I Miss Nuance

I miss when people had nuanced approaches to thought, and when people allowed for more grey area. Today, nuance and grey area is a thing of the past, and everything is black and white. Makes it pretty impossible to have any sort of civilized discourse.

Why do I bring all of this up? Today, Harvey Weinstein was found guilty for various sex crimes and harassment allegations. I think everyone with any decency would say this is a good thing. I also think Bill Cosby is equally guilty, and the fact that he is locked up is also a good thing. 

The reason I bring up nuance and grey area, is because the narrative I have been seeing online since the unfortunate passing of Kobe and Gigi Bryant has been this: When a black man gets accused of a crime or violation of a sexual nature, certain black women are quick to shame them, but they never say anything about powerful white men who do the same thing. When making this statement, most people pick one of two sides. 

Side A: Oh, so you think because nobody (black) vilifies Harvey Weinstein, then black men should be able to get away with these crimes too? (Team Gayle/Oprah)

Or Side B: Oh, so you must only want to see black men go to jail for this activity but you’re cool with it when white men do it? (Team 50/Snoop)

See what I mean? No nuance allowed. However, I have a completely different take that I don’t think I’ve read on the internet before.

Both things are probably false. 

Shocking, I know. But think about it. Do you think Snoop and 50 Cent REALLY think what Weinstein did is OK as long as black men get away with it too?

Or do you think they are saying “Hey Oprah and Gayle, we know that when black men act in inappropriate ways towards women it’s not cool, but how come you NEVER talk about when white guys do it?”

This is my position. Do I think the R. Kelly’s, Russell Simmons’and Bill Cosby’s of the world deserve to be dragged in the media by everybody? Damn right I do. Do they deserve to go to jail? Of course (assuming the overwhelming amount of allegations against Russell Simmons are true, he hasn’t gone to court for any of it as of yet). 

But to think that they deserve punishment doesn’t mean you have to ignore other people’s bad behavior. You can walk AND chew gum at the same time. And if some people notice that all of your attacks are only focused on one side, and they say something, that doesn’t mean that they are by default defending the people Oprah and Gayle are talking about (exception Snoop Dogg, the nigga literally said ‘Free Bill Cosby’. I want to believe this was more out of emotion and that he doesn’t ACTUALLY want Bill free.)

Nuance used to be so cool. I miss it. Bottom line, ALL rapists and people who engage in sexual harassment or other types of misconduct are trash. Doesn’t matter there skin color. However, focusing all of ones energy into one particular group rather than all of the offenders, has several consequences, most of which I believe are unintended. Only focusing on black accusers will make your mostly white audience feel (if they don’t already) that black men are dangerous. Especially if someone the majority of America (black and white alike) trusts and thinks highly of. That person’s voice matters. 

So again, to be perfectly clear, I am all for dragging these terrible men in the media and I sincerely hope that they all get the punishment they truly deserve. All of them. Not just the ones who look a certain way. 

ALL.

Young Voters Are Very Smart

I love millennials and generation Z people. I really do.

You guys seem to get it. When it comes to politics, we really know what’s going on. More than our parents ever did, more than that know-it-all cousin who you get into political and/or religious debates with at Thanksgiving, and more than most news sites apparently. 

I say this because it seems like ever since Donald Trump got elected, the Democratic side of the spectrum have been non-stop pumping up identity politics and respectability politics over policy. Now, while most of the right wing ignores or flat out vilifies anyone who isn’t white, a man who identifies as such, is straight and is a Christian, the “left wing” (heavy Dr. Evil air quotes here) has been using the struggles of racial/sexual/gender minorities for cynical purposes. 

Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren are perfect examples of this. They LOVE using the “woman” card whenever it’s convenient, or whenever it places the person they are debating in a situation where if you disagree then you look misogynistic. However, my question to them is, how does your being a woman get me Universal Health Care and tuition Free College? How does the fact that you are a woman (and that fact alone) fix the climate crisis? How do your ovaries and vagina help to end the wars?

This is the type of stuff millennials and gen-z’rs are focused on. We know there is realistically only ONE candidate who will fight for these things unapologetically. Everyone else in the running for the Democratic nomination has folded in one way or another on all of those key issues. And I’m isolating the young voters for a reason. Older voters seem to care more about how a politicians makes them feel rather than the work they do. All of the democratic media websites focus on how old and white Bernie is, and how racist and sexist America is because we won’t choose a woman or person of color for our nominee.

OR……

Maybe because the oldest white guy in the race has POLICY PROPOSALS AND PLANS that will actually help to fix the issues in minority communities WHILE ALSO helping out rural white communities.  Some people see this as a negative (cough The Root cough), whereas us youngin’s see this as smart strategy. No President will be able to do anything for minorities if white people don’t help get him elected. It’s just a fact. So, purposely pushing policy agendas that ONLY focus on helping black and brown people and ignoring the rest of workers is simply unintelligent. It seems that the Gen-X and Millenialcrowd gets this, which is why we put all of our hope into the oldest white guy running. His policy ideas will help all the communities democrats claim to care for, while everyone else will just make you (older voters) feel good because…it just does. 

Besides, who wouldn’t want to see Nina Turner in the White House standing next to Bernard in some capacity talking that talk that you only hear at black churches? 

#FeelTheBern2020

Yo DNC Let Me Holla At You

Hey DNC. We need to have a talk.

Look, before you try to lie to me, let me just tell you what I already know about you upfront. I know that both Donna Brazile, whow as DNC chair at the time, and Senator Elizabeth Warren both stated during the 2016 primaries that you guys rigged the election in favor of Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders. How was that done? According to Donna Brazile’sarticle in Politico:

“Before I called Bernie Sanders, I lit a candle in my living room and put on some gospel music. I wanted to center myself for what I knew would be an emotional phone call. I had promised Bernie when I took the helm of the Democratic National Committee after the convention that I would get to the bottom of whether Hillary Clinton’s team had rigged the nomination process, as a cache of emails stolen by Russian hackers and posted online had suggested. I’d had my suspicions from the moment I walked in the door of the DNC a month or so earlier, based on the leaked emails. But who knew if some of them might have been forged? I needed to have solid proof, and so did Bernie. So I followed the money. My predecessor, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, had not been the most active chair in fundraising at a time when President Barack Obama’s neglect had left the party in significant debt. As Hillary’s campaign gained momentum, she resolved the party’s debt and put it on a starvation diet. It had become dependent on her campaign for survival, for which she expected to wield control of its operations. Debbie was not a good manager. She hadn’t been very interested in controlling the party—she let Clinton’s headquarters in Brooklyn do as it desired so she didn’t have to inform the party officers how bad the situation was. How much control Brooklyn had and for how long was still something I had been trying to uncover for the last few weeks. By September 7, the day I called Bernie, I had found my proof and it broke my heart.”

The debate schedule heavily favored Clinton, who was of course already wildly famous due to being Secretary of State, a Senator from New York, and the First Lady in the 90’s. Bernie Sanders however, was relatively unknown to people outside of Vermont, or those who don’t run in political circles. So by scheduling the debates during times when they knew nobody would watch them, which essentially assured that Bernie’s ideas wouldn’t easily be heard by people who may have never heard of him or his policy proposals. 

Then of course you had the bias media reporting of how many delegates each candidate had won. How was it bias? The media reported how many pledged-delegates Bernie Sanders had won, while simultaneously reporting how many pledged AND non-pledged delegates Hillary Clinton won. Non-pledged delegates are also called Superdelegates. And the vast majority of them had pre-pledged their support for Hillary Clinton, therefore skewing the numbers dramatically when being reported in the mainstream news. You can read more about that here. 

But this LATEST move, holy shit DNC, you really showing out with this one. 

Michael “Stop and Frisk” Bloomberg gave about $318,000 to the DNC one day, and gave over $800,000 to the Democratic Grassroots Victory fund, which is also affiliated with the DNC, in the same day. What happened after that? The DNC removed the threshold for how many individual donors one needs to qualify for the debate, thereby allowing Michael Bloomberg to participate, even though he doesn’t have many individual donors. Why all of a sudden would you change that rule, which happens to strongly favor the guy who just gave you guys over $1 Million? Did you think impeachment would distract us? We already knew the outcome before you started the trial. Still think you can use the Russia card? People stopped caring about that a long time ago. We’re paying attention. And we don’t like what we see. So once these results come in from Iowa, if anything looks even a little bit suspect, prepare for holy hell. 

#TomPerezResign