Who should be making the decisions?

By the time I publish this story, I will be real close to 7 decades and 4 years old. I have seen a lot of stuff during my short life. Some I would like to forget and some are fond memories. When I was a young lad I saw a society that was driven by hard working males supported by equally hard working women who generally manned the house, cooked meals and cared for the children. To me this seemed like a natural order, and I assumed it was the way things should be. As I grew older I began to question the idea that men were making all the decisions. In fact, I wondered why one sex was considered more capable of certain tasks than the others. It was pretty obvious that we men were stronger and more physically capable of strenuous tasks, but there was something else in the mix that I did not fully understand. In high school there were regular fights between the guys. I was in of a few protecting my rights. I do not remember girls fighting in high school. I always wondered about this phenomena and why it existed.

Somewhere in my early teens I began to grow muscles and a small amount of hair on certain parts of my body. In biology class they explained to us that we were changing into adults, which seemed natural. I also remember having new strange, unexplained feeling that I had not experienced before. I decided, along with my friends, that I needed to bulk up so we bought a set of lifting weights and began working out. One of our classmates, who was skinny came back from summer break looking like Charles Atlas! He was our hero and we decided we all needed to look like Jim. Well, we were not as dedicated as Jim and choose to wrestle in the back yard or the swimming pool, play pool, ride bikes or just sit around acting like stupid teenagers. We had a good time but never did get enormous muscles.

Driving a car was an awaking for me. I now had large amounts of power and control when driving my old 283 Chevy. I was not the worst driver but I am sure I was not the best and managed to survive a couple of crashes and a few fender benders. I tended to drive too fast and sometimes carelessly.

Meanwhile, the female population was generally calm and collected, experiencing very few car wrecks or fights. I also learned in class, that girls/ladies matured at an earlier age than us guys. We did not notice or care that they were developing into young women. I think it was when Patty, who was a very well endowed young lady, who was bouncing on the trampoline during PE, that moved many of us one step closer to manhood. The only word I can think of that adequately describes the Patty situation was mesmerizing. Eventually Mr C, the PE teacher, realized what was distracting us and turned us around to face the blank wall. But the images were etched in our brains!

Sorry about that, I ventured so far off my topic, but this all leads me to my point. My point is that we guys are more geared to hunt, move heavy things and fight amongst ourselves. Testosterone is a powerful hormone that creates breeding machines that are less capable of making decisions based on the situation rather than facts! Lets face it guys, our boss is right below the belt line. Ladies have a small amount of testosterone but no where near as much as us, which allows them to make more rational decisions. What I am trying to say is women are generally more capable at doing the jobs we typically assign to men.

Have you noticed how many women are working in high level jobs? Are we at a point in history where the standard patriarchal society is changing to a matriarchal system? It is my belief that the forerunners (women who entered the corporate world early) to this new role were not quite prepared for the male dominated, dog eat dog nature of the workplace, not to mention the multitude of situations that arose because of SEX! Many women in higher positions suffered from the idea that they were not be capable of doing the job. This has all changed and the workplace is becoming much more gender neutral and men are required to keep “it” stowed away. This new workplace could become a much more productive environment and less testosterone driven as we settle into it. It is safe to say that we must create a testosterone free work environment! As soon as corporations figure out that they may have higher profits if women are making more of the decisions, it will be a done deal.

So, here we are in the 21st century and we are in need of some serious changes in our world leadership. It is pretty obvious based on history that men are not doing a very good job! The state of a male dominated world is in total chaos! From looming environmental disasters to the ever increasing number of conflicts and wars, one has to wonder where we are going?

To sum this up, I will say that a gender neutral workplace where everyone is judged by their productivity rather that their sex would be a boom for mankind…or is it womenkind…or maybe peoplekind.

Check out the ladies who have done well.

https://www.theceomagazine.com/business/management-leadership/female-ceos/

Parenting from the back seat

It is much easier to drive a car from the back seat. You don’t have to worry about all those pedals and lights on the dashboard, speed traps, price of fuel, that funny noise your car makes when you turn left and of course, all the half crazed people driving right beside you at high rates of speed! As far parenting goes, I have migrated to the back seat. I no longer have to make decisions on the proper thing to say to my kids, the right discipline, what they should eat, if they are really sick and, most important, if I am good parent.

Despite being in the back seat, I really have the urge to offer suggestions on how to drive the proverbial car. Also, sometimes being in the back seat allows one to have a different perspective, I did not say better, on the on-goings interaction between the driver and the road. It’s time for me to make the transition to what I am really writing about for those who are still stuck on the car analogy, parental skills. I think this will be easier for me if I just start with a list of things not to do.

1. Never talk about your children in the third person.
2. Avoid acting like an idiot in front of your children if at all possible. This would include such things as: road rage, fighting with your spouse, throwing the weed eater into the woods, sending your young child to get a gallon glass jar of mustard in the basement, talking negatively about friends, constantly yelling or nagging, eating coleslaw with your fingers, oh my, this list could get long.
3. Being obsessive about anything in your children’s presence!
4. fighting at the dinner table.
5. Do not be over protective. In today’s world this is called helicopter parenting.

To say it another way, avoid behavior that you do not want your child to exhibit even though it may be behavior that you tend to exhibit. If you want your child to be peaceful and quiet, that’s what they need to see. If you want your child to be aggressive, act aggressive. I know, this sounds pretty easy, but all of us have certain personality traits that often-time come out when we least expect them or when they should be kept deep inside. It is so easy in the hustle bustle of everyday life to forget that your child is a mirror of you. Like a new computer, you programed them, you were the first thing they saw, listened to, talked to and hopefully learned to respect and cherish.

Last point. Today’s world is a jungle of emotions including fears of all kinds, the boogie man, school, sex, ambition, just to mention a few. Many people do not keep their inner emotions in check and blurt out or do whatever they fancy whenever they want. On a deeper level, it is almost as if all the filters have been removed or at least compromised. One thing is certain, our children suffer from this. Like I said in the beginning, if a child is brought up in a trustful, peaceful, caring environment, generally they will be good people. This has been observed in many cultures. What you sow is what you reap.

Just a friendly reminder from your back seat driver.

I love the cartoons!!

This is what Donald said

“Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” Trump wrote in a post on the social network Truth Social and accused “Big Tech” of working closely with Democrats. “Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”

Now, I am sure some of you will not see this as I do, but to me it says he, Trump, wants to terminate some rules in the Constitution. My father fought in WWII. He quit his job and joined the navy in a world effort to fight a man who said…AND DID exactly that, in a country called Germany.

After making that incredibly stupid remark about compromising the Constitution, which you just read, our man Trump issued the following statement:

“The Fake News is actually trying to convince the American People that I said I wanted to ‘terminate’ the Constitution. This is simply more DISINFORMATION & LIES, just like RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA, and all of their other HOAXES & SCAMS. What I said was that when there is ‘MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION,’ as has been irrefutably proven in the 2020 Presidential Election, steps must be immediately taken to RIGHT THE WRONG. Only FOOLS would disagree with that and accept STOLEN ELECTIONS. MAGA!”

And one of the scariest things he said:

“We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country,”

Above is what Trump said. below is what Hitler said. You decide if this should be of concern. If you remember the Charlottesville incident, he said there were good people on both sides.

Hitler’s statements were: “I will get rid of the ‘communist’ ‘vermin’,” “I will take care of the ‘enemy within’,” “Jews and migrants are poisoning Aryan blood,” and “One people, one realm, one leader.”

Sept. 23, 2020 during a White House press briefing:

“We’re going to have to see what happens,” the president said, when asked whether he’d commit to a peaceful transfer of power, “win, lose, or draw.” “You know, I’ve been complaining about the ballots and the ballots are a disaster.”

“And the ballots are out of control,” he continued. “You know it. And you know who knows it better than anybody else? The Democrats.”

More than 60 courts, of which some of the judges were Trump appointees, decided this was not true in any way. If this is a conspiracy, some of Trump’s own appointed judges are involved! Most of his presidential cabinet believe the election was valid.

In 2019, he said, ” I have to (he forgot the word ‘do’) the right to do whatever I want as president”

It is my opinion that our elected officials are chosen to represent our beliefs, not theirs.

Below is an historic article that may enlighten you on the facts of World War II and Hitler’s rise to power. I must admit that I learned a great deal from this report. More important are the similarities to our current situation. If you wish to enlighten yourself on some of the facts about Hitler and his rise to power, I hope you take the time to read the article below. In the words of one of my favorite song writers, “Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you”.

https://p.dw.com/p/1GNhB

Image: Getty Images

Senator Bernie Sanders was asked about his religion. How does it inform his politics? The US presidential candidate and self-proclaimed democratic socialist is Jewish. He responded by discussing the cautionary tale of Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler’s rise to power.

“A guy named Adolf Hitler won an election in 1932,” Sanders said during an event organized by the Christian Science Monitor in June. “He won an election, and 50 million people died as a result of that election in World War II, including 6 million Jews. So what I learned as a little kid is that politics is, in fact, very important.”

This statement by Sanders was subsequently re-tweeted and posted across social media. The Washington Post, in response to one of its readers, published a fact-check article on Friday with the headline: “Why you shouldn’t re-tweet Sanders’s claim that ‘Hitler won an election in 1932.”

The Post reports that Sanders got his history wrong: “There was an election in 1932 – but Hitler lost.” The article focuses on the German presidential elections.

Deutsche Welle spoke with historian Mark Roseman, a professor of modern European and German history at Indiana University in Bloomington. According to Roseman, there were five German elections in 1932. And if you look at the national parliamentary elections, what Sanders said makes sense.

DW: Is Bernie Sanders, and those who are re-tweeting his comment, wrong about their history?

Mark Roseman: I think in fact Bernie Sanders is not wrong. But of course it’s more complicated than that. There were actually five major elections in 1932. There were two presidential elections; there were two national elections; and there was a big Prussian election. But what people are talking about are the two national elections, the elections for parliament.

So, who won the 1932 national parliamentary elections in Germany?

Basically, Hitler didn’t win those [elections] outright. In the German system nobody won outright. It was always going to be a coalition. But what he did do was, he got a huge share of the vote, more than any other parties by a million miles. It was a landslide victory in that sense.

No party had done anywhere near as well as the Nazis did in the summer of 1932. So to that extent, they were the obvious party of government, because they were the party that had done massively better than anybody else.

The complexity is that it then obviously required more steps to actually become the governing party. They would have to be in a coalition, because they hadn’t gotten more than 50 percent of the votes or the seats. And it also then depended on the president to invite someone to form the new government.

Hitler didn’t win the parliamentary elections like you would in a winner-take-all system like in the US. But the Nazis did become the largest party?

By far the largest party. They had 230 seats in the elections in July and 196 seats in the elections in November. The total number of seats varied because the number seats elected was in direct proportion to the number of people who voted. So if more people vote, you have more seats.

In the June elections, there were a little over 600 seats. They had around 40 percent of the vote on their own right. So they were amazingly successful.

They were successful also in the sense that they drew their support from everywhere. From Catholics and Protestants, from town and country, from rich and poor. Men and women as well. Young and old.

They were the first party that really made a national breakthrough. They stopped being a party of a particular group. They were a real national party.

How did Hitler take over the government?

There were right-wing circles with access to the president, who was getting on in years at this point and looking for a quiet life. They were saying, although the Nazis are a big party, if we can get them into a coalition, then we’ll be able to constrain them, and they’ll give popular credibility to the right-wing coalition, but they won’t run the show.

They were looking at Hitler because Hitler had the votes. So, in that way, his electoral support was absolutely key. Hitler holds out for chancellorship, the top position within government. He won’t agree to be junior partner. He doesn’t mind if there are a smaller number of seats in the cabinet, but he won’t agree to a deal in which he’s not chancellor.

That’s the basis on which President Hindenburg then made the offer to appoint him chancellor in a coalition government and he become chancellor at the end of January 1933.

At that stage, he’s not yet dictator. He’s the chancellor, he’s inherited the prerogatives of the previous office and the Nazis are in a minority in the government. The next thing is the amazing process by which they were able to leverage that to remove virtually all the constraints on that power by the summer of 1933 and certainly by the end of 1933.

To argue that he received a level of support that made him the legitimate government and by the standards established of who would be invited to the office, it would be the Nazis. That’s incontestable.