Recent News About Women's Issues. Or From Google Via Nobels To Ethiopia And Back

1.  Thousands of Google employees walked out on Thursday, to protest sexual harassment which the protesters said the leadership has not taken seriously.

The impetus for the protests was this:

Protestors were galvanized by a recent New York Times report that chronicled three top company executives who have received massive payouts over the past decade despite being credibly accused of sexual misconduct.

Google denies the claim that one of those executives received $90 million as an exit package.

The protesters' demands include an end to forced arbitration in cases of harassment and discrimination.  Microsoft ended forced arbitration in 2017, but most tech firms use it.  Why is it bad? Because of this:

Arbitration is a private, quasi-legal procedure originally designed to expedite disputes between corporations. But over time, it has evolved into a system where individuals are compelled for a variety of reasons to agree to arbitration decisions versus seeking a court decision. The net result is that disputes that normally would have been adjudicated via the public court process are often processed via private arbitration, which generally favors corporations over individuals.
Worse still, in the world of arbitration, there is no possibility of class-action claims. Arbitration proceedings are additionally often shrouded from public view, meaning it is traditionally difficult to find out about sexual harassment or misconduct claims at corporations.

Republican Political Tricks 101. Hind-Brain Politics.

The midterms are coming and the Democrats, despite their wishy-washiness and milquetoast demeanor might actually gain a few seats in the House.  So what's a Republican cunning strategist to do  to fix that problem?

The great tax cuts for the super-rich didn't go down quite as well as the Republicans hoped, perhaps because the goodies went to a small already goodies-loaded minority.

But fret not!  There's always those hind-brain emotions: fear and anger.  Angry and frightened people are easy to lead by the nose to the voting booths.  And angry and frightened people find logical counterarguments impossible to absorb.

So what could the cunning strategist do to cause panic and anger among the potential Republican voters so that they would claw their way to the voting booths to save their lives and destinies?

I know!  Pretend that this country of 326 million citizens, boasting the largest military force on this planet,  is going to be invaded by a massive military force consisting of a few thousand unarmed Central American migrants!  

Pretend that those few thousands hide among them frightening criminals (more frightening than homegrown American criminals) and deadly Middle Eastern terrorists.

Pretend that those few thousand harbor horrible diseases which they are going to spread all over this glorious country in the first few hours of their arrival at the border.  Leprosy, for example*.  Or the plague, perhaps.  Or foot-and-mouth disease (not to be confused with the Republican foot-in-the-mouth disease).  Or rabies.  Or any of the many diseases which already exist in the United States.

Clearly, this invading giant civilian ragtag force is nothing but a walking talking bomb, ready to explode and destroy this great and powerful country.

The above plans take care of the fear.  Fox News and other similar sites will forecast these messages over and over, because repetition is the mother of all learning and because brainwashing requires repetition, too.

If a few of the more rational conservatives are still not convinced that there is any real threat, have Our Supreme Leader send military troops to the southern border.  This demonstrates to even the most skeptical conservatives that the threat is "real" and that the time now is to panic.

When  all that fear is nicely simmering inside the ideological pot, add a few shakes of anger:

Hint that it's the Democrats who have organized this giant invading force.

Don't dwell into their supposed reasons, but simply say that the caravan is going to occupy this great country with its powerful military, because the Democrats want this country to be taken over by a few thousand South American migrants.  And real Murkans must stop them before it's too late!  Vote Republican or die of leprosy, rabies and demonic possession.

Now isn't that a clever package of voting incentives?

Of course it's very sad, our Republican strategist might admit,  that fanning the flames of baseless fear and anger and pointing accusing fingers at the other party and at specific individuals (such as George Soros) can cause some collateral damage.   But to the Republicans domestic politics is nothing but civil war by other means.



------

*  Armadillos are a more likely source of infection than people for this, though the overall risk is minimal.  Besides, the disease has a very long incubation period and is treatable.

I added the foot-and-mouth disease, thinking it was funny because I thought it's a cattle disease only.  But humans seem to get a mild version of it or of some viral infection with the same name.

This Dismal Week in American Politics. Or Turning and Turning in the Widening Gyre.

William Butler Yeats:

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

On Wednesday this past week,  two people were butchered at a Kroger supermarket in Jeffersontown, Kentucky:

A gunman who killed two people at a Kroger supermarket in Jeffersontown, Ky., on Wednesday tried to enter a predominantly black church minutes before the attack, the police said on Thursday.

The man, Gregory Bush, 51, of Louisville, was arraigned Thursday on two counts of murder and 10 counts of wanton endangerment. He was ordered held with bail set at $5 million. The victims, Vickie Lee Jones, 67, and Maurice E. Stallard, 69, were both black, while Mr. Bush is white.

...

The police said there was no indication that Mr. Bush knew either of the victims, nor did he have any known connection to the grocery store. Mr. Bush has a history of mental illness, Chief Sam Rogers of the Jeffersontown Police Department said at a news conference on Thursday. Court records show that he also had a long history of domestic violence charges, and had previously been barred from possessing a firearm.

The attack is investigated as a possible hate crime.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

All through the past week most of the leadership of the Democratic Party, the CNN, and several other individuals who might to him look like they had disrespected Donald Trump, Our Savior received pipe bombs in the mail:

Targets have included Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, former CIA director John Brennan, former attorney general Eric Holder, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), Robert De Niro and billionaire donor George Soros.

The suspect, a registered Republican man from Florida,  has a lengthy criminal record, including 

in 2002, a “threat to throw, place, project or discharge any destructive device.”

These acts of political domestic terrorism aimed at many of the leaders of one of the two major parties met with an oddly non-serious response.  Some on the right openly speculated that the bombs were a false flag operation.

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

On Saturday, to cap this week,  an anti-Semitist man opened fire at a Pittsburgh synagogue, killing at least eleven people in a clear hate crime.

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

At least the last two killers appear to have been radicalized by watching right-wing news in the United States.

The biggest recent news item there has been the extremely frightening caravan of a few thousand Central American migrants approaching the southern border of this wealthy country with its several hundred million inhabitants, some presumably cowering under their beds. 

But in the right-wing news this, my friends, is an invasion, something to be very scared of, something, which requires the military at the border, and something which might, just might be a way for a few Middle Eastern terrorists to get into the US. 

An earlier president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, told worried Americans in a different context that "the only thing we have to fear...is fear itself,"  but our current president loves to fan the flames of fear.  Here is Trump on the migrant caravan:

 

Sadly, it looks like Mexico’s Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States. Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in. I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy. Must change laws!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 22, 2018

Trump later admitted that he has no proof of his assertion that the caravan contained Middle Easterners.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

*****

This is the story of the last week.  It's not a story of incivility from both sides of the political aisle, and it's not a story of the horrible violence of the Antifa movement.  Both sides can be and have been violent, but attempts at some sort of false equality are truly misplaced here.

We are not turning and turning in a widening gyre because we have all somehow forgotten how to treat others with respect, but first and foremost because of decades of right-wing talk radio, Fox News, Breitbart.com and many online hate sites which declare the hatred of women, minorities and Democrats to be justified and patriotic.*

Still, Donald Trump has repeatedly "jokingly" signaled that he is comfortable with political violence and that he admires a good brawler.  He also explicitly refuses to bear any responsibility for the influence his own statements may have, and he is simply incapable of acting presidentially in any context for more than thirty seconds or so.

Then his inner demons take over and he starts preaching hatred to his red hat acolytes.  This is what he tweeted shortly after CNN received a pipe bomb:

Funny how lowly rated CNN, and others, can criticize me at will, even blaming me for the current spate of Bombs and ridiculously comparing this to September 11th and the Oklahoma City bombing, yet when I criticize them they go wild and scream, “it’s just not Presidential!”

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 26, 2018

But we all knew this on that fateful election day in 2016.  Here are two of my posts written around that time.  They are still worth reading, if only as a reminder that a sufficient minority of American voters preferred this man to that crooked woman, and quite possibly to any woman.

The falcon (the forces Trump has loosed) cannot hear the falconer (Trump in his role as the inciter of hate) if the falconer suddenly tells the falcon not to tear and rend the flesh of the prey.  And this is what we now see at Trump's never-ending victory rallies where his bottomless need of assurance is momentarily sated by the adulation of his followers.

But the crowds are restless, now.  They don't want to hear a more presidential Trump.  They have tasted blood and they need more.  Lock Her Up (any her will do)!

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity...**

------

*  In other words, the right began this trend and magnified it over the last few decades. Donald Trump is simply the natural outgrowth from all the propaganda conservatives have swallowed every day for years.  This does not absolve those on the left who have joined the same trend.  But the fault is not in our stars. 

**  At this point in my writing I found out that Charlie Pierce had used parts of the same poem on the same topic.  Great minds and all that.

I could have added stuff about the centre not holding, except there isn't a political center anymore, what with the conservatives having slipped to the right of Attila the Hun.