Tag: political

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rights and consequences

Some musings on 1st amendment rights, hate speech, and consequences:

The 1st amendment guarantees us (US Citizens) the right of “free speech” but many in today’s USA do not seem to grasp what it means and how/when it applies. Freedom of speech is written into our constitution to protect citizens from action by the government simply for speaking in a way that disparages the government. The government can not arrest you for speaking out against any government official (unless you cross the line into calling for someone to be assassinated).

What the first amendment does not protect you from is the consequences of your speech from non-governmental sources.

So, if, for example, you stand in the town square, surrounded by people in clown costumes and say “Clowns are stupid and all you clowns deserve to die,”…well, you have the right to say it and no one is going to arrest you, but you very well might be set upon with seltzer water and balloon swords. That is not a violation of your free speech, but it is consequences of what you said.

Likewise, if you tell someone that Joe over there deserves to be stabbed in the face because he’s an asshole, and that someone stabs Joe in the face, your free speech is not being violated if you get arrested for incitement.

If you work for a company and your contract includes language that states that you, as a representative of that company, must behave a certain way, and you don’t, say you say things publicly that contradict the company image, while you still have a right to say those things, the company also has the right to fire you.

When you build your identity on what is ostensibly hate speech, be you a politician or an actor, don’t be surprised when those who find your hate unpalatable turn away from you. When that hate speech incites someone, or a crowd of someones, to take violent action, don’t be surprised when you find yourself on trial. That doesn’t violate your freedom of speech, it holds you accountable.

And as a side note, if you find yourself among that crowd of someones incited by a person’s hate speech and goading to commit a crime, you are culpable for your actions, regardless of who “told you to” do them.

Have a great day, Readers, and as always, be kind.

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come into the light

Yesterday was a pretty monumental day here in the US. Did it fix everything that is wrong with our country? No, of course not. There is so much work to be done, and not all of it can be legislated.

Right now there are thousands of people who were led down the fantasy-laced rabbit hole that was QAnon having to come face to face with the reality that they were mislead, played for fools even. There are hundreds facing federal charges because they believed they could forcefully keep their want-to-be dictator in office. There are millions of Americans who feel as though their voices will no longer be heard.

Of course, those are the voices we need to understand, not to give them power, but so we do not forget that hate and anger have the power to destroy lives, and not just those given over to the hate and anger.

As someone who was once very far to the right side of the political spectrum, while also being poor, I understand how easy it is to misplace the anger and frustration of your living situation by blaming those who have nothing to do with the reasons that your angry and frustrated. Blame is always easier than responsibility.

We can’t let them go back into hiding, because that is how they multiply without us knowing. We have to hold them accountable for their reprehensible words and actions, shine the light on them and force them to come out of the dark.

Will we change them? Most likely not. That isn’t our job. No, we simply need to let them see themselves and make them understand that they can not and will not drag our country into that dark chasm where bigotry and fear oppresses our BIPOC and LGBTQ+ citizens ever again.

Photo by Lefty Kasdaglis on Unsplash

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we need to talk

Martin Luther King day, 2021

I don’t often speak about Dr. King on this day we set aside to honor him because I would rather the microphone is passed to those who are still fighting the battle that took his life. It seems disingenuous to me the parrot his words, no matter how wise or eloquent they may be, sitting here in my white skin and privilege in a country that still devalues BIPOC.

The amount of hatred and anger I see in my fellow white Americans toward people they have never met for nothing more than the color of their skin shames me. The white supremacy on display in our nation is disgusting.

This week we will see a black woman take the second highest seat in our country, and I have no doubt that she will be hated just as much as President Obama was. She could single handedly solve the climate crisis, find a cure for cancer and eliminate poverty and she would still be hated. Because of the color of her skin.

The man leaving the white house this week has whipped these people up into a frenzy that has thus far culminated in death and defecation in the home of our governance. He has allowed over four million Americans to die from a virus by not taking action that would have prevented it from getting so bad. He has laid out no plans for vaccine distribution. He forced states to struggle to find and buy PPE for front line workers. He sent unidentified thugs in uniform to terrorize people who only want the police to stop executing them for the color of their skin. He has pardoned the most appalling people (and plans to pardon more). He has spent millions of dollars playing golf.

I could go on, but there would be no point. Instead, I’ll turn this back to Dr. King. We haven’t yet become the nation he dreamed of, where black men and women stand on equal ground with us white folks. All these years later and we are still waging that battle. It is a battle we must ultimately win, friends.

Because, black lives matter. Today and everyday.

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an act of treason

July 4th is a celebration of an act of treason. An act of dissent. The original event, the signing of the Declaration of Independence, was only one such act. The colonies had already been at war with their sovereign for some time. They had already convened a Continental Congress once to bring the colonies together and lay down plans for governance and to bring grievances from the colonies to the ear of the king, among other things.

The second congress was convened and from that congress came the Declaration of Independence, essentially a written FU to the king. These Americans were fed up, done with being the king’s dogs. So they rioted.

They started a damn war. They felt cornered, like they had no choice.

Sound familiar?

Sound like anything going on in our country today?

I keep hearing people saying that the Black Lives Matter movement is not going to get the changes they want unless they are “polite” and “protest the right way”…whatever that way is. But that isn’t how the world actually gets changed. We’ve spent two hundred years treating black and brown people far, far worse than old King George treated the colonies.

You think they don’t deserve to rise up and make their own declaration? You think they don’t have reason to destroy the property of the overlords? Is it going to take a war? A revolution?

Think that’s unAmerican? Think that’s treasonous? They aren’t even looking to create their own country, they just want to be treated like people, equal to and considered the same as white folks, by white folks.

That kind of treason is where we come from. An act of treason should not be necessary, a war should not be necessary, for us to recognize the problem inherent in our history and our present so that we can forge a better future.

And those are my thinky thoughts on this July 3rd. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness“

All men are created equal and entitled to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. All men. All.

And on that note, I shall leave you and head out to the living room to start work on Job #2. Have a nice long weekend, Readers. And contemplate the rights which are unalienable.

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stay the hell at home

I was going to start this post with some trite comment about surviving another week in this apocalyptic hell, but realized almost immediately that not everybody has survived.  So many people I know has lost someone in the last few weeks, or has a loved one in the hospital that they can’t visit.  Nearly everyone I know has fears that a vulnerable person they love might contract this virus.

And, while we all need some light hearted humor in times like these, what we don’t need is flippant commentary that makes light of the situation.  We are standing at a precipice with our incompetent government poised behind us with a cattle prod, ready to send us hurtling to our deaths on the rocks below.

I try not to get overly political on this blog, but we can’t afford to not be political in this situation.  It is pretty clear to me that those at the top care nothing for the rest of us, and the idiots that are being goaded into protesting to end the very protections that are keeping us semi-safe, care nothing for people they do not know.  It’s going to take major losses of people who they do know and care about to reach through the cult-like group think that keeps them doing the bidding of a man who has used public office to rake in millions of dollars.

How can anybody look at the death toll numbers that climb and climb every single day and not realize that we are not doing enough to curb this thing?  How can they see stories and posts from our doctors and nurses who are fighting tooth and nail to save people without the proper PPE and with no effective treatment plan, and still demand their right to go to the movies or the beach or wherever the hell else it is they think is so damned important?

I know someone who lost her husband this weekend.  He was thirty six.  She had to drive him to the doors of the ER and leave him there because they wouldn’t let her in.  In less than twenty four hours he was in the ICU on a ventilator, unable to talk.  Her last words to his face were, “Call me when you know anything. I love you.”

He died alone, with a stranger in a mask beside him, holding his phone to his ear as his wife tried to say goodbye through choked tears.  He leaves behind a wife and three kids who are now under quarantine having to rely on the kindness of strangers to keep them fed.  Right now, they aren’t sure where he contracted the virus, as he made every attempt to be safe, but he had taken a job as a delivery driver after getting laid off from his regular job.  He had said he just wanted to help in this time of crisis.

His desire to help got him killed.

Make no mistake, Readers, this virus is a killer, and it doesn’t care how old you are or how healthy you are. It comes out of nowhere and can strike down a person in a week, maybe less.

So, stay the hell at home please!  The life you save could be your own, or your mother’s or your spouse’s, your kids, your neighbor.  Please be safe.  Love one another. Be kind.  These are weird times.

 

Cover Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash

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disappearing act, work and pride

Oops!  I seem to have missed a couple of posts there last week!  Sorry about that.  Truth is, job hunting and Pride have eaten up all of my time lately.  The good news is that I’ve landed a job that is paying me well, and not taking up all my time, and once I’ve gotten my feet good and wet will let me work from home as much as I need to.

And how are we almost to SF Pride?  We’re under two weeks away!  I’m giving my first Supervisor’s training this Thursday!  It’s crazy!  I still have a little bit of work to do to be ready for that, so I anticipate this afternoon after work I will be deep into that.  It’s not like I haven’t given at least part of this training for more than 10 years!  I could probably do it in my sleep, but I still get anxious about getting ready.

As writing goes, I’m still kind of in limbo land, in part due to stress related writer’s block and in part due to editing commitments. Doesn’t keep my head from filling with ideas though…and I’m contemplating an anthology of short stories to get the juices flowing again…after Pride and the editing of the anthology for Sirens.

For now, I should get back to my coffee and my getting ready for work.  Happy Tuesday, Readers!

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the politics of an angry female

I got an email earlier this week from someone who advised me that as an author who wants to “make it big” in the world of books, particularly as a woman, I needed to take the politics out of my books and focus on writing better.

This gentleman told me he had read the Shades and Shadows series and thought it would have been improved by not making the politics so pointedly directed at the darker “underbelly” of the USA.  He told me it was “unseemly” for a woman to display her anger so prominently in her work, and that I should “dial it back” and “focus on the actual plot” which he apparently thought had nothing to do with the politics.

He told me he didn’t mind the prominence of a homosexual relationship, though he thought that too should be “dialed back” and not so “in the face” of the Reader.  He said I should remove all references to Muslims because it was too controversial to say that discrimination against them was wrong.

He closed the letter with what I suppose was meant to be encouragement for me, telling me that I was a “fairly good writer” who could do well as an author, provided I stopped showcasing the “politics of an angry female” and embraced the softer, more accepted kinds of stories written by women, you know, the kind with no politics and no bad words and filled with plots driven by men and the women who need men.

I haven’t responded to this email.  In fact, I nearly deleted it out of hand.  In this political climate here in the United States, how are women not angry?  For centuries, we have been silent bystanders, watching the politics of old men regulate our rights, our bodies, our place in society and allowing ourselves to be marginalized out of jobs, out of careers.  But the world has changed and we have found our voice, we’ve come out of hiding.  We’ve shaken off the dust and stepped out onto the stage.

And yes, we’re angry.  And yes, we’re political.  It isn’t going to change anytime soon.  So, if you’re reading this, Sir of the Email, sorry you aren’t happy with my politics.  I probably wouldn’t be happy with yours either.  Sorry, not sorry.

Happy Wednesday, Readers!  I’m off to poke some more job sites in hope of finding a new job sooner, rather than later.

 

Photo by Gabriel Matula on Unsplash