People aren't evil because they talk to people you don't like.
Have you considered re-directing some of that misplaced woke energy at actual bad things?
To all the woke-sters expressing their wokeness by cancelling me or just dismissing my message of free speech and open debate, because I spoke with Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson or because I met Governor Ron DeSantis that one time, I’d like to have a word.
People aren’t evil because they talk to people you don’t like. People aren’t evil because they hold views you don’t like. They just hold views you disagree with. That’s it. Remember disagreeing without cancelling? Let’s try getting back to that.
But if you need to direct that cancelling energy somewhere, here are a few more worthy suggestions for entities doing actual harm.
I have a few suggestions for how to redirect what I would call “misplaced energy” if you really care about the causes you claim to care about. Here they are.
The World Cup in Quatar - this whole country is one big human rights violation.
Same-sex sexual conduct is a criminal offense under their penal code, punishable with up to 7 years of imprisonment.
Women are considered the property of men, and under this country’s “guardianship” system, women are legally tied to these men (fathers, brothers, husbands) and unable to make decisions on their own without the consent of their guardian. Women need their guardian’s permission for most key life decisions - marriage, work, travel, education.
Migrant workers are victims of wage theft and their deaths, on the property of their “employers,” go without investigation. Essentially, these migrants are the property of their “employers.” They are basically indentured servants. Or slaves, you might say.
Add to that no free speech, no right to assemble. No rights at all for every day citizens.
The problem with FIFA allowing Qatar to host the World Cup is not that there is no beer but that it gives this human rights catastrophe of a nation legitimacy. But sure, cheer your favorite team at the World Cup this year.
Manufacturing in China - this country, too, is one big human rights violation.
China has detained over one million Uighurs, a Turkic Muslim minority group in China primarily located in the Xinjiang province, in work and “re-education” camps.
The U.S., in fact, has called it a genocide as recently as July 2021.
Human rights organizations including Amnesty and Human Rights Watch have accused China of crimes against humanity.
The vast majority of Apple products including MacBooks, iPhones and iPads are assembled in China. Apple benefits from lower cost labor and by assembling their products in China, they make nice with the government for the purpose of easing retail inroads and green-lighting shiny Apple stores. It’s a win-win. For Apple.
What it also does is legitimize a country engaging in an ethnic cleansing.
Did you know that 20% of the world’s cotton is farmed in China and close to 90% of that Chinese cotton comes from Xianjiang province? Guess who farms the cotton in that province?
Did you know that 30% of the world’s “better cotton” (think of it as the next best thing to organic) comes from Xianjiang province? If it comes from there, you get charged more for it because it’s “better.” By “better”, the Better Cotton Initiative means it is better for the environment because it uses less water to grow. You know what else it uses? Slave labor in the form of Uighurs deployed at work camps. Can we really call anything better that is made with slave labor? I guess so, if it comes with this Good Housekeeping style seal of approval!
Which of your favorite brands still uses cotton from this region? I can tell you one: Nike. In fact, their board just voted down a proposal to stop sourcing cotton in China. That’s right. One month ago, they voted to continue sourcing cotton in a country using unpaid labor to farm that cotton.
You might consider objecting to this, unless those leggings are just too comfy to pass up. In which case, just continue cancelling people on Twitter who talk to people you don’t like. Same-same.
Union busting by Starbucks - you say you care about workers, but do you care about your pumpkin spiced latte more?
Starbucks, now led once again by former Democratic Presidential candidate Howard Schultz, is fighting back - against workers seeking fair wages. Unionized stores at Starbucks make up less than 3% of the 9000 Starbucks across the country. Why? Well, it is reported by the likes of NPR, that Starbucks is engaged in a “scorched earth” campaign to quash unionizing by offering raises and benefits for non-union stores only and by firing union organizers and leaders.
Starbucks has been charged with 325 unfair labor practices. They are being investigated by the National Labor Relations Board for 35 formal complaints including firing workers engaged in unionizing activities.
Somehow, I haven’t seen much outrage from leftie consumers on this. Where are the #boycottStarbucks tweets? Of course, once you’re done with that pumpkin latte.
I know I know, people like me are the bad guys/gals because we didn’t agree with lockdowns and closed schools and some of us talked to people on Fox and that means we need to be ousted from polite society because that makes us evil.
Meanwhile, the good guys who fawned all over Sam Bankman-Fried – including Bill Clinton, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Katy Perry, Gisele Bündchen, Joe Biden and Maxine Waters and oh-so-many more - are fine. No issue with these folks!
They can slobber all over this criminal who stole billions of dollars from not only rich investors but workaday employees and everyday crypto dabblers. And their fawning, provided Bankman-Fried with legitimacy, just as he knew it would. Enough so that he was able to continue his scheming and stealing until the whole air sandwich of a profit and loss statement just imploded.
These celebrities and politicians and “journalists” can not only talk to Bankman-Fried, but take pictures with him, utterly fail to interrogate his non-existent financial controls and Ponzi-scheme of a balance sheet — and it’s all good. I defend poor kids’ right to a public education, and I’m the bad guy. Do you see how ridiculous this is?
And people like Senator Cory Booker, are writing pleas for sentencing leniency in defense of Elizabeth Holmes. Oh please go easy on Elizabeth Holmes she’s nice and well-intentioned, and how do I know? Because she’s a vegan! He added, in defense of his friend:
"I've always been struck by the way our conversations focused on her desires to make a positive impact on the world."
Well she didn’t. But Booker stands by her goodness despite all evidence to the contrary. Holmes has been convicted of 4 counts of fraud and now sentenced to 11 years in prison, despite Booker’s be nice letter. She bilked investors of billions of dollars. She put people’s health and lives at risk by using her non-working black box of a machine to test their blood for disease.
But according to woke ideology, Holmes still deserves lenient sentencing because she doesn’t eat dairy. This is how deep the delusion runs.
FIFA holds the World Cup in Quatar a nation rife with documented human rights violations against groups the woke say they care about. No one cares.
Apple assembles most of their flagship products in China, a country engaged in genocide of the Uighur population. No one cares.
Starbucks fires workers fighting for fair pay and decent working conditions. No one cares.
Booker endorses Holmes – an actual criminal. No one cares.
This is how it all works, apparently, in the age of woke-ism. Virtue signaling through veganism and Starbucks’ advertising campaigns for Pride month put you in the “good” column. Standing up for kids during covid, puts you in the bad/needs to be exiled column.
I’ll take my exiling then. Because if Quatar and China and Starbucks and Holmes are the good guys, I don’t want to be good. I’ll stay over here in the corner with the bad kids. Because I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that my standing up for free speech and the rights of children to an equal education, are the right thing to do. And it doesn’t become any less right when I discuss that view with someone the woke-sters don’t like. No matter what @Abedonnor78971 (and his 39 other handles) tweets.
Hi Jen, I just wanted to say thanks for seying what is unspoken. Keep seying everything. A lot of us can't comment as publicly as we like and I wish we had the courage to do what you are seying.
Dayam. You know how I can tell when I am reading someone I should be reading? When they inform me of actions I take that might be B.S. and I still want to read more of what they say! You continue to break off knowledge and take no prisoners. I appreciate that!