The Problem with Victim Blaming

There is a tendency to say to people who are the victims of common crimes – “It’s your own fault, if you had just done X or Y, it wouldn’t have happened.” Or alternatively, “If you had just not done V or W, it wouldn’t have happened.”

The most basic flaw in this logic is that you have undermined a basic contract of civilized society. We all agree to abide by the law so that we can all be safe. So, for example, in order for me and you not be killed, we agree not kill other people. And we agree that there will an applicable punishment and social stigma for breaking this law.

All of our basic laws are ultimately a way for all people to feel safe. If we give in to the idea that certain crimes are so common that one of the people to blame for the crime is the victim for not protecting themselves properly, we have now changed the basic tenet of civilization. We have now tacitly accepted that this crime is an exception to the social contract.

The contract says we all have a right to the safety of ourself and our property. That is the fundamental reason for civilization.

When enough people blame the victims, the perpetrator of the crime is perceived as less guilty because it was so “easy” and the victim was thereby assigned some of the criminal’s guilt. It also gives permission to more people to do something illegal or immoral because it was just easy and they were asking for it by not taking better precaution.

It is too idealistic to assume that certain crimes don’t happen. But there is a difference between blaming the victim and teaching yourself or another person to be prepared against a possible crime.

Victim Blaming is not just hurtful to the victim, it is detrimental to our society in general.

Kids are Wild Animals

Listen, let’s just take a minute and remember. KIDS are not precious bundles of joy and love. They are wild beasts and their childhood is basically just a really long taming period.

They will, just by nature, do lots of stupid, destructive and embarrassing things.

They aren’t tame yet.

And just like any animal, they are REALLY good at jumping in a gorilla pit or knocking over a 10,000 piece Lego Sculpture or asking your fat boss if their baby looks like an Alien.

That is just regular NORMAL behavior. Yeah, it’s our job as adults to try and get them to act just a bit more rationally and with slightly more awareness of the consequences of their actions, but it’s a process.

And unless you intend to superglue yourself to a child until they are release into adulthood, they will do stupid stuff. In fact they need to do stupid stuff. Mistakes are how kids learn. Mostly the mistakes are confined to small disasters that are relatively tiresome but easy to clean up or fix.

But there are the outliers. There are always going to be kids who destroy part of themselves or someone else or something else while they are busy being the wild beasts that they are. Humans have always known this, but for some reason we have been getting a sort of collective amnesia recently. We seem to have forgotten that children are really just potential disaster areas.

This obsession the 1st world has with over-parenting, keeping children safe from every possible harm, with making their lives into one long moment to moment entertainment complex, has made us forget – kids aren’t really designed like that. They are like wild animals put in a zoo. They are still wild and unpredictable no matter how many buffers you put around them.

It’s been happening for millenia. children_playing_tag

Let’s fix the US Election for President

The Problems:

Money in many forms.

The U.S. Election is funded by rich people and corporations. That is why Sanders enjoys pointing out his percentage of individual donors. There are laws that limit how much any one person can give a candidate directly. These laws were supposed to avoid this issue. But the candidates developed Political Action Committees. PACs are just huge bank accounts where anyone can give any amount of money and that money can be spent any damn way. If they don’t even have to spend it all on the election, they can use it to go to Barbados. It’s not a problem.

The money problem is not just centered with the candidates and their donors. That money buys Advertising. During an Election Season Advertising in Media costs THREE TIMES MORE. Yup. So as you can imagine, the media conglomerates are NOT super excited to clean up that nasty PAC problem.

The platforms:

Over the last couple of decades the elections have increasingly become a 24 hour reality show. The election has always been big for TV and Newspapers. And since those TV and Newspapers needed to get people’s attention, they preferred colorful short stories. Candidates learned to use “soundbite” phrases that would resonate well in small clips on TV. Complex ideas and discourse were ignored.

However when 24 hour news channels arrived, things started to drift south at an alarming rate. And it soon became clear that the things that got attention were NOT the tax plan or the budget or foreign policy. It was concepts that packed emotional impact. That people could square off on in a talk show. So those things became an increasing part of the simplistic speeches. And if a policy didn’t have any emotional impact it was linked to something that did. Or ignored.

Actual detailed policy and platforms are sometimes ignored to the extent that they aren’t even published. And even if they are published there is no need for them to be viable. Because for the most part the candidates don’t have to defend or explain the details. They can hit the highlight reel and ignore the hollow center of their plan.

VOTING:

Not enough people vote. Not enough are even registered to vote. This creates an unrepresentative election. The candidates have a vested interested in this and go to some lengths to continue this trend.

Electoral College:

Right now we have an electoral college. This means it’s possible to win the election by winning only 22% of the actual votes. YUP. And that’s in a 2 party system folks. Everyone’s votes in this system are not equal. My vote is less powerful as a Ohio voter than someone’s vote in North Dakota. There is a conscious reason for this, but it is also deeply unfair. The electoral college was created to more evenly weigh the less populated states with the heavily populated states. But we have elected presidents who have not won the popular vote. In other words the guy who lost became President. That’s not actually very democratic.

Debates:

Debates only retained the name, but not the actual intention or form of a debate. It is essentially an opportunity for the candidate to say the things they want to say without much of a challenge to their position. They are not forced to even answer the question that is asked most of the time. They nominally start to answer the question and the pivot the answer into their standard rhetoric on some topic where they know most people agree.

Follow up Questions are often not even part of the agenda and most of the conversation happens between the moderator and the candidate and not between the candidates.

The solution:

Money:

We need to get rid of the PACs. We need to stop corporations from giving more to a political campaign either directly or indirectly than any one individual can. Basically we need to isolate this election to the money that is given directly to the candidate. Also the party or a some lobbying group or the boy scouts cannot directly advertise for candidates.

I would not go so far as to eliminate allowing a group to advocate for a particular policy as long as they did not link that ad directly or indirectly to the candidate or party. So if a group is all excited about wall building, that is the only thing they can say. “let’s build a wall.” They cannot say Trump, Republican or have any logo, image or symbol that would link that issue to the candidate.

There should also be a cap on the total dollars spent on a campaign. And it should not be anywhere close to $1 billion dollars. I would cap it $50 million.

Voting:

4 candidates should be running. See my primary thoughts on how to accomplish that. Then we use the Alternative Voting System. This allows a person to vote for a candidate they truly believe in without feeling that they are throwing away their vote.

EVERYONE must vote. You can show up and mark Abstain, but you have to show up.

Electoral College:

Let’s ditch it like dirty dishwater. Its NOT working. The idea that certain areas will be ignored without the electoral college is unlikely. If it were true, since candidates could conceivably win an election by winning all of the small states, that would be where the candidates would be spending a good deal of their time.

BUT NO. Candidates disregard those states and focus on about 12 of the 50 states. This system doesn’t give those small states any more attention from the candidates BEFORE the election so you KNOW it’s not causing any attention after election.

Popular vote is a fairer way. Period. I know this Republic is based on States and what not, but that is what our Congress is there for.

The Platform:

Candidates are required to publish and discuss all of their proposed policies on a pre-set list of issues.

You need to provide this upon declaring your candidacy. If you change it – you must note your changes.

DEBATES:

Debates must include challenges by opponents and moderators. False information must be shown that way as soon as humanly possible. In fact I would make all follow up shows be about the accuracy of the information presented. And if it is possible for a moderator to know in real time and challenge the information, that must be done. Indeed when you think of it, I imagine the public will find that more entertaining. A sort of quiz show mentality.

——-

There are days when I think a fascist dictator would be a nice thing.

You know why?

Because with a dictator – THERE’S THE PROBLEM. Its this one idiot who we can point to. They are the problem.

When it’s a democracy – well, that’s not so easy is it? There’s all the idiots in elected positions. Idiots who got voted in by the population or at least some portion of it.

And then you have to face how complicated it all is. Everyone is the problem. The system is a complicated pile of problems.

Can’t get rid of democracy/republic. That’s the only thing we can all agree on. It doesn’t work really super well, but it’s generally regarded as being a good thing.

Can’t get elected officials to change laws that will be a disadvantage to said elected officials. That a nonstarter for obvious reasons.

Can’t convince other members of the population that their particular choice of elected person is an idiot.

All of it grinds to a halt and nothing happens on a regular basis while either a brawl or a standoff is going on. Which does at least make good theater.

But in the meantime stupid amounts of money being wasted on pointless bridges to nowhere or entire populations being poisoned or war happens.

So I fantasize about a nice simple dictatorship. Where the problem is nicely contained in that one person. So easily explained. So thoroughly eliminated when that person is eliminated. AND once that ugly dictator problem is eliminated, you get to start with a clean slate re-do of the basics in the way a proper democracy / republic should work.

It all looks good on paper. If you ignore all the horrors that are associated with most dictatorships.

Sigh. I suppose ignoring that would be bad.

When Mom Made Veggies

They were always yummy. I grew up liking almost all veggies as a result. The exception is brussel sprouts which I will always maintain are an evil plot by SPECTRE. I mean who else would make such an adorable LOOKING veggie and then imbue it with such a bitter horrible taste? It’s obvious once you look at the evidence.

Anyway, Mom made veggies all kinds of ways, from simple steamed veggies to casseroles. I always liked them.

Just so you are aware – the premade, preflavored frozen mixes – they just don’t meet that same level of yum.

Today begins my “take better care of your body” regime. It has recently been made clear to me that I’m

Fat
Constipated
Hobbled

All of which are directly or indirectly related to the food I put in my mouth.

So I’m eating better from now on.

This is going to require more effort on my part, which when you consider my depression is going to be a challenge. So I thought – well it’s not hard to throw frozen veggies in a microwave, is it?

So this morning I made an omelet and nuked up some frozen veggies to go with it.

But frozen veggies in the microwave don’t taste very good. I mean they’re not disgusting, but they don’t make you want to take all the bites until they are gone.

Mom’s veggies made me want to take all the bites. Mom was good at cooking.

This healthy thing is going to be a challenge to my brain. I’m going to have to figure out a better way, because if I don’t look forward to the food, I’ll choose a food that’s easier.

The ease of our collective delusions

Have you ever wondered how the population of a country can be blind to the horrors it is perpetrating. How did Germans not see? How did the Japanese not see? How did the Americans not see?

WHAT?! Many an American is bristling right now. “WE ARE THE GOOD GUYS, SARA. You take that back!” is being shouted at the computer screen.

But yeah. NOPE. Not taking it back. Because we aren’t the good guys. But the general patriotic rhetoric and feeling about the U.S. by Americans is “We are the heros, the good guys, the knights in shining armor.”

I was 40 before it occurred to me that We Aren’t the Good Guys. And I knew all the bad things before that. But still, it was the unconsidered simplified assumption I had about America so I just reinterpreted the bad stuff, as bad but not really changing the basics – America: Good Guy.

I never challenged Good Guy America because that assumption is fed by lots and lots of rhetoric to make me feel that way. Heck it’s part of the school curriculum. America, we are willing to blow innocent people up with Atomic Weapons but only because WE ARE THE GOOD GUYS. That is the gist of how Hiroshima and Nagasaki were taught to me in school. In fact, right now, someone is thinking about writing a comment about how many lives America saved by doing it. AMERICA, GOOD GUY!

This country has an ugly internal history of violent and horrific bigotry. Consider Slavery, the entire Native American Population, (Trail of Tears is just a high point), Segregation, Immigrant Treatment, and Suffrage. Just to name the big ones. A full 25 volume encyclopedia would be necessary to summarize the various points of injustices done inside this country by its government to the people and the land and the wildlife. But we still internalize the fact that we are a good nation.

The U.S. has spent most of it’s young life being self satisfied at how marvelous we are. Or if we are having a bad hair day we relish how marvelous we WERE and imagine how we can recreate this fantasy land of greatness which we once were.

The human brain is fully capable of seeing a fact and reorganizing it inside the brain to be a good thing. To prop it up against beautiful ideas and honestly believe that despite evidence this viewpoint is reality. It’s the same way people use religion.

If you take a clean objective look at the bible, for example, it’s hard to find a Good Guy God. But you won’t catch Christian Religions calling God anything but Love. Because they believe God is Love, they just re-work all the stories inside their brain to be stories about how much God Loves Us. Our brains work really well at switching that.

Our monkey brains are not clever. They can be easily manipulated to remember things that never happened, to see things that aren’t there, to re-interpret the view to one that fits our current worldview.

We are complacent in our belief that our brains will not be wrong, when in fact they are wrong regularly. And we just ignore it. Like a glitch in the matrix.

Right now Republicans are reworking Trump in their brain. He’s the Republican so he must be worthy is how it’s going to come out for most of them. Because they have the unconsidered assumption that Republicans are Good. Therefore the brain switches to Trump is Good.

We fail when we don’t look carefully at our assumptions. So very many are hidden from us, but they are worthy of a good stare. Because our monkey brains don’t just make assumptions, they make SIMPLIFIED assumptions. So something like being a Republican, which obviously is a complex mess of ideas and concepts, is drilled down to REPUBLICAN. This removes all the nuance and lets our brain make those unwarranted brain switches on someone like Trump.

Let’s fix the Primary System in the U.S.

The Problems:

Primaries are centered around the 2 party system. Excluding the value of smaller third parties because the media focuses on the existing system of finding someone in each of the two parties to run. This gives a tremendous advantage to those inside that party system.

Primaries are NOT representative of the voting public. They range widely in how they are handled resulting a deformed view of what actual consensus looks like.

Some states have caucuses – ie people standing in a room and having their vote publicly counted. People don’t like having to openly vote. Its awkward. There is a VERY noticeable lack of turnout for caucuses.

Then there are closed primaries, where only people who are registered members of the party can vote for the potential candidates. This seems reasonable, after all the party is the one sponsoring the candidate, but the reality is that anyone registered can vote for this person AFTER that date, so basically we are having some people choose what other people can vote on.

And then those counted votes are not counted evenly. Some state’s parties have a system where they allocate the votes proportionally to the delegates – ie 20% of the votes gets 20% of the delegates and other states allocate 100% of the delegates to whomever got the most votes.

Some states send their delegates with instructions to vote the election results, but those delegates are NOT REQUIRED to vote as elections indicate. Yup. They can just vote anyway they want to. And on occasion they have.

Many states do a system where SOME delegates just vote however the fuck they want. No pretense that they should follow the voters, they are specifically directed to vote their conscious or their wallet or for their favorite m&ms. Yeah. That’s right, just a few dozen people are deciding who gets to run for this office in those cases. This obvious creates a serious misrepresentation of what the actual population of the country wants.

Then there are states that completely avoid having a public primary vote as Colorado did this year to avoid giving any delegates to Trump. That happened. In a system that leads to who will be our President. A few powerful people chose how the delegates would vote by not letting the public vote at all.

Finally – none of these things is consistent from year to year. Every year, the parties just decide to change it around. They change anything from the dates to the method of voting.

And then there’s the problem of how few people vote at all, much less in a primary. As a result of undervoting we have a massively unrepresentative election. This needs to change.

The Solution:

FIRST: We change to the Alternative Vote.

Stop the the first past the post system of voting. That’s the one we all know – where the person with the majority of the votes wins. But you can have the majority of the votes and not represent the majority of voters. This is ESPECIALLY true in primaries where there are so many people in the field. So a candidate may win all the delegates by getting 32% of the votes. That doesn’t seem right, does it?
So let’s change to Alternative Vote. Watch the video to understand. Essentially the Alternative Vote allows people to vote for people in order of preference. And if your first choice is eliminated, your vote goes to your second choice and so on. Believe me, it’s a WAY better plan.

SECOND: ALL Primaries happen on the same date.

We aren’t spreading this nightmare out over half a year. One day, with all potential candidates in same stew pot. No backsies. We had a spread of dates because historically candidates had to get around and explain themselves. Be seen in person. Well, let’s face it, that’s not necessary anymore. No one is going to a rally to change their mind. They are going to show support. We make our decisions based on information we gather on TV and the Internet.

THIRD: EVERYONE Votes.

You can go and mark Abstain, but YOU HAVE TO SHOW UP. Just like filing your taxes. It’s something everyone has to do. Some people feel this is a lack of freedom. But I think you can still act on your choice not to vote by abstaining, but you don’t get to just opt out because you too were lazy that day.

FOURTH: Candidates are required to publish and discuss all of their proposed policies on a pre-set list of issues.

In depth. You want to build a wall around the US, you need to submit a plan that shows how much it will cost, how it will be funded, details on how it will be accomplished, and analysis on expected outcomes WITH EVIDENCE. Your proposal must include at least 2 legitimate objections to your plan and your counter position to those objections. “We’ll see” doesn’t count as a counter argument. (interesting side note: this is how big business is run and if someone walked up to Trump the CEO with an outlandish idea, that person would need to put together just such a report to even get 30 seconds of Trump’s consideration. But apparently that’s not how he’s going to handle the Presidency)

FIFTH: Everyone votes on Everything.

With Alternative Vote that means you will vote for candidates in each party separately giving first, second, third etc to each one within that party. Or Abstain wholly or by individual. And that also means that EVERY Party has a chance to be considered in primaries.

There are downsides to this. For example, the Republicans may be favoring Cruz or Trump heavily but since the rest of the country is also voting on it – Kasich, the moderate, may walk away with win.

But you can also see the upside – the middle is where things get accomplished. So I think the fact that this system may wash away the minority views it’s also more likely to work than our current system which misrepresents minority views far more drastically. Still this is a serious drawback to my plan. I would be interested to hear other views.

SIXTH. Parties as a whole will also be voted on.

So for example – I voted for candidates in Green Party and Zoo Party and Garden Club. But now I need to vote for which of these parties should be able to run ANY candidate in the final election. Top 4 parties get to move forward. Obviously there needs to be some kind of popular support existing to end up on a ballot in the first place. And the current method of signatures of support seems reasonable.

SEVENTH: NO MORE DELEGATES. AND DEFINITELY NO SUPERDELEGATES

The public vote is the only way this game is played. Super Delegates don’t belong in a democracy or, in my opinion, a republic. And the entire delegate system is pointless in this day and age. Count the votes and be done with it. Sorry – no more boozy conventions.

EIGHTH: All states handle primaries the same.

There is no caucus vs primary vs no primary vs closed primary. It’s all a universal system. States manage it, but they can’t make up a bunch of rules that only apply to their state.

NINTH: Primary happens 3 months before the election.

Declaration of Candidacy and any version of open campaigning begins 3 months before Primary. 6 months and the whole nightmare is over for 3.5 years. I’m tempted to lower that to 2 months and 2 months…

I have other ideas on how I would revamp the whole system. I’m hoping to write those up over the next few ~~days~~ weeks.

What do you think? Shall we change the broken system?

It’s Business.

One of the weird quirks to capitalism is that we have created a separate and NOT equal world of ethics inside of business.

So that we walk into work and we do things that we would NOT do in our personal lives. Things that would be rude or mean or just morally wrong to us in our personal lives are considered OK if it’s in business because the basics of Business Ethics is – make money and do whatever it takes to make money. We may add in “as long as it isn’t illegal” but ONLY because illegal acts add a cost on it that makes it not profitable.

We think it’s fine to suspend our morals (what we think is right or wrong) when we walk into business because there’s a different code of ethics (rules of conduct) inside those walls.

No one thinks particularly about it. It’s just how it is. Many people have made Capitalism into greater moral authority than their particular God. And they do it without even thinking about it. Because it is so very prevalent in society. It’s the Capitalism Exemption.

I think that eventually humans will have to face the vile hypocrisy that we all pretend is not a problem. But it is. It’s deeply embedded into some of the biggest problems this world faces, including climate, war, discrimination and poverty.

It’s also something every single one of us sees happening and does everyday in ways we don’t even notice until the big ugly thing happens. Then everyone is sort of weirded out but they nod their heads knowingly – Its Business. Its OK.

But it’s NOT OK! If something is morally and ethically wrong – it’s wrong in all parts of this world. Business is not a parallel universe in which morality can be temporarily suspended so that we can apply Business Ethics to the situation. The morality of an issue remains the same, even when we ignore it in the name of profit.

I say these things as an non-believer, whose moral compass is somehow managing to ping louder over the moral outrages that are perpetrated inside of business than many of the people who claim a strong belief in a deity. If those folks wish to continue to hold what they consider to be the high moral ground they need to stop working the Capitalism Exemption.

Indeed, we all need to stop working the Capitalism Exemption.

The odd in my brain

Yesterday I got a new chair at work. This new chair has been something of a journey. I was sitting in an old comfy AND broken chair. It listed a bit to the left. When offered a new chair, I only specified that it not have arms that poked into my fundament. I hate that. And my current chair, besides being broken, has arms that were put on backward and allow my fundament to spill over without check.

So I got the new chair (same kind as old chair) and it was defective. The wheels wouldn’t turn to roll in a new direction and I was constantly feeling snagged. Attempts were made to fix that. No Avail. So I went back to old and broken chair a new chair was ordered.

This time, they went big. As in Big and Tall. They got me a GIANT chair for large people. And I love it. It’s a fat person chair. There was a time when this would have been a humiliation for me. Instead, it wasn’t until I was falling asleep last night that I realized I’m fat. That I’m the fattest person in the office. That they bought me a fat person chair not just because I made jokes about liking plenty of room for my fundament but because I’m fat.

I’ve had an unconscious self identity of being normal weight. Despite the conscious awareness that I wasn’t. So this is why it felt like a surprise.

I wasn’t this fat when I started there 3 years ago. I was a normal weight 7 years ago. But in those years I have gained 100lbs. 100 pounds. That’s A WHOLE LOT.

I am aware of it, but I don’t have the obsession with it that plagued me when I was young. My only desire to lose weight is connected to the awareness that my joints hurt when I walk. And pain is problematic.

You have to understand the ABSOLUTE OBSESSION that filled my life until I was 33 and got a gastric bypass. I was very fat, much fatter than I am now, and my entire focus was on how to lose weight, how awful being fat was and feeling terrible about what I ate when it was bad. I have NONE of that. I have only a clinical awareness that my pain is due to my weight.

I have none of the humiliation that would have filled my 20 something soul at getting a fat person chair. I’m fat. OK. My co-workers think I’m fat. Its OK.

This change is due to the plunge my life has taken in the last 7 years. I’ve been living my life in a place of desolation. A place of horrors. This is a maximum security desolation where minor side issues like being fat are just lint in the air around me.

So now, my brain has a new perspective. And on the one hand, it’s nice to not have that constant whip that is an obsession with body weight and weight loss. On the other, I’m not healthy and it’s due to what I eat and the weight I’m carrying, so it would be better if I got a little big more focused on this issue. Not caring at all isn’t particularly helpful.

Figuring out a plan for this seems annoying and huge and a change. Mostly I think its the change that the depression is bucking so hard. My brain is NOT a fan of change or New.

So first small step. This weekend I will figure out how I want to develop a new way of handling this. I think a daily walk and food changes. Which is where we come into problems. Because I’m not well enough to prepare elaborate things, so it has be easy and healthy. Not two things that go together in my mind.

Sigh. This is going to be a lot of work.

Self Control

I re-read and edit my already published posts. A lot.

If I had the slightest bit of self control, I wouldn’t publish it immediately. I would re-read and edit it over a couple of days until it met my satisfaction AND THEN publish it.

But I don’t. I want the drug of feedback from readers. I crave it.

The 21st century – adding yet another thing I should have some form of willpower over but instead have fallen victim to its addictive nature.