Complaining about Obamacare is Ignorance of United States Healthcare

Two questions that most Americans will still answer incorrectly based on their vast ignorance of what our so called “health care system,” in the United States was and what it mostly remains today despite the revolutionary changes made in the Affordable Care Act:

What is more economically more efficient and delivers better health care delivery to the most people at once?

1. For profit private health insurance companies.
2. Government managed health care delivery and financing.

Here is another question that most will get wrong based upon the psychology of denial:

Who would do a better job at economic efficiency and changes in health care financing and delivery to the most people at once?

1. Elected representatives who are accountable to taxpayers and all citizens.
2. Faceless for profit private health insurance company shareholders and executives.

If you hear someone complain about any aspect or any detail of current healthcare provided and blame it as the fault of “Obama Care” please ask them, “How was that particular situation before the Affordable Healthcare Act?” They won’t have an answer. They did not know how bad it was. They are learning just now of what they dislike. They are now hyper aware of the thousands of details of healthcare financing and delivery. They have developed this awareness because they have been eating the conservative and private health insurance company propaganda sandwiches.

The problems are not a causality of Obama Care they are a causality of being afraid of change for decades and of being afraid of facing complexity and of being afraid of admitting that the United States has failed at something.   

I predict that in 9 out of 10 of those complaints that that person will have no idea how that problem, or the problem that that aspect of delivery attempts to repair, was prior to the ACA. This a sure prediction because it seems very much that as we now scrutinize our health care delivery and payments in this country we do so with a new awareness, not an old awareness.

Those details of a vast and very confusing healthcare payment and delivery system (if calling was what before a “system” is even merited) are what most of this community is learning about now, at this time, after the ACA has been passed is new to a great many who cared not for understanding the mess that we had.

It was passed with no conservative support in this country as the best attempt liberals in this community could make to correct a tangled mishmash of disorder that was costing everyone of us an out of control fortune in precious life-saving money that we (liberals) knew could be better spent.

The healthcare system was out of control and costs knew no ceiling and tens of millions of people in our community had no access to even visit a doctor’s office. It was so out of control that all of my community (the United States) could expect that all health care costs would be at least 12% more expensive in the following year. It was an economic monster by any definition. It was literally killing us.

We had plenty of true systems to look at all over the world, but the conservatives among us thought that we were too different. Too good to learn from others. They thought that our so-called system was wonderful.

1996: What it looked like and what it still looks like. Except the ACA removed many of these lines and then allowed affordable health insurance for 17 million people, many who never had it before and more to come still. I made this abstract collage in 1996. If defines only in abstract what our current system still looks like. The ACA was an attempt to use what we had without greatly upsetting conservatives in our country and so maybe get a standard passed that insured millions and curbed the amazingly rising annual costs of delivery and health insurance premiums and also allow us to become more moral as a society.

It was the profits and it was greed and bottom dollar corporate healthcare industry out of control. It was the cost of doing business or so we accepted it as. We were ignorant and we were all naive. It felt better to be blind to the complexity of a very confused “system.” Barely one conservative representative in this nation knew about those complexities. Barely one of them thought it was “a mess.” They would say things like “the best healthcare system in the world.” They were as children not wanting any change. They had the best healthcare system in the world: it was Congressional healthcare, it was a fast trip to Bethesda Naval Hospital or Walter Reed Army Hospital to be cared for by multiple doctors and nurses and get the best diagnostic technology within an hour of any complaint. They saw what they thought was our healthcare and so postponed making changes that would have saved the lives and the suffering of millions of Americans.

Now they complain the loudest when change is before them. They are the conservatives. A label for a political opinion that dislikes changes that favors the blissful state of ignorance of avoiding complexity and so maintaining a status quo. They think in naivety that the change should be easy. They  remain blissfully ignorant. The conservatives in the United States have no better solution for the mess that they allowed to grow and fester for decades.  

In 1994, I fought for a Single Payer healthcare system for the state of California. The private industry that was steeped in money spent over $72 million to defeat the initiative and won. Californians lost-out on a great chance to show the rest of this country what could be. Here we are 20 years later and we finally have the first glimmer of a national program and we are hearing the voice of the ignorant who hate change once again. Now they want to repeal the ACA and “fix it,” but they have not a good plan to do so. They have learned what the dislike about changes that are really only the beginning.

There will be a unified and national program for providing our healthcare to a standard that surpasses all known standards of healthcare delivery and financing and payment known in the world. I know this because I have seen what the United States is capable of. I still have optimism we can do this after the all the ignorance and greed and disdain for changes that I have witnessed.  

We will likely call it “Medicare for All.” It will be an evolution of “Obama Care.” It will be the inevitable. Change is always wrought with complexities that often involve trial and error learning by large societies. If there was ever a change that we all had to bravely direct ourselves toward, in all the pain and through all the complaining, it is our healthcare financing and delivery “system.” We will one day be able to call it a genuine system of healthcare.

We will choose the current operations of the Medicare Insurance program because it already exists and provides health care financing and so the distribution of healthcare for over 73 million of us. So it makes sense that we should use it to be the most efficient method of financing and delivery of something every man and woman and child in our community will need through their whole lives.  

The next complaint you hear may come from someone who works closely with the complexities of management. They will likely blame it on “Obama Care.” It is the pain of doing what should have been done decades ago. It is the frustration with having change forced upon them. No one like changes that make us do work and causes us to be critical. That is human behavior. That is predictable.

All Rights Reserved:  End All Suffering / James Gray Mason, 2-2016.

Keywords: health insurance, affordable care act, obamacare, healthcare financing, healthcare delivery

#Obamacare #AffordableCareAct #Healthinsurance #Greed #Healhcaredelivery #Medicareforall #Medicare4All #singlepayerhealthcare #Insurancecompanies #ignorance #BarackObama

The Whirlpool of Socio Economic Despair and the Average Donald Trump Supporter

This image portrays a well documented social concept in metaphor, as a constantly churning cycle that feeds a liquid spiral of our population down into a dark pit at the bottom of an unstoppable whirlpool of socio-economic despair that continues as if a function of nature. I made this image more than 15 years ago and this cycle remains today and it must be broken. But few in our busy society have taken the time to understand it is representing a causality in reason that can be addressed.

The graphic metaphor in summary: In a wealthy society that has resources enough but does not recognize the best use of those resources, if large numbers of children receive a poor education they will very likely live a life of poverty and be unable to earn enough in any given year to escape the many facets of life that lead to a feeling of desperation as the ever constant emotion of despair. In their despair, many will turn to dishonesty as crime to cheat the life they are disgusted with living and cannot see a reasonable and viable methodology of escaping.  Impulsively, society will then spend a great deal of money locking them up. That spending becomes the liquid that pulls by gravity with equal force as the momentum of crime behind it pushes it along. That money is lost and can not be used to address the causality of that crime that is the inevitable result of poor education. Poor education continues. They spiral persists. Poverty follows.

It was a lack of formal and public education that in 1787 was not seen by our supposedly brilliant “founders,” as being necessary for the security of a free state of free people. It was decades before the first cities in the new United States chose to publicly fund a school system. It was longer than a century before we recognized that African Americans must have a legally enforced right to that education as well. We still suffer because of this lack of foresight by privileged landowners, and slave owners who had very economic reasons for wanting us to be free.

In this graphic there are two metaphors of two entwined concepts: it is only our perspective from a distance (a stand-off position) that causes the center of the spiral to appear to be smaller. That small size is the size of the issue to the general population. That small size is also a cause of our segregation of those caught in the spiral away from our better functioning members of society. If a society were a person it might say:

“If it appears small we won’t have to face it. We won’t feel constantly guilty for our inability to share the opportunity of education with all as equals.”

A liberal in the United States of America knows of this whirlpool. A liberal knows that it begins with a poor educational system that does not favor equality of opportunity for every single citizen child in our country. Too many of the wealthy deny it exists.

If we want to see a good example of the demographic of who those people are, then we not look any further than at the audience of angry people who feel they should support the empty rhetorical campaign for president of the United States of America of billionaire real estate mogul Donald J. Trump.

There are millions of Donald Trump supporters who, if locked inside of a room with a well informed  liberal activist and so forced to listen to the explanations of this metaphor  would eventually understand this well-documented concept. They won’t like that they are listening to bleeding heart liberal but they would eventually agree that this spiral begins with education.

Donald J. Trump got a great education even though for most of the years of his primary education he treated those years as if that education could be forsaken as if it were a natural part of life.

But it was a natural part of life for the spoiled brats of the greedy land owners and landlords living in white male metropolis privilege clicks, as was the environment that Donald Trump’s father was living in while he became a millionaire in the 1950’s.

In this context, it is no coincidence that the majority of Trump supporters do not have higher education. It fits the pattern of this metaphor and it fits that Donald Trump would deny this causality as one of the privileged participants of a forsaken as an expectation of life,  higher educational system.

What is Donald Trump’s answer to stopping this whirlpool? It does not exist. He would deny that this very liberal metaphor is a causality of the very anger that the minions who are enthused by his reasonless campaign for president of the United States express with shouts and yelling of vitriol at the many public campaign events he has held.

Readers: If you know a Trump supporter try to get them into that room and lock the door behind you. Appeal to their anger. Let them know you understand how they feel before explaining your opinion of why they feel the way they do. They are hard working people. They each know someone who is either vastly underemployed or still unemployed from the near depression we suffered beginning in the Bush year of 2007. Empathize with them first. Maintain that empathy during the expression of your opinion as to why they have that anger. Let them know some facts like the fact that immigration into the United States has turned around. That the rich have been getting richer for decades while people like they are have continued to grow poorer. If you have read this far into this essay, you know what to say because you were already an informed liberal with empathy and understanding of causality of our whirlpool of despair.

By James Gray Mason for End All Suffering.

All Rights Reserved: James Gray Mason / End All Suffering, 2016.

#DonaldTrump2016 #Economy #Education #PublicEducation #Kids #Society #essays #amwriters #endallsuffering #stopallsuffering #JamesGMason

Another Weekend in the United States of Guns

6/12/2016 1:02 pm -5:

The Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida; our worse mass shooting to date. It was only a matter of time! Disgusting HATE was LIKELY the causality of the shooter's anger. We can all be angry about something. But we are surrounded by EASY tools designed to kill people. GO FIGURE! Our behavior of anger must be expressed peacefully ALWAYS.* Monkeys with tools that can be pointed at any other monkey then just push a monkey button. This is not a CIVILIZED society. Thanks allot NRA ‪#‎assholes‬. You share responsibility for this madness. A mad stabber would have likely only wounded a few. Our gun madness makes this possible, unfortunately. Very sad. We are crying today. I thought this was going to be a happy Sunday. Wrong. - James

~~~~

Essay from the days after the San Bernardino massacre:

From: December, *after the San Bernardino, California shooting: From the Gun Control Discussion page on G+: Relevant EVERY DAY in the United States of Guns.*

14 lives very easily wiped-out in minutes in California yesterday. Shocked? In disbelief? I’m not. That event in California yesterday was the second mass shooting yesterday. It was one of more than 80 shooting deaths that occurred yesterday in *the United States of Guns.* We won’t hear of the others because they died singly and not with many others in one place at one horrific time.

22 years ago I was fighting hard and risking my life while receiving death threats on an almost regular basis as I had the only pro-gun control website on the world wide web for several years, beginning in 1994. [The image below this post is left-over from those days.] I would drive around a working class city in California with a Handgun Control Inc. bumper sticker on the back of my truck. Gun lovers would get angry and follow me around town, cornering me in front of shopping centers and engage in angry debates with me for up to an hour while security guards would get nervous and merchants would chase us off. For years *“Watch your back Mason!”* was a common line of threat in my email inbox. The FBI would not help me, “We really don’t have any method of dealing with digital media at this time, Mr. Mason, so sorry.” I had no Secret Service protection, no alarm system at home, nothing but my clear knowledge that I was dealing with men who are paranoid cowards at heart, to keep me going as a matter of a gamble of a sacrifice of my own safety for advocacy we were (and still are) greatly lacking.

The beginning of that advocacy was approximately 2 years prior to the sudden surprise of learning my sister had been murdered by her jealous ex-boyfriend who blasted a hole in her head, in her bedroom, with his father’s .38 caliber revolver, that he and his dad and grown up with, having fun a few times a year shooting it at the range together and bonding around the firearm. The little bastard had acted impulsively and used a tool that was very effective and was easily within his reach and snuffed out the life of a beautiful 19-year-old girl, then shot himself dead (thankfully).

I was lucky in that misfortune. I had only just learned I had a sister I had never even met, prior to minutes later, over the phone long distance with my never met father that she had been ripped away from my father’s and her mother and her family’s lives. Because of this forced detachment from the time I was an infant I was more angry than heartbroken. I would never know her. I would learn of her from stories about her and family video tapes and old pictures. My abandonment by my biological father had spared me great heartbreak. Hearing from my father that he had to scrape the remains of her brain matter off of her bedroom wall is the most shocking and grounding image I have to carry. Many hundreds of thousands of my fellow Americans have to carry imagery like that around with them daily, with clearer and more lasting emotional effect than I have to.

Tina. Shot dead at 19 years old. The sister I never got to meet.
A jealous ex boyfriend killed her while he was experiencing a very typical emotion and had access to a tool designed to kill people and used that tool in a manner this IS CONSISTENT with the design of that tool.  

 

Coincidentally, learning of her death occurred nearly one year after I had become an online advocate for gun control in my community - the United States of America.  Prior to learning of her death, It was online debates on the Prodigy Network where I learned the most about the opposition to gun control. I learned about their psychology. I learned the real reasons they selfishly protect themselves at the expense of all of us while immersed in utter deniability of the mass effect upon us all of their continuing defense of a mythology of a modern interpretation of the politically and very purposefully and vaguely written 2nd amendment to our U.S. Constitution. It was on those early internet online discussion boards where the asshole who later wrote and published a best seller called *More Guns Less Crime,* lost public debate after debate in text exchanges with me. He had learned exactly what not to write in that book and that allowed it to be a big-seller among American gun-nuts. I get no credit of course for teaching him what not to write. What he left-out in that diatribe of denial is what made that book sell.

Rhetoric about gun control appropriate? *Damn straight it is.* Rhetoric is an important tool of communication. Those who communicate well use accurate rhetoric to invoke emotion.

Know this accurate rhetoric: if having more guns in society would make us safer than *we should be the safest society on Earth right now because uniquely there is a legal firearm for every 88 out of 100 citizens in this country.* No other nation has this characteristic.

Know this accurate rhetoric: *If teaching people to handle their guns safely were to prevent them from ever using them wrongly, were any solution to gun violence in America then we should have no crisis of mass deaths by firearms and my sister would still be alive.* The feelings that cause us to use the nearest and most effective tools, to do what our brains in a temporary state of mind decide to do are key in those tools being used.

Know this accurate rhetoric: “Guns don’t kill people, people who use guns kill other people far more effectively and in far greater numbers, with less impulse control necessary and far quicker and so far more frequently than people without easy access to guns.”

Back in the years of the 1990’s I wanted the military style weapons eliminated from legal sale in the United States. I wanted realistic universal background checks throughout the whole country. I wanted electronic smart-gun technology mandated on all new firearms. I wanted gun locks distributed freely to all gun owners. I wanted the cost of all compounds for gunpowder to become very expensive. I wanted everyone to have to wait at least 6 days from the time of buying any gun to the time of physically receiving that gun (we called it back then “A cooling off period.”). I acted to close down traveling gun shows where many young men could buy $55 .25 caliber, small handguns without background checks in the State of California. I wanted all so called, “Gun Shows,” eliminated. Today we have watered-down waiting periods. We don’t seek a “cooling off period.” We have free right of travel from one state to another where millions of automobiles carry within them the legally purchased firearms from one state to another. We have idiots on the anti-gun control side who ignorantly point to cities and states with some (weak) gun control and say moronic things like “See, Chicago has gun control and it doesn’t work!” We have glorified the assault weapon far more than ever before and they reign in their popularity now. We still allow non-licensed (to sell) gun owners to sell their own used guns freely. We have a Supreme Court of the United States that had cast a very modernistic and political interpretation of an amendment that was originally written to protect the right of the States to keep their “Well regulated militias . . “ armed. That is the subject of the entire amendment. The end of that sentence is empty and political rhetoric that was cleverly designed to appeal to a hugely illiterate population in order to get the states to agree to ratify those first 10 amendments to our constitution. Look it up, please.

Is immediately after another one of many horrific acts of domestic terrorism by firearms an appropriate time for a gun control advocate to speak up loudly - *you’re damn straight it is because we are busy and selfish  news consumers.* We move on too quickly. We mourn the lost very quickly and we cower from selfish assholes who put forth the idea that a badly written constitutional amendment is some kind of religious and so sacrosanct credo that cannot be violated. We wimp-out in denial and fear of political upset.

Those two idiots in California yesterday represent a horrible condition in the United States. Workplace anger? We all have that. Most of us don’t pack assault rifles in our homes and then fantasize about blowing-people-away.

Accurate rhetoric: Everyone of us, every man and woman and even children, are capable of experiencing a time in our lives when we would use any tool near us for it’s purpose. So singling out those most likely (statistically) to use a gun wrong is ridiculous. It doesn’t work. The mayhem continues. Far more of that every day gun violence occurs from those who have no record and no indication by those around them that they would kill another. That is a cold hard fact.

In a crowded and complex society the people cannot keep tools of death away from people who at sometime in their lives are going to experience nearly each and every one of the literal definitions of conditions described in the above collage. There are hundreds of other very typical conditions that are similar and each of us will have one or more of them, perhaps multiple times in our lifetimes.

All rights reserved: James G. Mason for End All Suffering, December, 2015, February, 2016.

http://EndAllSuffering.org

#guncontrol #2ndAmendment #EndAllSuffering #StopAllSuffering #Everytown #CPHV #Backgroundchecks #NRA #Guns #UnitedStates #JamesGMason

Sexual Harassment by Manpigs in Public and Courtly Love

First: As a graphic and emotional example, of how many women feel about public sexual harassment, and all sexual behavior in public directed at them: On the subway one day, a couple of years ago, Nicola Briggs, suffered a visual, in person, sexual assault from a pervert flasher. She reacted in a manner appropriate (I wish more women would have her reaction - I would defend her right to do so, immediately). Ms. Briggs has since used this experience toward positive action, teaching women to defend themselves in public, and speaking frequently on the issue. Video taken by passengers went viral and the man was arrested and placed on a sexual predator public directory:

Nicola Briggs: “Then I see his penis out.”

Second: A public experiment that shows us an example of here in the United States (in some other cultures it’s far more blatant and actually accepted by the male population): A heroic young man who is sensitive to this assault on women and two young women who present themselves as prey for an important social experiment. It's also viewed and accepted differently in sub-cultures within the United States.

Video: One molester, two women. 

Third: The video that inspired this essay, a new video produced with purpose to expose public sexual harassment is getting a great response from the public at this time:

10 hours of walking in New York City:

In discussions of this recent video women seem in majority agreement that this is harassment that is offending and so harmful to the feelings of women and girls. There are more than 30 videos of people, mostly men discussing their viewpoint of this experiment. Many men opining on this video presentation are commenters downplaying the significance or harm of this cat-calling and teasing gestures, even the frequent persistent coy and devilish smiling as has been included as harassing behavior in this video. The men are in agreement: “What’s the big deal?”

But be advised men and boy readers: We can not just consider their feelings vaguely or broadly. Try to understand that for the women it is an assaulting challenge on overall self-esteem to experience this every day.

It is as you are followed by the store detective every time you go into a department store. Because you look like a shoplifter in the shallow profiling judgment of some security guard.

A long term hurtful perception from this behavior is developed. We call the victims stigmatized. While your sister is walking, your daughter, your mother she is attempting to maintain pride in who they are, and protect their level of dignity. Self-esteem allows positive emotions like pride and dignity are traits we all try to maintain all day-long.

Men, think about your own pride and self-esteem, and imagine yourself on the other side of this behavior. The behavior invokes the persistent feeling of having to live while stigmatized. A self-esteem defeating condition to have to live with. We men don't want to live with it, why dish-it-out? Unless you're just a selfish and shallow a**hole.

By the way, women are getting armed and training for close encounters with sidewalk a**holes. Stop the cat-calls and the jeers, and passing greetings of animistic sexual barbs. It may be the practical thing to do.

~~~~~~~~~

How to Greet Beautiful Women in Public Using the Mannerisms of Courtly Love:

I want to encourage men and boys toward a new manner of getting a beautiful woman’s attention in public. I find it to be courteous, pleasant, dignified, friendly and far more likely to receive a pleasant reply.

Here’s my take: The background I speak from; I must confess before I go on further with my experience in getting the attention of a woman: I’m a handsome guy from afar and up close. Many guys are not blessed with a face that melts hearts at first glance and that can be a handicap when trying to meet a woman in the public environment.  To my disadvantage I have actually denied my appearance as handsome or “cute,” for most of my life. As I disbelieved persistently that attraction to my appearance was a factor in the many times a girl or a woman made first advances by flirting communications toward me. I have walked away from at least ten (probably many more) opportunities to further a chance meeting into a romantic relationship, completely unknown to me while I was being hit-on by an attractive girl or woman. Because of my under appreciation for the face I genetically inherited and my (false) low self-esteem in this important area of human interaction in life I have allowed myself to collect remorseful memories of several of these encounters where I later realized “I blew-it.”

The author: The heart breaker face that did not know it - many times.

My mother was a feminist in the late 1960’s and into her life. As a boy I was dragged along to her weekly and sometimes bi-weekly Women’s Liberation Front meetings. Where I was bored by the apparent gaggles of women who were voicing their disgust with being treated by men as a lower status of a person. They were clearly angry and full of complaints and on the verge of being ready to take-up arms. But I was a little boy and so paid scant attention to their pleas for equality. However, my mother explained the issue to me once or twice during those days and so I shared in her passion, but only casually because I was a hyperactive little boy.

Mommy's' little feminist of the future. 1968.

Use Courtly Love

Aretha Franklin was not just singing pretty sounding words, when she reminded us all "A little respect," is all it takes. Constant respect in romantic or admiration behavior is the basic premise of Courtly Love.

In the public as an attractive woman approaches my location I seek a moment in the timing of her approach that will likely catch her eye. When that tiny moment arrives I always wave (not excitedly) and smile pleasantly and say in an upbeat intonation (mid or high C note) “Hi” or “Hello.” Nothing is sexual about it except for your own secret intention. I hope to convey to her the feeling of being addressed by someone “Who would be grateful to know me.” This impression is often a priority for a woman. Don't forget this men, boys, lesbian or bi-sexual women and girls.

Guys seriously: You are far more likely to get a return smile and a wave for your efforts in this manner than those cat calls will ever get you. Or by doing something foolish like spontaneously flattering her hair or shoes. Because she's then thinking "What the f--k do men know about hair and shoes? What an a**hole!” Sometimes this is received as disarming to a woman's natural defensive persona while in public. Seen as distinctly different from a confrontation or a sexual threat. I get a pleasant return for my brief investment at a chance at love. Sometimes the pretty woman will reply quickly, seemingly impulsively, and wave back and smile. I just recently received a pleasant return wave and smile from a pretty girl, from over 150 feet away, on the other side of grassy common, in eastern Connecticut. And that is rare in New England.

I was motivated to adopt this public approach upon having a realization as a 17-year-old, at a time when I was feeling very lonely. I had developed a social phobia. I impulsively launched into a nervous panic when faced with a beautiful girl or woman who I would feel could be a romantic and or sexual prospect (it is fear of failure). I remember one day deciding positively that the chances of just running-into a beautiful woman and meeting her in a comfortable and natural context, where I felt more confident, were odds almost as bad as those of winning the lottery. So I resolved at that time that I would always attempt to wave and say "Hi," to catch the eye and attention of a beautiful woman or girl. I would not deny myself the opportunity of being in love with an attractive partner.

Courtly Love. A 12th-century European adaptation, inspired by poets and troubadours of the many kingdoms. One day a new queen carried to her court, and proclaimed it be practiced, in her own ways:

Wickipedia:

Courtly love (or fine amor) was a medieval European literary conception of love that emphasized nobility and chivalry. Medieval literature is filled with examples of knights setting out on adventures and performing various services for ladies because of their "courtly love". This kind of love is originally a literary fiction created for the entertainment of the nobility, but as time passed, these ideas about love changed and attracted a larger audience. In the high Middle Ages a "game of love" developed around these ideas as a set of social practices. "Loving nobly" was considered to be an enriching and improving practice.[1][2]

Courtly love began in the ducal and princely courts of Aquitaine, Provence, Champagne, ducal Burgundy and the Norman Kingdom of Sicily[3] at the end of the eleventh century. In essence, courtly love was an experience between erotic desire and spiritual attainment that now seems contradictory as "a love at once illicit and morally elevating, passionate and disciplined, humiliating and exalting, human and transcendent".[4]

The term "courtly love" was first popularized by Gaston Paris in 1883, and has since come under a wide variety of definitions and uses, even being dismissed as nineteenth-century romantic fiction. Its interpretation, origins and influences continue to be a matter of critical debate.

God Speed! by Edmund Blair Leighton, 1900: a late Victorian view of a lady of the Court giving a favor to a knight about to do battle.

It’s different in different cultures.

To my experience, of living in three subcultures of this country - women react differently in public to a kind or pleasant greeting, or visual confrontation from a man, soft or light or even seemingly sexual, in different regions with differing cultural norms, of this country, and it is true in the world (as is seen in the 2nd video).

In Maryland where I grew to a young man, once I adopted my new method of greeting in attempting to make contact with a new beautiful woman, I could usually get a reply wave and often a “Hello,” in response to my kind, innocent in presentation, greetings. Even if delivered while driving my car past a beautiful woman. After moving to Massachusetts, I received one, one sunny day in Boston, in the entirety of living there for more than 10 years. I remember joking to the man I was traveling with “She must be from California.” I used to say to my male friends “They’re like walking refrigerators; they react as if I’m presumed to be a masher.” In that region of this country, even a friendly approach is likely dismissed and ignored, although heard clearly, as likely sexually motivated taunt that would result in harm, or “knowing some pig.”

In the south, in Louisiana where I lived, and in Georgia, and in Florida, a pleasant return can be expected, but not always. But when I left Massachusetts for the wilds of California, at age 30, I soon discovered a reply was common. Even a beautiful woman only hearing my greeting, may turn to smile and wave back, she’ll wave her hand behind her in the air above her, seemingly grateful, as she goes about her life. But that's California a.k.a fantasy-land. And men, if you're wondering if it's true, that women and girls are more beautiful in California, I tell you now, it's really true.

Copyright Reserved, James Gray Mason / End All Suffering, November, 2014, 2-2016,

YouTube video serach results: Public Sexual Harassment

#sexualharassment #catcalls #menrpigs #now #womenonly #mansman #courtlylove #gentlemen