During this Covid-19 stay at home situation, it has become glaringly obvious to me that our two-party system is extremely flawed and enables polarization. We will always be in the situation of having to choose the lesser of two evils. We need to shift to a Preferential Voting strategy. Do your homework if you want to know more. Several states have shifted to this strategy.
I was playing golf last weekend. Two strangers, I played golf with brought up elections. Their answer was to vote republican then we will figure things out. To me, that is a clear signal of how divided we are.
I will restate that I have not voted for either of the two primary parties in the past 20 years. Since I turned 18 years old and could vote I have voted in every election. Bullwinkle the Moose will likely be my write-in candidate. The sad news is that if I throw away my vote we will still have an incompetent leader elected as the POTUS. Honestly, I am not sure what I am going to do, but I will vote.
The other thing that has me so disillusioned is declaring essentially declaring Marshall Law on cities that are lead by the opposite party. Insanely poor leadership!
I am attempting to become more aware of Inclusion and Diversity. I am reading some really thought-provoking books, White Fragility by Robin Deangelo and How to Be An Antiracist by Dr. Kendi. I am almost done with White Fragility. I think the biggest take away for me is that the game is rigged. I used to equate the term White supremacy to organizations like KKK. The book has made me realize it is much broader than that.
White Fragility will be discussed this evening by a group of esteemed panelists at Southwestern University.
I had the opportunity to listen to Dr. Kendi speak and I was inspired to read his book based on the dialog.
I committed to listening to some podcasts delivered by "people of color". Unfortunately, my first podcast has me asking more questions. I was listening to Friends Like Us podcast specifically episode called All that Disparity and Inequality. I enjoyed the energy and the conversation, but Marina the host made a comment that the "White man is the Devil". I can only hope that this generalization has more context related to one of the comedians' stand-ups. I sent Marina an email, but sadly no reply. Based on my reading this is probably a legit sentiment, but I personally do not find statements like that to add value to the conversation. It is a polarizing statement. I hope Marina responds to my email. I could learn so much from her and her humorous friends. I will continue to listen to the podcast because as the books above the conversation makes me think. Update: Since I posted this I watched some of Marina's comedy on YouTube. She is hilarious!
Then once again I was following some current events. Once again the media does us a huge disservice when they reported the Memphis story where parents dropped off 300 children at a miniature golf course. The photos I observed seem to imply that is was a racial issue. This could be my bias showing through. I am trying to work on my biases, but my trust in the media is so low that I wanted to know more.
Regardless, I will continue my learning journey. I will do my best to assume positive intent on everything I watch, read, or listen to.