Category: politics

Just the Facts, Ma’am

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It’s been far too long since I’ve written. Truth be told, I have not had the heart to write. On one hand, writing seems pointless. On the other, a message that would help young people be more immune to fear mongering is desperately needed. And today, in light of that, I actually started working on book two. It felt great!

One of the many things people have been talking about since the election is the proliferation of fake news and its effect on the vote. I knew for years that networks like Fox skewed the news to their viewpoint, but up until recently I had been unaware that people were actually sitting out there creating false stories just to rake in clicks and advertising dollars. It makes me sick to think someone is using their writing talent this way.

For ages I’ve been one of those annoying people who sometimes comments publicly, and sometimes sends private email message, to people who post false stories. Usually the posts weren’t political, but were something that Snopes had long ago debunked, like “Watch the wing of this plane fall off, and the guy lands anyway!” Any time I saw something questionable on Facebook, I did a quick search on Snopes.com to verify it. It just became habit and it constantly amazed me that people didn’t do it themselves. Sometimes they’d even post, “I don’t know if this is true or not, but look at this!” It took seconds to check, and yet few people did it.

That trend continued during this election. People were passing around stories that with just a few quick searches could have easily been proved false. Yet they never did it, and these stories burrowed into people’s psyches and changed the outcome of the election. For instance, if you think an FBI agent involved with the Clinton email scandal was found dead in a murder/suicide, you have fallen for a fake story. If you think that in 2013, Clinton told Goldman Sachs bigwigs: “I would like to see people like Donald Trump run for office. They’re honest, and can’t be bought”, then you have fallen for a fake story.

Checking the validity of a story is so easy. For years the place I always went to research political stories was Politifact.com. It was known as a non-partisan fact checking site and I found it extremely reliable. Imagine my surprise when I heard a Trump supporter claim it was a liberal propaganda site, and that if you wanted the truth, you had to go deep into underground news. That’s where you got reliable facts.

So, rather than assume this was a right-wing nut job, I did a little research. I looked up Politifact.com to see who actually runs the site. It’s owned by the Tampa Bay Times. Aha! It’s that biased liberal media! So that Trump supporter was right!!! Or was he? Who runs the Times and Politifact? A man by the name of Paul Tash, who has an extensive journalistic background covering national politics. A little more digging on Paul Tash’s political affiliation shows that according to voter records he has been a registered Republican since 1984. Hmmm. Unless this man knew in 1984 that someday he would be in charge of a independent fact-checking organization and wanted to go into hiding more than 30 years ago so as to sway the country to his point of view, I think it’s safe to say that Politifact is not a liberal propaganda site.

A few quick searches and I knew the truth. Why was that so hard for the Trump supporter to do?

The truth is, when the facts didn’t support a Trump supporter’s world view, they went in search of sources that did – deep underground. It didn’t matter that those facts were fake. They felt good. They felt truthy. Politifact listed Trump’s statements as only being true 5% of the time, while Clinton was listed as the most truthful of the candidates. That fact didn’t sit well with me when I was supporting Bernie, but I accepted it. But since it didn’t line up with a Trumpy’s world view that The Donald told it like it is, while Hillary was crooked, therefore Politifact must be a liberal propaganda machine.

I found a few fake stories aimed at liberal as well. Several friends posted the meme from a 1998 People interview, where Donald Trump supposedly said: “if I were to run, I’d run as a Republican. They’re the dumbest group of voters in the country. They believe anything on Fox News. I could lie and they’d still eat it up. I bet my numbers would be terrific.” I wanted to believe that. Oh, I wanted to believe it so bad. But a quick search on that one proved it to be false, so I didn’t post or share it. Fake news story writers have admitted in interviews that they didn’t get much traction with liberal fake stories, because within a few comments somebody would debunk it.

That’s not to say there will be political peace and harmony if we start believing the same facts. Facts are just facts, and they can be interpreted differently. For instance, it’s a fact that red states generally take more money from the federal government than they pay to it, and blue states generally pay more into the federal government than they take from it. Democrats would say that’s because their states are run better. Republicans might say that’s because they have less natural resources and more poverty in their states.

You can interpret those facts through whatever set of lenses you want so it wouldn’t be smooth sailing, but at least we’d be starting with the same set of facts. Right now it’s pretty much impossible for Democrats and Republicans to have a rational conversation. We live in two completely different worlds made up of two completely different set of facts.

Please, whenever you see a story online, take a moment or two to evaluate it. What site did it come from? Look into who’s behind that site. Search the internet to see if other sources are also reporting the story. Make sure they’re not just repeating the first story. Compare how it’s being reported if you do find two sources. Are there facts listed in the story/meme that can be checked independently. Look up the name of the author. What qualifications do they have to cover the story? Use Snopes. Use Politifact. Use your brain. Admit when you might have something wrong. We only make good decisions when we are informed. Don’t be a part of the problem.

As the old saying goes, everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they’re not entitled to their own set of facts. Until that gets fixed, this country is in trouble.

I am hopeful that future posts will focus more on the process of getting published.

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The Facts?

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A quick update on the book… the major editing is done. Now it’s being proofed. The next step in the process is to edit and improve the synopses for each book in the trilogy and follow that with a killer query letter — one that makes the agents beg to read my manuscript.

Just in case nobody wants to read my stories, I am beginning to work on plan C. Plan A – Screenwriting. Plan B – Novel writing. Plan C – ?? I enjoy the place and people I work with so much, that it would make sense to try to increase my hours there. Over the next year I plan to get a couple of certifications that will allow me to teach some classes, and I have an idea that would add a new service to our fitness studio. Hopefully I will manage to keep a roof over my head somehow.

Of course, after the election I may have a harder time doing that. With one candidate, it’s likely I’ll be stripped of access to healthcare. I will likely have to quit a job I love, one that benefits society, in order to find a meaningless, corporate job whose sole purpose is to make rich people richer but that provides enough hours to give me insurance. Or I will just have to be a 52 year old woman without insurance, and hopefully I’ll get sick and die quickly, so as not to burden my fellow citizens.

I’m doing my best to fight the anxiety, but I can’t deny that I am terrified about Tuesday.  One thing I’ve gained is compassion for the people of Germany. I used to wonder how they could have let it happen and judged them for their apathy. I get it now. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how loudly you scream.

Though, according to political scientists, Trump is actually closer to Mussolini than Hitler. And, he can’t truly be called a fascist because he doesn’t control his own military. However, what they also pointed out was that the same fertile soil that grew this authoritarian is the same soil that grows fascists. That we could see Trump fade away only to be replaced by something much, much, much worse.

One thing we definitely need to correct this situation are journalists who report the facts. Though, on a side note, it’s frightening to see the same people who go rabid about the 2nd amendment yet are all too willing to abolish the 1st amendment. I guess they only love the parts of the constitution that fit with their worldview. And what better way to hang on to that worldview than to silence anyone who disagrees with it.

Anyway, right now, if you are a conservative, you watch and read news with one set of facts presented by people who agree with you, and if you’re a progressive, you watch and read news reported by those who agree with you. So, you can have one event, and two people can believe completely different facts about it.

For example. In the last day, Trump has relished in telling the story of how Obama screamed at a Trump supporter in his audience. He said, “Obama today spoke in front of a much smaller crowd than this, by the way, and there was a protester. And a protester that likes us. And what happened is they wouldn’t put the cameras on him. They kept the cameras on Obama. And I said, ‘That’s strange.’ You saw it today on television, right?

He was talking to the protester — screaming at him, really screaming at him. By the way, if I spoke the way Obama spoke to that protester, they would say, ‘He became unhinged! He became —’ You have to go back and look and study. And see what happened. They never moved the camera. And he spent so much time screaming at this protester and, frankly, it was a disgrace.”

That’s Trump’s view of events. And the problem is, because it came out of his mouth, his supporters believe him without question. They don’t need to look it up. It doesn’t matter how many times you point out the facts, they will always just scream back, “Is to! Nanny nanny boo boo!” Just like now after Trump said the FBI had found the mother lode of Hillary emails, it makes no difference that the FBI says there’s nothing there. Trump said it, it’s true.

Now, just so you can see for yourself, here’s what really happened:

Unhinged? A disgrace? If it wasn’t so frightening it would be a little funny how almost every single one of Trump’s accusations against his opponents highlight his own flaws. I consider encouraging your supporters to attack protesters and offering to pay their legal bills is unhinged and disgraceful.

Yet, conservatives only saw Trump’s version, because that’s what places like Fox News covered, and everyone else saw both versions. The point is, when 1/2 of Americans are getting one set of “facts” and the other half is getting another, how do we ever figured this mess out? We won’t. We’ll just keep fighting each other while the 1% cleans up.

I don’t know what to say anymore. This entire election has become mind numbing. Soul numbing. Everything numbing.

When we can’t even share the facts, how do we share a country?

 

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Sexism

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There is much I could share about the editing process of my book, but there’s a more important topic on my mind today.

Sexism.

Yesterday’s Humans of New York post has sent ripples through the internet. Please read it if you haven’t. Try to forget who it is about. Just listen to her story.

As a young woman, I never really thought about sexism, and didn’t really see it as an issue. When I arrived in Hollywood, I began to see things differently. When I applied to be a teleprompter operator, I was flat out told that it wasn’t a woman’s job, because you had to carry heavy equipment and have mechanical ability to trouble-shoot problems. I convinced him to let me observe a shoot. The male prompter operator was not so sexist, and offered to train me on the job. He reported back that I was good, and the man who discouraged me would get past his stereotypes and hire me. A year later he told me, “From now on I’m going to hire more women, because you do a great job, there’s not so much ego, and you get along with clients so much better.” Granted, this was still subtle sexism, because I had been trained as a woman to be submissive and he liked it. Still, it opened a door, and today there are many, many women in the job. In fact, today it might be considered more of a woman’s job.

However, going out on shoots, I still got a lot of men on the crew saying, “Honey, (or sweetie) can I help you carry that?”  At first it annoyed me, and then one day I realized, if they’re so stupid to want to do my work, let them. Though, after a few days on a job, when the men saw how strong, smart, and competent I was, not only did the offers of help stop, but so did the condescending titles. Very often friendships could then begin.

When I landed a network job, my supervisor, who was a woman, talked about the sexism in television and at the networks. I scoffed. Surely talent and hard work would overcome. Wouldn’t they want the best person in the job?

The resounding answer to that was, “NO!”

Hollywood, in general, could care less about talent. Half of the graduates from film school are women, yet less than 2% of major films are directed by women. You see, when those in charge are men, and their favorite after-work activity is going to a strip club together, or maybe if they’re a little more evolved, the cigar bar, there is no opportunity to bond with anyone other than men. And when a position opens up, who do you think the man in power is going to hire… the quiet, hard-working, efficient employee they don’t really know or the guy they’ve misogynistically bonded with after work? Women are fine to have around, as long as they stay in their place, and make their superiors look good.

And then there’s the other messages women get. I was once told, “You’re so dramatic!” And when my response was to glare back, he added, “What? That wasn’t an insult.”

Right.

Because we so often hear men saying, “You know what I love? A dramatic woman.” No, that was a not-so-subtle way to tell me to control my emotions and be more acceptable to men.

Then there was the time I watched a group of male coworkers smugly patting themselves on the back for “playing the game” and getting ahead. They weren’t feeling proud of their talent, hard work, or creativity. No, they were suck-ups, and thought that was awesome. Inside I was laughing because not five minutes before they were complaining about the person in charge who had done the same thing. No experience, no real talent for the job, but he sucked his way up to the top, and was now in charge.

And people wonder why there’s nothing but super-hero movies and remakes coming out of Hollywood these days.

I don’t.

For too long men have been the default standard and women had to contort ourselves and measure up to them. Men won’t admit this; much like conservative whites can’t see that their culture is the default standard, and minorities have to contort themselves to try to measure up and fit in.

There’s a part of me that is taking great pleasure in being alive at this time in history, as women come into their power and stop looking to men for permission to do so. I remember one of my bosses complaining about how he felt marginalized and unrepresented. Oh, poor baby. For the past few years you haven’t felt like a king in his castle. Try it for a few thousands years, then get back to us.

So men… your time is over and ours is coming. At least you’ll benefit from the fact that we have a lot less ego, and get along with people better. And maybe if you meet our standards, we’ll even give you the respect and equality you never gave us.

 

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Filled with Hate

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Lately I’ve been noticing a trend. Here’s how it goes.

Alice: I like pizza.
Bob: I don’t like pizza, the cheese is too greasy, and they never get the crust right.
Alice: Why are you so filled with hate?

I’m sure you’ve noticed it too. Lately, when anyone disagrees with anyone else online, the response usually takes some form of telling them they are filled with hate. It’s the new way to shut someone down, and paint yourself as a loving, wonderful human being because you recognized their hate.

I read liberal sites and commenters all say, “Just like a Republican, full of hate.” Then I’ll read a conservative site and the commenters all say, “Just like a Democrat, full of hate.”

Here’s the definition of hate: strong or intense dislike

That’s it.

Guess what folks, people are allowed to like or dislike anything they want, even intensely. It’s America and there nothing wrong with liking or disliking something, at least for a few more months. It’s not surprising that Democrats and Republicans strongly dislike the other party’s ideas, otherwise we’d just have one party.

A friend hates the taste of onions. I LOVE onions. Still, not once have I accused her of being filled with hate.

I have friends who support Donald Trump. I don’t understand how. I don’t understand why. I simply don’t understand how they can’t see the racist, bigoted, thin-skinned, misogynistic, sociopathic, narcissistic bully that I and so many others see. I don’t understand how they can’t see him using the same playbook that Hitler and other authoritarian leaders have used. However, having said all that, I know them. They are not filled with hate. Misled, yes, in my opinion. Filled with hate, no.

I know women who are strong, independent women who are sick and tired of living under men’s rules, so they live by their own. They have been called man-haters, but they are not filled with hate towards men. Distrust, maybe. Hate, no. They love themselves enough to want the best for themselves. Nothing hateful about that.

Now, if you hate all men, or all women, or all blacks, or all whites, or all Mexicans, or all cops, or all Jews, or all Muslims, or all Christians, or all liberals, or all conservatives, or all gays, or all of anything, then yes, you are filled with hate. If you only know what you don’t like, and never talk about what you do like, then you are filled with hate.

It’s not just a harmless online trend. Accusing others of hate is a tactic that is creating an even bigger divide in the country. The person making the accusation stops listening, because why should they listen to someone so filled with hate. The other person not knowing how to deal with the irrationality of being called hateful, doesn’t want to continue the conversation either, or it devolves into really nasty name-calling. Nobody learns anything.

It’s like the political post where someone goes on a rant, calling people of the other party disgusting names like Libtard or Rethuglican. When I see a rant like that, I want to respond, “Oh thank you. Now that you’ve called me an offensive name, assumed I’m uneducated, uninformed, stupid, and lazy, NOW I’m on your side. Oh, what a relief.” The sad truth is, if we sat down face to face to have a meal together, we would probably have a lovely time. Online, it’s so much easier to hurt others when you don’t have to deal with the consequences.

Until we start talking and listening to each other, instead of trying to find new ways to shut each other down with the ultimate slam, this country is headed for a cliff. Frankly, I think we’re already there and sliding off the edge.

I hate that.

But I’m not filled with hate.

 

 

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