Saturday, 13 January 2024

FROM this week’s news ON: politics in the USA [Content Warning - links to reports on bigotry/hate, violence including SA/abuse. Reader discretion is advised]

Note: CONTENT WARNING - some of this content is about upsetting, disturbing or triggering events & attitudes. Seek competent help - including professional - if you need it. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that linked articles may contains names and/or images of deceased people. READER CAUTION IS RECOMMENDED! For anyone distressed by anything in this post, or for any other reason considering seeking support, resources are available in Australia here, here, and here. In other nations, you will have to do an Internet search using terms such as “mental health support - <your nation>” (which, for instance, may lead to this, this, and this, in the USA, or this, this, and this, in France [biased towards English-language - my apologies]), or perhaps try https://www.befrienders.org/. 

Note: in my “from the news” posts, quotes are shown italicised and blue, my comments are in a different shade of blue, and “good” items are shown in green. I have loosely grouped the posts where such seemed reasonable, but that is subjective (i.e., my opinion - others are free to disagree), and challenging, as some posts belong in multiple “groups”.

Given the extensive coverage of major problems there, I have a special this week’s news on politics in the USA - partly to enable a focus on those issues, but also to ensure issues elsewhere don’t get lost (I may have to do this again occasionally over the coming year): 

  • “Is the US Headed Towards Another Civil War? | Barbara F. Walter | TED”   https://youtu.be/Yilgr2SJ3xQ?si=S3xHqLNj7koZvAeE    The two major risk factors identified by the work described in this TED (not TEDx) talk were (1) whether the nation was a partial democracy, and (2) whether political parties in that nation are being formed around identity rather than ideology - both of which apply to the USA, and the model would have been predicted high risk of civil war in the USA in December, 2020. Also, civil wars are started by those at risk of losing social status ...   I was dubious about the claimed change of ethnicity until I looked up https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Demographics_of_the_United_States&oldid=1194963938   The commentary on what to do about these problems is interesting, and I am going to spend some time thinking about that - although I already agree with the need to address those who have been left behind, which was the working class in the USA, according to the speaker, and also the same here in Australia, based on my life experience - although some of that has a US bias. The comments about social  media are significant  

 

My links for activism post may aid any activism you may decide to do on any/all of these. If you do, don’t get too fixated on specific instances of problems - important though they may well be: take a moment to also consider the broader issues these incidents and groups of incidents may suggest/reveal.

 

Assumptions / basis 

In writing this, I have assumed / started from the following: 

  • this blog states quite clearly that it is about political and human rights matters, including lived experience of problems, and thus I will assume readers are reasonable people who have noted the content warning in the post header;

Possible flaws 

Where I can, I will try to highlight possible flaws / issues you should consider:

  • there may be flawed logical arguments in the above: to find out more about such flaws and thinking generally, I recommend Brendan  Myers’ free online course “Clear and Present Thinking”; 
  • I could be wrong - so keep your thinking caps on, and make up your own minds for yourself.

 

If they are of any use of interest, the activism information links from my former news posts are available in this post. 

 

If you appreciated this post, please consider promoting it - there are some links below.

Remember: we need to be more human being rather than human doing, and all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk & accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor comes with commensurate use of “cis” as a descriptor to prevent “othering”.

Copyright © Kayleen White 2016-2024     NO AI   I do not consent to any machine learning aka Artificial Intelligence (AI), generative AI, large language model, machine learning, chatbot, or other automated analysis, generative process, or replication program to reproduce, mimic, remix, summarise, or otherwise  replicate any part of this post or other posts on this blog via any means. Typo’s may be inserrted deliberately to demonstrate this is not an AI product.     Otherwise, fair and reasonable use is accepted under Creative Commons 4.0 on an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike basis   https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/  

 

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