Tag: missing the point

No hidden message

The first lady’s staff says there was no hidden message to the “I really don’t care. Do u?” jacket Trump wore whilst embarking for Texas to see the children separated from their parents and housed in former WalMart stores and tent cities. Apart from the literal “yeah, I’ll concede the message wasn’t hidden as it was emblazoned in large letters across the back of the jacket”, I assume the spokesperson meant there was no meaning to the message quite visibly displayed. That is a TERRIBLE defense. The claim is a staggering level of incompetent ignorance – for both the first lady and her staff – meant no one considered the sartorial choices made for the visit.

Flood heels I could accept — I used to wear high heeled shoes all.the.bloody.time! Your calf muscle adapts, after years of this mistreatment, and not wearing heels is uncomfortable. Walking on your feet stretches the calf muscle. Now I didn’t wear 5″ stilettos, so I can only imagine the muscle strain one might induce with such contraptions. Honestly the glowing white sneakers bothered me more — blazing white shoes don’t scream “I am going to slog through some mud here”.

But in electing to wear this jacket, and attributing no meaning to the message literally printed on the thing, they claim that a former model — someone whose profession is cultivating a “look” for profit — does not consider the WORDS that appear on her clothing?! That a political staff — whose profession is cultivating an “image” for profit — do not consider the WORDS that appear on the politician’s clothing?!

The truth is there wasn’t a hidden message, nor was the plainly visible message the message. But there was intent to wearing the jacket — trolling liberals.  Her husband’s method of garnering popularity. “OMG, look at all these crazy liberals freaking out that the First Lady doesn’t care about suffering children! What a bunch of crazy idiots!”. And it works – I’m sure there are entire threads about how wacky libtards are freaking out about a jacket. Because he isn’t president of slightly less than half of the voters who agree with his policy positions, or trust him, or think he’s going to do a good job. He’s president of people who want him to be angry at the people which whom they are angry. He’s president of the 4chan set who want to upset people just to prove people are too sensitive.

Show Respect

All NFL Players ‘Shall Stand And Show Respect’ For Flag And Anthem – Wow! I wish I was an avid football viewer so *not* watching football would be a state change. Hopefully being permitted to stay in the locker room enables players to make their point. If two guys on a team of, what, fifty people aren’t on the sideline you’d never notice. Half only emerge once the anthem is over? That makes a statement too. And someone’s camera would end up in the locker room to cover the protest. Any takers on how long it is before players aren’t permitted to stay off the field after that protest makes news?

‘Show respect’ is a ill defined term too. I assume this is so you don’t have guys standing backwards, but how is hanging back in the locker room playing candy crush *more* respectful than kneeling during the anthem? And for the guys on the field, some dude who was kneeling last season is a little slouchy in his stance, the team still gets fined to avoid a presidential tantrum?

The whole idea of being forced to stand for the anthem seems anathema to the ideals of our country, even if the long history of private employment shows we can be forced into just about anything if we want to continue receiving a pay cheque. The same could be said for being forced to stand and pledge allegiance to the country 180 days a year for thirteen years. Or more – I was rather dismayed to learn that my daughter’s preschool class was taught the pledge of allegiance so they could recite it at their graduation ceremony. Now I’ve got a bit of an Anabaptist philosophy – I don’t much see the point in having someone repeat words or go through a ceremony without *understanding* what they are doing. I avoided children’s clothing with words on it – overkill, yeah, but a six month old baby doesn’t *mean* to say “I just did 9 months on the inside”, “Grandma’s Drinking Buddy”, or make a boob joke, no matter how many people find the messages cute or silly. Until she knew and understood what the shirt said, she got shirts with pictures. Or patterns. Or plain colours. So I asked my kid if the teacher explained what allegiance *is*, or even explained any of the historic principals of the United States. Of course not; they were just given words to recite. Now we’ve had some discussion of the country’s principals and failings – she votes with me two times a year (primaries and general, this is not some admission of voter fraud), we’ve discussed how to affect local, state, and federal laws (and the diminishing influence an individual has as you move from local to state to federal government). But the principals of the Republic for which the flag stands is pretty abstract to convey to a preschooler. And pledging allegiance to a flag? The essence of a nation is not bound up in its cloth banner.

Forced recitations of pledges and vows do nothing to impart knowledge, develop skills, or promote good citizenship. As an intimidation technique, forced declaration of faith and loyalty are not new, although they are generally the hallmark of an insecure society. People do not become more patriotic through such declarations, but being subject to coercion can have the opposite effect.

Let the war begin

One thing I respected about the first President Bush was that he didn’t attempt to secure re-election by re-invading Iraq. The 1990-1991 invasion of Iraq led to significant jumps in Bush’s approval rating — 15% at the onset and 20% when we “won”. And a surge of nationalism (and the “don’t change horses mid race” thinking that certainly helped his son’s re-election bid) that accompanies military action may well have allowed him to win in 1992.

George W didn’t have terrible approval ratings at the onset of his presidency – his approval number was over 50% just before 9/11. But his approval rating hit near 90% in the immediate aftermath.

Which brings me to Trump. Someone who loves glowing praise. And who kicked off a new round of trade wars with tariffs on steel and aluminium which may allow some increased domestic production, but is more apt to make everything that uses steel or aluminium more expensive. Or maybe it make more sense to make parts in Canada and truck the bits South. Or maybe finished products crossing the ocean become cost competitive. And that doesn’t even address adverse response from trading partners.

If the guy was sufficiently delusional to believe it was possible for any president to receive a surfeit of adoration, and by his own admission he’s not into fomenting new wars (+he has some existing wars in which to drop huge bombs +the general population has had more than enough warring to last a few lifetimes) … is it possible this is a self-aggrandizing trade war?

Tips For Avoiding Unpleasantness

Mayim Bialik has offered her tips for avoiding sexual harassment and exploitation. This would be like me offering tips to avoid police brutality — be polite, be deferential, don’t make sudden moves, keep your hands visible. Or my tips for avoiding traffic stops in the first place – drive the speed limit, control your vehicle, signal before turns and lane changes. Not bad advice per se, but it completely ignores the fact that my skin tone and gender play a significant part in my success in achieving positive interactions with police officers (or avoiding the interactions to start with). Ignores that, in areas I frequent, police don’t encounter a lot of dangerous traffic stops.

The fact is, her real secret to avoiding harassment wasn’t her clothing or her mannerisms – it was her situation. As others have pointed out, sexual assault is about power. I didn’t wear demure clothing, I had a very open and solicitous personality, but I wasn’t harassed until I needed the job. You need the job to feed your kids or to keep your apartment, then casting directors have a lot of power over you. To start out with, even a lot of skeezy guys stay away from statutory situations. But ignoring age. Get into acting to earn rent money, to feed yourself … that’s a different scenario than Mayim. Get into acting for something to do – you can tell a guy he’s gross. Or refuse to continue the discussion at his hotel restaurant. Then his hotel room.

The Straw Man Argument

The players taking a knee during the anthem are protesting racial injustice in this country. They are protesting the fact that one’s skin tone is the difference between believing a police officer is going to save you and believing a police officer is going to literally kill you. How military personnel treat people in an occupied country is a salient discussion (see: Iraq) not only as an academic appeal to human decency but as a pragmatic approach to reducing risk to military personnel. How police treat people, yeah even people committing crimes, is similarly not just an appeal to decency. An officer engaging a citizen who fears for his life … this is an infinite loop like the arms race. Cop needs to be more aggressive to prevent violence from citizen. Citizen needs to be more aggressive in resistance to officer. And no one wins. Racial relations in general are a difficult discussion, and how to ensure reasonable treatment in situations with inequitable power distribution is exponentially more difficult. Protesters are saying there’s a problem in the country that needs to be addressed.

And we all know how Trump feels about difficult ‘stuff’ – avoid, deflect, avoid some more. Some people are partaking in peaceful protest at their workplace — that’s employment law and barely free speech. There’s a good bit of case law behind companies being allowed to prohibit free speech of employees (i.e. if I reflect poorly on my company, they can fire me). Sorry, but free speech does not ensure freedom from consequences. The government won’t stop you from marching in a Neo-Nazi rally … but your employer may fire you. Your neighbors may never speak to you again.

The president of the United States (a.k.a. ‘the government’) advocates private employers fire individuals over expressions that the company did not deem worthy of reprimand … this comes really close to actually infringing on an individual’s First Amendment rights where no such infraction previously existed.

It is a nationwide straw man debate, and now other sports players are using the same protest as a symbol of their support for first amendment rights. Glad people support the first amendment (especially when you see surveys where they ask if people support actual content of the bill of rights and not just “the third amendment” – hint: the bill of rights doesn’t poll well in details). But the discussion that was being sought – how to ensure police officers are adequately trained and incentivized to diffuse dangerous situations – has become obscured.

24/7 Campaign

How can you be the president of the entire country if you cannot even be the president for the entire military?

The address Trump gave at the commissioning of the USS Gerald Ford may reflect the increasingly long campaign cycle or it may reflect his complete misunderstanding of government (not to mention a complete misunderstanding of how military health care works!). He encouraged (ordered? Not speaking to intent; but as the ostensible head of the military, it would behoove him to use more care in selecting what will be communicated to military personnel) those assembled to “call those senators to make sure you get health care”.

A generous interpretation would be that he isn’t letting an opportunity to push for his legislative agenda pass by – this will be televised, reported … but who stands up at a guy’s retirement party to laud himself and ignore the retiree? Or at a commencement to congratulate yourself … oh, wait. That’d be Trump too. A man seemingly incapable of participating in an event and not making it about himself. Even the generous interpretation is essentially “I’m too self-centered to let your thing be the highlight here”.

But beyond the optics of using the commissioning of a naval vessel as a campaign rally, the ACA does not have a whole lot to do with health care for the active duty military personnel to whom he was ostensibly speaking. TRICARE covers them. It qualifies as insurance under the ACA, so they’re set. Given Trump’s other outright nonsensical ramblings on health care, this in and of itself is telling. Enlisted persons have no more need to lobby for whatever ACA replacement is currently on the table than members of Congress. It’s not going to fuck up their coverage.

Worse, though, the military may report to the president like employees report to the CEO … but it isn’t like we changed out the military for a Republican one in January. They may fight to defend the country, but they are not obligated to support the legislative initiatives of the current administration. From his speech at the CIA Memorial Wall bemoaning how unfairly the press treats him — imagine a similar topic being delivered in front of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall — to this most recent address, Trump seems ignorant of the fact there are liberal government employees and military staff. There are Libertarians. Red scare McCarthyism aside, there are probably socialists too. Point being — there were people in the audience who do not want either of the current Congressional health care plans to pass (given it’s approval rating, the majority of the crowd may even feel that way!) and how insulting is it that the speaker would co-opt what was meant to be a naval celebration to rally support for something to which you object?!