After literally centuries of oppression and minimization of women, I can understand the fury and anger that fuels much of the Me Too Movement, particularly since I’ve witnessed that on-going and still continuing minimization and disregard by men toward my wife and my daughters. It’s well past time for change, and that change needs to be considerable in scope and duration, but such change isn’t going to take place without passion and, frankly, fury.

Unfortunately, there are also going to be excesses and collateral damage. When there are profound social changes in society, there always are. And there’s the very real danger that those excesses will produce a backlash. In fact, if the excesses are too great, the backlash will also be great.

In addition to the considerable and well-documented revelations about powerful men, from Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby to Donald Trump, there have also been what appear to be charges against other public male figures, and even one female figure, based on far less substance, and in the case of one well-known author, a series of anonymous and undocumented charges, charges that remain without any support, three months later, and, in the case of a respected commentator, a single dubious charge, one refuted by the commentator and roughly sixty other female media personages.

After some forty years as a published author, I do know a considerable number of authors, male and female, and quite a few of the women authors I know are disturbed by some of the anonymous and so far unsupported charges being bandied about.

Now… there is no excuse for unprofessional behavior and particularly not behavior that degrades or damages others, especially women, given the abuse and minimization they’ve endured for years, but charges of abuse and minimization need to be documented and accusers need to put their names on the line and not hide behind anonymity. In those cases where the accuser fears retribution, evidence is still required.

There’s also one other danger that needs to be avoided, especially in the field of writing, and that’s equating criticism and considered judgment with gender-based minimization. Men and women can both write great books. They can also write terrible books. If a man believes a woman’s book is poorly written, and says so, that’s not minimization – even if others think he’s wrong. The book or story is not the person – even though all of us authors do in fact take it personally when we get negative criticism.

On the other hand, when authors’ advances and/or royalties are based in any degree on gender, rather than on sales or projected sales, or when female authors get less publisher support when they have comparable sales levels to male authors, those are examples of gender-based discrimination and totally unacceptable. But we need to keep in mind the difference between criticism or literary opinion and actual discrimination. And, yes, a negative comment or review can harm an author, but so long as the negativity is based on the book and not the author, that’s fair game. Over the years, I’ve occasionally gotten some terrible reviews. I never cared about, and often never knew, the gender of the reviewer. Books and their reviews need to stand on their own.

However… for all that I’ve just written… there is going to be collateral damage. I can only hope that it’s kept to a minimum, because the backlash could even be worse. After all, for better or worse, isn’t backlash one of the reasons why we ended up with President Trump?

Today, the local newspaper featured a letter from a reader who was totally irate about the stance of a previous reader, who had suggested that some gun-control legislation was in order. The irate commenter stated that no one had the right to infringe or abrogate his “God-given rights” to carry weapons.

I’ve heard and seen that wording and argument more than a few times over the last few years, until I’d like to stuff the barrel of a weapon down the throat of any idiot who utters any more nonsense about God-given rights, especially about weapons. I’ve read the Bible more than a few times, and I’ve never come across any mention of the right to bear weapons. Yes, the God of the Old Testament often exhorted his chosen people to take up arms, but it’s never stated that there’s an absolute right to carry any weapon you choose in any circumstance. I’ve read the Koran, admittedly in translation, and I’ve gotten the same impression about Allah, but, since I can’t read Arabic, I have to rely on the translation.

Even if a holy text did state something like that, the “word” comes through prophets and not directly from the deity, and given that all individuals have agendas, I’d have to express some doubts. In addition, there’s the rather large problem that the Constitution expresses a separation of Church and state, and definitely does not endorse any specific deity…or that deity’s commands… as statutory or Constitutional law.

Now, many of these individuals citing “God-given rights” may think that they’re quoting the Founding Fathers. They’re not. The Declaration of Independence clearly states: “all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness….” Three specific rights, and not one deals with weapons, and as for the other rights, they’re never mentioned, especially not in terms of firearms. The Constitution allows firearms under certain conditions, but the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that reasonable limitations on that right are allowable and permitted, and that right wasn’t granted by any deity, but by men who framed our governmental system.

In tradition in practice, “rights” are set forth by men and women, usually men, and whether they believe they’re acting out the will of a deity, those rights exist under human law, and not under a divine command. Besides which, if you read the Bible closely, the Christian God isn’t even consistent with what the prophets reveal about him, especially in regard to killing.

So… lay off the crap about “God-given rights,” especially with regard to firearms. Just confine the debate to the existing legal structure and what might actually work… or might not, and why.

Like most of what Donald Trump says, there’s a grain of truth in his claims about “false news,” and it’s a grain of truth that most reputable news organizations are essentially ignoring, and by doing so, are acting against their own best interests… and the best interests of the rest of us.

That grain of truth is that too many news media people are acting and reporting on rumors and rumors of rumors all too often before coming anywhere close to reporting hard facts.

Why? There are two reasons. First, to call a spade a spade, a large percentage of mainstream media analysts and reporters dislike him, and that intense dislike blinds them to the fact that they’re often cutting corners and not getting all the facts. Each time they print an incorrect rumor or incorrect charge, they’re reinforcing Trump’s contention that they’re printing “fake news.”

Second, news media has been captured by the profit motive, excessively captured, so that getting the first scoop, whether correct or not, too often trumps [pun intended] accurate and factual coverage.

Part of this need for speed comes from a realization that the public attention span is so short that by the time the actual facts surface, most of the audience has lost interest. But news media are supposed to make money, or at least not lose it, and waiting until facts can be confirmed costs circulation and ratings… and money. And money trumps accuracy, these days, in every way.

Most people have forgotten that the time between the Watergate burglary and the time Nixon was forced to resign was two years and three months. Even the Woodward and Bernstein article that revealed the scope of the Nixon campaign in the burglary wasn’t published until October 10, 1972, almost four months after the burglary, and it took almost two more years for all the depth of White House involvement to become public and for Nixon to be charged with impeachment by the House.

So let’s hear it for profit at any cost, regardless of what those costs are.

Most people, when they think of technology, immediately think of advanced forms of tools, and certainly the Greek roots of the word “technology” mean “systematic treatment of art or craft,” which tends to suggest tools or some sort.

But those tools and that systematic system would never have occurred without another innovation, one that we don’t think of in terms of technology, but one that’s absolutely vital – and that innovation is simple and obvious… and invariably overlooked. It’s called the group, or group cooperation, and it’s far more important than most people want to believe.

From what remains and skeletons that archaeologists have so far discovered, it appears that not only were Neanderthals stronger than homo sapiens, but they also had larger brains, yet they died out, and we didn’t. One very likely reason for this is grouping patterns. From all the evidence we have, it appears that Neanderthals never formed large groups. Humans did. Recent evidence also suggests that Neanderthals had most of the same tools as did humans at the time Neanderthals died out. So… if they were as smart and stronger, why didn’t they make it? There’s a strong indication that their small groups couldn’t compete with the larger human groups.

Despite the myth of the “lone genius,” that doesn’t happen often, and even when a lone genius does discover something, it takes a group to implement it and make it work. As I’ve noted before, technology is a multiplier, and because groups multiply individual achievements and discoveries, the society/culture with the most effective groups tends to be the most successful.

Unhappily, like technology, group dynamics can multiply not only the good, but the bad, and there’s one area where groups are especially effective at multiplying evil – by “demonizing the other.” Social scientists have known for a long time that one of the most effective ways of unifying a social group is to identify a common simple belief and a common enemy that opposes that belief and then to blame all the evils facing the group on that enemy. Demagogues have done this successfully throughout history, and it’s continuing today.

Like at least some of the Founding Fathers, I’m tired of groups with absolutist agendas, whether the group is a political party, a religion, a gender, a lack of gender, the in-boys, the in-girls, a culture, an ethnic group… I’m sick and tired of all of them, because all of the absolutist groups, for all of their protests to the contrary, attempt ostracize and marginalize “the other” with simplistic charges.

The environmentalists/liberals are destroying the coal industry. Civil rights for minorities is reverse discrimination. Any form of gun control will lead to taking away your guns. Balancing the budget will destroy social programs. Immigrants take away your jobs. The list of these sorts of simplistic and hate-mongering slogans is seemingly endless.

We live in a complex world, one that’s not amenable to simple solutions, but the problem is that simple solutions have great appeal, and that great appeal makes them ideal for demagogues to use the technology of group dynamics to demonize those who either oppose them or can’t accept simplistic solutions, and, currently, the only technology seemingly able to fight back is the other side using the same techniques… and people wonder why we’re getting more and more polarized?

Most of the teachers, professors, and others from whom I learned the most and whom I appreciated the most are dead. That wouldn’t seem surprising, given my age, but several of them died far too young. Even when I was much, much younger, I did contact them to let them know of my gratitude and appreciation – with one exception, a professor who died while I was deployed as a pilot. I’d meant to write him, but I procrastinated and then I was in a place [long before the internet] where I couldn’t get his address, and by the time I could, he was dead of a fast-moving cancer I never knew he had. There were some I only contacted occasionally, largely because they never responded, but I still made those occasional contacts. Those who did respond I kept in touch with until they died. But I still regret the one letter I didn’t write.

Oh… I’ve dedicated books in his memory, and I’ve told many of how much he meant, but I wish I’d told him that what he taught me literally formed one of the pillars of my literary success, but then, when he died, I was a barely published poet, and certainly no great success, and I think that I wanted to be able to tell him more… and instead I told him nothing.

Because I’ve taught, and because I’m married to a professor who’s spent fifty years singing and teaching, and because I have grown children who teach, and have acquaintances who’ve taught most of their professional lives, I’ve seen hundreds of students come and go, and know of hundreds more, and the vast, vast majority of them seldom express any appreciation beyond a quick verbal thank-you, if that, even to teachers and professors who’ve gone out of their way for them, far beyond any call of duty.

Some will say that this is just the present generation, but I have my doubts, perhaps because of a story my mother told me. She was the salutatorian of her high school class, and she felt she owed a thank you to the teacher who helped her prepare her speech. So she wrote him a note expressing her appreciation. A year later, when she came home from college at Christmas, her mother told her that she’d run into the teacher at the grocery store, and that he was so grateful for that note, since it was the first one he’d received in all his years of teaching. That was in 1937.

At this time of year, with graduations approaching, I wonder how many students, whether graduating from high school college, or graduate school, will even think about those teachers who went out of their way for them… or will they merely think that they deserved all that extra time and effort?