If They Say They were Mistreated, You Must Believe Them

The new mantra is if they make a claim of sexual impropriety, you must believe them even if it turns out to be false; even if it ruins the innocent accused. Even the accused are guilty before proven innocent; we don't need due process. The mantra refers to women but other groups could also apply. 

Women have been subjugated throughout history. Their claims of sexual harassment have gone ignored. Even rape got little attention, so if a woman claims she was sexually assaulted, she was.

Many years ago a woman in New York, Tawana Brawley, claimed that she was raped by four white men which included a police officer and a prosecutor. Their careers were tarnished. Then we found that she was lying.

More recently a party entertainer claimed she was gang raped by several Duke Lacross players. The accused were kicked off the team and forced out of the school. After years of investigations, the woman was found to be lying. The students who were presumed guilty sued the university for how all the damage of this tale affected their lives.

A student at Brown University claimed that she was raped while she was drunk. The entire student body turned against the accused. He was ostracized and forced to leave school. That claim also turned out to be false. The accused sued Brown for millions.

A coed at the University of Virginia claimed that she was gang raped by a group of fraternity boys while her boyfriend watched. The Rolling Stone wrote about this allegation as though it were true. The fraternity was a kicked off campus and a few college administers had to step down. It turned out to be untrue. The accused students sued the magazine for its sloppy reporting.

But though these claims were false as were those made recently against a Supreme Court appointment based on her allegations. She couldn't remember when it happened, where it happened, how she got there and how she got home. None of her "witnesses" said it ever happened. She took a lie detecter test and the results were inconclusive. We then learned that she knew how to cheat the detecter. The result was that the Senate approval was delayed with Democrats hoping that thanks to this false allegation, they can run out the clock. Now, though no one claimed rape and though her allegations proved to politically motivated, young progressives starting calling him a rapist.  Now senators who voted for this fine juror were subjected to verbal attacks. One senator who was about to get an honorary degree from a state university, was to be denied the degree because she voted for a sex offender.

Those who say "believe her" remind us of all the women who never got justice, so even patently false claims should be believed.

But what about members of groups that were mistreated for hundreds or even thousands of years? Should we believe them when they claim to be discriminated against?

What about Americans of African descent? Haven't they suffered from racism? Many had ancestors who were African slaves who were sold to Western slave traders. They were slaves in America until 1865. Then they were subjected to Jim Crow laws that segregated them in schools, restaurants, on buses, water fountains and bathrooms. Surely, if they claim discrimination, we should believe them even before investigating the claims?

What about American Jews? Their ancestors were slaves in Egypt,  were overrun by the Romans and had their temple destroyed twice. They were marginalized in Europe with many of those countries expelling Jews or persecuting them at one time or another. When they complained about their mistreatment they were ignored.

Starting in the 1920s, Ivy League schools like Harvard set low quotas for Jewish applicants, perhaps believing that their superior intellects gave them an unfair advantage when competing for admissions. (Now they are limiting Asian admissions perhaps feeling that their  superior motivation would give them an unfair advantage.) Shouldn't we believe them, if they claim discrimination? Who know it better?

Lately, a gay young man has claimed that a junior Senator from New Jersey, also known as Spartacus, had dreams of running for President in 2020. Haven't LGBTQ members faced enough discrimination. Should we believe him even though he is making a claim about a Democrat?

But what choice do we have? 

We can hear all complaints of wrongdoing based on gender or ancestry, withholding judgment until a full investigation is concluded. We can remember that in America people are presumed innocent until proven guilty in due process. As Reagan said of the Russians, trust but verify.

The Emperor's Newest Clothes

The Emperor's Newest Clothes

When I first heard the story of the emperor's new clothes, I thought it was ridiculous. How could an entire population not notice that the emperor was naked? Only one child declared it.

Current events have reminded me of the story.

I know many intelligent, well educated and kind people. America is full of them. So how can so many people not see that the emperor's newest clothes are naked falsehoods? Perhaps they fear peer pressure.

When candidate Trump promised to end illegal immigration, these people were outraged. They ask how can you deport people who come here illegally to get a better life? Anyone who gets here should be able to stay even if it encourages tens of millions to do the same.

People here illegally are no problem for the majority of us who are well educated or at least secure in our position. American lawyers, doctors, surgeons, nurses, social workers, psychologists, teachers and those in similar positions are not harmed by these undocumented workers. Illegals provide inexpensive workers for landscaping, construction, hotel and restaurant jobs, house cleaning, nannies and furniture moving, so what's the problem? They are seemingly not aware that those here without invitation take jobs away from the less educated, especially Americans of African and Latin American descent. 

Why didn't liberals come out say so? Perhaps, they feared being labeled racist, bigoted and /or xenophobia. These labels can be very destructive.

People were shocked when the President said that all three groups played a role in the riots in Charlottesville even though it was obvious that the alt right, the left and the police were to blame for what happened. Had the liberals just stayed home, this would not have happened. If the alt right hadn't been so disgraceful, it wouldn't have happened. When both groups got into a fight, the police should not have waited an hour to intervene. They were all responsible.

Why didn't liberals come out in agreement? Maybe they feared being labeled fascist or anti Semitic and uncaring for people of color.  

A football player, who was in his second season of sitting on the bench, decided to make a public statement. He disrespected the National Anthem by kneeling for it instead of standing proud. We knew that this player had every advantage in life but he was protesting the treatment of blacks. Not only was it unpatriotic, disrespectful and ungrateful, it was unnecessary. We had been talking about the problem and were addressing it two years before his protests. Since then the incidence of abuse by police has only increased. We applauded his effort without asking ourselves where do blacks have it better? Not in Africa or Latin America or Asia or most of European countries that have very few. What other country outside of Africa, has ever elected a black president or prime minister? We did twice. 

We had been aware of police misconduct that resulted in almost a dozen unnecessary fatalities in the last four years ( Chicago, South Carolina, Buffalo, Dallas, New Orleans etc). A few week-ends ago 12 people were killed by fellow blacks in Chicago. In Baltimore after the four officers were mistakenly blamed for the death of a 20 year old drug dealer who was resisting his 20th arrest of that year, police stayed out of the violent part of Baltimore for six weeks. During that time 56 people were murdered, 55 of them were black killed by other blacks. Nationwide though 12% of the population, the majority of murder victims are black as are 93% of their assailants. So the problem is much greater than police wrongdoing which is unacceptable for even one unlawful police shooting.  

Why didn't liberals and their mainstream media report all this? Maybe they were afraid of appearing to be racist, bigoted and/or insensitive.

Desperate to stop the appointment of an excellent juror because he is conservative, not super liberal, Democrats resorted to questionable accusations about something that allegedly happened 36 years.

A woman came out in the end of the process to claim that when the judge was 17, he got drunk and kissed and fondled her when she was 15. Not only does her story not hold-up - she couldn't remember how many others were involved; no one that she named to bear witness to the event said they never saw or heard anything; she couldn't remember where or when it happened or how she got where she couldn't remember, couldn't remember how she got home; and she was seen by one of her colleagues teaching someone how to fool the lie detector test - it is unimportant. If a teen got drunk and kissed someone long ago, it has nothing to do with his current status. Surely every Democratic senator knows this. American liberals know this, but they pretend that this is important. Even Dianne Feinstein, the only senator on the left who had any integrity abandoned it in the hope to get  re-lected so she can serve until she's 90.  

Maybe they fear being considered to be in favor of sexual abuse or of having no compassion with this woman seemingly traumatized by the experience. Just by coincidence, she has protested Trump for everything from stopping illegal immigration to potentially limiting or eliminating access to what have been legal abortions. 

After disgusting evidence proved that Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein were sex abusers in the worst way, we started looking for others. And we found them - actors, comedians, congressmen and CEOs have been found guilty of sexual abuse by the court of public opinion. Women who were abused were encouraged to tell their stories. We seem to not realize that there are degrees of abuse from Cosby to CK to kissing or touching someone who didn't want to be when he was a minor. We don't seem able to differentiate the seriousness of the alleged accusation. Maybe we don't want to. Perhaps, the goal is to derail this Catholic conservative. The main fear seems to be having Roe versus Wade overturned. Since 1973 abortion was declared legal citing the First Amendment, the right to privacy, even though there is no mention of it in the amendment, we have had more than 50 million fetuses terminated. Thanks to Roe, women became free to have sex with anyone, at anytime, anywhere without fear of unintended pregnancy.  

Maybe that's why intelligent, well educated people pretend that the emperor is fully and beautifully clothed. 

Turning Off the News

A Harvard-educated health guru, Dr. Andrew Weil, who has been at the University of Arizona, gave a series of lectures on how to be healthy and happy. He told us the many steps we could take to lead a better life.

One of the first things he advised is for us to stop watching and reading the news. I couldn't understand how being well informed could cause stress and unhappiness.

I have been a columnist for more than a decade and watched the news in order to comment on the events. Up until recently, I watched the national news every night. I watched ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN (when in a waiting room with no other choices) and read the Huffpost, the NY Times, and the Washington Post. I prerecorded the T.V. news shows so I could watch a 30 minute program in about 10 or 15. Some of the news is the same in all the mainstream media, so it can be fast forwarded after seeing it once already. 

I have long realized that the mainstream media is focused on being sensational, superficial and subjective (read biased)

Every night there is a story of a plane crash with the occasional train, bus or ship disaster. It makes me want to stay home. Then there are the weather crises. They report on flooding, mudslides, drought, hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes and forest fires. There are reports of temperatures that are higher or lower than normal. It makes those of us in mild climates feel relieved that the problems are far away, and are willing to pay more for the privilege. These events provide the media with sensational and superficial reporting.

There is usually a human tragedy. A child is missing. A woman is found to have been raped and murdered. A couple is found to have kept children locked in closets, starving them or chaining them. This is being reported with greater frequency to remind us that there are monsters in the world, and to be sensational.

The news also includes scenes from the continuous wars in the Middle East. We see pictures of dead bodies, children suffering from a chemical weapon attack in Syria, years after President Obama forced Syria to get rid of all of them.  We see cities destroyed by bombings, people starving and brutally cruel terrorists.

But lately, before we watch the terrible news about our world, the media must start with a story about President Trump, with rarely, if ever, has a good thing to say about his administration. They seem to report only the negative and not the beneficial - this has all three journalistic objectives.

The latest political reports take the cake. They represent  the ultimate example the media's intent to be sensational, superficial and subjective. 

An excellent juror was opposed before he was even named. He was conservative and that was bad enough for the Democratic minority and the media. When he was named, he was questioned for long hours over several days. The opposition could not find any way to deny his appointment. At the last minute, a woman came out that she was kissed and fondled against her will 36 years ago when the accused judge was 17 years old. The attempt was transparent and unimportant. Anyone with a brain would take issue with such a claim which was denied by the judge and witnesses. Even if it were true, it is unimportant 36 years after the alleged fact. But then the media, the Democrats and a few confused Republicans pretended that this was important and should be further investigated, delaying the vote on the judge, and hoping to end his candidacy with not enough time to appoint another. Even the very liberal Supreme Court Judge, Ruth Ginsberg, objected to this treatment. The Democrats were disgraceful but not to the media, which found this sensational, superficial and subjective, their three journalistic goals.

So I am not watching or reading the news, (except for the Wall Street Journal).  It's too depressing, biased and therefore, objectionable.

Dr. Weil was right and I am finally taking his sage advice.