery than pretty much any other industrialized country didn’t matter to the people who felt like they were paying twice as much in the grocery store or at the gas pump.
The gas pump part is really odd to me. For the last 6 weeks or so, I have been buying gas at less than $3 a gallon here in Massachusetts. That was certainly not true in the Trump years. But inflation is real! Housing, especially, has gone way up. And with supply chain and labor shortages as we emerged from the pandemic, prices on a lot of other things went up. We had lower inflation and more job creation under Biden than any other industrialized country, but it was still grim for those who had to figure out how to keep their families fed and sheltered.
The Democrats didn’t do a sufficient job of pointing out that they have taken major steps to let people’s buying power keep up with inflation, not least by creating an economy that provided more jobs than any president I can ever remember. And Trump was able to capitalize on this.
Harris had some really good economic proposals that would create even more jobs while cleaning the environment and reducing our carbon footprint. Expect a lot of those jobs to go away as prompt dismantles the programs that put them into place. Expect prices to soar as he puts his anti-consumer tariff policies into place. Predictions from economists all over the spectrum put that hit at about $4,000 of extra costs to the typical family each year, and higher prices as businesses struggle to replace the workers–essential to our economy–who Trump deports. Unless you are a billionaire, expect higher taxes to pay for the massive amount of incarceration and deportation. Those things are not cheap! Expect further giveaways to those who already have far more than their share while the middle class and the poor suffer tax increases and service cutbacks. He may think he is president for life, but if there is the chance to vote again, and if he is still in office by then (which I doubt), he will be a one-termer again.
This still doesn’t explain the disturbing phenomenon of a 13 million drop in the number of people who voted for a Democrat for president this time despite the lunacy that obviously awaits us under Trump. But it does at least make me think that people were voting on their economic self-interest as they perceived it, rather than a desire to roll back the clock on human rights inequality. And make no mistake, human rights and equality will be on the chopping block.
But here’s something that gives me a lot of hope. Wednesday and Thursday, I attended four different calls about how we move forward and how we work to block the worst parts of Trump’s agenda. These calls were exciting and hugely attended. The one I went to yesterday had 140,000 registrants. If I’m not mistaken, that makes it the largest conference I’ve ever attended and one of the largest events I’ve been to in my 67 years, other than a few really huge public demonstrations with 800,000 to a million people. I’m attending another one this afternoon, much more niched. I imagine there will be a few thousand on that call.
Remember that we have lived through bad times before. We lived through Joe McCarthy, Nixon, Reagan, Bush II, and Trump I. We lived through slavery and wars. And now, with the benefit of all the organizing of 2017, 2020, and 2024, we are prepared for action. The actions will be non-violent and effective. The Democratic Party structure is involved. Harris’s concession speech was a brilliant call to stay involved, to get back into the trenches. To recognize that we have power and that our power is not based only on who wins an election.
And how will you get involved?
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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Ethics in Government, Media Ethics, media-general, Politics, propaganda, Psychology, Publishing, Sexuality and Gender Tagged with , , , , ,

I am asking myself two questions in the wake of Tuesday’s election results.

1. Why did so many people stay home? Why, despite a bazillion new registrations, despite enormous enthusiasm at every public appearance, despite a roster of endorsements the like of which I’ve never seen before did 13 million fewer people vote for Harris then did for Biden 4 years ago?

2. And why did 72 million people vote for a convicted felon who tells thousands of demonstrable lies, who based his entire campaign on hatred, othering, retribution, and the promise of fascism, and who was increasingly incoherent, physically exhausted, and obviously mentally unstable as the campaign went on?

I have a ton of respect for journalists. I trained to be one. But under the rubric of “journalistic objectivity” and pressure from owners who are more interested in ratings than reality, they had a lot of constraints covering this election. And thus I think at least part of the answer lies in a third question: why did the mainstream media consistently have a double standard of coverage: refusing to hold Trump accountable as they were doing first with Biden and then with Harris?

First, they went after Biden, even before his disastrous debate with Trump. “Isn’t he too old?” “What about inflation?” I even remember a shockingly biased Washington Post newsletter with a graph comparing Biden’s age at the end of a second term to Trump’s age at the beginning of one. So suddenly the three and a half year age gap looked like seven and a half years. Wtf?

And then after the debate, enormous pressure for Biden to step down. I do think he had become compromised and stepping down was the right decision. It was pretty clear within a couple of weeks that the debate was not a one-off (as it had first appeared) but a pattern that was emerging more frequently. He wasn’t up to the job for another 4 years and to his credit, and unlike his opponent, he stepped away to make room for a younger generation.

But then came the attacks on his replacement. “Why won’t she meet with us?” “How come they aren’t going to run the primaries again?” “Why doesn’t she release policy statements?” “Does she have the gravitas to be president?”

That would have been fine if they were asking the same questions of Trump. Not only were they not pressuring him to go into details on policy, but they accepted his softball interviews in front of Trump-supporting audiences venues like Fox News as an adequate substitute for actual journalistic interviews.

More worrisome was the normalization of Trump as a legitimate candidate. Where were they when it was time to question Trump’s gravitas—or his competence? As Harris herself noted, he is “an unserious man” in a position to do serious damage. The cadre of media that was so quick to jump on every little stammer of Biden’s not only tried to paper over Trump’s increasingly incoherent and delusional speeches, even on several occasions translating the nonsense into what he might have said if he had been talking in comprehensible English. They also papered over the genuine threats to democracy in the vague policy outlines he did provide and the much more detailed proposals from the project 2025 blueprint. His lack of gravitas showed again as he lackadaisically attempted to disavow in the face of evidence that his fingerprints and those of people close to him were all over it. And Vance? Vance has so little gravitas after just two years in the Senate that he whined the one time in his debate that he was fact-checked—after making up completely false and very damaging lies about immigrants eating their neighbors’ pets, as he himself admitted later.

There wasn’t even much hand wringing when Trump skipped out on future debates after Harris wiped the floor with him in their sole formal pairing. And then he skipped out on promised interviews with real media, who acquiesced.

And there was surprisingly little examination of his character until just a few weeks before the election. Where was the focus on his 34 criminal convictions, his liability in civil court for raping and defaming, the other 60 or so criminal felony counts that didn’t get to go to trial and now probably never will, the literally tens of thousands of lies he told before, during, and since his term in office, his authoritarian tendencies, his blatant narcissism and personal cruelty, and his totally transactional view of the world in which everything has to be a way for him to make money, gain status or power, and/or build his personal brand or else he is not interested. That this sociopath was treated as a normal candidate will be a shame on the media for decades to come.

And then there is Fox! I used to be a free speech absolutist. But free speech absolutism only works when there is a common core of decency that everyone respects, some minimum standards for reporting. The filth that was spewed by their commentators, the disgusting and completely false advertisements they were airing, and the way they shielded their audience from any negative news about Trump should disqualify them from any legitimate role as press. This of course is not new and has been going on since it was founded—but it has now reached extremes and probably has a lot to do with why certain sectors of the population voted for Trump against their own interests.

I happened to be at a restaurant one night that was airing a baseball playoff on Fox. They showed one Trump commercial accusing Harris of immigration positions she has never taken and policies that did not exist. I happen to know a thing or two about immigration issues. It has been the focus of my activism since spring 2019. This ad was so blatantly false that it made me wonder why it is even legal to air it. After all, a candidate who is attacked has no way to respond. Those messages go out into the ether unchallenged, whether or not they’re based in fact. Only when the Fairness Doctrine was eliminated in the Reagan era did Fox become even possible. And maybe it’s time for real-time fact checking to be standard operating procedure for any political debate.

We don’t have room in this article to explore WHY this biased coverage happened. But unconscious OR conscious othering (ageism, racism, sexism, bias against physical disabilities such as Biden’s stutter) just might have been a factor, don’tcha think?

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Environment, Ethics in Government, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Mindset, People Helping People, Politics, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Sexuality and Gender, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , ,

As I was waking up this morning at 5:47 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, the New York Times was calling the election for Donald Trump. And when I checked a few minutes later, I literally burst into tears. I am not much of a crier but I feel upset, betrayed, a stranger in my own country.

It is going to be the worst presidency in the history of our country. This lying, thieving, predatory thug is going to do his worst to reverse all our hard-fought progress. Expect devastating attacks on:

  • The environment and the movement to reverse catastrophic climate change
  • The rights of immigrants, LGBTQ folks, people with disabilities, people of color, people who do not identify as Christian
  • Women’s reproductive freedom, and potentially even women’s place in modern society
  • Independent media featuring honest reporting
  • Low-income wage workers
  • Labor unions
  • And of course, democracy and personal freedom

But we can’t give up!

We have 2 months to organize a nationwide nonviolent resistance movement. We have four years to do what we can to clog up the evil work this man will try to do. We have been here before, in the 1850s, in the 1960s, and in the 1980s, to name three. We have resisted and we have survived. Never underestimate our collective power but never take it for granted either. Some of us may find ourselves organizing from  prison or exile. But we can still organize.
Study and train in non-violent resistance. Follow people like Stephen Zunes, Erica Chenoweth, George Lakey, the long list of people who organized Standing Rock, the shrinking list of people who were active in the many-headed nonviolent revolution that brought us the civil rights, get out of Vietnam, modern feminist, and environmental movements, and whose (figurative as well as literal) children and grandchildren have been active in stopping carnage in Palestine and elsewhere. That is our future, that is our hope, and that is our call to action. We do not give up and we are not going back! Even if our government is.
You may thing that nonviolent resistance doesn’t work. But you would be mistaken. Nonviolent struggles are slow but they do work. Historicallty, they’ve worked better than violent revolutions. On multiple occasions, they’ve brought down govenments.
One lesson I take away from this is it proves that yes, the perfect is the enemy of the good. I am totally shocked that 15 million fewer people voted for Kamala Harris then for Biden 4 years ago. It was about people staying home or voting third-party. That is the only way I can understand the huge drop between Biden’s 81 million 4 years ago and Harris’s 66 million. That’s where the election went.
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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Demographics/Psychographics, language, Marketing Trends/News, Mindset, Politics, propaganda, Psychology Tagged with , , ,

Relax and take some deep breaths. Get time in nature and in physical exercise. And think about these truths:

  1. Just forget about the polls. They self-acknowledge that when an election is as they all seem to think it is, the margin of error is greater than the projected margin of victory. In other words, each state they forecast could go either way.
  2. Judge more by both the magnitude and demographics of early voting. 76 million people have voted ahead, even though society has recovered from the pandemic that created a huge wave of early voting four years ago. Women and youth are very prominent in these early returns, and that bodes well for the Democrats.
  3. Remember that we will probably not know the results Tuesday night and maybe not for a few days, because all these early votes have to be added into the tabulating machines and some states don’t allow that until after the polls close—and because really close races will trigger recounts (by hand, in some places). The only exception would be if the votes are so overwhelmingly in one direction that adding in the early votes won’t change the results. And that’s not likely in the seven swing states that will determine the winner. So don’t get anxious because the result can’t be called yet. That’s normal.
  4. As the campaign has progressed, so has enthusiasm for Harris, including endorsements from not just A-list celebrities with enormous followings but also many former Trump staffers. Meanwhile, facing diminishing crowds, lots of empty seats, and people leaving early, Trump continues to deliberately alienate large sectors of the electorate with his hatreds, vindictiveness, name calling—and rambling narratives that simply don’t make any sense. And not only is Trump’s mental acuity seemingly on a rapid decline, so is his vaunted physical strength. He had trouble opening the door of that garbage truck that he rode (he was in the passenger seat, so no, he didn’t drive it) around the airport tarmac).

So those are some of the reasons why you shouldn’t waste energy fretting about the result until we know the result. And by then, I’m hoping we’ll have something to celebrate. Last month, I blogged ten reasons why I think Harris will win. My analysis has gotten validation from a number of sources, among them Michael Moore and Rachel Bitecofer. One day before the election, and after spending four weekend afternoons knocking on doors in a swing state, I remain calm and optimistic.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Demographics/Psychographics, language, localism/locavore, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, Mindset, Networking, People Helping People, Politics, Psychology Tagged with , , , , , , ,

I just came across a 20-something marketing genius who is not in the business of business. He’s the Democratic Party Chair for Mecklenburg County, North Carolina (Charlotte and environs). His job is to make sure Democrats vote on or before November 5, 2024.

Regardless of your politics, you can learn a lot from Drew Kromer in this 22-minute interview with Substack pundits Robert Hubbell and Jessica Craven. A few of my takeaways:

  • Understand your market, deeply. Kromer knows that his market is the roughly 500,000 registered Democrats in his county–and especially the huge subset that doesn’t tend to vote.
  • Craft your messaging as a win-win. To get his army of 5000 volunteers(!!!), Kromer didn’t say, “please come out and canvas, work your butt off in all sorts of weather, get doors slammed in your face” or even “come out and canvas, for the future of the country and to protect democracy.” I’ve canvassed for candidates and ballot initiatives, and I’ve experienced both of those His pitch was, ‘Hey, we’re having a party and it’s really close to where you live, come on out, have a good time, and meet neighbors who share your values’ (single quote marks because I’m paraphrasing).
  • Deploy resources where they do the most good. Kromer’s fundraising went into staff on the ground, a far more effective allocation than TV ads, which will not reach the typical unmotivated Gen Z voter who doesn’t consume much if any broadcast TV. A good ground game, where people are listening and talking and interacting with potential voters, is far more effective.
  • Keep the bigger vision in mind. Kromer says that if Democrats win his county, they win North Carolina. And if they win NC, they win the race. He shared his vision of a commentator on Election Night, having the results come in, saying on-air “What the hell happened in Mecklenburg,” and calling both the state and the nation for the Dems.
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By Posted on Posted in Democracy, Ethics in Government, language, Marketing Trends/News, Politics, propaganda, Psychology, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , ,

…They claim the Dems are undemocratic because Kamala didn’t become the presidential nominee through primaries? What hypocrites!

Here’s what to tell MAGA folks when they start kvetching that Biden got 14 million votes in the primaries while Kamala got none:

  1. 81 MILLION people (almost 6 times as many as Biden’s primary votes) voted for Kamala Harris when she ran for Vice President in 2020 (and that same 14 million who voted for Biden this year also voted for her again in the Democratic primaries)—and the entire electorate will get to vote on this very shortly.
  2. She has Biden’s (and both Obamas’ and both Clintons’) strong endorsement as well as pretty much every major non-MAGA politician from AOC and Bernie on the left to Liz Cheney, her father the former VP, and conservative columnist George Will along with a bunch of former Trump senior staffers on the right—precisely BECAUSE Trump presents an existential threat to democracy.
  3. She got endorsements from practically every delegate pledged to Biden once he withdrew.
  4. The whole idea of HAVING a VP is to have a mechanism in place if the president can’t continue. Listing them in reverse chronological order, LBJ, Harry Truman, Calvin Coolidge, Teddy Roosevelt,  Chester Arthur, Andrew Johnson, Millard Fillmore, and John Tyler all became president without ANYONE voting them into that office. They were sitting VPs when the president died. If people feel that Kamala’s nomination was unfairly undemocratic, they have the option not to vote for her on November 5.
  5. MAGA people are opening quite the can of worms by bringing up undemocratic attitudes. Because THEIR guy is super-vulnerable on this. Not only has Trump openly stated he wants to be a dictator but his speeches are jam-packed with attacks on minority groups, calls for retribution against his enemies, endorsements of other dictators including Orban, Xi, Putin, and Kim among others, not to mention endorsing the savage but fictional cannibal Hannibal Lecter. Project 2025, which Trump falsely claims to know nothing about, is a roadmap for overthrowing democracy—created with help from more than 140 past and  present Trump employees and naming Trump numerous times. And that is just one of his tens of thousands of documented lies (30,573 just during his time as president, 162 in a single recent so-called press conference that did not take actual on-the-fly questions and did not subject him to being in the same room with his hand-picked panel). Agenda 47, which Trump does endorse and which the GOP has adopted as this year’s platform, sounds an awful lot like a simplified, less detailed Project 2025.
  6. And Trump not only has an extremely undemocratic record in his four years as president, a lot of the guardrails that kept him at least somewhat in check have been taken away—starting with the loony Supreme Court decision that found a president can not be held accountable for any action that was taken in his role as president.
  7. Finally, do we even need to mention that sore loser Trump is the ONLY US president who refused to hand over power peacefully at the end of his term, who incited a riot in a vain (and in-vain) attempt to incite a coup, who filed roughly 60 lawsuits to overturn the will of the people, many of which were tossed out by judges he had appointed? And, of course, he’s the only US president to be charged with 94 felonies and to be found guilty of 34 of them in the one trial that has taken place so far, not to mention held liable for $454 MM in the aftermath of just one of many suits against him for slanders and credible allegations of abusing women.
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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Branding, Consumer Issues, Democracy, Diversity, Ethics in Government, General Commentary, Innovation, language, Media Ethics, media-general, Mindset, People Helping People, Politics, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , ,

Ever since Biden withdrew, reporters have been kvetching that they have a hard time finding out Kamala Harris’s policy positions. This is a very dubious claim, considering she has a website, she gave a broad outline of several polices in a much-viewed speech at the Democratic Convention and regularly repeats those themes in many speeches around the country.

But I’m not here to chastise lazy journalists but to give them another great place to find her policy statements:

Kamala Harris gave a truly remarkable interview to three very tough questioners at the National Association of Black Journalists. It is so rare to see a forum of this type where the journos actually let the interviewee answer at length and with depth.

And Kamala was really impressive—not just because she gave smart and detailed answers, not just because she continues to make every appearance about uplifting everyday people—but because she takes a holistic view that has not been obvious to me in the sound-bite journalism that all-too-often passes for news. This interview makes it clear that she understands root causes, unintended consequences, and the interrelatedness of multiple issues (intersectionality, in other words).

In a campaign where one candidate makes a fetish of putting others down, vowing retribution against perceived enemies, lying his way through life, and never taking responsibility for his criminal actions or dangerous policies, where everything is only about how he personally will benefit, it’s refreshing to discover that his opponent is a deeply systemic thinker who has crafted action plans that will help ordinary people while she continues to undo the damage that Trump inflicted on this country. Biden has made good progress on undoing that damage, but we still have a long way to go. I am convinced that Harris will carry that water for us.

I was especially moved by her answers on Gaza, on the race-baiting of Springfield, Ohio’s Haitian community, and on making progress on the US’s massive problem of gun violence. But the whole thing is so worth watching that I posted it not just to my Facebook feed but also LinkedIn and several of my Facebook groups.

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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.

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