Women in politics - not sexy like society tells us women should be if they are entering public life. After all seen women should be ornamental rather than formidable, sexy rather than a force to be reckoned with, a woman who'd make you sandwiches after hours of your passionate love making - right?

And women like Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Sen. Susan Collins of Maine who firmly resisted the urge to buckle to the bullying of their republican president, the party of follow the leader, the party of men being manly men and putting the interests of rich white men ahead of everyone else (the way God meant it to be), especially given that Trump explicitly threatened Alaska if Murkowski didn't fold.

That's pretty brave for women to stand up to these men and the money they were likely offered to fold.

Well on this issue anyway they stood firm facing ostracization by their party and perhaps even their voters.

And perhaps that's what had the right so terrified of Clinton - they knew she what she was made of when republicans gruelingly questioned her for 11 hours about emails, Benghazi and leadership - 11 hours! This is a tactic used by police trying to get suspects to confess to crimes they didn't commit so they can close the case.

Voting for a woman may not be the cool thing to do - she's old - she's not a great showMAN like Sanders or Obama or Trump or W or... but she might actually be on your side rather than the rich corporations you've been told she's on their payroll. It's likely she's not and never will be.

I was recently doing a quiz to find out which philosophical school I belonged to on a libertarian website. After studying some philosophy in college I was curious but also aware of how many branches and how much time philosophers have spent on the question of ethics.

Perhaps morals and ethics aren't precisely the same thing but a large number of these options tend to fall under hedonism - I'd say - rather than representing a wide variety of philosophical schools.

What happened to some of the classics - like: Do No Harm - first coined by Hippocrates but elaborated on by the Dalai Lama where he added If you can, help others; if you cannot do that at least do not harm them.

But this list of morality extends to others only as a kind of consensus, like its a popularity contest, or the odious 'morals are determined by their benefit to humanity'.

The irony is that happiness tends to be directly proportional to the health of your relationships with others. The more you serve other people the happier you will be.

I've had people thank me for asking for their help. Sure I wasn't asking them for life long commitments to my well being, rather simple things like asking people to help open jars with tight lids... things that normally would take no more than a moment - but it wasn't me doing the thanking - rather it was them thanking me for letting them help me.

We are deeply social animals, we need to be needed and whatever our moral code is should reflect that. Hedonism and selfishness in general is run against the needs of my neighbor and necessarily worse for my neighbor and hence necessarily me. Until we realize we are rich in our neighbor and their wealth represents my wealth - in terms of if they are prospering, I in turn prosper (they are less likely to steal my stuff if they are wealthy).

This libertarian experiment showed this result in abundance. Libertarian thrift failed with catastrophic consequences.

I was just reading about a grown woman being told to cover up at an apartment complex's swimming pool because she might excite the teenage boys who also live at the complex. My understanding of teenage boys is that any woman in any state of dress will excite teenage boys. But seriously we know boys can control themselves because, well, when was the last time you saw a teenage boy masturbating in public - or for that matter - how often do you see boys raping in public?

We need to get over this ridiculous urge to protect boys from themselves. They must know they must control themselves.

The problem isn't just with women - but it's a problem with all people. Sooner or later these boys will be making decisions for the rest of us and the planet as they get jobs that impact the rest of society.

Why is it that we are obsessed with policing women/girls at the expense of policing boys/men? Men create most of our problems - like war. Every time I say women don't start wars - men do, some man starts blaming Hillary Clinton for starting wars - which she did not, Libya was a NATO action initiated by Europe. Or Margaret Thatcher - who also didn't start wars - the Falkland war was started by Argentina. Then these men go racing back into history and talk about wars British queens (and sometimes Russian tsarinas) from centuries ago may have started while ignoring the many wars there have been since then. It's curious how the woman nevertheless gets the blame.

Another argument I had with a male included me saying men destroy forests - then this man produced evidence that apparently there have been female lumberjacks. I found it amusing.

Especially since very probably the corporations bringing down the trees were probably owned and operated by men. Indeed how many corporations are owned and operated by men - yet it will be the 1 or 2 lumberjacks who are female will be blamed for the destruction of forests.

Nice one guys.

Why do men find it so difficult to accept the blame for the shit they do. (Yes I know it's not all men - it's a generalization based on bell curves.)

Apparently a politician has to spend half their week being a telemarketer - no doubt this is 'make-work' to stop politicians actually doing their jobs. I found out about 'make-work' when I read a bunch of George Orwell's essays in the collection 'all art is propaganda' where people are employed to do low-skilled labor jobs to keep them busy. I'm the first to say we as a society do not want too many bored people on  our hands because bored people create mischief.

Also politicians should be busy working for the people rather than raising money. But this is the reason we have make-work - or rather rw-thinktanks have engineered the political system thus so that politicians don't have time to police corporations (the funders of rw-thinktanks).

Then there is the political outsider - the one who isn't an insider. The outsiders in the previous election were Sanders (a guy who's been in federal politics for decades - yet is supposed to be an outsider - well perhaps he is - he was an independent - although I don't know if he's a democrat now or an independent or what... anyway I'd sooner have him on our side than not).

But an outsider is definitely someone the RW-thinktanks want in power - they want a newb in office - they want someone who doesn't know the ropes, they want someone that they can control and control they do - look how Trump was going to drain the swamp and here we are - him with exactly the same advisors as ever before...

Everyone wanted to hate Clinton before the election - it was the cool thing to do. She was corrupt - was she? She was helping to raise campaign funds for other democrats so they could go out and electioneer rather than spend all their time fund raising.

I have long since thought we need to get the money out of politics and it is time we did. Clinton was on-board with ending Citizen's United as Sanders was - but there is no way Trump will end it, indeed electing him will make it even harder to get rid of.

To fix the system - all campaign financing should be done by the government - they need to stop asking us for even more money. Politicians should only be able to earn their salary along with their family. All income should be declared and open to public scrutiny.

The reality is that government is being crippled by fund-raising - they are handed bills written by rw-thinktanks and directly by corporations that they don't even have time to read - they then get bribed to pass odious bills...

This is not merely the fight of the GOP/libertarians but of RW-thinktanks who manipulate the hell out of all of us for the corporations.

I guess you all heard by now about the guy who was dragged off the United plane. Not long after it happened the corporations, namely MSMedia, started circling the wagons - they started in on the character assassination of the guy they pulled off the plane.
And this is what I want to talk about.

You see, for women, character assassination is just another day. Where is the outrage that a woman's past is called into question at rape trials? Everything is done to assassinate her character in an attempt to make the statement that she somehow deserved what happened to her.
But this doesn't only happen to women who are raped, it happens to other women too all the time, think of Casey Anthony or even Hillary Clinton.
If people are outraged about character assassination it's only because some man's character is being assassinated.
I'm not sure why people thought it was strange that United apologize, no one would think of apologizing to a woman for assassinating her character.

I really enjoy brain pickings and sometimes Maria Popova writes some sensational posts. But unfortunately she often uses Viktor Frankl posts which refer 'man'.

When I see the generic 'man' used I often comment that I feel excluded, but of course, we know the generic 'man' is meant to refer to both men and women - or humankind. Nevertheless, I think we could happily substitute 'people' or 'person' in most translated 'men' quotes and not lose meaning because someone who spoke German said that these quotes were bad translations. The exception is if quoting an historical figure who actually used 'man/men' in their quotes.

Anyway, my husband says that this quote cuts both ways, people may choose to either live up to or down to expectations...

But my reading this quote makes me feel completely excluded and is completely different. In this case I think Frankl was only talking about men.

You see, women can never be as they really are, they always must be saintly - imagine a mother not spending 24/7 caring for her child(ren) and if something goes wrong while she is absent!?! - the first question on most people's lips will always be: where was the mother?

If a woman was instead raped, it's because of her carelessness in terms of what she was wearing, if she was drinking or her sexual history.

Or her performance in the workplace must be exemplary - she cannot let down her guard and even then she may be overlooked instead for a much less qualified and even incompetent male, think Clinton and Trump.

So the only acceptable behavior for women is to be saintly.

On the other hand men can be remembered despite being really despicable, think of Andrew Jackson the guy on the US $20 note, probably the note in highest circulation.

Expectations of different behavior for males and females is completely unfair.

Do a google search of images that come up when you look for 'charismatic' or to a lesser extent, 'confident' - I dare you. Of course I know google will often tailor the search results for you depending on your cookies and what they know about you - but for me at least for those two adjectives I see pages of male images.

Compare with 'sensitive' images and you'll see a fairly even mix of humans crying.

Even when it comes to a quality/skill like empathy which you might think women would excel in, you see a mix of cartoon characters.

I have often noticed people complaining that it was the DNC's fault it lost the previous election because of Clinton rather than their preferred rock star, Bernie Sanders. I personally would have supported Sanders if he'd won the primaries but he didn't, Clinton did.

But I think this is a symptom of we have to elect the 'coolest' most 'charismatic' person for the job - rather than the candidate who is best suited for the job.

And I blame TV for turning the US president into a celebrity. When the president is depicted more often than not, in movies, he's Harrison Ford or someone handsome, fit and basically a movie star and thus charismatic. Older women are never depicted as beautiful, fit and charismatic. In a twist Judy Dench is the only older woman playing a person in authority in the Bond films and she's crafty, not necessarily someone some people might be comfortable with in such a role.

Trump has been on various reality TV shows - perhaps he's charismatic too?  Well perhaps he is - but it doesn't mean he was in any way the best person for the job.

The criteria that we've been using to select the presidents has been successively charismatic - it may not necessarily be the only characteristic they have but their showMANship has been demonstrable.

I think we have to take a step back and remember what the role is for president. Someone who can prove themselves to be able to deal with the stress - which Clinton demonstrated in abundance, comfortable with managing the many tasks a president has to deal with from day-to-day, have concrete plans and budgets - something no one considered essential to a candidate. Sanders, Stein nor Trump had no real policy. They relied on purely rhetoric and their charisma, and vague policy that many thought would never come to actuality.

The President should not be someone who is necessarily the cool kid you invite to your Saturday barbeque because we think we have them pigeon holed; the best person for the job doesn't need charisma, nor does s/he really need a sense of humor, a quality I was told Clinton lacked? Who cares. Clinton was just the best person for the job. Anyway that ship has sailed and now we are stuck with this temper tantrum throwing toddler masquerading as a president.

If you get into a political debate it's likely because you have different assumptions from the person you are debating with.

Sometimes we are told things like: We make all sorts of assumptions because we don't have the courage to ask questions.

This gives the impression that assumptions are always clear and always at the fore front of your mind. it's my experience that it can be quite difficult to figure out what your assumptions are and this is where most of our problems come from.

Everyone makes assumptions even those with the sharpest critical thinking skills; it's possible science would advance faster if we spent more time teasing out exactly what we're assuming and being skeptical about whether those assumptions are correct.

One of the assumptions I've teased out about political debates is how happy we are about the state of affairs. Some people are content with how things are. Then there are those who aren't very happy with the state of things.

Then we have the problem with who we want to benefit from the changes they want in politics. Some people want everyone to benefit. Some people only want a single class or group to benefit, while others really only want to benefit themselves. While some people want everyone to benefit, there is a possibility that they themselves might also benefit too. This might not always be a bad thing and depends on their motive(s).

An example: An LGBT person wants marriage equality. This person benefits because they are in love and would like to get married one day. The person's assumption is other people who are in love can marry, why can't this person marry who they choose to love?
Another example: A rich business man wants to have the air quality laws repealed. This person's motives are that he doesn't have to face the expense of replacing the failing air filters on his factory. The person's assumption is that cost is the only consideration.

Another problematic area is the goal of the changes. Some people have a vision of a vastly different future to where we are now and they are talking about reaching that goal now. There are a lot of assumptions going on here. One being that that future will work as the person imagines it will without experimentation or historical examples to draw on.
An example: Communist Russia had very little to do with Marx's blueprint.
Some people are pretty happy with the system we have now, but think there is room for improvement. This assumes there is not some systemic problem.

Some people want revolution. The assumption is that revolution will materially change something and usually benefit themselves or a single group of people of whom the person thinks they belong. This is aimed at the hierarchical structure of society and they want their group elevated in the hierarchy, usually at the expense of another group.

Others want to basically continue with what we have moving at a steady pace to a better world. The assumption that there won't be back sliding and frustration with the perceived slow pace.

So figuring out your assumptions is a good start to seeing what the point of your political debates are.

The big problem with Clinton not winning the 2016 US election is it tells us that even the worst possible man is better than a truly competent woman as president, and that power is passed from man to man rather than from man to woman, and Clinton was a vastly more competent person to be president rather than what we got. But there were all kinds of catchy, glib bon mots and usually alliterative sound bites saying she wasn't competent which people may have actually believed. Yet those same qualities that were found to be obnoxious in her would be welcomed by the same person in other (male) candidates.

I know on Facebook I was subjected to story after story to see what would make me change my mind about Clinton, stories about her being in favor of GMOs, her anti-the environment, her being anti-LGBT... all of which I studied and found to be wrong, misconstrued and generally unfair as most complaints weren't apples to apples comparisons...

Since the election we've been besieged with articles looking at who voted for Trump and mostly they show frumpy looking older Red State women. Seldom if ever do these articles address why men voted for Trump. Indeed even gender neutral articles supposedly examining the Trump voter will usually feature a frumpy looking female.

It's not a question asked: why did men vote for Trump?

With all the problems we are now seeing, it's like the MS media is trying to blame women for Trump winning, while never asking why men did.

Indeed, soon after the election a woman at the NYTimes said it was women's fault that we didn't get Clinton - and some of it is - we are still trying to define sexism, flesh it out and understand what it means. But how did they know so soon after the election that white women voted for Trump? Yes there are optional exit polls but in red states, you might say you voted for someone you didn't because there are real repercussions for saying you voted one way when you really voted another. Even in extremely red states like Oklahoma, Democrats still get about 30% of the vote.

But we know there is a problem because female jurors are less likely to convict in rape cases, I have even seen comments by women that they'd never let themselves get into such a situation, and thus blame the rape victim. Women have been conditioned for a long time to not think of themselves as equals, or they may think of themselves as being equal but not the general population of women. Much of it about fitting in, much of it is about belonging, as in women choosing to have their genitals mutilated in some societies.

The worst problem though is men saying 'well more white women voted for Trump rather than Clinton', this is merely a masque to hide behind to make it okay that white men were misogynistic regarding Clinton.

The other problem is when men say: women wrote articles on why white women didn't vote for Trump, like this woman was elected by all women to speak on their behalf. That all women are basically interchangeable and therefore one woman can easily speak on behalf of all women because her experience is pretty much the same as any other woman's. In other words, women are nothing other than a stereotype.

The problem is as I see it that women aren't striving for uniformity, we are striving for individuality, and having that individuality respected by everyone, men and women alike.

We never say: a white man said this so he must speak on behalf of all white men. We usually accept what he has said as being his opinion only.

It's really easy to forget about people who are outside of your group. Some posts ago I was listening to these young guys telling me about which was the more intelligent, Einstein or Tesla. Another one would chime in with talk about 'men' quoting grandiose statements like "all men are...". I did once call him on these quotations referring to "men" as excluding "women"... Women have been excluded from history, philosophy, science, commerce, ownership, politics and pretty much every other field you can name.

But then yesterday I was viewing a video about how images of Christmas are of white people exchanging gifts, or white people celebrating... - and then I realized how excluded colored people must feel.

Christmas can be a wonderful time when you are able to share it with the ones you love - but there are many people who feel excluded or are lonely and have no one this Christmas, please reach out to everyone this Christmas. Because Christmas should be a time when no one feels excluded or alone.