AFP photo
By
Don Krieger
As most of us are acutely aware, there is a powerful financial motive to whitewash sexual misconduct in the workplace. But this stuff is so commonplace everywhere that it is only the most egregious acts which see the light of day.
Every woman I have ever asked has been groped innumerable times since she was a teen.
Passive acceptance of these omnipresent bad acts by nearly all societies worldwide reflects a despicable and entrenched attitude towards women.
This is a somnolent monster which I believe woke up and was the basis for Hillary Clinton’s political defeats by a nearly unknown black man in the 2008 Democratic primaries and by an incompetent and impaired monster in the 2016 general election.
It was the good fortune of the entire world that we stumbled on the competence, grace, and wisdom of Barack Obama.
These things were not, in my view, what got him elected. It rather was the hideous backlash against a competent and aggressive woman by both men and women as was the case in 2016.
I am brought back repeatedly to the idea that we must target our near universal vulnerability to indoctrination in order to deal with wrong ideas which have been internalized for millennia.
Those ideas lead or force almost all of us to act contrary to our own best interests and without a hint of alarm or understanding.
At the basis of our vulnerability is our trust in our parents, clergy, teachers, salespeople, political leaders, ourselves.
We must trust no one and nothing without thinking it through and consciously deciding: “Yes I will trust this but only to a point because I could be wrong.”
I think we can push back against this with free online tools which help people learn to think about what they are hearing, to recognize propaganda, to identify the ideas on which they base their lives and confront them all.
I see very little that is pushing back against the madness. Harvey Weinstein, Jerry Sandusky, Donald Trump, Dennis Hastert, the exposed rape culture at Choate, Baylor, the US military, and so many others — these are all tokens which are resolved by finding someone to blame and sacrificing them.
We are not now and never have attempted to address this problem at its source.
Don Krieger
I have built satellites, worked in the operating room, been in a cult, …
I earn my living as part of a group which is trying to understand and treat head injury.
In my poetry and short blog pieces, I want to express ideas with unambiguous clarity and intensity.
I willingly sacrifice rhyme and meter, art, cleverness, elegance, and beauty for these.
No Comments Yet!
You can be first to comment this post!