Employers throughout the world, including Disney, American Express, Wells Fargo, and thousands more, have begun to battle their employees. Unionized shops, the battle has been waged for 50 years and shows no sign of relenting. Only recently have other employers joined the fray, not to help employees but to rid themselves of employees. These businesses are fighting employees against their employees for the company’s culture and soul. Couched in many a buzzword, political stance, and archaic practices, the employers want to rid their workforces of those they despise, and the battle is legal!
Make no mistake, what the employers are doing is immoral, unethical, and disastrous to those employees unfavored, but the actions remain perfectly legal, and this is the point we must understand. Laws have been changed against the majority for the selectivization and advancement of the minority. The fight is important because you might be next and never know your termination has been affected, but not enforced until it is too late. This article intends to raise awareness, not cover every particle in the fight or catalog every avenue an employer might take to attack an employee. Imperative to know and remember, as long as the actions are against individuals, no laws are being broken, and the employer wins when they can make the situation untenable, and the employee on the out quits or is forced out under a miasma of quasi-legal terms, so it appears that employee was treated fairly.
Never forget, a lawyer’s job is to make the illegal appear legal, and the legal appear illegal, so a judge must decide. Add in judicial activism and legislation from the judicial bench, and the trouble becomes apparent quickly. Unfortunately, the lawyers’ training has shifted, and the legal mind’s quality has slipped under the weight of many of the topics discussed herein. The vicious cycle can only be broken when the collective beliefs of the majority are re-established, not to the demise of the minority but the growth of the entire society.
Culture and Politics
As long as people have banded together into organizations, societies, governments, etc., there has been the push and pull of politics. All of recorded history bears truth to this fact. People have beliefs. They express these beliefs through representatives who rise and fall in different leadership positions, and societies change according to the expressed beliefs through which a society is governed (law). Pick a governing style (Communism, Socialism, Representative, Direct or Indirect Representation, Monarchy, Theocracy, etc.), and you will find the collective beliefs of the people expressed in how long a leader remains in power or the stability of the society so governed. Politics happens and is best described as the push/pull of collective beliefs expressed by populations. Economies rise and fall based upon the collective beliefs, expressed in the stability of the society and the government leader’s length of time as leader.
History has shown when a governing leader is short-lived, it is generally because they refused to follow the collective beliefs of the population, giving rise to the credit ratings of stable governments and societies being higher than for those who are changing leadership every couple of weeks or months. Those leaders who can tread the waters of public opinion maintain their jobs and, many times in history, their heads by following the collective beliefs in the morals of the people. The US Dollar’s stability is one of the strongest reasons this currency is one of the world’s benchmark currencies. Politics did that, and politics are the push/pull collective beliefs expressed by the citizens to their government leaders. The process is messy and needs to be messy for a reason; only in the expression of two divergent points can a healthy middle ground be established, and society can grow.
Culture is not politics, but politics and politically minded people can influence it. If politics is a society’s expressed beliefs, then culture is the expressed moral convictions as lived by a community. For example, many institutions have been built on the law that coveting (envy) is wrong, but the practices of the people living build a culture that accepts graft, bribes, and other incentives that, while violating the law, are accepted. Make sense? The closer the culture is to following both the letter of the law and the living of the law provides for a stable and influential culture to invest resources into.
How does one change the collective beliefs of a society and the living practices of that society; first, you capture the children. Bad ideas do not go away, they are either replaced with good ideas, or the bad ideas go into hiding, awaiting the time they can make a new appearance. Everything modern society is facing has been faced previously, and the difference is that the seeds for the current dilemmas were planted more than 100-years ago, but the bad ideas first captured the children. Why have these bad ideas advanced so rapidly? The education of children in social customs, collectively shared beliefs, and individual duty, has been eroded and attacked mercilessly since “progressive education” (the refusal to teach children to read, write, and perform math) began in the late 1800s with Dewey, who called functional illiteracy “Progress!”
One of the first words plasticized, twisted, ripped apart, and then put together to fuel tyranny through modular language was the term progress. Unfortunately, language has continued to suffer relentless attacks since the late 1800s, and more words have suffered the same fate in the modularization of language. Consider with me the history of Tea. Tea plantations in India were ruled by the iron fist of laws drafted in America and marketed with women in distress to the consuming nations geographically distant to where the crops were grown. The tyranny of slavery is the same tyranny we face with modular language. Nobody realizes this because to mention this connection is frowned upon by those making money off the tyranny of language. The tyranny of modular language fueled the oppression of entire populations to fuel an empire. The language led to actions (afternoon tea) and a host of other practices, words, and social customs to fuel the demand for Tea. Unfortunately, the tyranny of modular language also fueled hot wars in China, more geographically distant suffering from the population consuming Tea.
Language – Plastic Terms
Diversity, what is it; what does it mean in practice versus meaning from a dictionary; what value does it have for a business? Equity, same problem, fewer answers, more confusion. Inclusion, same problem, confusion, chaos, and eventual destruction. These are, but a small sample of current buzzwords strung together and causing problems in businesses. There are entire word classes set apart for plasticization, which sound good to the ear, and that people love to rally behind, but these terms cover a hidden agenda. They have been weaponized to destroy, not lift and build—tyranny through modular language, plastic words.
American Express is a perfect example of how DE&I efforts (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) have been weaponized to pick away, through politics, the non-politically affiliated, those who show up to their employment and merely want to work their job. The University of Phoenix is another company long captured by, and suffering from, DE&I tyrants. Both American Express and the University of Phoenix began their DE&I journeys with the best of intentions. Still, the result remains the same, the minority classes bring politics anathema to good order and discipline into the company, initiating change cloaked in DE&I. The result has been the discouragement and disenfranchisement of employees. The DE&I champions crow and cheer for these people leaving as it injects more DE&I hiring, and the new employees realize that unless they are politically affiliated, read that as aligned to a militant tyrant in DE&I, they too will be out of work very shortly.
Language matters, and when terms are plasticized, the only result is destruction and tyranny. Consider the teachers in the Albuquerque Public Schools System or the employees of the State of New Mexico; both populations stress DE&I initiatives under various names but with the same purpose. Who are the enemies of DE&I; those who do not wear their politics on their sleeves, acting as emotionally charged smart bombs of the media. Even if a person holds some of the DE&I beliefs, if they are not militant in their beliefs, they are ostracized by their language, judged, and removed from employment.
When the patients rule the asylum, the problems for all patients in the asylum double and triple, not improve. The same result occurs when the vocal minorities of a population gain power that is not theirs, and they make no concerted efforts to rule fairly and justly. One of the truths about any revolution is that those who initiated the revolution rarely (if ever) get to enjoy the fruits of their rebellion as they are so focused on fixing what they perceive as injustices, they miss that they have become worse in action than those they deposed.
80-20 Rule
The 80/20 Rule is known by many monikers, but always it is the same rule, in different wrapping – 80% of a population will be controlled by 20%. In standard terms, the minority is setting the culture for the 80% to follow, and they hope you will never realize you are stronger without the vocal minority than with them. Take the recent changes at Disney. There is a vocal minority demanding change, couching the changes in diversity, equity, and inclusion, and the Disney business model is about to self-destruct. The same is true of American Express, where if you are male and white, you are not welcome. But, if you are one of the members of any number of protected classes, you are welcome. When politics interferes in professional pursuits, 80% will always suffer under the tyranny of the 20%. What happens when the vocal minority becomes the majority, they fang themselves to death, and nobody is left to care because that 80% majority has left them to their own devices.
It should go without saying, but I will make plain, I am not against diversity. I do believe that diversity for diversity’s sake is wrong, immoral, unethical, and anathema to good order in a society. Diversity of thought should be preeminent as the diversity of thought transcends skin color and lifestyle choices. Diversity of thinking includes the desire to see all succeed on merit, character, and individual action. I abhor in the strongest terms picking a person solely based on their gender, skin color, religious preferences, disability status, culture, or any variable that supersedes accomplishment, education, and learned skill set. The same is valid for inclusion and equity; when people cannot compete solely upon achievement, education, and intellectual skill sets, this creates an imbalance in the population.
Hence roadblocks to education must be removed, character-defining and building experiences should be shared and taught, and achievement recognized. What is missing from schools from K-12 and up; is accomplishment, education, and learned skill sets. What has replaced these; is DE&I, where the vocal minority is destroying with no thought for what replaces the institutions, societies, corporations, and more. Iconoclasm in its most destructive form has taken over employers, and these companies are committing suicide to pacify, tranquilize, and placate a small population at the expense of all.
Inherently, change is not bad but growing, productive, and useful change requires inputs from a diverse population. Inclusion is not inherently a bad thing, but the current demands for inclusion, only for the sake of inclusion, make the activities of the vocal minority lethal to the entire social body. Equity is a prerequisite for society to grow, develop, and be stable long-term. This is why societies built on slavery, or those muzzling 50% of the population, are inherently ripe for hostile takeovers.
The actions of the vocal minority in employment right now are precarious at best, suicidal at worst, and permanently immoral and unethical. The models they promote have no substance and enable unfair, unjust, and unequal systems. Worse, companies that flout their customer base, which is the largest stakeholder in any business, will find smaller profit margins and higher expenses as employee churn increases.
One truth that should give hope to the employees affected is that when the minority becomes the majority in a body and does not have any substance, they destroy themselves. C-Leaders, are you sure you want to take the company you have been placed in control over down this dangerous path? On my first day at American Express, new hires were introduced to the rich, proud, and stable company history and core values. How sad it is to witness how fast this company has fallen! Who will replace these companies? Will their replacements learn from the failures of the past?
© Copyright 2022 – M. Dave Salisbury
The author holds no claims for the art used herein, the pictures were obtained in the public domain, and the intellectual property belongs to those who created the images. Quoted materials remain the property of the original author.
My high school experience included eight different high schools in four years. Seven high schools on the Wasatch Front in Utah, finally graduating from Camden-Rockport High School, Camden, Maine. During my high school career, I was unfortunate enough to be placed into several classes called “Language Arts,” “Literature Arts,” or something similar, plastic words covering the fact that I needed more English credits to graduate. In my first “Literature Arts” experience, I was hoping to explore books, literature, and as a young bibliophile (book nerd) I was excited to study literature.
Shortly reality would snuff out the excitement. Shakespeare is not the only author of note in the Renaissance period, and those other authors are easier and more fun to read. Poems and poetry are not the same things. Forcing high school kids to spend an entire semester on Emily Dickins and Edgar Allen Poe’s writings is sufficient to make suicidal depression seem like a jolly good time! Not a single literature arts class covered Kipling! Not a single class ever covered Aesop. None of the lessons put the art in literature arts, which made the classes boring.
In Junior High School, Crosby Junior High School, Belfast, Maine. The school was ancient, used to be the high school until the district built a new high school. Crosby Junior High was a gothic building, very imposing, but it had the coolest library. On my first day in Junior High, I bet the librarians that before leaving, I would have checked out all the books, read them, and returned them. I might not have gotten them all, but I explored every inch of that library, supplemented my reading from the Belfast Maine Library, and read books! Lots and Lots of Books!
Believe it or not, you bring the art to literary arts. Sure, authors will cast the story, set the stage, and prepare well to inspire you, but you bring the art. For example, I can give you a paint set, a charcoal set, pencils, paper, canvas, and every other art supply available, but you have to wield the brushes, pencils, tools to create the masterpiece. The fact that you, the student, are the art bringer to literature arts, should be the first lesson taught, but it is never mentioned. It is sad that many people have been turned off by something that should have turned them on. Worse, the second lesson in literature arts is the requirement for time with the materials to understand the meaning, grasp intent, and apply to a life of living.
For example, take the poem of Joseph Malins, “
When I was eleven, January, turning twelve in February, a person I admired introduced me to a poem that has defined, taught, and corrected me since that January day. The poem “
There are three reasons. One, literature arts is not just reading, but also writing, imagining, exploring the art inside you; but it is rarely taught in this manner. Two, the age of the mind during literature arts is unprepared for drawing lessons from materials for application to life through reflection on experiences. Reflection must be taught, and too often, reflection is refused as a topic in a classroom.It has taken a lot for me to find the poetic power in Kipling’s poem “
My penmanship is deplorable, but penmanship is rarely taught anymore, considered a wasted subject, but in killing penmanship, the art in literature arts dies just a little more. But what is penmanship, really? Some will erroneously claim, penmanship is writing cursive. Detestable ignorant blaggards! Penmanship is the science of writing the symbols of language neatly, precisely, cleanly, and writing in a manner that is interesting to read. As a K-12 student, penmanship meant cursive, and cursive meant I was going to suck! Why isn’t penmanship a daily practical lesson for K-12 students? Mainly because of the third and final reason literature arts is being murdered. Three, reducing literacy through abusing literature arts was a design characteristic in K-12 Education since the 1860s and John Dewey; for he looked upon literate people and loathed them, and children have struggled ever since.
We, the inheritors of intentionally designed poor education, must wake up, put on the work boots, and go to work learning literacy and literary arts. We are then responsible for teaching these lessons to our children so freedom and liberty can flourish and prosper again in America. Literacy and literature arts is a fight we cannot afford to lose!
From this quote, in 1898 to the mid-1960s, phonics in K-6th grade education began to be battled by “Whole Word Memorization.” By the end of the 1960s, teaching phonics in the classroom will be lost entirely. Reading will continue to be irrationally marginalized, and learning the English language will take a hit so hard that many people will never know the grandeur of the language.
John Dewey found high levels of literacy abominable. He worked tirelessly to transform the school curriculum centered around the development of academic skills, intellectual faculties, and high literacy to a curriculum built around occupational activities, provided with maximum opportunities for peer interaction and socialization. He spent 30-years teaching teachers how to subvert society by little introductions into the curriculum until the pattern was perfected, and lesser topics were more important than reading, writing, and arithmetic. The pattern: today’s school philosophies are tomorrow’s government actions. Remember, all actions taken by a legitimate government will cause injury!
Literacy is the ability to use printed and written information to function and achieve in society, to master one’s goals, and to develop one’s knowledge and potential, attain growth, and improve one’s mind and body through the written word. A 1992 survey reported 40 million adults’ literary competency at Level 1 (the lowest literacy level: understanding basic written instructions). The National Institute for Literacy estimates that 32 million American adults cannot read, which can contribute to chronic unemployment, low self-esteem, and a lower quality of available work. Dewey has succeeded in reducing literacy to its lowest common denominator, functional illiteracy. This lowering of literacy standards was intentionally conducted to destroy people’s minds to accept lives in socialism and communism.
The power of reading is remarkable, critical, and is the hinge upon which the Great American Republic swings. Believe it or not, the American population’s literacy will be the point upon which we survive or fail as a nation. Dewey understood the truth of this in 1896 and fought tooth and nail to eradicate literacy in America. Castro in Cuba understood this, and that is why Cuban schools have such low literacy rates. Every despot in history knows that the more literate a population is, the less likely that population is to accept captivity in the form of government largess. Every single tin-pot dictator knows the pattern. Today’s school philosophies are tomorrow’s government actions, and controlling literacy is the tool to dumb down society into brainwashed robots who do what they are told.
Hence, the best way to combat this war is through reading. Pick up a book! Read! Practice writing and grammar. I am not the best writer or grammarian; I use Grammarly, but I still try to write better because to my wife, I am functionally illiterate due to how and what I was taught. My wife, born in 1941, received such a robust education she amazes me. But, even in the K-12 Schools of the 1940s and 1950s, reading and literacy were being marginalized, freedoms and liberties were being stolen, and the plans to dumb down America were in full swing.
Please turn off the TV, turn off the computer, pick up a book. Read! Read because your life depends upon your ability and love of reading. Your children’s future depends upon your literacy rate and willingness to read aloud to them and with them. Your freedom, your liberty, your country all depend upon your literacy level. If you want help, ask. If you want suggestions, talk to a librarian. But, please read!
The following is an assignment typically found in doctoral psychology classes to create debate, discussion, and learn how to articulate principles of psychology and understand the founders of psychology. “According to Freud, healthy adults successfully progress through the first four of five stages of psychosexual development and then persist in the final stage. Do you agree or disagree with Freudian theory as applied to gender identity issues? Why?”
Diamond (2002) provided some clarity on the terms in the discussion. Sex is determined by either having gametes or receiving the same and is biologically tied. Gender is the choice one makes to live as one decides in a socially diverse society, and these choices might or might not be connected to the traditional roles assigned by biology. Hence, the stages of psychosexual development from Freud (Hothersall, 2015) are nullified by the individual’s agency to progress and the natural consequences of making a choice, not a biological clock moving the individual through various ambiguous stages or levels of sexual identification.
Of critical importance to the psychosexuality discussion, is that freedom to choose doesn’t mean freedom from consequences that cannot be chosen. For example, I can choose to touch something hot, but cannot decide not to be burned. How long and how firmly I hold that hot item identifies how deep the burn will be, but I cannot escape being burned by holding/touching something hot. The same is valid for choosing different gender identities in society. There are always consequences for the choices made.
Hossain and Karim (2013) wonderfully diagram the problems with postmodern thinking and provide the tools needed to understand why these problems hinder societal growth and development. To advertise the confusion and issues in postmodernism and the current issues in confusing gender and sex, Aleshire (2016) promotes having nurse practitioners understand the confusing realm of gender identity in an attempt to help the patient feel included, thus receiving a higher standard of care. Completely neglecting that professionalism means doing the job properly, not learning the mental health of a patient.
Having discussed psychosexuality and provided a basis for the conversation, would you be interested to note that the reason psychosexuality exists at all was due to the dumbing down of education, originating in the writings of Wilhelm Wundt in 1832? Wundt assumed that there is nothing there (no soul), to begin with, but a body, a brain, a nervous system, and that to educate a person, the teacher must induce sensations. Skinner, Pavlov, and so many others celebrated as the fathers of psychology represent the theories that have been destroying education, ruining potential, and disrupting freedom.
I cannot stress this point enough. If we, the conservatives of America, are to begin to reverse course, open freedoms are stolen by the government, and keep liberty through Constitutional Law in a Republican form of government alive, we must understand what is happening. There is Truth in saying that today’s classroom philosophies are tomorrow’s governmental actions. The progressives of yesterday are today’s liberal leftists, and they have a stranglehold because they have won the fight for the classroom.
DNC-Consulting 