Whining White People

by Ruth A. Sheets

On “Weekend Edition” on NPR, the show seems to be following a trend for the past year and a half. Interview, whenever possible, a dissatisfied, seemingly disenfranchised, disgruntled White person or persons.  These people are brought in to “balance” coverage.  Donald Trump or one of his familiars does or says something outrageous or illegal which must be covered at every news break. Then, someone is asked to “explain” it.

It is best when a prominent person, often White, tells everyone it is not as bad or illegal as it appears.  It is best if the person is from Harvard, Yale, or some other “big” school. Alan Derschowicz was it today.  He told us that much of Trump’s executive pronouncement against refugees, and immigrants and travelers from 7 mostly Muslim countries was really mostly Constitutional.

OK, then, a woman who had been interviewed before the election was introduced to someone who had criticized her on Facebook for voting for Trump.  She claimed she had voted Democrat in the past, but saw some white guys shooting up in front of her building and decided there was too much crime (or something - she was not really clear about that).  The Hillary supporter she spoke with talked about helping others and caring what happens to people in difficult situations.  The Trump supporter talked only about herself and those horrible people who don’t use the Government help to get ahead the way she did.

Wow! That pretty much sums up the herds of scared White people who voted for Trump, self-absorbed, unaware of their advantages, besieged on all sides by (O God why can’t those people be like me!).

Then, as if that were not enough, we had to hear from an artist who wants to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts. He assured us that without Government interference, art would be better. Now it is the poor paying for the rich.

I honestly don’t know which planet this guy lives on. In many communities, the NEA’s help is what gives local, small-time artists, composers, photographers, playwrights, and performers a chance to put their art out there for people to appreciate.  It sounds like sour grapes to me. But, he is so sure the free market would give people like him a better chance, it must be right for everyone, so ditch the NEA.

Are the whining White people and the media tasked to protect them so scared of their position in society their presence must be out there every minute of every day?

It seems there must be “balance” for anything said or written by or about anyone who is not White and put upon.  We who are tired of hearing about this particular group of oblivious white people may find our support for your programming fading.

So, keep it up NPR!

Brains! (Liberal vs. Conservative)

by muon

I read an article a few months ago, the gist of which is just now hatching into share-able graphics on social media. The article told of 13 different scientific studies that show how people calling themselves liberals and people calling themselves conservatives have pathological difference in the brain. (You can read about the studies on the ABC News website.)

Liberals tend to have larger anterior cingulate cortexes, associated with tolerance to uncertainty. Conservatives have larger right amygdalas, the area that governs sensitivity to fear. Conservatives avoid self-harm. Liberals are usually more concerned with harm to their group. Liberals focus on progress and are more likely to take risks to find better ways of doing things. Conservatives will stick to the status quo if it's comfortable for them and poses no immediate danger.

What none of the studies showed was how these two different kinds of brains evolved (yes, I mean evolution. If your sensitivity to fear makes you tremble at that word, better stop reading now). My theory is that families who never had to find creative solutions for their problems probably developed conservative brains.

Say your family has had wealth for generation after generation. Your ancestors could always rely on money to feed, shelter and clothe. They could pay someone to fight enemies. They could buy immediate solutions to problems as they came along. Your family never had to figure a different way of doing anything, and they, of course, never wanted their way of dealing with life to change. But they became very fearful of having their wealth taken from them, because it was their only means of survival.

My family were always great jury-riggers. When you can't afford to buy the means of survival, you have to creatively adapt or die. Duct tape was invented for families like mine. And while our stop-gap measure was buying us more time, we could be planning how to fix the problem for the long-term, in the most cost-efficient way. We have less fear of uncertainty, because we've dealt with it on some level each day, for generations.

Now, I'm not saying that all rich people are conservative. I think that families who have taught creative thinking to their progeny, and passed the teaching down through the generations, are the ones who have developed liberal brains. But I believe ultra-conservatives, either now or at sometime in their families' past, have probably been the "haves" of society, in some way. If not by money, then by strength or charisma or whatever. They never needed to learn adaptation, and so became fearful of it, and fearful of losing their special "have" at any moment.

Then again, if you don't believe in evolution, I guess God simply created conservatives and liberals physically different. So get over it, and quit trying to inflict your fear-mongering right amygdala on society. Or some liberal is apt to get out his duct tape.

What Liberals Want

Modern manufacturing. Not your grandpa's sweatshop.

by Ruth Sheets

I am always amazed, perhaps shocked, when I read something by Conservatives and Republicans these days.  I think it’s the audacity of their outrageous claims.  This time, it was an article called “Liberal Nostalgics Don’t Understand Jobs of the Future” by Michael Barone.  It appeared in the townhall.com blog on April 23, 2012.

Barone claims that the current administration’s desire to increase manufacturing jobs means that “liberals” want to bring back the old assembly line jobs of the post World War II era.  Because the “liberals” are nostalgic for these jobs they have no idea what the jobs of the future are going to demand.

What a bunch of bull!  Can anyone really believe that “liberals” or anyone else wants to bring back the mind numbing, brain frying repetition of those jobs?  What “liberals” really want are jobs that pay a living wage.  They want jobs working for companies that respect their workers.  They don’t want workers to be driven to put in mega hours under a threat of loss of their livelihood.  They want work that is meaningful.  They would prefer not to be pawns of employers who are addicted to money and power   

In his piece, Barone finds a way to blame past assembly line workers for the near destruction of Chrysler and General Motors.  Admittedly, the unions did make some unreasonable demands, but they were not the cause of the industry’s downfall.  That came as a result of short-sightedness on the part of the guys at the top of the auto companies.  They refused to believe that cheap, easy oil was coming to an end and that what was left would be controlled by countries/cultures that do not like us and our way of life very much.  

Detroit built gas-guzzlers when they should have been working to develop cool small cars that were safe, comfortable, and efficient.  The creative talent working in the auto industry could have managed that and more.  They also had the power of Madison Avenue on their team.  If handled well,  Americans could have been talked into buying almost anything if it was good enough.

Mr. Barone describes the jobs of the future as ones that people will create themselves, I suppose on the model of Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerbburg.  It is not the “liberals” who don’t get this, it is the Conservatives who put roadblocks in the way of nearly every attempt to make this a reality.  It was not the “liberals who made irrelevant testing the main indicator of student success in school.  It is not the “liberals” who cut research and development setting back efforts to find new directions for producing the jobs of the future.

The “liberals” didn’t cut assistance to help creative people get businesses started.  It’s not the “liberals” who think college is elitist and a waste of time.  It’s the Conservatives who want to take America back to some imagined golden time, (except for the tax rates which they would like to see as close to zero as possible, of course).

I worry that an argument like Mr. Barone’s is so simple that a lot of people will accept it without thinking critically about whether it is true.   

Oh wait, we don’t get to teach that critical thinking stuff or creativity in schools since it’s not on the test.  We “liberals” had better get busy.