Opinion From the Weak

 

I love you.

But I disagree with this right down to my very core, to the depths of my soul. (And that's probably why a virus could become political.)

But I see how the idea exists. Survival of the fittest. As long as someone is part of the fittest, sacrificing members of the herd who aren't is acceptable. That is how animals do it, especially when there's a lot of predators and they're just struggling to not go extinct. That's the exact right mentality when the chips are down and there's no other way to keep the species going. Adopting that mentality is a sign of living near an apocalyptic event, being filled with a belief that the species as a whole is on the verge of extinction and needs extreme measures to survive. That's why only the healthier people would be given a chance, along with the hope they'd spawn more of the thinkers and artists later. Every writer who has penned a dystopian novel knows there needs to be fit characters to get to the end. 

😔

But I'm not the fittest.

And I thought we lived in a society well enough off to be able to protect those with weaker bodies. That we didn't need to sacrifice the old or sick. That we weren't in danger of extinction. (Nearly 8 billion people. Not 8👤👤👤👤👤👤👤👤. 8 billion. That's kind of a lot.) 

See, in that kind of scenario, one where the population has advanced enough to not have to sacrifice, one where thinking and art can be just as valued as health and strength, in that scenario it's HOPE, not fear, that gets the whole to act in the interest of mass preservation without sacrificing. Where the smallest numbers are lost because the focus is on keeping the current group alive. (The opposite of cutting the loss of all the weak and hoping enough will remain to regrow numbers later.) In that scenario, the virus is the predator and everyone fights it together. The strong and the weak. And they're GLAD. They like that they have evolved to the point of being able to support each other, to not have to sacrifice. It means longer lives. It means a society. It's what animals don't have. And it is THE mark of being a dominant species. It means you're not prey. Prey leaves the weak. Strong prey can say they're not scared, but they've left a chunk of their own to die, knowing that chunk cannot protect itself, because that's all they can do. That's fear. Bravery is protecting the whole group from the predator, from the virus. It's shielding the weakest members and saying, "it's okay, we won't let it harm you."

That's the society I want to live in. But as it vanished this year, and my health is weak, I will probably die wishing that society existed here. And that's why I disagree. Because the virus is riding on the strong to get to the weak. And the more of the weak it gets, the stronger of a predator it becomes. And eventually it will take down the strong too. And it will win. Because they called "hope" a "fear" and misused it. 

Sorry.

Long Shadow #WEP #WEPFF #essay #prochoice #crime or #PunxsutawneyPhil Pics

WriteEditPublishNow

My birthday is on August 21!

Picture from a birthday party in 2016.

There are two topics for my Long Shadow post. The first involves abortion (trigger warning). The second is just a collection of happy pictures from a place where a shadow matters once a year.

Long Shadow

(564-word essay)

Crime rates rise and fall from many factors, some that take decades to reveal themselves. There are ways to impact the crime rate immediately, such as altering laws, improving crime prevention measures, and giving law enforcement better training and resources. It has been postulated that permitting abortion and expanding birth control have a long-term impact on crime rates.

The reason behind it is that children who are wanted by someone with the means to properly care for them are less likely to fall into a life of crime. (The study may have focused on "blue-collar crimes" instead of "white-collar crimes.") Most notably, the odds of becoming a prostitute, drug dealer, or burglar decrease.

The idea is that someone who is prepared for the responsibility of parenthood is more likely to provide a good education, proper nutrition, a stable home, and the mental and emotional love a child requires. An excellent book to read on this topic is Freakonomics.

Some people are willing to trade a higher rate if it means abortions and birth control are more difficult to access. A fair amount of those people also do not view rape, child molestation, pedophilia, or sexual slavery as crimes. There are even some who wish to make human trafficking legal, particularly in regard to the sale of female children. Rather than as fellow humans, females are often seen as objects to them.

This type of thought may explain why so many "pro-life" protesters in America march outside of free or low-cost obstetrician clinics, intimidating women who are seeking pregnancy care as well as those considering abortions. The same protesters are less likely to stand outside of upper-class locations with obstetrics residency training, which is where the medical procedure is generally learned. Training tends to include the procedure because not all pregnancies are viable, and sometimes can result in the imminent death of both the mother and baby. However, some people strongly believe that life begins when cells can mimic a beat, but a woman of childbearing years should die if her pregnancy goes poorly, even when medicine makes that death avoidable.

Death as a predestined outcome. This means that, perhaps, some unwanted babies need to be born to grow up to become killers, sexual-assaulters, robbers, gang leaders, drug dealers, etc. Perhaps Americans need a certain amount of crime so that there are "bad guys" and thus the possibility of "good guys"?

Legal arguments as to which medical procedures a qualified medical professional should have the option of offering to a patient could be based on how it impacts society as a whole. Do religious morals have the same impact for people who do not believe in them? Should the religions and cultures of others be imposed upon people who do not share them? Where do laws come from, and do any exist for non-religious reasons?

If a law allowing abortion and expanded birth control were firmly in place, no longer teetering on the edge, would it cast a long shadow of reducing crime? If so, is that worth having some people sacrifice their moral or religious beliefs that what someone else does impacts their own afterlife?  If science could remove a fetus in the first trimester and grow it to term, would that be better? Would that help or hurt the hundreds of thousands of children in the US who are waiting to be adopted?

---

You want to talk about a LONG SHADOW?
Punxsutawney Phil is a groundhog in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. I was in Punxsutawney a few years ago. (Not on Groundhog day. Sorry.) Here are a few pictures from the town where, for one day a year, a rodent's shadow is newsworthy.

"According to the tradition, if Phil sees his shadow and returns to his hole, he has predicted six more weeks of winter-like weather." ⛄❄

Tourist Phil

Tourist stuff in town.

Me with Liberty Phil

Me with a hand-carved Phil statue

Dentist Phil

USPS and the 2020 Election

$84,150,000 - Over eighty-four million dollars if each registered voter used a stamp in the election.
$1,683,000,000 - Over one and a half billion dollars if each registered voter bought a book of stamps.
$2,721,489,408 - Nearly three billion dollars if every adult in the US bought a book of stamps.
$141,517,449,216 - One hundred forty-one billion dollars if every adult bought 52 books of stamps (1 book a week for a year).
$160,567,875,072 - The one hundred sixty billion debt is solved if every adult in the US bought a book of stamps a week for 59 weeks.

In 2018, there were 153 million people registered to vote in the United States.
247,408,128 adults live in the US (estimation).
$160 billion debt of the USPS.
First-Class Mail Forever® stamps cost $0.55, $11 for a book of 20.

*IMPORTANT NOTE*
The USPS sells a lot more than stamps.
This is the scenario of how the USPS could be saved with ONLY stamp buying by people.
Businesses are not included.
Shipping packages with Amazon is not included.
This is how the American people could save the USPS in 14 months JUST by buying stamps.

100,000 Military members and Veterans work for the USPS
600,000 jobs exist because of the USPS

24,000 veterans are employed by UPS
28,200 veterans and military spouses estimated FedEx
The competition employs a quarter of the number of veterans that the USPS does.

The people of the United States do not HAVE to beg our elected officials to use our tax dollars to save the USPS. We could do it ourselves, if we wanted to, if we sacrificed eleven dollars a week to buy stamps.
(Not that everyone has $11 right now. But the reality is that stamps are not the most profitable product, and businesses like Amazon spend more with the USPS than people do. That isn't the point of the scenario.)
The point is that the American people are being told they are incapable of solving this mess. Get a calculator and check my math. Get a pencil and paper and check my math by hand. Put the numbers in your mind and check my math with your own mental powers. The proof is that American adults could, in fact, save the USPS if they all decided they wanted to do so. This is just one way.

$11/wk * 247,408,128 adults= $2,721,489,408
$2,721,489,408 * 59 weeks= $160,567,875,072
$160 billion debt solved.

Here's the next big issue:

If the USPS is saved, by this or another such plan, then voting by mail is back on the table. If you feel the USPS is safe enough to send government checks, taxes, and pretty much every form they ever created; but not safe enough for voting ballots (except for the ballots cast by elected officials who aren't in their home area on election day and thus do use mail-in ballots, despite being opposed to their existence), okay, double the stamp buying. Two books of stamps a week! Or a book a week for 118 weeks. There, an extra 160 billion dollars to enhance security. That ought to do it. Amazon made $34.6 billion during the pandemic. If they paid 5% tax on that profit, that's 1.73 billion to use to enhance security. There are WAYS it could be done is my point, there are ways to fund it, it's POSSIBLE.

On to the real reason for wanting the USPS to tank, and especially for the 2020 election to not be by mail:

Because it would make it easier for People of Color, Disabled people, Senior Citizens, people with Multiple jobs, and Poor people to vote.

So really, let us start asking the REAL question:

Would you rather-
A) Save six-hundred thousand jobs, one-hundred thousand of which belong to veterans, BUT it means voting will be easier for POC, disabled, elderly, multiple-job holders, and poor people to vote?
~OR~
B) Unemployment goes up by another six-hundred thousand, one-hundred thousand of which are people with a military service record, BUT you get to suppress voting! You'll spend a heck of a lot more to ever send a letter or card again, BUT there will be considerably fewer people able to vote. You have to increase unemployment during a recession and screw over veterans, BUT you can spread HATE and remind certain people that you'd do anything to silence their voice.

That's it. Just toss veterans into the groups of people hated by white terrorist groups (the klan, neo-nazis, skinheads, etc).

Do you LIKE and support vets MORE than you HATE POC and such? You have to stand up for a mail-in election. So sorry!

But if you hate POC and such MORE than you like and support veterans, congratulations, you can be opposed to mail-in ballots and favor increasing unemployment by 600k by ditching the USPS!

If you happen to value Veterans, and People of Color, Disabled people, Senior Citizens, people with Multiple jobs, and Poor people -- then you get to be in favor of a mail-in election and saving the USPS. (And you're probably a Democrat or Independent, and being told by others that you should commit suicide because you're evil. Fun🙄, isn't it? I'm in this group.🥺)

And there you have the real reason for tanking the USPS and for being opposed to a mail-in election.

Weigh your hate and feel free to post on your own wall because I am not in charge of giving a damn about haters. My health won't let me do much more than write long rants here and in the many letters I send to my elected officials. GOOD THING I BOUGHT MORE STAMPS.


** Copied from my Facebook post, just in case that mysteriously disappears.**

Facebook Humor

Some days I am annoyed by Facebook. The algorithm 😤 just drops me out of my comfort zone.  But once in a while it groups things together and cracks me up.  Here's today's:

Opinion

Should we protect statues of people who tried to destroy America? Who betrayed America with the intention of defeating America? If so, should we make more? Should we make statues of the people who made the planes crash on Sept 11? Why not? They wanted to overthrow America too. They felt the same way. Took more than 5 years to defeat them though. But they felt the same way as the Confederates and had many of the exact same goals. Should we name military bases to honor the Japanese kamikaze pilots who gave their lives to bomb Pearl Harbor? Same goal as the Confederates.

Should we force the police to do many different jobs without the equipment or training to do them and then do nothing when they fail? Much better than reallocating funds so they can focus on law enforcement and others qualified for the other jobs could do those. 911 could be improved to assist with that so the police are less overwhelmed, or meh, screw them make them multitask! Why should we give them more training and act like they matter? (Admittedly the word "defund" is misleading. We usually only hear it when talking about schools having to do more with less.)

Is the Bible important enough that people should get the first edition? Because there's a version from about a century ago and it made some SERIOUS changes and people have been basing their beliefs on those changes. But people who study ancient languages keep pointing out that the original versions say the opposite. Guttenberg Bibles still exist and are very different from the ones in print now because of a certain publisher. Is that okay? Do those Words matter?  Should we want those Words to be as intended?

No deal.
The Constitution has the First Amendment specifically to protect the rights to fix and improve the world.

We aren't alone. This is a society.

The world isn't a better place for Everyone yet, but some of us are working on it.

America to Adopt Swedish Education Model

American Schools:
"We can't afford to open safely. There's not enough money for the appropriate precautions."

President:
"Fine! Now you have even less money! I want the taxpayers of that district DEAD! I'm trying to get a war on the poor so they can't vote in November. Gahhh."

'Merica:
"Let the children suffer! Down with children! Stupid dependents."

Smart people:
"Okay. How about more birth control so there aren't as many children? And how about if we let some of the LGBTQ + community who can afford kids adopt some? End child marriage. Tougher on rapists. Child support starts in the womb. More access to abortion clinics. Limits on the cost of giving birth and prenatal care. Free daycare."

'Merica leader:
"WHAT??? NO!!! Crank them out so we can kill them!"

America isn't Germany, Denmark, Norway, or Sweden.

https://eacea.ec.europa.eu/national-policies/eurydice/content/funding-education-31_en

In general, education is administered and financed by Germany's 16 federal states, with the national government assuming responsibility for the standardization of requirements for the Abitur, for teacher training, and for vocational education, as well as for financial support of students in higher education.

Equal education. Not better schools based on where students live.

In 2014, Germany's 16 states abolished tuition fees for undergraduate students at all public German universities. This means that currently both domestic and international undergraduates at public universities in Germany can study for free, with just a small fee to cover administration and other costs per semester.

The central government finances the bulk of education in Norway. About 40 percent of compulsory education, 60 percent of upper secondary education, and a full 100 percent of higher education is paid by the central government. Local municipalities cover the remaining expenses.


The Danish school system offers high quality education from the age of 6 to 19. Education is a key priority in Denmark. The Danish public schooling and education system is financed by taxes and therefore free of charge.

Funds are generally provided as part of a block grant. No local or regional authorities are involved in the funding of upper secondary schools and nor is own revenue use for the funding of the schools.
https://eacea.ec.europa.eu/national-policies/eurydice/content/early-childhood-and-school-education-funding-22_en




The Swedish Education Act states that all children and young people are to have equal access to education, regardless of gender, where they live or social or economic factors, making it the, ‘education of the future’ for many people across the world.


https://twitter.com/openletterbot/status/1281024927458422784

National Human Resources

There's a problem where people get hired for their gender, race, creed, looks, etc etc etc; and a more qualified candidate does not. There's a problem where wages are based on those same biases.

What if there was a National Human Resources? Employers would no longer be responsible for hiring or wage division.

Company A submits to the NHR what they're looking for in a candidate. Here's the thing, whatever "qualities" they're looking for, someone was already trained to look for those. It's teachable. It's documentable. It can be quantified. Therefore, it can be outsourced to NHR.

Oh, Company A needs someone that can get along with their group? Well that means that the current HR person at Company A knows what it takes to get along. They know the person should enjoy basketball, should be able to discuss nail polish colors, should have a favorite cookie, etc. Anything that isn't prejudice is something that could be covered in a question. See how that works?

(And if you don't like the person that gets hired, you're gonna need to put your finger on why. Gotta make sure it isn't because they aren't <insert prejudice reason here> enough.)

Also, every position at every job will report the current pay. Company A pays X dollars for this job. The qualifications for a pay increase is Y. NHR will review if employees are eligible upon request once per quarter or year, depending on how often Company A gives raises. If no one "at the bottom" is qualifying for raises, that "bonus money" that top tier usually gets is being put into an employee training improvement program. The people at the top aren't doing a good enough job if the people at the bottom aren't rising.

Anyone unemployed will use NHR to get job offers. Matches in their area and matches with better pay in other areas will also be suggested.

Headhunters are all going to have to work with NHR.

Resumes will be complied in the NHR database. People won't make them anymore. Either you're qualified or you aren't. We won't be using names, addresses, phone numbers, or other such information. No, like social security, everyone gets an NHR number. This will help ensure jobs aren't given based on bias information.

You know who really will dislike this? Colleges and Universities. There goes the notion that a degree from a community college holds better job opportunities than one from Big State U.

This is just the base idea. Obviously, there needs to be computer algorithms and figure out how to hire people for NHR and how to get every company in America onboard.

Other jobs, too. Have you been hired to do politics? Your wage will be based on how often you do your job and how many of your constitutes agree you're doing it well. (People will be asked on a quarterly payday, and will not be paid unless they answer. Answering "no opinion" is allowed.)

Staying at home as a parent, house spouse, or caregiver will also now generate a minimum wage income. NHR will not consider parenting as being "out of the workforce," but rather as gaining experience in other areas. NHR is also going to destroy the discrimination against pregnancy. And while we're at it, maternity and paternity leave are going to exist, be for a real length like other industrialized nations, and are no longer going to hold someone back (or give someone else an advantage) in the job market. Babies will get to be as important as jobs! Population generation will get to matter. And those who don't raise a family will get to retire earlier or get equal time off after a certain age or something. Because that choice is also valid, but it won't be a competitive edge in the career world.

Plan to take your business overseas because you can't find workers here? Prove it to the NHR or face hefty fines. Intend to toss out a bunch of people just before they reach retirement or other benefits? Better be ready to justify that to the NHR, who will likely find the money by cutting the pay of the CFO. That's right -- no one gets laid off while top tier people make over six figures. Let me say that again -- NO ONE gets laid off while anyone at the same company makes more than $99,999 a year (including money from stocks and bonds and stuff, because loopholes are getting tied shut). You want to know a big obstacle to the NHR? Rich people who don't want to pay people well.

I've been thinking about this idea for some time because of the wage gap. But what inspired me to write this today was this video:




So that's my idea. Please don't comment with why it won't work. Be useful, comment with how it COULD work, how you'd fix whatever reason it doesn't work.

It's time to start fixing things. Equal pay for equal work. Hiring based on real qualifications. Raises based on effort. Accountability for vastly overpaid top-level people.

Anyway, this is just a blog post. It's just an idea. Unless someone with authority makes it happen, it's little more than fiction. A plot bunny for a better America.