Can we say, "Witch Hunt"?
Of course we can!
It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood.
Not that I am supporting pawing and groping and indecent liberties,
but don't we have an old slogan, "Innocent until proven guilty"?
Doesn't that mean guilty by a panel of our peers, in a court of law,
or by a judge or panel of judges?
As far as I am concerned, every person who crossed the line, forcing
their affections onto an unwilling subject, should be given a fair
hearing, and accept the determination handed down. But until then,
each accused person has the right, under our law, to profess
innocence, and to be so treated. That means we do not fire people or
force them to resign their jobs, until a verdict is reached.
Shades of The Salem Witch Hunt! Are we never going to learn that
conviction by hysteria can harm as many innocent people as it convicts
the guilty?
As a People, we Americans are leaning more and more toward accepting
the Word of the Mass Media as the final measure of Innocent or Guilty.
Bad enough that we have a legal system weighted toward the Wealthy,
learning of innocent people serving long sentences, or being executed.
What we need to do is to use these times when our attention is focused
on how we determine whether a person is guilty or not, to revisit our
entire legal system. Is Justice really blind? Who does the law
protect, and who does the law punish? Why are our prisons filled with
so many persons of color? Are persons of color really inferior to us
White folk? Are the rich less crooked than the rest of us? Since our
laws seem to favor the Rich, do we have statistics proving that they
are superior to those of us less wealthy?
Why should members of congress be forced out of their jobs when
accused of improper conduct, when the President, Donald Trump, is on
video declaring that his "Star" status gives him the right to grab
women's pussy's, and pass it off for "locker room talk"? Why has he
not been removed from his job? Are White, rich Men just made to be
treated better than us lesser Beings?
Even as we focus on the offending men, the women stepping forward are
beginning to feel the hostility of the American Public. This nation
has a history of shifting the blame onto the victim, the offended
woman.
When I was a boy, we learned that boys "sowed their wild oats". But
any girl who was forced into sexual relations by a young "Wild Oats
Sower" was considered "Damaged Goods" from then on. She should not
have allowed him to have his way with her. She dressed provocatively,
and was "Asking for it". Women who did contact the police and file
complaints of rape, were treated to humiliation by officials. In
fact, the woman's entire sexual history was on trial, while the man
protested that "she said she wanted me", and he was judged on only
current behavior.
We tend to see events based on our current experiences and upon our
current social conditions. The American Scene was much different 40
or 50 years ago. When a woman finally steps forward and declares that
she was pawed back in 1980, we view the act on our present
understanding, not on conditions as they existed then. The great
shame and embarrassment she would have undergone at the time most
likely kept her silent, along with the advice usually given women at
the time. But we also need to remember the world as it was for men.
In those days men were raised to believe that when a woman said, "no",
she might simply be playing "hard to get". So the man, if he's any
kind of man at all, pressed forward.
Because we have had a history of not talking about Sex, and our
responsibilities as men and women, we have a tangled mess. Sorting it
out by turning it over to the Mass Media is about as wrong a thing to
do as to hand it over to Donald Trump.
Carl Jarvis
On 11/29/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> Every time I look at the computer, there's a new headline about another
> well
> known man who is being fired for inappropriate sexual behavior. Too bad
> Trump isn't among them. But seriously, will this really change anything?
> Maybe they should all be required to go through a rehabilitation program
> with each graduating when they're cured of their addiction. Of course, most
> of them have enough money so they don't need their jobs. Maybe they should
> all do what Al Franken did and just meekly apologize and keep working.
> Maybe
> they should be required to do volunteer work in hospital emergency rooms.
> But I'm tired of the headlines and the glee of women who think that now
> we've, as they put it, "turned a corner". I keep having the feeling that
> all
> these headlines about men doing what men have always done, are a means to
> distract people from the terrible changes being wrought by the Trump
> administration and the Republican congress. The media keeps saying that the
> congress hasn't accomplished anything yet, that Trump hasn't accomplished
> anything yet. That's certainly untrue.
>
> Miriam
>
>
>
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