Cheeto Mussolini & the Magic Sharpie vs. the Notorious RBG

I woke up before the alarm this morning, wracked with anxiety. RBG’s passing last Friday, may her memory always be a blessing, has thrown so much more doubt into an already doubtful time. I don’t think many people, myself included, understood viscerally what she stood for, all she had done, and what a bulwark she was … and how much we were depending on her.

Honestly, she reminded me of my mom, seemingly able to absorb every blow and come back fighting… until her frail body just couldn’t take it anymore.

Now with McConnell and Trump working as hard as we knew they would to fill her seat with an anti-RBG, to all intents and purposes, their motivations and lies are laid bare.

For all those who think they want an a world without all that Libtard shit, 40 hour work weeks, weekends off, osha protections, the ACA, a functional CDC, environmental regulations, clean water, freedom to live that “gay lifestyle” (including marrying the one you love, working without fear of being fired, and other “minor” considerations), women’s rights to have a credit card or mortgage without a co-signer, to take birth control without consent of her partner, not lose her job just because she gets pregnant, to have an abortion, equal rights for black people and people of color, trans-rights, and so many other things we have come to enjoy and count on.

The list is voluminous, but the point is that she worked for us all.

The amount of damage our institutions, norms, and laws have sustained under Cheeto Mussolini and his Magic Sharpie in not even 4 years is amazing … unthinkable is how much more he will be able to do with his packed courts and a win in November. Nothing that we have known is safe, especially if you aren’t white or male or straight or Christian.

These movements are like an ever-tightening circular firing squad, with continuous purity testing. It happened in the French Revolution, it happened in Nazi Germany, it’s happening with Trump. As the Dear Leader gets bored or tired or disaffected with a given person, they get tossed aside and the circle gets smaller and the purity tests get harder to pass.

And the faith that so many had in our institutions is now recognized as a false hope. Certainly, those loyal to the rule of law and the constitution remain, but the agencies have been co-opted and corrupted by Trump. The CDC, DOJ, USPS, have all been Trumpified to some level or another… and many other agencies as well.

The rule of law and the constitution are only as strong as our collective belief in the ideals they represent. This includes our elections. Trump has been sowing doubt about the elections, which have been a sterling hallmark of our country since its inception, especially as the franchise has expanded… and now that founding principle is thrown into doubt. He has successfully brainwashed his minions into believing that voting by mail is fraudulent, even though, according to former Republican strategist Rick Wilson, absentee voting has long been the “secret sauce” the GOP used to help secure wins in states like Florida.

And now, tonight, Trump made his plan clear… pack to the Supreme Court with a 9^th justice favorable and (most likely beholden) to him and refuse to accept any election results. Then he will use that favorable supreme court to throw out all mail-in ballots and declare the election null and void so he can just continue on. That’s it. That is the plan.

And the Democrats, after years of bringing tea sets to gun fights, are finally waking up to fact that the old norms and rules were scrapped long ago. Unfortunately, while they were clutching their pearls, and sending scolding letters to Republicans, the playbook fundamentally changed and they have been stripped of many powers. Additionally, they refuse to use the powers that they do, such has the subpoena & contempt powers of the House. It’s just not decorous, it’s not bipartisan, it’s not seemly…. “here have a cup of tea… and be careful not to get it on your lace gloves.” It’s also way past time trying to shame the shameless.

The Democrats have got to get it through their heads that the tea set needs to stay at Grandma’s house, and while dropping it off, they should grab Grandpa’s shotgun. As former Congressman Joe Walsh said on his Monday (9/21) “F*ck Silence” podcast, the question Democrats need to answer is “What are you prepared to do?!”, referencing Sean Connery’s character in The Untouchables. It’s a valid question that deserves an answer.

The death of Notorious RBG has made an already complex situation worse for this country. As has been said in several places on social media, it’s a hell of an indictment in this country that the laundry list of things I mentioned earlier were being held up by one 87-year-old woman in frail health. She can’t save us, Pelosi & Schumer can’t (or won’t) save us, Mueller didn’t save us, the Electoral College didn’t save us, Hillary didn’t save us.

Again from Pogo, “We have met the enemy & he is us”.

All we really have left is the vote. This is our last chance to save our Democracy. And we must do in numbers too large to be ignored.  And if they try to nullify the election, we must be ready to lay ourselves on the line… just like the Civil Rights fighters in the 1960s and the Black Lives Matter protesters today.

VOTE!

 

 

200,000 

& Inconvenient Truths

200,000. Dead. Small by percentages as far as total US population goes, but huge to those who have lost loved ones… in some cases, almost entire families wiped out… only kids left behind… and the ongoing health effects for the “long-haulers” and those with ongoing heart and memory problems. And the incredibly high impact on communities of color makes COVID-19 even more horrifying. Per the CDC, when compared to whites, the case rate for Black communities is 2.6x higher, 2.8x higher for Native American populations and Hispanic/Latino populations. Death rates are, 2.1x higher for Blacks, 1.4x higher for for Native Americans, and 1.1x higher for Lantinx people.

But after the initial push in March for lockdowns and masks, we pass the 200,000 dead mark with a blasé sigh and seemingly collective national “Whatever”… unless you are out protesting masks and lockdowns as against your rights. Nevermind, the concept of personal responsibility and consideration for others, ie duty to society.

I am a former Public Health RN, I worked in a small county health department in Missouri for 7 years, but continued funding cuts and crappy pay finally forced me out of a job that I loved… and we saw people from the community from birth to death almost. From the WIC program to immunizations to injections for community members and so many other services, what we were able to do diminished over time.

I was primarily the Communicable Disease nurse and did the contact tracing for disease reports and outbreaks. When I see how the Coronavirus Pandemic has been screwed up, I feel it deep in my soul. I know the hard work of the invisible battlefront that nobody appreciates… and used to ask where we were when things got bad. But Trump’s absent leadership now calls into question the very function of public health from those who have no clue of its vital role in healthy communities.

If you don’t know where the disease is coming from, who has come into contact with the infected, or where they have been, controlling the spread is nearly impossible. When messaging is muddled or incorrect, it further diminishes the credibility of any advice, even from the most respected institutions like the CDC. And we have lost any sense of civic duty, rather like the Dear Leader.

So, thanks to the lack of national leadership on the Coronavirus Pandemic, 200,000 is not so much a milestone as a speedbump at this point.

One of those inconvenient truths that Cheeto Mussolini likes to obscure with other scandals, like he does.

The Inconvenient Truth is that we have long surpassed the total number who died in every conflict from Vietnam to present (63,418) AND World War 1 (116,541)… total 179,934… and taking out the 5 years of WW2 at 405,399, it took us 98 years to wipe out that many people in war. We lost an estimated 675,000 to the 1918 Flu Pandemic. (https://tinyurl.com/yb9sz5e2) (https://tinyurl.com/y33v84me)

Or another way to look at it: it’s like the population of Salt Lake City has disappeared over the last 6 months. But many of us are lucky, because we are untouched by the heartbreak of this disease… often because we are white. And these lives have been slipping away slowly, outside our sphere of experience

And it’s not because whites live inherently better lives than people of color, it’s because healthcare isn’t a right in this country and accessibility and affordability is unequally distributed. 

Racism is such a part of our entire governmental system, and we have been divided to such a point as to make it impossible for poor people of color to join with poor whites to fight together to make the system more equitable for all of us.

The Dear Orange Leader has an evil cunning for manipulation. As I wrote in 2016, “Trump is a master showman & fraudster ... He builds big shiny skyscrapers, casinos and hawks steaks, wine, his “university”, clothing line, et cetera… All flashy, status-ey things with his name slapped on them… but, truthfully, the core is hollow and the glitter is just spray paint. …Then the spray paint & reality got conflated, and here we are, unsure of objective reality vs. spray paint fumes. …Stuck in the dystopian theme park we can’t leave.” (https://tinyurl.com/y5kbkbar)

His favorite “secret sauce”, if you will, is racism. He knows he can play on the base fears of the rubes, but he doesn’t care about them, unless he can squeeze more money out of them. Per Olivia Troye, who served on the White House Coronavirus Task force, the president said: “Maybe this Covid thing is a good thing. I don’t like shaking hands with people. I don’t have to shake hands with these disgusting people.” (https://tinyurl.com/y39gpbau)

Additionally, he lives in a demented fantasy world, one in which he believes he can obscure the rising death toll by just talking his way out of it, or ignoring it, or obfuscating by creating other scandals… he has managed to do for most of his life. He said repeatedly that the virus would just go away and after said cases would drop from 15 to zero, he started equating “a good job” to 50,000-60,000 deaths, then 100,000, etc. Now he just says that he has done a great job and prevented “millions of deaths.” He has also said that he takes no responsibility.

This is the same man who ridicules those who wear masks and practice social distancing…. While packing crowds together at venues all over the country… but at a recent appearance in Nevada, he actually told a reporter that he doesn’t worry about catching coronavirus because “I’m on a stage and it’s very far away”. He also told the same reporter, “I’m more concerned about how close you are, to be honest.” (https://tinyurl.com/y5et7wsl) He expressed no concern for his followers packed illegally into the privately own airplane hangar.

Trump is not particularly book-smart, but has a twisted cunning, as mentioned earlier. In addition to his manipulative cunning, he has a strong sense for self-preservation & short-term gain, but no concept of long-term consequences or strategy. For months, controversy raged about whether Trump understood the severity of COVID-19 and was thusly carelessly bumbling along, but the Bob Woodward tape made it obvious that he DID know and made a conscious choice to play the pandemic down, doing essentially nothing, knowing that people would die…. all to preserve his image. Acting again purely in the moment, again looking only at short-term gain. (https://tinyurl.com/yyhm86fb)

His conscious decision to let people die coupled with his absolute disregard for those lives only leads to the conclusion that there is something seriously wrong with him.

Trump does not care about anyone but himself. People are the shit his money grows in (Ukrainian saying, Andrea Chalupa, Gaslit Nation)… or an easy piggybank he can tap with his never-ending cons.

The other part of his culpability in how badly the Federal COVID response has been is how he knowingly disregarded the roadmap left by the Obama/Biden administration, which was built on a sound foundation created post-9/11 by the Bush II administration. But his absolute narcissism, jealousy, and incurable malice against those who don’t kiss his ring run through everything he does as well. So he put Jared Kushner in charge of the response, and didn’t bat an eye blue states were left to fend for themselves, because they refused to bow down to him.

Additionally, he delusionally thinks he knows everything, including epidemiology. So with his “leadership”, real scientists and scientific knowledge has been sidelined, ignored, blocked, or covered up.  And now he has Scott Atlas,  a radiologist, advising him about a vastly different type of medicine. He’d probably be able to read an MRI and tell us about Trump having deterioration in his brain, but he would only have the most general knowledge of epidemiologic principles. Hint: neither herd immunity nor herd mentality are sound plans right now.

Trump has created, in-effect, a slow-moving genocide of the inconvenient, no gas chambers required. Ironically, many of those likely to die are his own supporters.

As of 16 September 2020, per Rachel Maddow, there were about 6.6 million cases and almost 198,000 dead. And Trump’s “herd immunity” (read as: genocide) strategy will see approximately 215 million – 231 million Americans infected (65-70% of total population). Our current fatality rate is 2.97% of those infected and if that follows, we can expect 6,385,500 – 6,860,700 deaths. (https://youtu.be/UVfxjS1DnBc).

Trump and his sycophants have decided that over 6 million of us are expendable.

The Inconvenient truth is that it didn’t have to be this way.

 

Watch What You Wish For

First they came for the Communists 

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

I first learned this piece in junior high, and it has haunted me ever since. I’m a lifelong history/news/politics junkie, thanks to my parents, who considered themselves “dumb old country kids.”

I am glad they aren’t alive right now to see Trump, a wannabe dictator, tearing our country limb from limb all for his own advantage. He incites “patriots” to civil war, incites their territorial imperative, paranoia, and deeply ingrained racism… all to protect himself from his many legal entanglements… but it is never about country, it’s always about Trump

The Confederates in 1861 thought they’d start a Civil War & be home in a month, after they licked the Yankees... 4-5 years later, and nearly 620,000 dead, some of them returned to a ruination of what was. Trump’s cultists exhibit similar sentiments.  Trump wants to be a dictator, and he will use any means to that end, even civil war.

Per my fave YouTuber, Beau of the Fifth Column, the US Army insurgency manual states that a civil war is a minimum 6 year commitment. Not days, weeks, or months… but years. How many *more* will die? Trump has already thrown 200K Americans into the ground to protect his fragile ego.

So we really come down to it now.

Watch what you wish for…

You think you want a civil war?

You think you want to go to war for him?

If Trump wins, he will continue to kill us all and sell the whole country for parts, as Sarah Kendzior says.

He doesn’t give a shit about you, you are just the shit he & his oligarch buddies grow their money in.

And watching the un-uniting of the former United States is Putin’s wet dream… and just like Syria, you know they will be happy to sell arms to any and all factions.

You think I’m hallucinating? You think I’m mad?

You still think he cares about you?

He called those who serve in the military losers & suckers.

He asked why our military members serve, since they didn’t get any obvious personal gain from it.

When interviewed after his recent Nevada rally, he worried more about getting COVID-19 from the interviewer and expressed no concern regarding spread amongst the crowd from which he was socially distanced.

So you think a civil war is an easy answer… and you will go out and own the libs in a month and return home….

As stated before… Plan to be committed for 6 years. 6 YEARS.

Not 6 hours, 6 days, 6 weeks, 6 months, but SIX YEARS.

And what happens in that SIX YEARS?

1.       People starve b/c they can’t get groceries
2.       There’s no electricity b/c the power grid is gone
3.       Cell phones will become distant memories
4.       Refugees will flee the fighting in droves

Really I could go on… but why? You think you will go home to your Keurig, Mountain Dew, Cheetos, Netflix and Amazon deliveries?

No.

Look at Syria. Maybe talk to a scary Syrian refugee… they will tell you what it is like to watch their children starve, or have loved ones die in bombed out shelters & hospitals. Only the very rich are protected in their enclaves and even know what electricity, cell phones, food supplies, or any of the things you currently take for granted, are.

I’d urge you to talk to real people who have lived through civil wars… oh, but they aren’t human, they are Muslim Scum, like the Libtards, you love to hate. You want to kill them all, just to make yourself feel better.

Also, you don’t want to have your dreams of manly glory messed up by the truth of how Uncivil war is, any war. It sure isn’t something to be glorified, unless you are insane… or just don’t care.

And make no mistake, your Dear Orange Leader doesn’t care. You are just a tool to him… and if you piss him off, he or his minions will come for you too.

Hell, they have already come for immigrants, locked children in cages, rolled back environmental protections, workers’ protections, they are attacking free speech on the streets of Portland, Chicago, Washington, Minneapolis with unmarked federal troopers. Who will be next? If you aren’t useful, or if you are complaining too loud, it may well be you. If the least of us isn’t safe, none of us are safe.

We have also reached the 14th point of fascism, elections interference, as our democracy fights for its life in possibly our last election.

When we have lost what is left of our democracy, it will be too late.

Watch what you wish for.

You just might get it.

BLACK LIVES MATTER

I am a White woman of privilege, not hugely wealthy, but I don’t have to worry about much, financially speaking. I don’t think I have personally had a bad experience with the police, per se. And I DO NOT know what it is to be a Black person in the United States. I cannot, from my position in this highly unequal and systemically racist society, say that I do.

That said, I know what my eyes see. I know that my heart reaches out to both my Black friends and all Black people. I cannot imagine the fear they feel of the police. I cannot imagine the years of racism and the constant messaging they receive from our society that they are lesser than. The years of anger, frustration, and stress are unimaginable to me.

Equally I cannot fathom White people who cannot get it through their heads that the America they experience is not the same one that Black people live in. Honestly, I am getting sick and tired white people as a whole… both by volition or just plain being obtuse. This includes my own brothers, ¾ of whom just don’t get it. One of them said that he doesn’t worry about law enforcement, nor should others, if they follow the law. Another brother of mine called Ferguson a “flapdoodle” when I tried to discuss it with him. Just too many white people are under the impression that if black people followed the commands of the police, they won’t get shot.

Classic white privilege talking. That concept often doesn’t work for Black people, if they are even given a chance to comply… and if they do comply, there is no guarantee that they won’t end up in a jail cell, or dead. Black parents have to have “the talk” with their kids on how to try NOT get killed by police, and that includes specific instructions on how to comply. 400+ years of that submission to merely survive isn’t healthy or sane…. but that is what we white people have created: a system that has driven our Black citizens to survival mode. And yet we expect them to keep putting up with things that we would never put up with. We ask our Black citizens to bear all of our shit and all their own, that has largely been created BY WHITES.

There have been so many lives lost through police violence. I know so many names, I wish I DIDN’T know them… because that would mean they were still alive, being loved and moving through life with their families and friends, and adding to the richness of the fabric of the United States. The list is too long. The point is that these were living, people who have been removed from their lives and the lives of those who knew and loved them.

-        Philando Castile: Worked in a cafeteria in Minneapolis, had a gun permit & told the police about it during a traffic stop. He was shot to death in front of his partner and child, after telling the officer he was reaching for the weapon.

-        Tamir Rice: 12 yo with a toy gun in park: the police car pulled up and shot him to death without warning. His sister was hysterical and was held, handcuffed, in the back of the police car.

-        John Crawford: young man was shopping in a Walmart, he had picked up a BB gun that he intended to purchase, police shot him without questions or warning

-        Michael Brown: 18 year old with his hands up and unarmed, shot in head, his body lay in the street for hours

-        George Floyd: Minneapolis: possibly used counterfeit $20 bill, suffocated by an officer who knew him

-        Breonna Taylor: Louisville: aspiring RN, dedicated EMT, shot in own bed while sleeping, no-knock warrant for person already in custody who lived 10 miles away.

However, the way that white people refuse to understand or listen to the ongoing trauma of the Black community, just shows how white privilege works. White people are shot by police & probably in greater raw numbers than Black people, but that is a function of us being a greater percentage of the population. When comparing percentages by race, Black people are much more likely to be shot by police. Additionally, white people are more often taken into custody peacefully, even if armed; one glaring example is the murderer of 9 Black parishioners at the Mother Emanuel AME church in Charleston… the police took him through drive through fast food before taking him to jail.

Then we come to discussing the police themselves: perhaps there are only a few “bad apples,” as we often hear, but the system protects them through qualified immunity and union contracts. And that “thin blue line” sure gets thick when their own are threatened with investigation of wrongdoing, or anything else. Good officers tend to keep their mouths shut, for fear of their jobs… or retaliation… or being forced out. The “bad apples” are spoiling the barrel. There will always be need for some police, but they don’t need leftover military equipment like MRAPs or AR-15s. Screening of potential police recruits needs to include psychological profiling and training needs to include de-escalation training. Misconduct needs to be met with real repercussions. Also pairing the police with community-based social services created with community input.

The racial divide in this country is as old as the country itself, but the breach can only be healed with deep, systemic change and a lot of soul searching & honest listening by the White population.

BLACK LIVES MATTER.

The Omega Glory meets Willy Wonka: aka A Lost Plot with Half a Map

Watching my twin grandsons, aged 3, play and frolic is a delight. Suffused with so much energy and joy, they remain blissfully sheltered a world where a nigh-invisible organism is stalking and culling the human race. We work hard to shelter them as much as we can in Trump’s United States of Fascism. I envision my grandchildren as fully actualized human beings – not just cogs in some dystopian corporate machine.

The Black Plague birthed the Renaissance – what will be born out of our current Plague? In the United States and worldwide, the inflection point is now and our ultimate disposition depends on whether the oligarchs wield enough power to keep the rest of us under their yoke, or not.

How do you wake up the tired/overworked/overmedicated/somnambulating masses in this country? How do you spur them to collectivize and fight? How to teach them that together they are strong? I DO NOT blame the people for their situation… the Powers That Be work tirelessly to undermine collective action, and have since the 1960s by “any means necessary.” Good old-fashioned fear knits together racism, sexism, tribalism into a tool that divides us and keeps us punching down, rather than punching up, and finding out what is really going on. Xenophobia, fear of job loss, fear that we can’t afford the plastic pretties that measure our worth, fear of missing out, fear of pain, fear of change, all feed into a desperate populace, trying to just maintain mental health. Adding in lack of healthcare, addiction issues (a side effect of living in a toxic stew), drugging the masses (with actual drugs, with things, with unreasonable expectations, etc.) just makes this country more toxic.

The Republicans manipulate these fears masterfully, to be honest. The COVID-19 pandemic naturally ratchets fear up to 11, and the GOP is grabbing power behind the curtain (ie. Suspending environmental regulations, attempting to suspend constitutional rights, ad nauseum…). The question remains… how long can they continue with the body count climbing exponentially every day. When/if the populace wakes up (ie. when the drugs stop working), will we 1) end up like Syria… a wartorn wasteland with factions fighting over rubble, 2) end up like The Handmaid’s Tale, 3) begin to rebuild the United States into a truly more perfect union, or 4) end up as several smaller countries based on regional affinities, which may already be underway.

I wish the answers were clearer, but the road ahead is dark.  The 1918 Influenza pandemic guides us for part of what we are experiencing, but very little precedent exists for the concurrent constitutional crisis. Never have we seen one political party almost completely abdicate constitutional duty in pursuit of power.

The Constitution only has as much value as we collectively give it, through real faith in the tenets of which it is comprised. I am reminded of the original Star Trek Omega Glory episode in which the constitution has become “sacred words” but whose real meaning has been lost. When the Constitution becomes words on paper that nobody understands and to which only lipservice is paid, the precarious historical precipice on which we stand is clear. When an amendable, living document of governance is treated as sacred, inviolable, and unchangeable, the plot is lost.

So, for now, we muddle through as best we can with a vile, despotic, dementia-riddled madman as the titular figurehead of this country. The States have effectively become sovereign unto themselves – haggling on the open market for supplies and equipment to aid our frontline medical personnel in saving as many lives as they can. Unless the madman decides we are all equal and deserving, we are headed for battlefield triage conditions without help and control measures.

And yet a third of the country supports him and the more his daily lies are televised, more people seem to think he is worthy of praise… but will his political aspirations for a second term survive the coming body count?

And these came up in my mix in Spotify today, randomly... 

https://youtu.be/4mam3iJLvCs

https://youtu.be/YSZf0yIx1ec

Emotional Labor, Toxic Masculinity, Trump

I feel compelled to write about emotional labor this week. On Wednesday I read several news stories that really impressed on me how unequal the distribution of emotional labor is between men & women, black & white, rich & poor and the depth to which it is embedded in our social power structure.

I’d like to start with a quick definition, but that is much harder than it sounds. Emotional labor is a relatively new term in scheme of things, but it deals a lot with things like fake friendliness service industry workers have to put on, and the way we (especially women) are expected to BE when interacting with the world.

A good primer appeared in this blog post by Leah Fessler: “While the term emotional labor was originally coined by sociologist Arlie Hochschild in the 1983 book The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, her description of the need for workers to regulate their emotions (so to satisfy their customers) feels a bit academic. Personally, I’m more disposed toward Hy’s definition of emotional labor as “shit someone does that goes unrecognized,” but again, that’s pretty general.”

She also references Adam Grant’s Worklife podcast about faking emotions . Emotional labor is likened to receiving a crappy gift from Aunt Bernadette and having to pretend you like it, but the concept is extrapolated out to having to be nice at work to everyone to assure everyone else’s comfort and ease, and the exhaustion that follows on that from having to wear a mask.

Now that the definition is out of the way, we can really get started. Emotional Labor has been widely adopted in feminist circles since women bear the unequal yoke, if not the whole yoke, of emotional labor. We bear the expectation of making others feel comfortable, of not burdening others with our troubles, and so on… women are often the ones who send the birthday cards, arrange the kids’ birthday parties, etc. while the men just show up. Emotional labor exhibits many nuances and definitions. However, I think the division of emotional labor illustrates a lot about the power structure in our society and also serves as a springboard to beginning to really understand and solve the problem.

A couple of articles and general trends of discourse in our country really sparked my thoughts on this topic this week and led me to extrapolate the emotional labor concept beyond just men and women…

1) From Raw Story: “Judge scolds four men who raped drunk teenage girls in Myrtle Beach instead of giving them jail time” My outrage meter maxed out, beginning with this story. We have seen this same story repeatedly, the young men are allowed to walk free with very little, if any punishment, and with every concern for their futures. In the meantime, the victims are blamed & shamed, and left with the entire emotional toll of being sexually assaulted. The emotional labor borne by these women includes the aforementioned shame & blame, then compounded by the fact that they did everything right (by reporting what happened & undergoing the experience of rape kit creation, which may or not be tested in all-too-many cases) and then have to watch their attackers walk off mostly unscathed and care free.

The young men receive the clear message that their actions aren’t so bad and they needn’t worry their little heads about it. The pervasive message of “boys will be boys” infuses our culture, absolving them of blame & responsibility. Emotional wreckage is left to the women they assaulted. In this case there is NO YOKE, as opposed just an unequal one. They probably experienced remorse for being caught, but the judge told them that they were just bad little boys and sent them on their way.

The womens’ burden isn’t considered because women aren’t considered whole human beings. Only straight white men are whole human beings.

2) From the Bradenton Herald: “Parents complain about ‘militant’ dress code at Lakewood Ranch middle school” In this story, a 12-year-old middle school girl chose to wear a sports bra to school, and this school has a “no visible bras” policy. The assistant principal actually had to move the girl’s hair to even see the bit of bra “peeking out”. She was then pulled from class and taken to a “holding room” until her mother could come and bring her “more appropriate clothing.” And, per the story, this young woman wasn’t the only girl pulled from class, as there were other girls changing clothes and mothers leaving with the “offensive” clothing.

A quote from the article states, “Young women are disproportionately cited for dress code violations, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which contacted the school district after Martinez’s story went viral. While she was accused of being a distraction to students, the organization said Martinez’s peers should learn to control their gaze.”

So again, we have emotional labor falling on women. Time and again, young girls and women are being burdened with boys & men being unable to control their feelings. So instead of teaching males to police themselves and control themselves, that labor is being put on females to do the policing… of what they wear, what they say, how they act, etc… to prevent inciting male emotions. Then you add in the fact that it’s usually the mothers having to bring the change of clothing for their daughters, often having to take time off of work, simply adding to the burden.

Males are again allowed to walk free with no emotional consequences or responsibilities because the women are carrying that load, as expected… another “no yoke” situation in which boys will be boys.

3) From the NY Post: “Nurse killed herself after being bullied at work, probe finds” This article served as my extrapolation springboard from emotional labor as just a feminist issue. I am a Registered Nurse, and have been MOSTLY lucky enough to work in places where the bullying hasn’t been that bad. A friend shared this article on Facebook, so I read it very quickly after the previous two. It really got me thinking how bullying is really someone with an inability to handle their own emotional labors trying to pass that work onto others. How that inability is acquired doesn’t matter.

However, I think the key is that these people have a deficit and addressing it is key. These are people who don’t feel a responsibility to their own emotional health or that of others. They believe and act (for whatever reason) like their emotional work and burdens are for others to bear. The thought of them ever being to blame for their actions is really beyond their base capacities, so they blame everyone else.

These stories are illustrative of trends that we are seeing in over media overall. These examples are mostly feminist, obviously, but I think of examples from my own life and our national discourse, and it seems to me there are some solutions embedded in the questions themselves.

Most personally, apart from the bullying that I suffered all from grade school through high school, the worst bullying and gaslighting lasted for 3.5 months. I took a job halfway across the country with great expectations, only to find myself in the most toxic work situation I have ever experienced. The place was the very definition of gaslighting, with moving goalposts, and blame for everything bad placed on my shoulders. I don’t know what the issues were there, but the emotional burden others had was happily dumped on the new person (me) by those who apparently couldn’t deal with their own issues.

My daughter recently divorced an emotionally abusive man. They lived with us for several years and the level of gaslighting he tried to use on us was apparently a small fraction of what he put her through. I never felt he particularly emotionally well-developed. He was always very good at coming up with blame and excuses when confronted. He would make great pronunciations about how he was going to change, over and over, but he never did. I knew she was carrying a lot of burden in that relationship, but only after it was over did I begin to appreciate all that he put her through. She carried the emotional water for a good number of years until she decided she’d had enough. She is now healing and moving forward with her life.

In our national political discourse, we have a man-baby in the White House who reminds me greatly of my former son-in-law, who was never taught or expected to do his own emotional labor. That is for the peons and little people to do, so he can stand there, living out his vision of being a “big man’. However, the blame for all of his failures falls on the string of ex-wives, mistresses, affairs, brown people, those who disagree with him, etc. And he is happy to tell us all about it in his tweets, ad nauseum. As I like to say, he has the self-reflection of a brick.



He really is the epitome of toxic masculinity and racism and misogyny, etc. Problem is, what he does and says is not being met with resistance from those who count, and those who idolize him take his words & deeds as tacit approval. Now brought to the fore, we see white straight males fighting back against being asked to do their own emotional work. They were so long relieved of that burden by social norms… giving it to women, blacks, other minorities who were all expected to serve without question. In that imaginary-world-that-never-existed, white men were unburdened, able to follow their noble pursuits without burden of care. This is where they want us to return, as the proper place for the “not-them” is wherever they say it is and the “not-them” is bound to act as they dictate.

Apparently, emotional labor is for the weak and those who have no choice.

The answer to the problem is fairly simple, start taking emotional health & labor seriously, start teaching others how to be emotionally healthy and to take responsibility for themselves. But first, we need a society that takes emotional well-being seriously for everyone and the basic recognition that emotional labor is a thing. Unfortunately while the cartoonish vision of men ala Toxic Masculinity remain the norm, we can't even begin to change.

It's not about the children, it's about you.

A conversation from when I was a teenager, probably about age 16, with my friend and her father has stuck with me a long time. The argument that was made against mixed race couples having children struck me as wrong then, and has bubbled up in my thoughts occasionally over the many intervening years. I finally figured out why.

The argument was that mixed race couples shouldn't have kids because we should think of "how the children would be treated."

It dawned on me this morning just how wrong that argument was, and in so many ways. Maybe the memory bubbled up due to the sociopolitical upheaval we find ourselves in currently; namely the horrendous resurgence of hegemony of white, cis-gendered, straight maleness.

By stating that people shouldn't have the freedom to marry those they love and shouldn't have children because of how they will treated infuriates me, for many reasons:
1) It puts the responsibility for any abuse on the victim
2) It basically states the status quo is always right
3) It absolves the one holding that position from needing to change

That (now former) friend recently accused me of being hateful because I was not willing to just roll over and let her walk all over me. I wasn't all-accepting of her intolerance, and really hadn't even responded to her much. When I'd gone to respond, she had apparently blocked me. Then she inblocked me and lobbed a hate bomb at me... I blocked her in response at that point; there was no real reason to respond or argue with her.

I have unfriended a lot of people in the last year. If they have been silent/equivocal, I have quietly unfriended them. If they have exhibited support for the other side, I have not tolerated it. I don't care. I cannot and will not have that energy in my life.