#1000

I won’t say that I’ve told you a million times.

But I will say that I’ve told you a thousand times.

Yes, this is my 1,000^th post on this website. It’s a milestone that I could not have predicted in 2008, when I grabbed the domain name, set up the site, and began my ceaseless, unending quest to scream into the void of the internet.

To give you an idea of how long ago I started this site, one of my first posts was about a young upstart named Barack Obama and how he was poised to win the Latino vote decisively.

And thus my track record of always being right began.

OK, maybe I haven’t always been correct, but my batting average is pretty good. Then again, I am often ranting about bigotry, conservative lunacy, and Trump. So it’s fairly easy to be proven right over and over again.

By the way, the all-time most popular of my 1,000 articles is this piece I wrote for the Huffington Post. It’s about the difference between Día de los Muertos and Halloween. I’m not sure why it went semi-viral, but it got shared a lot, and I still see it pop up in October. Hell if I know why it resonated, but if you write 1,000 articles, one of them is bound to hit.

As for my least popular post, well, it’s probably this one.

In any case, I thank you for reading. Whether you’ve perused all 1,000 of my articles, scanned through a couple of dozen, or are reading for the first time, I appreciate it.

Just know that I intend to keep going as long as I can.

Thanks again for reading.

The New Way to Make Money

What is the scariest three-letter combination in the English language?

I would vote for “GOP.” But maybe it’s “CIA.” Or perhaps you would say “MSG” or “NFL,” or for some emotionally complicated reason, “TLC.”

But if you are an easily triggered Republican, the diabolical combo is “ESG.”

That phrase stands for environmental, social, and governance, and it refers to a set of standards for a corporation’s behavior. Socially conscious investors look at an organization’s ESG initiatives — things like carbon footprint, diversity programs, ethics guidelines, and so on — to gauge if it is a business that they want to work with.

This seems pretty straightforward, and it makes sense that, for example, an environmentalist might not want to invest his money with a corporation that’s destroying the planet.

But where you see a principled stand, conservatives see the hideous creep of wokeness.

ESG has become “a lightning rod for the GOP, as the party turns the investing form into an emblem of left-wing politics.”

Republicans believe that anything that promotes racial diversity or combats climate change must be an insidious communist plot to round up all the white Christians and execute them. So they spew “hysterical rhetoric about ‘wokeness’ in response to everything from school shootings to police violence to the Pentagon budget, all while the party struggles to even define what they think the word means.”

Yes, the people who live for culture wars now believe that their old ally — big business — is a fifth column of social justice warriors who are selling out American values and making it impossible for straight guys to buy their products.

As a result, red states are “passing laws blacklisting state investment funds from doing business” with those companies that they claim are pushing “liberal agendas.”

Conservatives are trying to use “their own market influence to try to steer the larger project of American culture-building back in their direction.”

But it’s not going so well.

You see, despite “the increasing pushback against ESG by Republican politicians, including some potential presidential aspirants, and their fossil-fuel industry donors,” many companies view the “the ESG backlash [to] be a bump in the road” that won’t have a real impact. 

Hell, even some CEOs say the ESG “trend is just going to continue growing.”

There’s a good reason for this, and it’s not because Wall Street suits are secret progressives clamoring for Scandinavian-inspired utopias.

No, it’s because ESG is good business. 

This approach to investing “examines a company's social or environmental impact precisely because it considers non-financial information useful for determining whether the company would deliver strong investor returns.”

Corporate ESG initiatives are designed to help companies operate more sustainably and to create long-term value for stakeholders. And studies have shown that younger consumers take a company’s ESG policies into account before buying their goods or products. 

So in yet another display of spectacular hypocrisy and backwards thinking, it turns out that conservatives are the ones jeopardizing companies’ returns by demanding everyone adhere to their agenda.

Consider that “muzzling ESG activity is causing financial losses – again, which should be contrary to conservative financial principles.” For example, Texas “banned cities from having their funds managed by companies whose policies restricted investment in fossil fuels and weapons.” Because so many banks left the market, and Texas officials “had fewer choices of investment management,” the law wound up costing the state “between $303 million and $532 million extra in interest.”

Wow — owning the libs is not cheap.

Or consider that many experts believe “failing to consider ESG risks and opportunities would more
likely result in a breach of fiduciary duty,” meaning that company leaders are actually being negligent and sabotaging their organizations if they are anti-ESG.

Finally, keep in mind that companies “that get ‘woke’ aren’t going broke — they’re more profitable than ever.”

Even though conservatives will continue to rant against ESG, and blame business failures on leaders who “may have been distracted by diversity demands,” there is no real evidence for the harmful effects of this approach.

Again, the exact opposite is true.

And that’s why the letters “GOP” are far more terrifying than “ESG” will ever be.

Default Setting

In a few weeks, the US government will end COVID-19 emergency declarations, meaning that the pandemic will officially be over.

Hey, that wasn’t so bad, was it?

You know, aside from the years of death and madness and depression and trauma and societal unraveling, it wasn’t that big of a deal, right?

Ahem.

In any case, the pandemic provoked behavioral changes that we could not have imagined in 2019, like carrying a mask everywhere or washing your hands incessantly or sticking those weird clamp things on your fingers to check your oxygen levels.

Those were called pulse oximeters, by the way, and they were “a crucial tool for tracking the health of COVID-19 patients.”

Yes, pulse oximeters helped gauge the severity of the illness. They were a sterling example of medical knowledge, technological innovation, and white supremacy.

OK, that last one is an unpleasant addendum. But unfortunately, it is true.

You see, pulse oximeters were often “inaccurate when measuring oxygen levels in people with dark skin tones.”

This is because medical products are often developed using data from “trials that involve primarily white individuals.” As a result, pulse oximeters were designed to work well on white people. For the rest of us, however, not so much.

Experts say “it's not possible to know how much pulse oximeters have contributed to the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on people of color.” But considering Latinos and blacks “experienced higher rates of hospitalization and death from COVID-19 compared to white people,” it was likely a factor.

Of course, the assumption that white is the most common skin color, or even the only skin color, has a long history in America.

Until the 1960s, Crayola crayons had a pinkish hue that was labeled, “flesh.” 

And as we all know, band-aids don’t come in dark brown, which has “long been a point of contention among people of color who have questioned why white skin is the default shade for a range of flesh-toned products, including nude bras and other garments.”

Why, indeed?

But you will be happy to know that the baseline for the human experience is not just white people, but white men specifically.

We’re not just talking about the fact that white men hold over 60% of all elected offices, despite being just 30% of the population.

Or the fact that most films and TV shows focus on a white male protagonist. 

Or that white men are apparently the only group whose opinions matter, and that the rest of us are pretty much at their mercy.

No, I’m talking about air conditioning.

Yes, you heard me correctly.

Back in the 1960s, when air conditioning became common in office buildings, engineers needed a standard to ensure the temperature would be comfortable.

And of course, they based this standard on the preferences of white men in wool suits — the Don Drapers of the era. 

These temperatures “favor the thermal preferences of men," and are the baseline to this day, which is why women in office settings often feel like they’re freezing.

It’s because they are.

But don’t worry. Those white guys in suits are perfectly comfortable.

It seems that “everything in our society is centered around preserving white male power regardless of white male skill or talent.” And this is not just annoying. It’s also detrimental to our nation.

You see, the “rewarding of white male mediocrity not only limits the drive and imagination of white men; it also requires forced limitations on the success of women and people of color in order to deliver on the promised white male supremacy.”

When everyone just assumes that a certain group should be in charge (i.e., white guys), members of that group don’t have to excel to succeed, while members of other groups struggle, and the culture as a whole stagnates.

In this way, “white male mediocrity harms us all.”

Unfortunately, this situation is unlikely to change any time soon.

But hey, at least the pandemic is over.

Always Forward

My relentless quest to conquer all media channels continues unabated.

Recently, I wrote my first article for Latino Rebels, which is the premier site for Latino-centric news and insights. I hope to write many more for them.

You can read my debut by clicking here.

Sticking Together

I’ve been married for many years now, so I am blissfully unaware of the intricacies of the dating scene. But I’ve heard from single friends that it’s a hellish endeavor

Yes, it has to be difficult to go out on date after date, vainly searching for that one person with whom you can laugh, open up, and plot the overthrow of the lizard people who are trying to enslave humanity.

This universal dilemma has provoked fed-up and ostracized conspiracy theorists to set up “their own dedicated dating sites, in response to what they see as their growing incompatibility with mainstream society.”

Hey, just because someone is a raving lunatic who believes Jewish laser beams are targeting patriots doesn’t mean he isn’t looking for love. Come on, after a hard day of ranting on Reddit about liberal pedophiles, guys just want to cuddle with a lucky lady who will agree that Islamic terrorists are poisoning the water supply.

One such dating site asks users “to list which conspiracy theories they consider to be real — such as coronavirus, QAnon, New World Order or prepper ideology.”

Really, that’s a lot of craziness to choose from, and one wonders if the person who picks all of them is considered a real catch.

In any case, the desire of conspiracy theorists to mate only with people who share their belief in chemtrails is understandable. After all, so-called normal people are unwilling to put up with lengthy diatribes about JFK Jr. coming back to life. And as one dating-site owner puts it, “vaccinated people are hardly an option” for true believers.

Conspiracy-oriented dating sites are part of a larger pattern. In America and Europe, “hardline conspiracy groups have set up their own off-grid “education hubs” to pull their children out of mainstream education, while others have launched efforts to set up entire breakaway communities.”

Just imagine that community. Every town hall would deteriorate into a shouting match about secret symbols and which neighbor is plotting to betray the others to the one-world government. 

In such an environment, can true love last?