Workplace Bullying

 

Should I stay, or should I go?

I found some advice on ToughNickle.com on the subject of workplace bullies. It's something I wish I had found years ago. Knowing I was being bullied, and knowing it was not my fault was not enough. I'm sharing in the hope that you can be more proactive than I was. Sticking around had it's rewards, but I really question if it was worth it.

How Long Is Too Long to Stay at a Job Where You're Being Bullied?

According to Marianne Worthington, the founder of Work Warrior, a business that helps companies build healthy workplaces, "Three to six months. If the target is documenting appropriately, that timeframe should allow them to see if management or HR is going to act on their complaint." But if management is the bully in your case, then she recommends looking for another job as soon as possible.

Deb Falzoi, who educates employees, employers, and therapists about the dynamics of workplace bullying, "Workplace bullying works like domestic abuse—targets often don't see the abuse until their self-esteem and health have already begun to deteriorate, since abusers often convince targets they're the problem. So once targets realize they've been bullied, they have already been in the job too long. At that point, the goal is to preserve their health."

Patriotic Education / Mindless Zealots?

Teaching Exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny.

Are you wondering what is meant by a Patriotic Education? The first paragraph below will be taught in our schools. The second paragraph will be cut from the curriculum. 

Manifest destiny is defined as “the concept of American exceptionalism, that is, the belief that America occupies a special place among the countries of the world.” The Puritans came to America in 1630 believing that their survival in the new world would be a sign of God's approval.

Manifest Destiny was the idea that white Americans were divinely ordained to settle the entire continent of North America. ... US President James K. Polk (1845-1849) is the leader most associated with Manifest Destiny. Manifest Destiny inflamed sectional tensions over slavery, which ultimately led to the Civil War.

Does it matter?

Damn straight it does. By putting these these concepts in full context, students become critical thinkers.

There are five key critical thinking skills are: analysis, interpretation, inference, explanation, self-regulation, open-mindedness, and problem-solving. (zety.com)

According to Indeed.com, Critical thinking helps people better understand themselves, their motivations and goals. When you can deduce information to find the most important parts and apply those to your life, you can change your situation and promote personal growth and overall happiness.

Playing politics with our health

 Trump's political appointees are playing games with our safety and well-being. Political appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services are scuttling reports from the CDC they believe might be unflattering to the president. Why? Because the reports might hurt his chances at reelection.

This is from the the NY Times.

The Times reconstructed the White House’s push for a plasma therapy, and found a pattern that helps explain the intensifying concern that President Trump could demand pre-Election Day approval of a vaccine.

For instance, in August, President Trump called the director of the National Institutes of Health, demanding fast action to approve expanded use of convalescent plasma to treat the coronavirus. Even though it didn’t come, Mr. Trump announced the expansion of the treatment anyway, with the F.D.A.’s approval, on the eve of the Republican National Convention.

Tensions over the White House’s urgency to show progress against the pandemic, which has killed more than 193,500 people in the U.S., are also playing out at the Department of Health and Human Services, where political appointees have repeatedly meddled in weekly outbreak reports prepared by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Where's our integrity? Where's our ethics? Where's our compassion for our fellow human beings? Where's our common decency? Where's our love for all people? This last question is supposed to be a bedrock value of Christianity. What does this say about his so-called Christian supporters? We're way too deep into partisan politics. It's needs to end, now!

Lacking leadership = lost opportunity.

 

Summer is ending with a lost opportunity. From the NY Times

The U.S. is averaging about 40,000 coronavirus cases a day, down from a startling peak in late July, but nearly twice the level at summer’s start, according to a Times database. Above, a testing site in Los Angeles this weekend.

The failure to control the virus deepens the dangers heading into fall: the start of the school year, flu season and cooler temperatures that will drive more people indoors.

White Supremacists Our Biggest Terror Threat

 White supremacists present the gravest terror threat to the United States - Politico

The threat from white supremacists as the deadliest domestic terror threat facing the U.S., listed above the immediate danger from foreign terrorist groups.

“Foreign terrorist organizations will continue to call for Homeland attacks but probably will remain constrained in their ability to direct such plots."

Russia “probably will be the primary covert foreign influence actor and purveyor of disinformation and misinformation in the Homeland."

None of the drafts POLITICO reviewed referred to a threat from Antifa, the loose cohort of militant left-leaning agitators who senior Trump administration officials have described as domestic terrorists.

“This draft document seems to be consistent with earlier intelligence reports from DHS, the FBI, and other law enforcement sources: that the most significant terror-related threat facing the US today comes from violent extremists who are motivated by white supremacy and other far-right ideological causes,”   John Cohen

White House in Denial

Two former top DHS political appointees told POLITICO last month that White House national security officials shied away from addressing the problem and didn’t want to refer to killings by right-wing extremists as domestic terrorism.

The White House target, despite growing evidence that the real threat is on the right, remains Antifa.