lesser of two evils

As we get closer to the actual election of our next president, the news stories get more horrifying and the Facebook posts become more insane.  There are women of Mexican heritage touting Donald Trump with dire warnings about Clinton.  There are black men totally invested in Clinton while ignoring that the last Clinton presidency started this amazing new race-to-the-top with incarcerating black men for minor drug charges--I must admit, it took the wind right out of the sails of the drive-by's in our town, but now we have a militarized Police force using profiling and stop and frisk as an excuse to harass people of color--especially if they are large and dark, if they are surly or could be high, you can shoot them.
We have Wiki-leaks--showing up a little at a time so that no one knows what to do with the information.  And do we know where it came from?  Do we know if it is altered?  Is anyone checking and reporting back to us?
A random study (or poll, or questionaire or imaginary dream re-creation announced that our paid bureaucrats in positions of power think we are not smart enough to know what is good for us--the government needs to just tell us what to do.  Our female candidate makes the point that Lincoln spoke out of both sides of his mouth to get rid of slavery, My granddaughter has pointed out--repeatedly--that by fifth grade, she has learned about the pilgrims 6 times, complete with how they dressed and how they ate turkey and dressing and cranberries and pumpkin pie and had the meal with the Native Americans, but has never got that that they survived to that meal due to assistance from the Native Americans.  (Forget most of the rest of that lesson--the clothes and food are not accurate and they never discussed when this meal occurred or how many years went by before anyone found a need to commemorate it or if it really happened at all.  This year they added the story of Pocahontas.  At least she learned she married John Rolf and not John Smith.  It is like history is by Disney anymore and has no actual purpose.

It does make the nonspecific study results in which our bureacrats need to tell us what to do, more likely.

But back to the topic at hand--an election between two candidates that are seen as evil, choose which one is the lesser evil.  (what I don't understand is why so few people get that there are other candidates and with media attention and their votes, they are as viable as those 2 evils.)
So lets look at some other "lesser of two evil" choices:

• would you rather be bitten by a rattlesnake or a copperhead?
• would you rather eat dog crap or cat crap
• would you rather be murdered by a knife or a gun
• would you rather be falsely accused/ then framed for rape or for murder
• would you rather live in a single room with no windows, doors or light, or a glass room that is constantly bright as day.

I could go one, but by now, most of you are thinking, I wouldn't want either one, I can avoid a snakebite (in truth, most of the snake bites I've seen were to the hands of drunken young men that decided to pick them up on a dare).
I'm not eating crap, try to make me and I'll fight you.
I try to avoid being murdered--by anything--and have no intention of going softly into that....blah, blah, blah,
I hope not to have anyone try to accuse and/or frame me, but certainly should never be expected to choose one.
and the last--who cares, sounds horrible, and only a madman/woman would cause me to have to choose either one.

In other words--we humans do not have to choose the lesser of two evils.  We don't have to.  We can find other options and if someone or something tries to force us to choose--we can fight, we can even go so far as to fight for our lives, so why should we go to the polls and "choose the lesser of two evils"
 I think perhaps this election cycle is a sign of bad times coming.  I think maybe we Americans, that  are so quick to spout off about "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" and "living free or dying free" and "government by the people and for the people" are going to have to stop our infernal self-absorption; our non-stop focus on buying the latest craze and being entertained and making our kids feel happy-happy-joy-joy all the time, and try to find an actual way to get our country on track.  I'm not a "let's get back to how it used to be" kind of person.  It needs to be a country for all its inhabitants and we all need to wake up and think, empathize, look at our current lives and make some decisions about what it means to be a member of this society.

We can keep thinking in bumper stickers--"make America Great again", "we are number 1" "America, love it or leave it"---none of those mean anything because they are slogans, not plans, not goals, and not truths.  We aren't number 1 in anything we should brag about.  We were never great to everyone.  And if it keeps going like it's going, most won't love it and no other country is going to welcome our refugees anymore than they are those of Africa or South America.  Wake up.

Because, truly, the lesser of two evils is still evil.
No one should have to vote for evil.
We can do better than that.

 

We daugters of Eve.

When I was little, I remember the discussions of 2 piece swim suits and---god-forbid--the bikini.

We were definitely going to hell in a hand basket.

Woman showing their bodies, flaunting them even, no modesty...what man would want such a woman.  Might as well marry a prostitute.

Then the sixty's hit full blown, with nudity on beaches, free love, drugs/sex/and rock and roll.

Doomed, definitely doomed---at least we women were.

These days there are places making it unlawful to wear a burkini--which is similar to a swimsuit from Victorian England. If their religion won't let them dress like the rest of us--what is wrong with their religion.  What kind of modern woman would allow a religion to tell them how to dress and act.

If you stand around any water cooler or sit in any work breakroom, you will hear gossip about coworkers.  If the workplace is both genders, it might get raunchy.  If it is mostly women, it will get judgemental.

Sally's hair makes her look older and Alfrieda is putting on weight, but the big one is always about sex, sex and men, sex and women, too much sex, not enough sex, needing sex, or their daughter's sex lives or their mother's sex  lives and on and on.  And it is never complimentary.  And they are more judgemental about that than men.

Women expect other women to act like a proper woman.  I have heard 60 year old women refer to themselves as "good girls" and have heard 30 year old women referred to as sluts because they are single and go clubbing on weekends.  We talk about each other as if how to be a proper woman is a very specific thing with very specific rules.

We women want our women to be independent, but married.   We want our women to be fashionable but not too sexy.  We want our women to be ambitious and to always have a clean house and take good care of the kids.  And we want every woman to want children.

A woman that accepts a faith that places her in a submissive role is not acceptable, although a good christian woman accepts her place.  A woman that has children without ever marrying can never be accepted into the group of permanent "good girls" although if that same woman marries later its like that never happened.  Some of the strongest women I have ever met raised families alone and never married. 

And woman that are overweight but never talk about dieting, that wear their hair in an easy to care for pony tail or cut short---hopeless.  Did they wax.  Do their hands look too big or to work-worn.  Is there make-up polished.  Is it too heavy?  Is too little?

No one is safe from the judging until they are dying, and then only if their lifestyle couldn't possibly have caused the illness.

I have been told that women caused original sin.  That we are the weaker sex because of this.  That we need protected and need pampered and need guidance and need firm rules of conduct.  I have been told our shallowness is hormonal or in the DNA or is a result of our inborn role as mothers.

Yet every day I see women that are hunters, marksmen, athletes, CEO's, criminals, terrible mothers, great spiritual leaders, and on and on, like a list of every possible job and role a human can have.

Why do we try so hard to define women.  Why do we try to put them into a box that meets our standards.  Why do women do that to each other?  Why?  Why?  Why?

And why do we worry so much about how women dress and what they look like and what set of sexual mores they live by.

There is so much more to being a woman than how a woman looks.

There is so much more to being a woman than her sexual functions.

Maybe we need to stop being the foot on the head of the women around us.  If our partner is like that, we do not have to agree with him (or her).  If our religion is like that, we do not have to participate in that part of the religion.  If our coworkers can find no other way to feel better about themselves; if our relatives can't stop being that judgemental person, we do not have to join in.

We are all women, just women.  And there is no one way to be that.

Being a woman is just being a person.  That is a journey that is hard enough without a bunch of silly superficial and arbitrary rules.

If wishes were horses...

I was an idealistic child.  I expected a fair world.  I expected, in order of strength of expectation, a fair government, fair police, a fair school principal, a fair teacher, fair parents, fair friends and last--and probably least--a fair sibling.

Since I expected all this fairness, I was frequently disappointed and occasionally just plain mad.

I was also a wishy-washy child, not prone to confrontation (except with little sister) and always trying to be what I saw as nice--lady-like, even.  Because of that, I may have started a few too many of my complaints about the sad state of the planet with the words "I wish..."

As in,  "I wish that Mrs. Teacher didn't treat Lulu worse than Joseph just because she doesn't like her mother."  Or  "I wish we could all afford to go to summer camp"  or even  "I wish that the coaches didn't treat kids in glasses like they were hopeless at softball, they like to play too"  I may have been a whiner, and some of those things directly affected me, but some of them didn't.  I really did want a fairer world.

My mother's response was also, frequently, "If wishes were horses then beggars would ride."

She said that to me quite a lot.  More than the familiar "who said the world was fair".  Much more than "God works in mysterious ways" although I was prone to wishing God was fair also, so she may have given up on that one.

I am still pretty idealistic.  I still wish the world was fair.

I have figured out that with some truly awful things---perhaps God's mysterious ways are the cause, such as childhood cancer and tornado's sucking whole families into the sky and auto driver's having heart attacks and killing themselves and a van full of red cross workers--those I have to leave alone.  If I thought about those too much, I might become incapable of carrying on.

But other things?  There are a lot of things we could make fairer; systems we control and untruths that we agree to call true and plainly preventable ugliness.

I wish we could make it easier for everyone to get enough to eat.  And make it easier to get healthy food--no more food deserts in poor neighborhoods.   The government pays farmers to destroy excess food that would drive down prices and groceries and restaurants routinely throw out food that is completely edible just not purchased.  Some of them pour bleach on it in the dumpster to prevent anyone from eating that food safely since they didn't pay for it.

I wish we could get rid of poor neighborhoods--not by gentrification but income equilibration.  I remember a long boring car ride with parents in which I questioned why garbage collecting paid less than accounting.  Sitting behind a desk in clean clothes sounded much more pleasant than riding on a garbage truck in heat and rain and cold, and the smell could not be good.  The discussion about how the accountant had gone to college and the garbage collector had not, and that made his time more valuable became an argument about everyone's time being valuable, life was too short, and it made no sense to pay someone more for a more comfortable job.  I argued that maybe we should all get the same amount for our time since we all got a set amount of it and none of us knew how much that might be and "I wish jobs were fair"  ended with a "shush, you sound like a communist".

I wish every little nerd child  (we know who we were, and only want to learn more) and every older child and adult that found they had a passion to learn how to do something new had access to the education they needed to do that.  Not just college degrees but also skills and the arts.  I know many people that have piled up student loan debt--and not on the thing they are passionate about, but for a degree that someone talked them into because they could get a job, or a better job, or a good paying job, but not the job they really wanted and loved.  We don't really send people out to explore their options and we definitely don't encourage our children to find what they love.   We don't send our children in pursuit of their dreams, but of money--artistic children are encouraged to learn something saleable, hire-able, to make a better living.  Athletic children are encouraged to become professionals in a field that is so competitive and cutthroat that it eats their childhood then leaves them rudderless when they stop growing short of the body requirements expected in that world or get injured before they make any money.  And then there are those families that no member has ever had the ability to get an education.  Families in which they lose their dreams and hopes because reality calls for them to help earn money to feed the rest of the family long before they should have such pressure put on them.  If we stacked a single sheet of paper  for each person that wanted an education  but couldn't get  the one they dreamed of because of money or status or time requirements or responsibilities, it would be a terrifyingly high mountain.  But remember, at one time, there was no public education system, only rich children were educated to read and write.  There is no reason that our nation couldn't value education above weapons and make education free for those that wanted it.

I wish Walmart was a profit-sharing company.  That every employee shared in the profits at a rate of 50% divided quarterly with the employees and 50% with shareholders--which includes our own richest family.  And the profit sharing needs to be even, from lowest paid to highest--none of this million to the top and 10$ to the bottom.  Greed is ugly, we need to start valuing every person's time fairly.   (and the Walton' and the other shareholders would still get plenty--they didn't spend any time working, just bought some stocks)

We could all make at least a living wage doing whatever we chose as our life work.

We could all receive preventative healthcare--real preventative care--education heavy, exercise heavy, nutrition-heavy preventative healthcare, emotional coping mental healthcare--not just the insurance-will-pay-for-these-immunizations-and-these-screening-exams at these ages.  These days, healthcare is all about what can the healthcare provider get money from and not at all about improving the quality of life of the patient.  (The very name "patient"  implies a dependent, passive, and unimportant person.)

We could all receive basic financial and economic lifeskills starting in childhood.  Right now, public school is all about 1. following directions, 2. basic reading for comprehension, 3. writing for basic form-filling out, 4. Math for basic low-level work.  It teaches little regarding emotional health, caring for our selves, finding what we love doing or what we do best.  We could be aiming for helping each child reach their full potential.  Instead, except for those rare savants and the children blessed with a private education in an amazing school--the goal is to create minimally skilled, compliant, followers capable of low-level labor and office jobs.

It's not fair.

And the justice system--that is also not fair--which really sucks, since justice is supposed to be all about fairness.

I wish that people that have served their time were not pariahs afterward, relegating them to recidivism due to inability to become anything else.  Prison should not be for profit.  They should be able to get an education, psychological assistance, chemical dependency assistance, and learn skills beyond the current slave labor they provide to big corporations to make those companies have a higher profit.  Yes, they committed a crime, but if we are going to sentence every person that commits a crime to a death sentence of hopelessness and continued failure, maybe we should just decide that is who we are as a nation and kill them at entry.

 Our justice system is flawed, we have 2 adversarial teams, the prosecution and the defense.  The prosecution team includes law enforcement and the defense team frequently only includes a single unpaid and minimally experienced lawyer and both of their goals is to win.  It is not at all about truth.  It has nothing to do with justice or fairness or making the world a safer place.  And no one cares if the law that makes something a crime is fair or just or even sensible.  Our justice system has become a meat grinder that we put people into and what comes out in the end is broken lives and tears.

I wish that corporations were not controlling our government.  I wish the people running for office were not being paid for by those corporations.  I wish that the current voting system was clean and fair and unable to be hacked or twisted or bought.  Unfortunately, there is no actual oversight.  Every state is over their own.  Imagine if we all voted, 1 person 1 vote, and every person's vote counted equally.  Not this-electoral stuff.  No gerrymandering for party affiliation.  No closing of polling places or employers not letting people off get to the poll or refusing any ID's that are likely to be hard for a certain group of people to get.  Every person has a vote--and it counts.  That should not be hard.

I wish that life was fair: that the systems created by our government were fair, that the way we choose who represents us in our government were fair, that the way we decide who gets to be happy and who only gets to yearn for a chance at happiness was fair.

In my world--we all get to ride. It's only fair.