On this fine autumn day in the United States, millions of Americans are heading to the polls for mid-term election voting. I would like to take a moment to acknowledge the good work that our elected representatives have done recently. Here’s a complete list of their excellent accomplishments:
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[Update: Answered. Thank you. http://www.deathwithdignity.org/advocates/national]
And now I am seriously pissed off that there are so few pending bills. Where is California?
Note: F-bombs aren’t for everyone. Skip this post if the word offends you. I would have used a different word but for some topics there is just no substitute.
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I have a credit card account that I need to close, and today I discover that Wells Fargo offers plenty of paths for opening new accounts but no obvious way to close one on a Sunday (when I wrote this). What a surprise.
Warning: This blog is written for a rational audience that likes to have fun wrestling with unique or controversial points of view. It is written in a style that can easily be confused as advocacy for one sort of unpleasantness or another. It is not intended to change anyone’s beliefs or actions. If you quote from this post or link to it, which you are welcome to do, please take responsibility for whatever happens if you mismatch the audience and the content.
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In my prior post I suggested that if a person lives in a hostile place, that person should leave. I think we can keep gender out of the discussion for a minute. Let’s just examine the proposition that if you live someplace terrible, perhaps you should leave.
First, let me give some context. You know I love context.
Warning: This blog is written for a rational audience that likes to have fun wrestling with unique or controversial points of view. It is written in a style that can easily be confused as advocacy for one sort of unpleasantness or another. It is not intended to change anyone’s beliefs or actions. If you quote from this post or link to it, which you are welcome to do, please take responsibility for whatever happens if you mismatch the audience and the content.
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As regular readers know, I am a big fan of the feminist movement through history. A lot of brave people sacrificed and worked hard to move society toward greater equality. That was all good stuff. And the problem of sexism was so large a few decades ago that you really did need to approach it with a sledgehammer and not a scalpel.
Disclaimer: I own some Apple stock
After a month-long wait - and salivating the entire time - I finally got my iPhone 6 Plus. I don’t know how Apple manipulates my emotions so effectively but I am thoroughly impressed at the mental anguish they put me through while I waited.
Warning: This blog is written for a rational audience that likes to have fun wrestling with unique or controversial points of view. It is written in a style that can easily be confused as advocacy for one sort of unpleasantness or another. It is not intended to change anyone’s beliefs or actions. If you quote from this post or link to it, which you are welcome to do, please take responsibility for whatever happens if you mismatch the audience and the content.
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Do you find yourself wondering how ISIS suddenly emerged as a military powerhouse in Iraq and Syria?
The official story is that ISIS has smart leaders, fierce fighters, and they resupply themselves through crime and conquest. And we hear stories that the Iraqi army is incompetent and retreat-happy. And Syria is just a hot mess. That should be enough to explain the situation, right?
I don’t hold a competing theory. I just don’t buy into the official version.
And those beheadings look a bit suspicious to me. They seem more staged for the benefit of the U.S. military than the benefit of ISIS. Those beheading videos consolidated support for military action and serve to keep the U.S. even more deeply involved in the region. There are powerful elements in the U.S. who want that, especially the weapons industry.
I’ve described in this blog how my B.S. filter works. I look for two sources to be in agreement. For example, if the news reports match my common sense view, or my observations, or the first-hand accounts from witnesses, I tend to believe the news. But if the news conflicts with my common sense or my observations I raise an eyebrow and try to keep it that way.
The ISIS story doesn’t pass my B.S. filter because it violates common sense that such a competent fighting force could suddenly emerge and bitch-slap professionally trained (or even poorly trained) military forces with such consistency. I have worked in large organizations and I know that the logistics involved - the planning, training, and resupplying are huge challenges even for organized armies. Did ISIS really figure out all of that while their communications are presumably monitored by the enemy?
Then you have the curious situation that every country in the Middle East is united against ISIS. How often have Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Israel been on the same side of an issue? That is mighty convenient in the sense that it turns enemies into frenemies, and that’s a step in the right direction.
I said I don’t hold an alternate theory to explain ISIS. But let’s imagine one and compare it to the official story to see which one seems more credible. If the conspiracy theory we invent here sounds more believable than the official story, that doesn’t mean anything, but it is fun to do.
Let’s say one of the major military powers in the world has been secretly providing ISIS with training, weapons, and intelligence about targets. That would explain the success of ISIS, but why would any major world power help them?
One answer is that the only way to kill an idea is to transform it into something you can bomb. And you can certainly bomb a caliphate. A caliphate should act as a magnet for the worst of the bad actors. Presumably the bad guys would want to consolidate power in the caliphate before spreading it to neighboring countries. So the caliphate attracts all the bad people, like a heat sink, and puts them in one target area. Convenient! Are the troop barracks built yet?
Arguably, the best thing that could happen to Israel is the creation of a caliphate with no air force that the Sunni and Shiite countries can hate with equal passion. It is a great distraction and it makes the enemies of the enemy cooperate. And compared to the videos of innocent journalists being beheaded, Israel’s West Bank settlements seem like nothing more than a real estate issue.
ISIS has also become the “brand” for Islamic extremists, replacing al Qaeda. Scrappy little al Qaeda had support because it poked the big American bear all the way over in the homeland. That’s something American-haters can get behind. But can you love ISIS as it gobbles up your neighbor and threatens to do the same to you?
So ISIS has achieved several useful psychological goals for Israel and the United States:
1. ISIS is a common enemy that puts traditional enemies in the region on the same side. Perhaps that could help get an Iranian nuclear deal, for example. Iran needs U.S. help controlling ISIS.
2. ISIS has stolen the radical Islam “brand” from al Qaeda and ruined it by putting the focus on killing other Muslims. That should be good for America in the long run.
3. Israel’s military actions in the region seem tame compared to the beheadings and mass killings in the caliphate. So Israel comes out ahead thanks to ISIS sucking up the news cycle over there.
4. American arms dealers come out ahead because America continues to drop bombs in a war that probably won’t reach the homeland with much impact.
So if I had to put a conspiracy theory to the facts we know, I would say the CIA, weapons makers, and Israel are engineering the situation for a caliphate to form so it sucks the bad actors out of the moderate countries and puts them someplace easier to bomb while ruining their brand image at the same time. The alternative might have been to allow Iran to slowly gain control over the entire region while developing nukes. Compared to that future, creating a honey trap for the enemy and then bombing it (forever) makes perfect sense.
In the long run, I think ISIS will be the best thing that happened to the Middle East because of what it does to the common psychology of who the “real” enemy is. And it comes when the problems in the Middle East seemed otherwise unsolvable. Is that a coincidence?
(Here I will remind you that this blog is just for fun and that cartoonists are not good sources for knowledge of world affairs.)
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Scott Adams
Co-founder of CalendarTree.com
Author of this book
Twitter personal: @scottadams925
Twitter Dilbert: @Dilbert_Daily
Warning: This blog is written for a rational audience that likes to have fun wrestling with unique or controversial points of view. It is written in a style that can easily be confused as advocacy for one sort of unpleasantness or another. It is not intended to change anyone’s beliefs or actions. If you quote from this post or link to it, which you are welcome to do, please take responsibility for whatever happens if you mismatch the audience and the content.
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A recent study that got picked up by the media says that 90% of women in restaurant jobs that depend on tipping report being sexually harassed at work.
That sounds like sexist behavior out of control. But allow me to put some context on that based on my restaurant-owning experience.
I believe it is true that 90% of women working for tips in restaurants are sexually harassed by coworkers and/or customers. That fits my personal observations after working in the industry. But let’s put some context on that and see if your feelings about the story change.
For starters, let’s remove from the stats the folks who take jobs at Hooters and other restaurants that position the staff’s appearance as part of the “entertainment.” I would argue that those employees are signing up to be sexually objectified in return for the promise of easy work and good tips. You can make a convincing case that Hooters should not exist, but I don’t think you can lump the servers at Hooters with the servers at Applebee’s and get a good statistic on restaurant sexual harassment in general.
So let’s say the non-Hooters rate of sexual harassment for female restaurant workers is something like 80%. That still sounds terrible. But I’m not done with context yet.
In my experience, attractive female bartenders and servers are completely conscious of trading their sexuality for higher tips. They talk about it freely. They pick blouses to accentuate their best assets. And some will admit they choose jobs that allow them to trade on their looks. If I were in my twenties and could make money in a job that depended on my looks instead of my muscles I would take it in a heartbeat, assuming I had good looks.
My best guess is that if you remove from the stats the women who are intentionally using their sexuality to improve their income, you get about 50% of women in tipping jobs who get sexually harassed and have done nothing intentionally to inspire unwanted attention. That is still a horrible number.
But 50% is also the rate of men who report being sexually harassed in server jobs. In my restaurant experience, when we had handsome male bartenders or servers the female staff and customers were shameless with their non-stop sexual banter, flirting, and direct sexual offers. And if you thought all of that attention was the good kind, you’d be wrong. It was an ongoing problem for the guys. The handsome gay servers had it the worst because they had no upside potential from the female attention.
So here’s the proper context, in my opinion, based on years of direct restaurant experience: 100% of attractive men and women are sexually harassed at work in the restaurant business. And nearly every one of them took the job knowing that would be the case, but they decided it was worth it for the relatively easy money.
Everyone who has restaurant experience knows that the industry attracts folks who are simply not as sensitive as the general public on this and other topics. In a typical office setting, a sexual conversation could be a career-ender. In a typical restaurant, half of the conversations are x-rated humor, and most of it is coming from the women. Comparing restaurant folks with typical white collar workers is comparing apples and oranges. Restaurant workers are self-selected as not-too-bothered by sexual banter. Or maybe they just become that way after a month on the job. I’m just saying they are not the same personalities that are working at IBM.
The ratio of harassment drops off as you move from the attractive restaurant employees to the merely average of both genders. Probably only half of average-looking employees get harassed. That is still too high, of course.
And then you have the homely restaurant employees of both genders. They have their own problems, but sexual harassment isn’t at the top of their lists.
The bottom line is that sexual harassment in restaurants is not so much a gender issue as an attractive person issue. But it doesn’t become a story until you layer on the sexism angle and leave out the context. Would you read a story with a headline that says, “Attractive people get more unwanted sexual attention than ugly people” or would you think you already know that story? Sometimes good context makes a bad story.
In related and not-so-surprising news, a study says attractive women get more job interviews than unattractive women. Attractive men have no similar advantage.
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Scott Adams
Co-founder of CalendarTree.com
Author of this book
Twitter personal: @scottadams925
Twitter Dilbert: @Dilbert_Daily
Scott Adams' Blog
