Category: Complaint Dept.

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Our Humanity Is Not Up For Debate

Plenty of human behaviors and government policies can be reasonably argued about (for example, budgeting); however, what is not up for debate is our fundamental humanity. It’s not politics to understand that all humans deserve Dignity, Autonomy and Safety; we just do.

Anyone who seeks to create, maintain or control a lower class for any group of humans desires (consciously or subconsciously) power imbalance in their favor via institutional bigotry. This is not justifiable.

Transgender people (including trans-women of color) are human beings. It does not matter what your politics are, your sincerely held beliefs or religious doctrine. If you think that crossing traditional lines of gender makes them “wrong,” it is actually you who is wrong. LGBTQ+ folks do not have to hide their relationships nor who they are to avoid causing discomfort; we can be proud of who we are (as per the intent of Pride month celebrations).

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Remote Work is No Panacea

As we all know, remote work has exploded during the pandemic, becoming much more widely practiced than ever before. In the wake of pandemic (receding or becoming “new normal” in more areas, especially throughout USA in March/April of this year), there’s a lot of discussion of whether/how to bring workers back to the office.

On the worker side, I’m seeing lots of posts (on LinkedIn) by workers extolling the benefits of remote work, including eliminated commute (saving time), easier childcare (?!?), increased comfort and better for marginalized communities (e.g., no need for code-switching). To my mind, the most compelling argument in favor of remote work is the benefit for workers with mobility or sensory issues, as traveling to -or being in- the office can be onerous at best and unsustainable (meaning they can’t keep the job) at worst.

However, I feel like many downsides to office workers switching to remote work are being overlooked, such as offloaded infrastructure, space/network limitations, and health consequences.

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Law & Chaos: it’s what’s for dinner

When I hear the catchphrase, “Law and Order,” I can’t help but think of the news stories of 2020, including:

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Rocky Road of Spring 2020

The spring of 2020 has been a crazy time; this isn’t my usual one topic/essay post, but I thought it was worth mentioning some important events from this unusual spring: covid-19 first wave, black lives matter protests and an historic Supreme Court ruling for gender equality.

For starters, happy Juneteenth! I look forward to a day when our racist war on drugs ends and our racist justice system (including policing, trials, sentencing, imprisonment) is restructured for equality and emancipation can be more fully realized.

I support the Anti-Racism & Black Lives Matter movements, including (but not limited to) the recent protests sparked by the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor & Ahmaud Arbery, as well as the weaponization of police by white woman Amy Cooper against Christopher Cooper. These problems, along with so many others are caused by structural racism (aka institutional racism or systemic racism), which many white people are unaware of, but for which a great deal of statistical evidence and personal stories by people of color demonstrate as a significant societal problem. See also: unconscious bias (i.e., implicit bias or implicit association).

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He didn’t start the (dumpster) fire

Occasionally, I run across a news article or post, crediting our current leader Lump with “disintegration of trust” or otherwise creating the conditions for the corruption of our federal government. These annoy me because, unfortunately, cronyism, corruption, deception have been baked into our democratic government over the course of many decades.

If you want to blame anyone, blame the founding fathers who wrote the constitution and neglected to provide any real accountability for elected officials. Yes, yes, we have a “system of checks & balances” but one that has been easily corrupted. Two-branches of government are comprised entirely of elected officials and the third branch is appointed by one and approved by the other, so it might as well be elected. Perhaps the founders, being mostly of rational and earnest minds couldn’t conceive of politicized appointments to the judicial branch, but that’s nearly as short-sighted as their lack of consideration for non-whites, non-men and non-landowners.

I can’t unravel how we got to, as a society, a place where specious statements are the norm (I suspect it has a lot to do with the internet, but not entirely, as newspapers and textbooks included some counter-factual stories well before the start of the 21st century and dawn of the modern internet). However, I can easily explain how politicians came to speak speciously with regularity. It’s because there’s little-to-no consequence for doing so.

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There is No War, There is No Cure

I’m talking about Covid-19 circa March-April of 2020; as of now, there is no war, there is no cure. Aren’t we getting a little tired of MEWA (Make Everything a War Analogy)? There’s no “War on Christmas” and there’s certainly no war against an unbeatable micro-zombie (virus) that’s literally eating humans alive.

We do not have a vaccine; health experts say an effective, safe vaccine is 12-18 months in the future. Even when we do get a vaccine, that’s not a “cure”; a vaccine doesn’t help anyone who is already sick. I don’t understand how anyone can imagine a “war” where you have no effective weapon against the enemy, where the best you can do is run and hide/avoid (which is basically what “social distancing” is).

Americans, or maybe the world, loves to analogize/masculinize everything into a violent altercation, where all conflict is “fighting” and the deepest insult possible is “cowardice.” This is epidemiology, not war, and our best option is preventative practices, which can mitigate the spread. Such practices are borne of concern and caution, not “bravery”; here, the brazen and fearless are not “war fighters,” but instead will be carriers who catch and spread the disease.

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In Defense of Netflix

I sometimes hear Netflix lumped in with “Big Tech” or explicitly likened to Facebook, Google and Amazon, which is understandable in terms of newness, internet reliance and reach, but also can be unfair, in the context of data tracking and privacy violations.

While Netflix does track some data (primarily, the device identifier, connection and media watched while on the service), it’s not a data tracking company like Google* and Facebook* are. Those two companies provide ostensibly “free” services, which make money via 2 primary methods: the display of advertisements (from anyone who will pay, including disinformation/lies from both domestic and foreign sources) AND the collection and sale of personal information which was directly provided or can be inferred about their users (based on usage). In the case of Amazon, they also collect significant user data, although they tend to use it internally to increase their product sales, so it’s not commensurate with Facebook or Google, in that regard (although Amazon has other problems, including speed-running their warehouse workers*).

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Antichrist Christians

It is absurd yet true that many self-styled “Christians” exemplify attitudes and beliefs antithetical to the teachings of Jesus Christ, and thus are “antichrist” (which I’m using here as an adjective meaning “opposing Christ” and not as a noun in the sense of “evil prophet” as is more commonly used).

I understand the key themes of Jesus’s teachings to be love, helping others and humility. He made a point of being kind to those most hated in his era: tax collectors, prostitutes and lepers. He disparaged the wealthy and the self-righteous, instead encouraging compassion and simplicity. Many of his parables center around helping strangers in need.

Unfortunately, many self-proclaimed Christians espouse opposite behaviors: intolerance, self-righteousness, cruelty and greed.

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All the rage: capitalism

I haven’t posted in a long while, in strong part because I’ve been angry / frustrated / distressed about the current result of decades of government-distrust-mongering and neoliberalist capitalism. Result being that our government is dysfunctional, non-representative and financial disparities are wider than ever. Which has led to widespread disenfranchisement and higher susceptibility to manipulations and lies.

Capitalism, at its root = Competitive Greed

If we could strip away the glamour of that C-word, and an outsider were to consider the concept of “competitive greed” as a baseline for an economic system or government, they would not expect it to result in social good nor any sort of balance; rather, it would result in few winners and many losers in the “game.”

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