Trump blocks high tech talent?

Why has Trump blocked high tech talent from coming into America?  This is an assault on the one  remaining area of U.S. excellence - technology. Silicon Valley is shocked.  Business leaders are shocked.  U.S. technology leads the world because it attracts the world’s smartest people. 

“Putting up a ‘not welcome’ sign for engineers, executives, IT experts, doctors, nurses and other workers won’t help our country, it will hold us back,” said Thomas J. Donohue, the chief executive of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce”

I see three reason for This Trump idiocy:

1.  Racism.  Trump, and his closest adviser Stephen Miller, are stone cold racists.  His entire campaign is about racism - America first, foreign workers not welcome, white supremacy.   Disgusting - and stupid.

2.  Stupidity.  Trump is clearly below average intelligence. If he ever was average intelligence he has clearly devolved. Many who have worked with him have said he was a “moron”, an “idiot”, and incapable of comprehending anything complex. Keep it simple - America Good, White people Good, people of color Bad. 

3.  Putin.  He works for Putin. Putin tells him what to do. Putin is weakening America. This is just another in a long line of ways Putin has been and is weakening America. America no longer leads the world in anything. Putin is winning. 

Disgusting, as usual. 

How to better understand what Black Lives Matter means

I think women should more easily understand what blacks are trying to say when they say Black Lives Matter.


For example, can we imagine a man who loves his wife, loves his daughters, loves his mother, respects women of achievement - and yet is still sexist?  still chauvinist?  Of course we can imagine that.  Women have been telling us that for decades, or more.  For a man to love some women does not mean that he does not automatically diminish women, that he does not think women are too emotional, or at the mercy of their hormones, or not as smart, or as dedicated, or as capable of leadership, or don't belong in the workforce, or don't belong in management, or are too soft, or too nice, or toooooooooo….. or not enoughhhhhhhh….fill in the blank. 


Loving some women, and admiring some women does not let sexist and chauvinist men off the hook.  They can be and usually are to at least some degree sexist and chauvinist. We are raised in and surrounded by a world that diminishes women and the feminine.  We carry it in us and have to free ourselves from it.  It requires a conscious choice, and the first step in that choice is to know that a choice needs to be made.


So too with Black Lives Matter.  We can fool ourselves into thinking that we are not racists because we have black people in our lives that we admire, trust, and love.  OK, great, that is wonderful.  But it does not mean that we don't have centuries of racist biases in us - and have to overcome those deeply ingrained biases - not smart? lazy? dangerous? promiscuous? uppity?  pick a word, it is hard to continue with these pejoratives.


Or we can dodge the issue by just saying that we love all people, that All Lives Matter.  But that just lets us not examine and make corrections to the centuries of bias baked into our country and our world and into ourselves.


Black Lives Matter is a scream of anguish from the black community saying that in this country black lives don't matter - you can tell by the endless shooting of unarmed black men, by the social snubbing, by the fact that every black parent has to train their children in how not to get killed by a cop, etc. etc. etc. 


So, in the same way that women know that they have to make sure they don't get raped - for which they will be shamed and blamed - blacks know they have to make sure they don't get shot by cops - for which they will be shamed and blamed.


I hope the analogy helps clarify.


To discover your own biases go to implicit.harvard.edu.  It shows your implicit reactions - your subconscious mind.  It is a disturbing test to take, but the courageous will.

Take your feet/knees off our knecks

Ruth Bader Ginsburg famously said: "I ask no favor for my sex.  All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks”  as she spoke to sexist men.


George Floyd famously said: "I can't breathe" as he was being killed by a racist cop.


That's all.  Get your sexist feet off the necks of the women that you cruelly dominate.


Get your racist knees off the necks of the blacks that you cruelly dominate. 


Trumpsters have a president that they elected and idolize that said to governors during the multiracial Black Lives Matter protests; "You have to dominate"


But, of course, having to dominate is actually the problem itself - dominate blacks, and browns, and reds, and yellows and women, and children and other countries, and everyone and everything that looks threatening to the fragile and precarious egos of white men, white supremacists, white authoritarians.


Leadership, not domination.  
Inspiration, not domination. 
Example, not domination. 
Character, not domination.
Integrity, not domination.
Honesty, not domination.
Responsibility, not domination.
Caring, not domination.
Empathy, not domination.
Understanding, not domination.
Humanity, not domination.
Love, not domination.

I Can’t Breathe - Me Too - no going back

A friend pointed out that this “I Can’t Breathe” moment is a moment where there is no going back, just like the “Me Too” moment changed life for women. There is no going back.  In both cases twisted, domineering men have been told that their reigns of terror are over. The “domination” which is so beloved and admired by this twisted president has been exposed, reviled, and will be defeated. 

About time. 

"All men are created equal" Thomas Jefferson - what does that mean?

What does the founding idea of America as written by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence mean - "All men are created equal"?


All men are not equally strong, or fast, or smart, or tall, or skilled, or talented, or young, or old, or wise, or foolish, or....


Philosopher Mortimer J Adler answered that question in his wonderful book "We Hold These Truths" in 1987. 


All Men Are Created Equal means all men, and women of course, are equally one thing - we are all equally HUMAN.


When our male chauvinists think they are superior to women, they are wrong - all humans are equally human.  When our racist white supremacist men and women think they are superior to blacks, and browns, and reds, and yellows - they are wrong - all humans are equally human.  And all humans are equally endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, including the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  It's in the Declaration of Independence for all of us to read.


There is another wonderful book - "Guns Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998.  He asks the question - how did the European white race dominate and over-run the world?  His answer is the dominance of the white race is NOT because of any genetic superiority (sorry white supremacists) but rather the accident of geography. 


Europe, by mere chance, had the confluence of grains, animals, and climate that made Europe the first to very gradually develop agricultural societies which then led them to become the first to develop guns, ships, steel, etc.  For example, you can domesticate sheep, cows, pigs, and horses but you can't domesticate lions, zebras, hippopotamuses etc.   And, by centuries of exposure to their domestic animals the Europeans developed immunities to the contagious diseases that came from those animals - smallpox, chickenpox, cholera, measles, etc. that killed more of them than the brave cavalry enforcing the spread of the white European Americans across the land did with their guns (against the arrows and spears of the natives)


So, the message to white supremacists is this - white blood is not superior - white genes are not superior - white Europeans were just lucky to be in the geography to develop guns, germs, and steel before others. 


You could say that the white Europeans were nastier than the others, I suppose.  Because they certainly brutalized all in their way to their own "manifest destinies".  Not exactly something to be proud of, even though our current temporary president seems to think that Domination is the highest human "virtue."