The Plan for the New Year

So, this is the second time I've posted a plan for how I'm going to operate this blog in the coming months. Last time, I came up with a new plan and then, instead, continued to follow my previous schedule of posting articles mostly randomly, about once a week. But this time I'm going to stick to the plan I'm laying out.


December turned out to be a very good month for my thespainic activities but not such a good month for posting to the blog. I have a lot of stuff written out and, thanks to my wonderful parents, now have some dictation software to make 'typing' up those essays much easier. I will endeavor to make my postings here more frequent


My current plan is to try to do at least two postings a week, on Tuesdays and Thursday. Sometimes I will make additional postings. I will also try to provide more thoughts / snippets via twitter.


In the new year I also hope to expand the blog not only in terms of my own postings, but also in terms of readership. If you read a blog posting that you really like (or really hate) pass it along to a friend. If you have a specific response to something I say, please comment. And, as I've said before, if anyone wants to write a posting of their own for me to post on here, please shoot me off an email (the parrhesianprogressive@gmail.com) and I will be more than happy to post it here.


So, happy new year, it sure looks to be an interesting one.

The Season of Giving

Its the ‘holiday’ season, which means its time for most Americans to spend lots of money. On presents, on food, on travel, whatever you like. At the root of all of this buying is supposed to be the idea of giving. Giving is also one of the key tenets of any Progressive political agenda to the extent that living a Progressive lifestyle is a commitment to personal giving. We believe that government should be of and for the people, but that does not diminish the profound impact that an individual’s actions can have. There are many types of giving, but I want to concentrate on the most popular way, monetary giving. 

We live in a capitalist system and denying the great impact money has over our lives and society would be about as delusional as one can get. The most basic form of giving is donation, giving without receiving something material back (beyond a super cool button, t-shirt, or bumper sticker). As soon as someone begins to having some disposable income, they should try to save at least a small percentage of it to donate. Give within your means, of course, but give. Pick an organization you support and work in giving them a dollar a day, a dollar a week, a dollar a month. Odds are, if you’re reading this, you can probably afford one of those options. From birth, materialism teaches us that spending money is a means to a personal end. The progressive response must be to try to spend money in support of  causes rather than a products. Think of it as a ‘I wish my tax dollars went to support x‘ option task. If you do not have a specific cause you want to support, lend a hand to support independent, publicly controlled media. Supporting old-steadies like NPR and PBS are fine ideas, but also look into the wide range of (more truly) Liberal podcasts like The Majority Report, The Best of the Left, or The David Packman Show among others. Or give to your friendly cyberhood political blogger :). 

In a capitalist system we (at least the 99%) spend most of our money through purchasing products. Every dollar that we spend can be seen as an endorsement of the merchandise we are buying and a rejection of its competitor. When its 8 in the morning and I’m craving a bacon egg, and cheese, I head to a cart a few blocks away from me rather than stopping at any of the delis on the way. Why? Because I have a somewhat inexplicable love of street food. I drink Pepsi rather than Coke partially because of the baseball teams they endorse. I will always pick a green toothbrush if given a choice. Always.

We make value judgements with our purchases every day. It is important to understand just how much power your dollar, and thus, that judgement, can have. Let your socio-political beliefs consciously influence where your money goes. This may mean buying organic food, not supporting companies that have ongoing labour disputes, or choosing to shop at a local business rather than the nearest Walmart. Above all it means making more of your decisions consciously thought out, including your humanitarian and political beliefs in that decision making process. 

Once again, this does not have to be just for liberals. After all, there’s very little easier in America than to use your purchasing powers to support gigantic multinational corporations. If that’s your politics, go ahead, make some investments in Canadian Oil Sands and buy the biggest cars you can find to help burn that gas. The only thing required to start using your purchasing power to further your political goals is a little work. Transparency is still the exception to the rule, but you can still find a bit of background information on almost anything you buy. Spend even half an hour a week clicking around the web and you will find yourself fantastically more informed than you were before. If you are reading this blog, odds are you can find that kind of time. The adage that in a capitalist system we vote with our dollar is absolutely true. December, when we are likely to be spending more of our money than usual on nonessentials, is the perfect time to remember that. 

The Demise of Cain

The Herman Cain presidential bid is over. At first glance, it collapsed under the weight of seemingly endless allegations of sexual misconduct. But a closer look will uncover a slightly different set of events. After all, though the previous allegations may have distracted Cain from his intent to only talk about 9-9-9, it is hard to blame his dip in the polls on them. In many ways, particularly in terms of fundraising, being accused of sexual harassment (or, really, being accused of being accused of sexual harassment) actually helped the pizza mogul. Cain lost ground in the polls not because people began to fear him as a seemingly-serial sexual harasser, but because they are beginning to understand that, sex scandals aside, he is completely unprepared for the job he was supposedly pursuing. But, according to the story that the mainstream media spun, it was this affair which finally made him unfit for the presidency. So, what is different about (the perfectly named) Ginger White? 

If you listen to those same media outlets, it would appear that White had a lot more proof of Cain’s dalliances than the other women. The many late night phone calls, for example, have received a lot of attention.  While yes, that does seem like some good evidence, it can hardly be seen as more convincing than knowledge of the existence of settlements for multiple women. The proof surrounding the seven (or more) accusations of sexual harassment was just as strong, if not stronger, than Ginger White’s. 

In many ways this most recent ‘scandal’ shouldn’t have as much impact on Cain politically. There is no indication that his affair with Ginger White impacted his job in any way, while all of the sexual harassment certainly did. This affair was a completely consensual, legal, and private unlike the nonconsensual, illegal, public reports of sexual harassment. 

Of course, it should come as no surprise that an extra-marital affairs has brought about the end of another political career. Ethics violations, treasonous statements, and war crimes are all acceptable baggage, but non-normative sex certainly is not. From Bill Clinton to Tiger Woods to (until recently that is) Newt Gingrich, public figures are brought down for having consensual sex at an alarming rate. Rather than looking at the plethora of the ‘scandals’ as proof that we need to seriously re-evaluate the institution of marriage and our devotion to preaching strict monogamy, they continue to be used as grounds to attack every level of the ‘transgressor’s’ character. The lesson of the Herman Cain scandals are, after all, much more about how our media and how we as a nation react to sexual harassment than to sex itself. It is no surprise that a consensual sexual affair should be considered legitimate grounds to destroy a career.

But why is the reaction to the, in my mind and before the law, far more serious allegation of sexual harassment so different? Well, there are two specific reasons, both of which point out the ingrained sexism of our culture. The first is that the ‘accusers’ (not victims) are immediately look at as over-sensitive, gold-diggers, or both. Our media and our politics still propagates the myth that the most trustworthy person is the highest ranking (usually white) male. If you step back and think for a second, is it really all that surprising that the usually vicious men who gain positions of extreme economic or political power treat their female underlings without respect? Of course not. And yet, whenever stories like this are breached, the media seems to always take the side of the much-maligned Boss against his ‘accuser.’ And that’s true in America even if the Boss is French. 

The second reason is the more insidious one, and it is the claim that the entire idea of sexual harassment is, for the most part, a farce. From winks by the boss to shouts on the street, the idea that being actively objectified is a compliment rather than an affront is one held by a great number of men and, scarily enough, women. How can we expect our society to respond negatively to harassers when it has such a culturally conservative attitude in it? Accepting this kind of treatment as complementary, or even just natural automatically places all women in a different sphere from men. Whether this belief is accepted or tolerated because we’re all sexists or because we don’t fully understand its implications I don’t know, but if we are to truly overcome the cultural history of sexism it cannot be tolerated. 

Perhaps we have begun to devolve back into the morality of the past centuries. Perhaps we never really grew out of it. But this sexism, alive and well in twenty first century America. Women, as a group, must still be classified as a minority. Being a minority is not just about how many of you there are, its about having the minority of power. Its about time everybody admits to themselves that women are facing the same types of barriers to shifting that balance that they always have, barriers that may have been slightly weakened, but which still hold a particular protected place in the American-–and global––mindset.