I Will Not Wait

We are three weeks out from the election that has shocked the nation and rattled the entire world. It promises to change our country and our lives profoundly. How, is yet to be determined. How is dependent on a changing number of things, known and unknown. How, depends on us.

People ask, “Why don’t you give him a chance before you insert your pre-conceived biases?” In answer, I say this: He gets his chance regardless of my views, but no, I will not wait to begin to speak out. I will not wait until our constitution is diluted by more crimes against the citizens of this United States of America. I will not wait to see if we begin to register Muslims before I speak out. I will not wait to see if he rebukes the agenda of the white supremacists who have delighted in his election to make my view known. I will not wait to see if he follows through on his plans to abolish women’s reproductive rights or protection against discrimination of the LGBTQ citizens to begin to resist.

I will not wait to stand up for the rights of ALL the citizens of the United States of America. I will not wait until it is too late. I WILL NOT WAIT!

Gender Bias

I found last night’s episode of the new series “Bull” on CBS to be very fascinating. The subject of the show was a pilot of a commercial passenger plane which had crashed killing everyone on board except the captain. She was saved only because the nose cone broke off on impact and was flung away from the plane. She was being sued by the families of the deceased and was accused of being negligent.

It was a good story. She was a former combat pilot, a highly decorated veteran with many combat missions on her resume. A concussion at the time of the crash left her with no memory of the last few minutes of the flight or why she made the decisions she did in those minutes in spite of the protests of the co-pilot.

When the identical trial was presented to two identical shadow juries, one found in her favor and one did not. The only difference was that one shadow jury was presented with a defendant who looked like her and the other was presented the exact same information with a defendant who was a male.

Gender bias, it seems, is so ingrained in us that our expectations are very different for a man and for a woman in the same circumstances. When we see a man and a woman acting and reacting in the same manner we can put completely different assumptions to those actions. Without realizing it we expect more from a woman and accept less from a man.

I have watched this exact scenario play out in this election campaign. Mr. Trump is excused time and again for over the top, inappropriate and unacceptable actions and statements. And Secretary Clinton is punished for discretions that are nothing more than accusation and innuendo. People say they don’t trust her, when she fact checks as the most consistently truthful of any of the candidates and he blatantly misleads and lies more that 70% of the time.

I do trust Secretary Clinton because I have done some homework and I know what she has accomplished and I know that an accusation with no validation is nothing.

Go to this link for a good example of what I think might be mostly gender bias: 

http://www.forwardprogressives.com/fine-lets-actually-compare-controversial-scandals-hillary-clinton-donald-trump/