Speaking up is hard for anybody anywhere; I sympathize.
Brian Tellerico, during a review of a four-part show about sex predator Bill Cosby, wrote
“How Cosby was enabled becomes a backdrop for the show, but Bell avoids pointing fingers in that department, in a manner that could be frustrating for some. The idea that “someone had to know” comes up, but it usually stops there without much resolution as to who and why they didn’t do anything about it, but Bell clearly wants to keep the focus on Cosby himself more than the entire broken system.
My concern today is for speaking to prevent a “broken system” as made evident by “somebody knew.” How about convicted offender Harvey Weinstein? In her book Brave, (2018) assault survivor Rose McGowan reports entering a building, and before she had even reached the elevator to go up to see Weinstein she noted the guards were smirking. They knew. But she and Weinstein’s other future victims were never told.
My concern is when thousands of Americans perish from covid because people who knew that the Centre for Disease Control in Atlanta was hopeless at “control,” or any leadership, went unheeded and silenced. The system wants to protect itself, even if it dies dies from that protection.
As for systems and silence, there is a reason why this week the dictator of Turkey, ostensibly the “president,” jailed a journalist for reciting a proverb. It’s related to the reason why not a single Arab country is a democracy, not even after the Arab spring. Dictators know: Speech from a wimpy artist is more dangerous than a big man with a sword. Without speech, Arabs perish.
(The consequence to Islam: Someone said the evilness of the theocracy in Iran, with no chance to speak, means more atheists there among the under-thirty Muslims than among that same age group in Canada)
In my community, as in every time and space, it’s easier to stay silent, join in the lying or lie by omission. But Nobel Prize winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Gulag survivor, stated, “One man who stopped lying could bring down a tyranny.” I suppose this includes campus tyranny, and web tyranny too, by the woke and the unkind social justice warriors.
Honesty is hard. I can’t truly say what courage I would have had living in Soviet Russia or as a blond in Nazi Germany. But five years ago? Were I one of the security guard friends gathered in the lobby of that tower, would have I have braved peer pressure to warn Rose? A couple years ago, as a government employee, would I have spoken up when a short pretty blond “Barbie,” of proven competence, was brought in to be promoted to state chief medical officer, and was then denied a promotion? When the position, just before Covid, was instead given to a diverse person, not competent, brought in from outside? History tells us that a couple years ago it was easier for a White House official to tell Barbie “report everything to me” than to order a lady of diversity to “listen and pass everything Barbie reports to you onwards to me.” I realize that asking Barbie to bypass channels, thus enabling a broken system, would mean more virus casualties when the next Covid comes along, and so, could I somehow, unlike that White House person, have dared speak out to Barbie’s boss?
Today, if I was at a computer firm, or a university, and I was ordered to hire a person for diversity, even at the cost of common sense, would I speak up? This when the consequences are jobs, not lives? You say no? Then I won’t speak up against tyranny either. And if I’m a Muslim, here or over in France, then I won’t speak up when a fellow Muslim claims that Islam means neither peace nor freedom of speech: A fellow who later un-peacefully chops off the head of a Paris teacher in broad daylight.
Of a dispirited U.S. workplace the cliche is “I only work here;” people of a non-democracy say, “What’s the use?” And, “I only live here.” But the tree of liberty, while refreshed only periodically with the blood of patriots, is forever rooted in the spirit of hope.
I have seen hope in action. I work at a big “for profit” with diversity and common sense. At work, if we strongly disagree with a coworker’s speech or actions, then we do not go to our boss: We do not deprive a coworker of the right to directly face his accuser. Never. Not unless we have tried talking directly first, even though it is butterfly scary to do so. I learned: Courage to speak the truth is like a muscle memory. Courage can be improved.
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Sean Crawford
Woke to the left of me, justice jokers to the right,
Stuck in this madness with you.
January, 2022
Footnotes: It was Lord Bertrand Russell, in a 1952 television interview, who pointed out that Marxism is an unkind ideology. I say, “Yes, and so are social justice warriors unkind.”
For unkind Marxists, and other ideologues, refusing to let individuals face their false accusers, see my post of November 5, 2021, entitled Social Media Obscures Like Pond Scum.
Blog Notes: Writing “should” open with a promise to solve a reader’s problem, but… Most readers won’t care about social studies: no “felt problem.” Others, who do “give a care,” don’t need me. A blog is such a conundrum.
