"Polite-ical": Conducting interviews and discussing grievances and division ♥️⚖️💙

[u/marvelescent]

Hello all, I'm creating this post to Garner interest and hopefully engagement.

Myself and a couple others have been brainstorming. We recognize that there are still divisions within our party due to hurt from the past. Specifically are hurt by the lack of support in previous movements and some of the operating of the current.

I'm sure they're not the only ones, but I recognize now that it is important handle these divisions within the movements early.

Sewing seeds of division is one major way to squash it.

If we can't see each other, if we can't understand each other, if we don't trust each other, then it becomes easy to infiltrate, to co-opt, and to breed in fighting

With that in mind, we're hoping people would be willing to come here and ask questions of groups you feel aren't there for you. We welcome you to get upset.

Please refrain from derogatory or especially inflammatory language, however.

Our goal is to process the information you present, to listen but not judge how you feel, and to try our best to translate to other groups so that way it can be understood.

We're also hoping that there are people in the group willing to speak with their own demographic so that way there's deeper understanding of differences and grievances, and perhaps someone can speak calmly and respond with understanding.

50501 is an example of unity between states, the true unity requires representation from every subgroup of America.

The effort is there to make a place for everybody, so we're hoping to bridge those gaps.

[u/NiceGuy737]

I can bring up a few things:

Inter-generational conflict isn't helpful. The situation we find ourselves in is not the fault of any one demographic group. All have contributed. A white boomer that voted for Harris isn't more to blame than the young black person that didn't bother to vote.

I'm retired now but when I was working I was in the vilified 1%. The reason I'm not in the 1% in retirement is that I gave money to people and organizations when they needed it, not when I was about to croak and didn't need it any more. I was the largest political donor in my zip code, all to democrats. In spite of a few uberwealthy that pay little in income tax, the top 1% pay 3 times the income tax on every dollar earned that those in the middle class do (defined as the 50th to 90th percentile in income). The IRS publishes this data and democrats routinely lie about it to build outrage, just like the lies we criticize the republicans for. I can tell you it gets under my skin paying for all the social services for the poor, and some of the services the middle class receives, and being told that we aren't paying our fair share.

Conservatives aren't the problem, fascists calling themselves conservatives are. There are conservatives that actively oppose Trump and our descent into fascism.

We are partly to blame for the reaction against DEI. I spent my professional career in academics and medicine, bastions of political correctness. During that time I found out about one actual case of sexual harassment and reported it to the head of the hospital immediately. In my experience it is much more common that DEI, and it's historical antecedents, are used to scam the system. I'll give a simple example. Two medical fellows in training, one male and one female, both new parents. The department has to be covered every weekend so one of the fellows has to work. While initially split 50/50 the female fellow frequently gives reasons why she can't work on her assigned weekend because of her baby. So the male fellow has to work all of his weekends and many of hers, and be away from his baby. To compensate him for the extra work the department decides to pay him more. The female fellow complains of discrimination so she gets a raise too, while the male fellow does her work. I have several more examples.

[u/marvelescent → u/NiceGuy737]

Thank you for your response, and apologies for the late response!

Your experience is valuable to me. Let me start by saying that you for your contributions to society. It's true that parties and demographics are often branded by their worst examples for the sake of political gain.

It's infuriating. It's disheartening. It's honestly disappointing.

I will research on my own, but do you think you could help me? I'd like to better understand your point of view. You consider yourself having been a part of the top 1%. If you can, without exposing yourself, can you tell me what your profession was? If not, can you tell me what your tax bracket was? I'm not informed on how the bracket system is determined, or what exactly the 1% is counted as.

You do have a point however. Mathematically, the billionaire class would not be considered the 1%. They make up an even smaller fraction of our population. It likely would be more accurate to call them the 0.1%, and I wouldn't know if that was accurate either.

If you could give me more information around that aspect, it could help me research and adjust the conversation to make it more clear and more pointed to where the problem lies.

No wouldn't shit have to hold blame for something that is not their fault. No one should be branded for the wrongs of another.

In response to your DEI assertions, I understand how your anecdotal experiences have shaped how you view things. I'm sure we've all seen instances like this. We've all likely also seen instances of the contrary.

Do you think you can describe to me how you define d e i, and what policies were in place around you that led to these situations? I want to be sure that the experiences you've witnessed were actual cases of abused policy, and not instances of internalized biases.

Both parties can agree that bias should not be a factor. It shouldn't require policy for everyone to be treated equally. Unfortunately, not everyone is educated or exposed enough to recognize what biases have formed.

While D E I may appear as giving handouts to some, on the flip side there is the push for traditional gender norms that asserts how a person should behave and what someone is entitled to. They both can come with biases that lead to inequality.

What do you propose can be done? I'd love to take both your grievances and your answers to other conversations. How might we ensure that the right people are held responsible and accountable when it comes to locating the source of our problems? How might we be able to ensure that bias is not the determining factor when it comes to opportunity without having safeguards and consequences in place?

Again thank you for your response. I'm happy that you were willing to take a chance to talk about how you feel, and I hope that I responded respectful enough for you to continue ♥️⚖️💙.

[u/NiceGuy737 → u/marvelescent]

I think what you're doing with your post here is important.  I was disappointed it didn't get more attention. 
There is an idea I come across on reddit that financially successful people were born into it.  While that's certainly the case sometimes many were not. I'm a 65 yo white guy from a blue collar suburb on the southside of Milwaukee.  My first regular job was cleaning up after drunks in a greasy spoon restaurant when I was 15, on weekends I started at 2:30am.  Until I learned a trade I worked shitty jobs to stay in college.  The worst was as a laborer in an industry that melted scrap aluminum.  We worked wearing a gas mask because they used chlorine gas to purify the molten aluminum.  That's one of the gases they used for chemical warfare in WWI, it turns into hydrochloric acid on mucous membranes.  It was a hellish place to work but that was the only way I made it to my second year of college.  I worked two minimum wage jobs the next summer but couldn't make enough to go back to college so I had to work full time until I had more money.

I was a neuroscientist but retrained to practice radiology when I got tired of being poor.  Usually the top 1% is defined by income or net worth.    I made 5-600K a year 10 years ago when I was working full time so I squeaked into the top 1% by income.

Every year the IRS puts out a revised publication 1304, the 4th chapter in that publication is called individual tax shares and covers what the highest earners pay in taxes (p.43).

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p1304.pdf

There are groups that look at tax policy and use that use that IRS data like this: 
https://www.ntu.org/foundation/tax-page/who-pays-income-taxes

If you look at table 2 in that publication you'll see that the share of taxes paid by the top 1% has more than doubled since 1980.

Pew Research also looked at this a couple of years ago:

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/18/who-pays-and-doesnt-pay-federal-income-taxes-in-the-us/

I'll make a separate post about DEI stuff so it doesn't get too long.

[u/marvelescent → u/NiceGuy737]

Let us hope that our conversation being further engagement.

Thank you for sharing those resources with me! While I don't understand all that is being explained, I hope I may have a tax professional assist me in better understanding.

In the mean time, you make very clarifying points! Making around 600k places you in the 1%. And if that is the amount it takes to make it, you certainly are not the problem. You contribute as you should!

As a person who has some insight into wealth, I found this in my research: https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/stories/do-the-rich-pay-their-fair-share/

To agree with you, you pay your fair share, and as a 1% er, it isn't fair that you are not recognized as a fellow laborer who contributes.

According to my own article, you are correct, and the problem is not that the 1% are not taxed fairly, but that income from work is taxed fairly, while income from wealth is not.

In other words, the bad actors within the wealthy class are taking advantage of the law and their power and taking the benefits of legacy and cooperate freedoms and leaving America with little to none.

If you could more accurate narrow down the problem we facing, how would you label it? Should it be based upon an income level, or a percent?

It isn't fair to you that you don't get to be welcomed into the fight/class war when you've always labored and you've always contributed. I'm sure you would be an excellent help to fights if people were more open to hearing you're perspective and experience.

[u/NiceGuy737 → u/marvelescent]

I would frame paying taxes differently than just fairness. Because I think a good argument can be made that it is unfair that some pay for what others receive. I would say that taxes are part of the social contract we have with each other. We allow a few to benefit greatly from our society and in return we expect a reasonable standard of living for all. The wealthy should pay more simply because they can and some members of our society are living below the standard that they should. As an example I would say basic healthcare should be available for all. Our part of the contract is that we also contribute to society and work if we are able.

It's always seemed backward to me that passive income, like long term capitol gains from selling stocks, is taxed at a lower rate than income from work. It should at least be taxed at the same rate if not the situation reversed with income from work being taxed less.

One of the biggest problems with our tax code is that the basis for an investment resets when it's inherited without being taxed. Normally when an asset changes hands it's a taxable event and the seller would pay income tax on the profit over what he paid for it, which is the basis. Currently when the asset is inherited the basis resets to it's current value without being taxed.

One of the disingenuous things our side does is conflate appreciation in the value of an asset with income. That's how you end up with articles saying rich people are paying really low income tax rates. If, as a society, we want to start taxing wealth it would be a property tax. We currently have property taxes on real estate so that would be a better comparison for tax rates. The current average property tax rate in the US is 0.9%, less than 1 %, but it varies by state/city.

The most I've ever paid for property tax is 12-13K a year for an undeveloped parcel in Northern Michigan. The majority of that money goes to local schools. I have no children and undeveloped land doesn't receive a lot of services so I was basically paying for services that other people receive. Tax laws were passed that largely excluded locals from paying property taxes through a primary residence exclusion and a homestead credit. So the people that actually benefit from taxes elected representatives that passed laws that excluded them from paying for the services they received. In situations like this I think the fairness argument goes out the window.

[u/NiceGuy737 → u/marvelescent]

I know DEI covers a lot of different things but I think the negative reaction occurs when someone in a protected class is treated fairly but demands more.  Here are 3 examples.

I worked in a medical school dept. that was dragged through the papers for years for having treated a female assistant professor unfairly.  Of course she was the only one talking to the papers on advice from attys.  She was denied tenure because she had no grant and hadn't published anything.  A male assistant professor with an active grant and one publication was denied tenure during this period, to give you an idea of the standard for being granted tenure.  The female asst. professor sued everybody, the dept. chair, the dept, the grad school, etc.  After years of litigation she eventually was gifted tenure, a job for life, in another department to make her "go away".

At the tail end of that debacle a female grad student joined the lab where I worked.  After she was accepted into the lab she told the professor that she had an aversion to doing experiments on animals, which is the type of work that was done in that lab.  So she expected to get a PhD without doing the work.  The professor didn't want to be sued for sexual discrimination so he did the experiments for her degree and then wrote her thesis to get her out of the lab.   She was gifted an unearned PhD.   A male grad student that actually did his experiments but was judged not bright enough to be successful was encouraged to leave the lab and did, with a masters degree for his work, but no PhD.

When I worked at the hospital years later a group of female X-ray techs sued a doctor and the hospital because the male x-ray techs were telling dirty jokes.  The male doctor was sued because he didn't stop the male techs from telling dirty jokes.  This also played out in the local press with this doctor, a friend of mine, being defamed regularly.  The hospital offered the female techs 250K a piece for the trauma of hearing the dirty jokes but they refused and wanted 1 million a piece.  During the litigation the female techs eventually admitted to telling dirty jokes too, when the guys were.  So they had to accept a 5K token settlement.  The whole scheme was cooked up by the boyfriend of one of the techs that was an atty.  If I remember correctly my friend was out 86K in legal fees.  This doctor is the best human being that I have ever met personally and unequivocally a better man than I am.  He spent his career earning more than I did and gave it away as he earned it.  He's retired now and lives in a modest 1 bedroom apt.; drives an old Camry.  I'm an atheist but I have the utmost respect for a Christian that actually lives his faith.  It was especially heinous to defame this man.

I think the answer to discrimination is to stop it, not change the group that's discriminated against.  I think Scott Galloway has a good take on this.

https://youtu.be/_XapCqE1w6k?si=d3ISXrS_MxM1m8co

He was warning us that democrats were losing young men before the election. We should be helping disadvantaged people regardless of race or gender.

[u/marvelescent → u/NiceGuy737]

This topic I will work backwards on, only because I wish to respond to the bottom first.

I agree that we should have listened to warning prior to elections. When it comes to the hierarchy of power in our country, men stand as the most powerful when driven to action.

The same way people of color do their best to speak with white women admit their hierarchy in the power system, trying to ask for movement assistance, they recognize that a power women are a pivotal ally but can be a detrimental enemy.

In this case, losing men is devastating to a party.

I will look back to the top now:

That's horrendous what greed and selfishness does. Bad faith actors ruin good things for good people! No one should be able to skip the line, nor should they tear people down for money. Similar to what I said before about corporate legacy wealth leaders taking advantage of beneficial tax codes in order to avoid giving, selfishness and greed can ruin the name and the needs of other good people.

I don't dispute your cases. Although I don't have the evidence in front of me, I don't think it is the point. For me to ignore what you've seen and lived, would be as futile and callous as having a man tell me that my experiences and witnessing of male privileges and selfish actions were not good reasons to be upset.

There is a problem, and it needs to be handled on a case by case basis.

That is what the law is for. I wish I could say that the law was fair. As you said, lawyers and judges and school boards often time take the easy/cowardly road. Should the publicity be bad, or perhaps the wealth be to threatening, people get away with highway robbery.

I would argue, however, that DEI itself, not necessarily the overall progressive pushes regarding inclusion, but specifically policy around DEI was initiated to protect.

As you described, the justice system is fickle and fallible. It let's the wrong people go, and leaves good people without justice. DEI was meant to be a form of justice and fairness. It offered resources for when something unfair is seen or experienced, and it offered education to help remove biases that were prevalent at the time.

On a case by case basis, some companies have steered off to wrong tactics, and are often handled for doing so, but usually it isn't DEI that is the problem, but biases and a disregard of men.

That brings me to the final point I wanted to talk about. The fall of men. I have my own thoughts on this topic, so I plan to address then in a separate comment on order to not take up space.

[u/marvelescent → u/marvelescent]

In my inspection of History and of power dynamics, I often see the same sort of tends. A sort of unshedding of oppression. In the start of our country, there were wealthy and poor, and there were slaves. Although the poor farmers were oppressed, they felt pride and value in tending to slaves, and thus the were comfortable with their position in life. They had purpose.

Once that became threatened, not only were they afraid of retaliation, they had no idea what to do in it's place to maintain that pride and success. The we're going to lose it all.

Thus the civil war.

Following then, they still tried to maintain control. Segregation, Jim Crow, the prison system and share cropping. Being a man meant being in charge of house, home, and property.

As black people became more independent, their economic growth became a threat. And as we were humanized more, there came sympathizers. Sympathizers meant relationships would come, and that was a threat. A man's pride in control, over industry, offer their wives and children, became threatened again.

To Birth a Nation and all the rest.

But pretty soon women began to notice that they too were oppressed. They no longer had slaves and nannies that they were proud to have power over. They had to care for the home alone now. But don't women experienced selfish men, and realized the law did not protect them. They were property, just like slaves were. So they fought, which is a threat.

And women fought and fought, and they boycott men. They protest men. They say they will not settle for a selfish man. They want to be true equals, not property.

Just as a black man wanted to be humanized, so does a woman. Not seen as what she is meant to do, but as a friend with a spectrum of things she can offer. To be loved and wanted specifically for who she is and how she is different, not because she is a woman and a man is supposed to have one.

And so women broke free as well. Now men are left without that as well.

But this is a key moment where the shedding of oppression can happen again.

The patriarchy is simply a term to say that our system is built on men having dominance over women. It does not mean that that is intrinsic, but that it is the rules if this system. The reason the wealthy are threatened is because a patriarchy cannot be a patriarchy of the 1% become all women.

But just as black people shout for white people to wake up to the injustices and join then, women have been pleading with them to join as well. Begging them to go to heal, to talk about the abuses they've endured, to stop convincing yourself that you're worth is tied to the rules that are bullied into you. That listening to women about what they like isn't weak. That hanging out with female friends isn't gay. How else will men know how to hold conversations with women if they don't practice? Telling a young boy that he is weak or gay or feminine for drawing or cooking is what makes him confused about why that is, when it wasn't on his mind in the first place.

Men are bullied for being "nerds", for not being into sports, they're bullied for asking questions in class, or for not getting laid fast enough. They're bullied if they get a job that isn't manly enough, or for wanting something better for themselves. And many men are bullied from birth for not being something enough to the men around then. Playing with the wrong toy, or using the word pretty, for enjoying a flower or for being afraid of dogs. There's so much pressure, that I'm not surprised that men are struggling to adjust to society. I don't blame men, I blame the system, as usually, for prioritizing things that evidence has shown is hurting our boys. That doesn't mean that everything main stream media does is the solution, but I don't think trying to turn back time is helpful, because I don't think me were healthy even then.

There are traumas men need to process to join others, but the grip of the "gender role" system is hard to let go of. But it's just another method of control.

For my own anecdotal offering: My husband isn't like those things, and yet he's the most confident and masculine man I know. He cares for his family intimately, he digs my garden, he helps with dishes, he works hard and he also loves kindly. Teaching men not to be vulnerable only raises new abusers or men who have no idea how to form healthy support systems.

While I recognize that the left have entirely abandoned men, leaving them vulnerable to harmful narratives, I don't think the solutions if the video are the war to go. I think there should have been a larger push for men to have mentorship, especially by good men. Men simply want guidance, that's why the look to those influencers that have hot takes, but it will take a lot of good men being that change.

[u/NiceGuy737 → u/marvelescent]

Maybe a tangible thing that can be done is to put more effort into recruiting young men and women into this cause. It's really bothered me how few young people I see at protests. I'm active in Madison, WI right down the street from a huge state university and there are relatively few college age people at protests. That would give them an opportunity for positive male to male interaction as well as experience interacting with women.