All's Fair When You Win

 Autocrat's Tactics

When Trump spoke his praises in support of Putin after annexing more territory in eastern Ukraine, it should not have been a surprise. Extremist on the right have been cozy with Russians for years. For Trump. And the Republicans who support Trump, it is a deliberate political tactic. They want to project the image that Biden is weak, and only Trump can keep Putin under control.

Racist Attitudes

"The love affair between Russian and American extremists isn’t limited to individual relationships. Whole cultural exchanges are taking place between white nationalists in both countries, borne along by a current of swastikas, the Nazi “black sun,” and references to “88” (code for Heil Hitler) or “14” (code for the 14-word white supremacist mantra)." (splc 2018)

Trump's supporters in right wing media, like Tucker Carlson, agreed with his take on Putin. So did members of Trump's inner circle. "Now some of his supporters see an admirable figure in Putin. That includes Mike Pompeo, who served as secretary of state under Trump and recently called Putin “savvy” and “very talented." (Washington Post 2/23/22)

QAnon influencers have cast Putin in a positive light and believe he is now engaged in a fight against an international cabal of satanic pedophiles and "deep state" members who have interests in Ukraine. (Newsweek 2/24/22)

Speaking His Mind

It may seem like Trump may have spouted off, but what he says is  most often intentional and the product of the mindset driving his politics. 

Both Pompeo and Carlsen have stepped back their praise of Putin since the start of the invasion. Not Trump. He sees this as a chance for a divisive issue sure to appeal to his white supremacist base, while feeding conspiracies. Biden is weak. He is strong like Putin.

Importance of Self-Esteem

”Your value doesn’t decrease based on someone’s inability to see your worth.” Unknown

Honest Admission

I grew up with a low opinion of my worth. I'm not sure why. My parents made a point of reinforcing and encouraging me to build on my accomplishments. So what was the deal?

Labels

Maybe it was because I was considered slow. The word slow is filled with all the aspects of ableism. That label was damaging.  I was slow to walk and talk. My reading and math skills were below the mean. My grades suffered. As a result, I aimed low. Maybe it was fear of failure or fear of disappointment. But disappointment from what? 

Maybe I was lazy, whatever that means. My parent sent me for extensive testing, including IQ tests to see if I was actually 'slow'. The results changed everything. I wasn't slow, I was an underachiever. Oh boy! In an instant, my easy life was over. It was filled with tutors and summer school. I was sent to a new school with much higher academic standards. At first I was stretched by the experience. I was so far behind my new classmates it seemed to reinforce my feelings of low self-esteem. 

My accomplishments at that school didn't dawn on me until much later. I was not at the bottom of my class, I was in the upper half. Creativity came forward in my writing and music. It turned out I was good at sports, but not at the traditional sports. I excelled at running the mile and playing soccer. In summer I became a competitive bike racer with a string of victories and strong showings.

A Slow Process

Even with these accomplishments, my self-esteem did not blossom until I matured, after age twenty-five. I went back to school at twenty-five and things began to fall into place. And the feelings of self-worth grew quietly, from with-in, as my confidence in my abilities grew. What I thought was a measurement of my worth was wrapped up in what I perceived others might think of me. I discovered It mattered more what I thought of myself. 

What are the signs of low self-esteem? 

According to the Australian healthcare site Healthdirect, Signs of low self-esteem include:

• saying negative things and being critical about yourself.
• joking about yourself in a negative way.
• focusing on your negatives and ignoring your achievements.
• blaming yourself when things go wrong.
• thinking other people are better than you.
• thinking you don't deserve to have fun.

”Your value doesn’t decrease based on someone’s inability to see your worth.” Unknown

Building Self-Esteem

The Website skillsyouneed.com offers seven skills to build self-esteem.

1. Identify and Challenge Your Negative Beliefs. ...
2. Identify the Positive About Yourself. ...
3. Build Positive Relationships—and Avoid Negative Ones. ...
4. Give Yourself a Break. ...
5. Become More Assertive and Learn to Say No. ...
6. Improve Your Physical Health. ...
7. Take On Challenges.

Stephane Jade Wong came up with a list of 13 things that don't determine self worth in an article she wrote for Shine. "Bottom line: Your worth is entirely up to you. You are worthy because you say you're worthy and because you believe it. Look within, and trust that you are enough."

In an article for Psychology Today, Amy Morin, L.C.S.W., a psychotherapist, explains, "So often, the “stick” we’re using to measure our worth exists outside our control. We measure our worth based on the X’s on our to-do list, the number of matches on a dating app, the likes on our latest Instagram post, the promotions we receive—the list goes on and on. We tend to notice how our sense of self-worth affects us (aka those “I’m not good enough” feelings), but we rarely stop and think about how we’re doing our calculations."

It seems low self-esteem is a learned behavior, and learned behaviors can be changed.

Banning Books

The ideas in books spark more ideas

To some, ideas are dangerous. The Nazi book burnings were a campaign conducted by the German Student Union (German: Deutsche Studentenschaft, DSt) to ceremonially burn books in Nazi Germany and Austria in the 1930s. The books targeted for burning were those viewed as being subversive or as representing ideologies opposed to Nazism. 

- Wikipedia

Here come the Thought Police

It's happening again today. There is a concerted effort by conservatives to ban books that mention racism, slavery, the holocaust, anything about LBGTQ people, and feminism. It's a continuation of the culture war issues advocated by Pat Buchanan. It's an effort to advance thought control.

Why do people ban books? Often it's for religious or political reasons: An idea, a scene, or a character in the book offends their religion, sense of morality, or political view. Some folks feel they need to protect children from the cursing, morally offensive behavior, or racially insensitive language in a book.

Jan 30, 2022 commonsensemedia

Schools provide safe spaces to talk about controversial issues, and literature presents characters portraying human experience in all its richness and contradictoriness. Reading is a way to take in the difficult situations and understand them.
- Julia Alvarez

I read banned books in high school. You see, they weren't banned at my school. "Johnny Got His Gun," "Catcher in the Rye," "Huckleberry Finn," "Native Son," "The Great Gatsby," "Of Mice and Men," "1984," "To Kill A Mocking Bird," "Fahrenheit 451," and more. We had free and open discussions about the contents and the issues the subject matter represented. We were encouraged to debate. We were encouraged to express our thoughts. We were taught to think.

I did not grow up hating my parents. I did not change my sexuality. I did not become a communist or a member of the John Birch Society.

“Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."

-Benjamin Franklin

Constitutional Basis

Freedom of speech is guaranteed in the Constitution. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.“
— First Amendment to the United States

What are the effects of banning books?

For teachers, book banning means shaky, ever-changing curriculum, fear for personal choices, and the tragedy of self-censorship. For students, book banning means a denial of First Amendment rights, a narrow world view, and psychological deficits. For the classroom, book banning means discourse is hindered. Core values of the public radio audience include Belief in Civil Discourse. The power to find solutions depends on informed individuals able to understand the complexity of the issues we face.

Book banning can hang on the thinnest thread of reasoning.

The Top Ten Ludicrous Reasons To Ban A Book  -The Januarist/Amy Thibodeau

1. “Encourages children to break dishes so they won’t have to dry them.” (A Light in the Attic, by Shel Silverstien)

Is there a labor shortage?

Why are so many part-time workers struggling to find full-time work during a labor shortage?

David Leonhardt spoke with NYTimes reporter Noam Scheiber about worker shortages. He discovered many corporations do not want to move part time workers to full time positions to fill the gap of the labor shortage. The biggest reason they may not be getting hired fulltime, it's cheaper to have a labor force that does not qualify for benefits. 

There are people willing to do the work. Does this mean corporations are creating the labor shortage to keep from paying people a fair wage for their labors?

The bottom line

The increasing inequality of the U.S. economy over the past half-century is unlikely to end because of a temporarily tight labor market. “Labor shortages may be a necessary condition for changing the nature of these jobs,” Noam says, “but they’re generally not a sufficient condition.”

Effects of income inequality, researchers have found, include higher rates of health and social problems, and lower rates of social goods, a lower population-wide satisfaction and happiness and even a lower level of economic growth when human capital is neglected for high-end consumption. (International Monetary Fund)

The National Equity Access reports, The percentage of working poor has increased overall since 1980 from 8 percent of workers to 10 percent of workers although Mixed populations and Black populations experienced slight decreases. Since 1980 the share of Latinx people who are working poor increased from 17 to 21 percent.

Meanwhile the middle class share of income is diminishing. Middle-class workers are earning a national income share that is 8.5 percentage points lower, which translates to a 16.0 percent reduction. And the middle class is shrinking. The COVID-19 pandemic is likely to further accelerate these trends. May 14, 2021     https://www.rand.org › blog › 2021/05 ›

Once upon a time, this was a problem for reserved minorities, but now the plight of a working class cuts across all sectors. The anger of the white middle class is a product of an unwillingness of those in power to share the wealth. The deck is stacked. PARTISAN politics on the right is blinding people to the real reasons for their plight.

Rani Molla and Emily Steward wrote an article for Vox, Why Everybody's hiring but Nobody is Getting Hired. In it they explain it's a difficult undesirable job market. "A lot of what people are seeing are low-paying jobs with unpredictable or not-worker-friendly scheduling practices, that don’t come with benefits, don’t come with long-term stability,” Shelly Steward, director of the Future of Work Initiative at the Aspen Institute, told Recode. “And those are not the types of jobs that any worker is eager to take on.”

The jobs available do not offer a future. That problem did not begin with the pandemic, but it got worse because of it. "A survey of workers actively searching for a job on FlexJobs, a jobs website that focuses on remote and flexible work, found that about half of job seekers said they were not finding the right jobs to apply for. Some 46 percent of respondents said they were only finding jobs that are low-paying, while 41 percent said there weren’t enough openings in their preferred profession."  And many workers do not have the skill necessary for the newer highly skilled positions. 

Too many Americans feel left behind. The dream of a better future has faded away.