5 Similarities That "American Sniper" Has With Nazi Propaganda

     Seth Rogen likes being controversial. It's good PR. Just weeks after almost starting WW3 with his movie "The Interview," Rogen is back in the news, for some comments made about the movie "American Sniper."
      http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2015/01/19/seth-rogen-michael-moore-blast-american-sniper/21988391/
     This is the phrase I'm going to be analyzing: "American Sniper kind of reminds me of the movie that's showing in the third act of Inglorious Bastards."
     The movie he is referring to is Nazi propaganda. So he's comparing American Sniper to Nazi propaganda. Before even sitting down and researching as to whether he was right or wrong, many pro-military zealots, (who support the military no matter how many democracies they topple or how many puppet governments they install or how many civilians they kill on purpose), started bashing Rogen for being unappreciative of the military, a traitor to his country, a liberal Nazi, etc, etc.
      It's really sad that people jump down each other throats without even thinking. They deem any criticism of the military as unpatriotic and untrue automatically 100% all of the time, without even stopping, calming down, sitting down, and figuring out if it is valid criticism or not. In their eyes, the military can literally do no wrong. They are angels. As soon as you show a valid, clear example of a service member doing something wrong, they yell in your face "YOU'RE UNPATRIOTIC. YOU'RE UN-AMERICAN. YOU'RE A TRAITOR. IF YOU CAN'T STAND BEHIND OUR MILITARY, THEN JUST LEAVE THIS COUNTRY." Because when you really look at the facts, you actually see that Rogen is right. So let's go through this slowly, with rationality and logic, one step at a time.

     First, let's look at the similarities between the Iraq war and the wars the Nazis started to gain territory before WW2 started. In the Iraq war, we had the American government fabricating tens of thousands of pages of fake intel to mislead the American people. They claimed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, (which we never found), that Iraq was helping Al-Qaida, (they weren't), that Iraq was responsible for 9/11, (they weren't), that Iraq was a threat to America, (they weren't), etc, etc, I mean this was a massive effort. Hundreds of people at the head of the Bush Administration and various government agencies were in on it. The U.S. did this so that the American people would support their invasion and occupation of Iraq.
     Germany did the exact same thing in their wars of aggression and territory grabbing just prior to WW2. They lied time after time to the German people, and the world, making up lies as a pretense to invade Czechoslovakia, Austria, etc. Hitler said that German people were being persecuted and oppressed there, (they weren't), so it was okay for Germany to invade to help them, that land originally belonged to Germany in the first place so it was Germany's right to have that land, (it wasn't), that the Jews were masterminding to destroy Germany, (they weren't). I mean this was a massive effort. Hundreds of people at the head of the Hitler Administration and various government agencies were in on it. Germany did this so that the German people would support their invasion and occupation of Austria, Czechoslovakia, etc.
     Okay, so that's one similarity, but one similarity is not enough to associate anything with anything. Hitler drank water, and you drink water, so that means you're a potential mass murderer!! No, that's not how it works. We need more similarities.

     The second similarity is that America invaded Iraq on false pretenses, set up an undemocratic government there that would do anything America says because America controlled it, killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in the process, stole their natural resources, most notably oil, broke dozens of different universal human rights that the Iraqi people are entitled to have, kidnapped thousands of innocent people during their occupation, raping and torturing them for seemingly no reason at all other than to brutally force the population to submit. They did all of this, while the media made America out to be the victim! That's right, the media twisted just about everything to make it look the aggressor, the liar, was the victim.
      For example, an American patrol would be on their route, and come under attack by Iraqi insurgents. Some American soldiers would die in the fight. The media would make it out to be like the Americans were doing nothing wrong, that they were just innocent victims just walking along minding their own business, and the evil savage Iraqi terrorists killed them just because they are American Christians!
      This charade of making the aggressor look like the victim is portrayed in "American Sniper." Just look at the trailer. You're supposed to feel for the wife who is listening to her husband's convoy being under attack. Chris Kyle was just a pure American hero when he came under attack by those evil savages!
      Completely devoid in the trailer, or in the movie for that matter, is any context or scenario/location information. Kyle in an occupying soldier. He is a foreigner on someone else's land. Kyle is a foot soldier in the oppression of the Iraqi people. He is the muscle that is protecting the American occupation and the puppet Iraqi government. He is a small part in the big reason why the Iraqi people are dying over lies, why their universal human rights are being repressed by the occupation and the puppet Iraqi government. His patrol, trying to control the Iraqi people, is enforcing the torture, the kidnappings, the rapes, the oppression, the denial of basic human rights. Without his presence on the streets, the Iraqi government would collapse.
      The Iraqi insurgents are portrayed as savages. They are not humanized. They are not given depth, character, reason, etc. They are one faced, one dimensional monsters that only exist to kill Americans. The movie completely leaves out the fact that it is completely logical and rational to take up arms against a fascist corrupt government and a foreign occupation that is supporting it. In fact, it is an American value. Our country was born out of our fighting a corrupt puppet government and a foreign occupation that supported it. The pro-military crowd regularly spout that it is their right to use force in self-defense or when their rights are being violated. But, exposing their double standard, they don't believe every person, regardless of race or creed, gets to enjoy that right. White Christians enjoy that right, in their mind, but brown Muslims do not. That's why they demonize the Iraqi insurgents, even though they are doing the exact same thing that they would do if America was invaded by another country, and a puppet government was set up in Washington D.C.
      Everyday Americans from all backgrounds would employ the same tactics used by the Iraqis (i.e. roadside bombs, suicide vests, urban warfare, women/children, etc...) against any foreign aggressor. Why should Iraqis tolerate American tanks rolling down their streets when the very same Americans wouldn't tolerate Iraqi (or any foreign military's) tanks rolling down theirs?
      Imagine that thousands of armed foreign troops were constantly patrolling American streets in military vehicles. Imagine they were here under the auspices of "keeping us safe" or "promoting democracy" or "protecting their strategic interests." Imagine that they operated outside of US law, and that the Constitution did not apply to them. Imagine that every now and then they made mistakes or acted on bad information and accidentally killed or terrorized innocent Americans, including women and children, most of the time with little to no repercussions or consequences. Imagine that they set up checkpoints on our soil and routinely searched and ransacked entire neighborhoods of homes. Imagine if Americans were fearful of these foreign troops, and overwhelmingly thought America would be better off without their presence. Imagine if some Americans were so angry about them being in Texas that they actually joined together to fight them off, in defense of our soil and sovereignty, because leadership in government refused or were unable to do so. Imagine that those Americans were labeled terrorists or insurgents for their defensive actions, and routinely killed, or captured and tortured by the foreign troops on our land. Imagine that the occupiers' attitude was that if they just killed enough Americans, the resistance would stop, but instead, for every American killed, ten more would take up arms against them, resulting in perpetual bloodshed. The reality is that our military presence on foreign soil is as offensive to the people that live there as armed Chinese troops would be if they were stationed in Texas.
     Compare that to Nazi propaganda. Nazi Germany invaded Austria and Czechoslovakia on false pretenses, set up an undemocratic government there that would do anything Germany says because Germany controlled it, killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in the process, stole their natural resources, broke dozens of different universal human rights that the Austrian and Czech people are entitled to have, kidnapped thousands of innocent people during their occupation, raping and torturing them for seemingly no reason at all other than to brutally force the population to submit. They did all of this, while the media made Germany out to be the victim! That's right, the media twisted just about everything to make it look the aggressor, the liar, was the victim.
      For example, a German patrol would be on their route, and come under attack by Austrian or Czech insurgents. Some German soldiers would die in the fight. The Nazi media would make it out to be like the Germans were doing nothing wrong, that they were just innocent victims just walking along minding their own business, and the evil savage Austrian or Czech terrorists killed them just because they are blonde and blue eyed Germans!
     See, word for word, it happened exactly the same in both cases. All I changed was the identity of the actors. But the actions were exactly the fucking same. "American Sniper" practically elevates invading US soldiers to civilian status and natives who target the armed invaders are evil terrorists. Okay, so that's two major similarities down. Let's keep going.

     Pro-military zealots often use the phrase "The military is over there, dying to protect our freedoms, which were under threat." What a load of complete and utter fucking bullshit. No one has been able to answer my question "What American freedoms did Iraq threaten or break? What oppression did Iraq lay unto us? What rights of yours were being infringed on by Iraq?"
     No one has ever been able to answer that question, because the answer is NOTHING. FUCKING NOTHING. Iraq was doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to us at all. So the zealots continue to spout lies. Lies. Lies! LIES!!
     Nazi zealots did the exact fucking thing. Hitler ranted on about how neighboring countries were oppressing Germany, and how the rights of German people in Austria were being threatened, therefore, he had an obligation to invade Austria. ALL FUCKING LIES.
     Wow, that's 3 similarities now. We're on a roll.

     The 4th similarity is that America had an overwhelmingly more powerful military than Iraq. We had tanks, jet fighters, artillery, satellites, APCs, the most powerful military in the world. What do the Iraqi insurgents have to combat this? AK47s. RPGs. Homemade bombs. Grenades. It's not even comparable firepower. It's like comparing a gnat to an elephant. And yet through this seemingly incredibly one sided fight, "American Sniper" makes it out to be that Kyle and the Iraqi insurgents are fighting on equal terms, that he is in just as much danger as the insurgents are, that he is fighting against overwhelming odds, that he is the vulnerable good guy going into danger for the greater good, etc, etc. Michael Moore called snipers cowards. He's right. It's not brave to go after people with pea shooters when you have artillery and jet fighters and stealth bombers and attack helicopters to back you up in case you get your ass whooped. The other guy doesn't have any of that to back him up. He just has the gun in his hands, maybe a grenade or two, and that's fucking it. Oh, what danger you're in! That's why we only lost less than 5,000 troops in 8 years of fighting, when we killed over 26,000 of them in the same time frame.
     Do you know what is brave though? Going against the powerful military in the world, going up against APCs and tanks and radar artillery armed with only an AK47 and an RPG. That's courage. That's dedication. It's the Iraqi insurgents that were brave, not Kyle. They didn't flinch going into battle knowing that against such overwhelming odds that they were most likely going to die. An American going into the same battle wasn't most likely going to die. Most likely he would live. 
     Guess what? Nazi Germany did the exact same thing. They had the most powerful military in Europe. They had tanks, artillery, bombers, etc, etc. What did Austrian and Czech insurgents have? Bolt action rifles. Submachine guns. And yet through this seemingly incredibly one sided fight, Nazi propaganda makes it out to be that Germans and the Austrian and Czech insurgents are fighting on equal terms, that the Germans is in just as much danger as the insurgents are, that he is fighting against overwhelming odds, that he is the vulnerable good guy going into danger for the greater good, etc, etc.   

     The 5th and last similarity is that the films conveniently omit any flaws, any negatives, any bigotry, about the soldiers that they elevate to God like status. Kyle is shown as fully human, likable, complex, multidimensional, etc. There is absolutely no negative aspects about him shown on camera at all. He is, like the pro-military zealots believe, perfect, flawless, utterly impossible to do wrong. The movie conveniently leaves all these parts out about how Kyle was:      

Substitute "Koran" for "Bible." Would you like someone who said that about your holy book?

     Likewise, no Iraqi is shown as likeable, complex, multidimensional, capable of showing anything but hate. But the Iraqi insurgents are people just like you, me, and Kyle. They have jobs, they have families, they have problems, they have lives, they have little quirks in their personality, etc. But no, the movie paints them as all, one tracked minded killers.
     The same thing happened in Nazi propaganda. The Nazi soldiers are shown as likeable, human, complex, capable of thought, opinion, etc, even though they, in reality, are murdering civilians by the millions. And the Jews? No, they're subhuman. Rats. Greedy rats. All they do is scheme and plot against the poor innocent blonde Germans. That's all they do. The French resistance? Terrorists, killers, unhuman, evil, etc. 
    Look at some of the reactions people had after the film:

 

    Now, substitute the words "ragheads", "Arabs," and "Muslims" with any other religion or any race. 

• "Teared up at the end of American Sniper. Great fucking movie and now I really want to kill some fucking Jews."
• "American Sniper makes me wanna go shoot some fucking Christians."
• "Nice to see a movie where the white people are portrayed for who they really are- vermin scum intent on destroying us."
• American Sniper made me appreciate soldiers 100x more and hate black people 1,000,000 more." 

     In conclusion, there you have it. A step by step analysis of why Rogen's comments are actually true, and that the only reason why people see them as "incendiary" or "offensive" is because they want no one to criticize the military no matter what they do. People will counter with "Well, it's the politicians who started the war, the military didn't start it at all, they were just following orders." That is true, but that simply dodging the subject. The military still committed crimes. They should've said "No, that is against my American values. I took an oath to the U.S. Constitution, not the current government, administration, or president. Attacking a country based on lies is against the Constitution. Installing a puppet government is against the Constitution. Killing innocents is against the Constitution. Killing people who are simply protecting their lands against foreign occupiers is the against the Constitution."
     But they didn't. Some soldiers refused to go, but not a lot. The ones who refused to go are the heroes. But the majority of American soldiers still followed their traitorous orders without question. The politicians would not have been able to put in a puppet government if they troops didn't invade Iraq and overthrow the government.    
     The pro-military zealots will say "Not all American service members have killed innocents." True. I never said otherwise. But there were plenty of Nazis who never killed an innocent either. They were either an office worker or a soldier who got wounded before he shot anyone else. That doesn't mean the Nazi party, as an entity, is not an evil and despicable organization. 
     It's not insulting to say that the military doesn't fight to protect our freedom. The pro-military fanatics want us to believe that, as to shut down as criticism of the military's actions before the criticism can even be stated. We are not allowed to explore the topic because it is "offensive" to suggest anything otherwise. I'm not saying it to offend anyone. I researched the topic, and I can find no freedom that Iraq was taking away from us or that was even under threat from Iraq, that the American military got back for us. If it's offensive for me to simply ask the question "What freedom did the American military fight for in Iraq" then you have to seriously ask yourself what type of society we have created here. Certainly doesn't sound free to me, we can't even ask questions.

Free Community College Will Kill Higher Education in America

    Ah, a new year. A time for new beginnings, right?
    Well, if you're the Obama administration, then fuck no.
    On their everlasting quest to completely destroy America from the inside out, the Obama administration moved on to the next phase of their plan on 1/8/15. They've destroyed the military, (everlasting wars, lowered physical requirements so weaker soldiers will be on the battlefield, thus, a more likely chance of them or others around them dying, etc,), the middle class, (outsourcing millions of jobs, destroying higher education so they can't move up, standard of living way outpacing wages, etc,), the economy, (with Obamacare, tax loopholes for the 1% and the top corporations, banks, strangling small businesses with government red tape overload, etc,), America's reputation abroad, (the endless wars, spying on people of other countries on the internet, giving billions to terrorists, fascist and undemocratic regimes, etc,) the millennial generation, (by making underemployment the norm, thus them having no money to hardly anything in life, suffocating student debt, making it impossible for them to save any money, etc), and the civil liberties of Americans, (with the slow, gradual erosion and elimination of the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 6th amendments).
     (Billy May's voice): But that's not all!!
     Not content with the destruction mentioned above, the Obama administration has been chipping away at higher education for some time now. It is not a new front. From making it too expensive so students have to be in tens of thousands of dollars of debt for a degree that will do them nothing, from making the classes so easy that the students aren't learning the skills they need to know in order to be competitive in the weak, hyper-competitive job market, the Obama administration announced a new program that, if enacted, will spell the end of quality higher education in America:
     Community college will now be "free".

      At first glance, this sounds like a great idea. Higher education will now be more accessible to poor people, who need it the most to gain skills to get better jobs so they can move up in life. Students won't be burdened with so much student loan debt as before. But if you think about it for more than 2 seconds, (which is asking too much of the liberal retards who support this idea), you'll see that this is an absolutely horrible idea. Why? Because when you make something free, it is literally worth nothing. That's what the definition of free is. Think about having a college education that is, by definition, worth nothing. College diplomas will no longer help anyone in finding jobs or doing well in jobs. They'll be free bees, pieces of paper that say "I sat down in desks for a while, and I'm able to read and write."     

http://generationopportunity.org/issues/higher-ed/

    Here is just some of the highlights showing how utter pathetic higher education is in America:

• Only half of all college seniors believe their institution properly prepared them to enter the work force.
•  According to a 2014 USA Today poll, a  quarter of employers do not believe colleges have adequately prepped students for a job in their company, while 41 percent do not believe college graduates are prepared for customer service jobs.

     Having "free" community colleges will exacerbate the problems mentioned in the above article. The quality of higher education is already going down the tubes. Since students have to pay so much to enter classes, professors are afraid to fail anyone, because that would mean the student would have paid a lot of money for nothing. So, they make the classes super ridiculously easy, so that every student passes. But in making the class so easy, they won't be teaching anything. The students will learn nothing, no skills that they need in order to be competitive in the job market. That's how I'm able to get straights A's in my graduate school and at a community college for IT certification, at the same time, without even having to study or crack open a book at all. It's easier than elementary school. At least in elementary school I had to study to get good grades. In college now, I don't have to study at all. But I'm not learning anything, and I actually want to learn, I want to be challenged so that I will learn competitive job skills, but so far, through a whole year in a grad school and in community college, I have yet to learn a single damn thing. I ask the professors about this and they say there is nothing they can do about this because they cannot change how the course is taught.
    Having "free" community college will exacerbate this problem exponentially, damning an entire generation to poverty because there is no way they can learn just about anything in order to get jobs that will allow them to live on their own.      
    There is another major problem with the word "free."

 

    

    There is no such thing as "free." This new "free" community college still has to be paid for. Professors have to be paid, janitors have to be paid, police have to be paid, the electric bill still has to be paid. But student's tuition will no longer pay for those things, because under this new idea, they pay nothing. So, guess who has to foot the bill?

    That's right: Us. The people. The citizens. The poor and middle classes. We will see a tremendous increase in our taxes to pay for this. It will be crushing, as the lower class is ever increasing with people's money being strangled by tax after tax after tax. The middle class is disappearing in front of our eyes because people cannot make enough money, after taxes, to afford a middle class lifestyle anymore. This tax increase will already be on top of the fact that I pay 25% of my entire income in taxes, and I'm in the lowest tax bracket.

    The last thing the struggling American people need is more taxes. We're dying over here as it is, and this new tax will just be more misery. All for people to learn nothing. And you better bet that it will solely the lower and middle class footing this new bill. You see, Obama and his 1% cronies make sure that they and the top corporations have tax loopholes that they can utilize so they pay nothing on millions and billions in profits. So they won't foot the bill. They are privileged, so they can avoid it. So the bill comes to us, the lower and middle class, to pay for it all.

    In conclusion, a better idea would to be to lower college costs, not get rid of them completely. As said before, student debt is a huge and shameful problem in this country. Lowering college costs would go a long way to fix that, but eliminating it entirely would create a whole new set of problems.

You wonder why us young people are mad

You wonder why us young people are mad?
 Maybe it's because older people say we are lazy, don't work at all,
Yet the average work week is longer than it's been in over a decade.
Maybe it's because they say we're dumb, don't know shit,
Yet we're the most educated generation America has ever had.
Maybe it's because they say we're stupid with our money,
Yet inflation has made it even harder for us just to get by.

Maybe it's because they're saying we're ruining this country,
Yet we're not the ones who tanked the whole fucking economy,
nor were we the ones that launched the disastrous wars of Afghanistan and Iraq,
and Yemen,
and Somalia,
and Pakistan,
and Libya,
and who knows Gods where tomorrow.

Maybe it's because they say we need to more mature,
Yet we're the ones who have to balance two part-time jobs and school at the same time,
We weren't privileged like you mother fuckers,
Who could just work during the summer and bam your school is paid for the year.
We work more for less money,
and you say we should be more grateful?   

Maybe it's because they fuck up shit and then act like it's our fucking fault,
We weren't the ones that shipped all the middle class jobs overseas,
We weren't the ones that have destroyed the standard of living in this country,
We weren't the ones that passed thousands upon thousands of stupid ass government red tape that strangles small businesses,
We weren't the ones that create corporate loopholes so companies that make billions in profit don't have spend a God damn fucking dime on it.

They vote for the same two parties again and again and again,
Political parties that have a proven record for killing jobs,
and then they berate us for not finding jobs.
They scold us for not trusting people,
But never fail in the opportunity to backstab us again and again and again.

They say innovation is the key to future of America,
Yet they castigate us for not doing things exactly how they did them.
They wonder why we can't find jobs,
Yet they make it legal for companies to discriminate in hiring based on race or gender. 
They pass law after law curtailing our freedoms,
Then complain that we get arrested too much.
Well, maybe if you didn't make every third God damn fucking thing illegal,
People wouldn't get arrested as much,
You ever think of that, dickhead?

Yeah, I admit, there are some lazy stupid young people.
But there are lazy and stupid people of every age.
For every lazy and stupid young person you find, I can find a lazy and stupid adult to match.
So your statements mean nothing,
Just because we are the same age doesn't mean we act the same,
Don't generalize a whole group of people,
You wouldn't want us to stereotype you fuckers, now would you?

You think this is a mindless angry rant,
Yeah, maybe it fucking is,
I'm only ranting because I'm constantly being told not to complain,
Not to talk back,
Not to rile up the system,
Not to be ungrateful,
To accept my poverty and fucking deal with it.
All this anger at injustice, at avarice, at arrogance, at haughtiness, at just straight up being a self centered bitch,
Just builds up over the years when we're not allowed to express our opinion, our thoughts, our anger at the shit you've thrown at us.  

Why don't you older people just shut the fuck up,
Get off our fucking God damn backs as we toil and sweat in low wage jobs,
Let us get through this hell as best we can,
This hell you created for us!

Listen to the facts; don't support or not support someone just because of their race

     I avoided writing about Ferguson for a long ass time because I am so fucking sick of seeing that God damn town on every single God damn newspaper and website in the fucking world. But after seeing literally millions of people act like fucking retards when it comes to Ferguson, I am compelled to write about it.
     Bottom line: Stop supporting/not supporting someone just because of their race. Because that's racist. You are judging someone by the color of their skin. That is the textbook definition of racism. If you're white, and solely supporting Darren Wilson because he's white, and you're not paying attention to any of the facts/physical evidence, then fucking stop. If you're black, and solely supporting Michael Brown because he's black, and you're not paying attention to any of the facts/physical evidence, then fucking stop. The only way we're going to stop racism is by being edgy, by getting in racists' faces and call them out for the fuckers they are. That's why I'm cursing a lot now. That's why I'm being confrontational. Because if you're quite in the face of racism, then it will flourish. That's why it has been flourishing in America long after the Civil Rights Movement was done. Because people have become pussies. They don't stand up to anyone/anything anymore for fear of a confrontation.
     Race shouldn't matter. I support Darren Wilson because of the physical evidence and eyewitnesses' accounts. Not because he is white. If he was black and Michael Brown was white, I would still support Darren Wilson. If Wilson was Chinese or Hispanic or Hawaiian or whatever the fuck someone could be, I would still support him.
     The physical evidence supported that Michael Brown attacked Wilson in his car. Everyone, regardless of race or creed, has the right to self-defense if they are being attacked first. It doesn't matter if Wilson rolled up close to Brown or told him to get on the sidewalk. None of that is physical violence, so Brown had no right to attack him. Brown was the aggressor. Wilson had every right to use whatever force he deemed necessary to neutralize Brown and stop him from attacking him.
     This right to self-defense is a logical aspiration to make universal. For if you don't support it, then the only other alternative to follow is for Wilson to just sit there and let Michael Brown attack and kill him. You would be condemning Wilson to death because of his race, he can't protect himself, otherwise that would be racist. See how absurd it is?!
     Yes, there is a serious problem of police brutality in this nation. Eric Garner's death is testament to that. But the Brown case is not a case of police brutality. It is a problem of thug culture. Brown thought there were going to be no repercussions of him robbing the convenience store and cursing/yelling/not cooperating with Wilson. Brown was a bully. He attacked the convenience store clerk and then saw Wilson, and thought "puny little white guy" and started being a jerk towards him. And when Wilson didn't allow himself to be bullied, Brown got enraged and attacked him.
     Sadly, there were a lot of black people, who when they heard about this incident, all they heard was "black person shot by white cop." They didn't look into any of the details of the story. They didn't listen to any of the physical evidence. They didn't listen to any of the eyewitnesses who said anything that supported Wilson's side of the story. Nope. None of that. They determined in their minds that since Wilson was white, he was automatically and without question, wrong, the bad guy. They also determined that Brown, since he was black, was automatically and without question, right, the good guy.
     This is basing your opinion on the people's identity, and nothing more. By saying that black people are always right/the victims, etc, and white people are always wrong/the aggressors, etc, you're creating a zero sum game between whites and blacks. It's winner take all. You no longer look at the facts to determine who is right and wrong. You make all white people the enemy. Now, some white people, who would ordinarily protest against police brutality, are now forced to defend themselves because they are under attack because of their race.
      Take me for example. I hate the police. I like to be as far away from them as possible. But since the media is making all white people to be the aggressors, I have to stop what I'm doing, which, from my past posts, is anti-police state, pro-human rights, anti-surveillance, etc, and turn around and deal with all these people who are calling all white people oppressors and racists. It divides us. The media and their 1% overlords want this divide. Suddenly, we're distracted. We're no longer attacking the system, we're busy fighting each other. The system profits off this distractions.
      If you honestly think that there is a race or creed out there that is 100% right in EVERYTHING that they do, that NEVER do anything wrong, then you are a racist bigot who is fucked up. There's no going around it. There are wrong and right people in every race and religion. If you hear Muslim and think "Oh he's wrong" or if you hear Jew, and think "Oh, he's always an innocent victim" then you have no place in this reality because your mind is in a totally made up one.    

 
         

How does ratios of genders affect work in the workplace?

The following is a paper I wrote for my PUAD 520 Organizational Theory Class.

 

What It Takes To Get Along

            How a manager breaks his/her department into groups/teams can greatly affect the speed and quality of their work. You can have the same 25 people broken up 4 different ways, and you will get 4 variations of their finished product/service. They’re the same people, same work, same environment, the only thing that has changed is how they were organized. Now let’s move to a seemingly unrelated subject, then, tie the two together. The second concept is that the gender dynamics of companies and organizations are drastically changing. What is meant by that is that some sectors of the economy that have been traditionally male dominated are now less male dominated. At the same time, there are other sectors of the economy, such as construction, that has been traditionally male dominated and continues to be male dominated. The point is that every variation of the number of males and females working in every sector of the economy is different. This means from no change to a drastic change, and all in-between, this is what happening. It’s not all one thing or not all one another. So what is the tie between these two concepts? The tie is my main question that I seek to answer in this paper: Does the ratio of male to females in a group/team affect the quality and speed of their work?

            None of the sources solve the question directly. One assumes that no one has asked this question before, because the research and sources touch on the subjects related to the question, but that is the extent. One has to gather all of the conclusions from all of the sources together and then will see the answer, if there even is one. The first journal is “Think Crisis–Think Female: The Glass Cliff and Contextual Variation in the Think Manager–Think Male Stereotype” by Michelle Ryan, Alexander Haslam, Mette Hersby and Renata Bongiorno. The title can be confusing. It is asking that in a time of crisis for a company or organization, is it better to have female or male managers? The study and data showed that managers that showed typical male behavior and managerial traits were better in companies that were successful at the time they became managers. Conversely, managers that showed typical female behavior and managerial traits were better in companies that were not successful at the time they became managers.

            So what does this have to do with my question? It only answers part of the question. No study has asked my exact question; the chances of that happening are very rare for any psychological/behavioral question. The best we can do is piece together conclusions from different studies and come up with a general answer. So this study says that if your company/organization is doing bad, it is better to have female managers. However, what may seem like a proponent of female managing styles is actually something wrong. The “why” question is important. Why are female managers better than male managers in a company/organization that is doing bad? The study found that the answer is “Because it is easier to blame them for the company/organization’s failure.” So the only reason why they are considered better is to be scapegoats. That really doesn’t do anything for women’s rights in the workforce, and definitely doesn’t answer my question.    

            Another problem with this study is that it fails to define what “typical female manager behavior” and “typical male manager behavior” is. It’s open to the reader’s interpretation. What you might think typical behavior is may be totally different than what I think is typical. And even if there is a general agreed upon consensus in a society, I may disagree with the consensus. The fact that I’ve seen men act in every possible manner regarding management leads me to believe that there is no typical male manager behavior, only out-dated stereotypes. Likewise, I’ve seen women act in every possible manner regarding management. That leads me to believe that there is not typical female manager behavior, only what society thinks they are based on archaic cultural bias.   

            The second study is called “Challenging Conventional Wisdom About Who Quits: Revelations From Corporate America” by Peter Hom, Loriann Roberson, and Aimee Ellis. This study found that women quit their jobs/switch jobs more often than men. This is across all other demographical characteristics, such as a race, class, or religion. Why do they do so? There is no one answer; there is a whole bunch of reasons. But most of them do it only a year on the job. We can infer that means that they had wrong expectations about the job, found out it was something different then they thought it would be, and they went on to find something else.

            Unfortunately, this tells us even less about our question than the first study does. As the concept of all these women entering all of these workforces is relatively new in comparison to all of human history that we’ve been working, there are very little answers to be found. It’s not an issue that we have been studying for centuries. The only tie in that I can find is that, as a manager, you may think twice about hiring a lot of women to positions that are critical to your company/organization. Why? Because they quit more often soon after you hire them.

            But do the studies actually justify thinking that way as a manager? People could see that as a sexist attitude towards hiring, even if there is data to back it up. So unfortunately, the findings are too limited to actually base a policy or mindset towards it, in my opinion. As always in Public Administration, there is more research that needs to be done.

            Peter Blau had hypothesizes on macrosocial theories, which this issue falls under. He published his findings in an article called “A Macrosociological Theory of Social Structure.” Amongst his various conclusions is one that is pertinent to my question. He found that social groups had less interaction with other social groups that were radically different than they were. So, Protestants and Catholics had a lot of interaction. Their religious differences are slight, and they share many demographical characteristics in common such as race, income, etc. Overall, Blacks and Jews did not have a lot of interaction because things like their religion and income were often very different.        

            So what does this mean for our question? More interaction between people usually means they get along more. People don’t interact with other people that they hate unless they have to. So it’s logical to assume that a lot of voluntary interaction means that person A and person B like each other. This means that woman A in a company will, more likely than not, work well with woman B if some of their other factors, like religion, lifestyle, personal networks, etc, are similar. Their gender has little or nothing to do with it. This study is suggesting that the ratio of men and women doesn’t mean a lot when it comes to performance, because it is only one of many factors that play into how well people work together and their performance levels.

            This runs in line with what we learned in class about diversity. Skin deep aspects, such as gender, race, etc, are less important than deeper aspects of a person. That’s where true diversity lies. So if you want your workers to work well together, don’t focus on the ratio of men and women. Get a group of like-minded people who have some things in common and they’ll most likely work great together.  

            Rosabeth Kanter did research pertaining to my exact question, in her article “Some Effects of Proportions on Group Life: Skewed Sex Ratios and Responses to Token Women.” In short, she studied groups of workers with different ratios of men and women: sometimes it was 9/1 male to female, 7/3 male to female, or 5/5 male to female ratios. After she observed them working for a while, she found that in the groups with the fewest amount of women, the 9/1 ratio group, the women were mostly excluded socially from the men. Their input wasn’t taken into consideration, the men just cared about their looks, they had to work twice as hard for the same amount of credit, etc, all negative consequences of the 9/1 ratio. The “logic” behind the men’s behavior, that Kanter goes on to explain, is that since the women were such a small minority in the company that the men did not need them as allies to get their work done, so they didn’t even try to be nice to them. In ratios like 7/3 or 5/5, women consisted enough of the company that they were needed quite often to get any work done, so men included them in projects, valued their input, treated them like the normal human beings that they are, credited their work duly, etc, all opposite of when the ratio was 9/1.

            Kanter’s explanations seem to say that if, the roles were reverse, and women had the majority in the company, that they would do the same thing to men. Neither gender is more “mean” or self-centered than the other; what only matters is the ratio between men and women. This makes sense because in companies that I’ve worked for where there are very few males or my age is significantly higher or lower than the medium age of most of the other employees, my input was not taken, my achievements weren’t taken as seriously, etc. You can substitute gender for age, race, religion, etc, any identifiable trait a person can have can potentially be inserted into this ratio explanation that Kanter figured out through her studies.

            This data paints a dismal picture of human behavior. It suggests that people are only nice to other people when they see something that they can gain from that friendship. So, the men aren’t nice and fair to the women because they possess good human qualities, they’re only doing that because they see some benefit for themselves. I can’t think of any other explanation because between all the groups, the only thing that changed was the ratio between men and women.

            Kanter has some suggestions for managers who want to minimize this problem potentially happening in their office/organization. The first one is to have a “sponsor.” A sponsor is a person who represents the majority group. The sponsor maintains dialogue to the minority group and works out any problems that the minority group has in working. I would suggest having a higher requirements in the ethics of the people you hire. It’s despicable that people will turn on one another simply because of a numbers game. I treat people with respect, value their work and input no matter how many people of the same gender work in my company. It’s not that hard, and not too much to expect from your employees. I wouldn’t care how good of an employee you were, if you started being unfair towards a person just because of their gender/race, etc, then I wouldn’t want you to work for me.

            A solution that seems obvious but actually doesn’t work is to simply hire more of the minority group so that their proportion is better, so the majority group will treat them nicer. The reason why that doesn’t work even though it does solve the proportion problem is explained in Gillian Ranson’s “Gender, Earnings, And Proportions of Women.” Her study is about organizations that sought out to hire more women, for diversity purposes. However, she found that the companies hired less educated and less experienced women, compared to their male co-workers, in order to meet these diversity purposes.

            This is problematic for several reasons. One, it means, in the name of diversity, companies hired less educated and less experienced people on purpose, passing up a person who would be a better employee. This means the quality and speed of the company’s work will diminish. This is the case against hiring for skin level diversity, a.k.a. race, gender, age, etc. A better hiring practice, for example, would be to hire people based on their diversity of outlooks on life, which would lead to different ways of thinking to solve problems. Diversity under the skin, such as emotions, personal networks, attitudes on life, etc, we learned in class, is what matter more than skin level diversity. This claim has been backed up by the studies we read in class pertaining to diversity.

            Secondly, hiring less competent females to these positions will only reinforce the male bias in the workers that are already there. They’ll think “Geez, every woman they’ve hired in this department doesn’t know how to do her job well.” This will reinforce their belief that woman don’t know how to do this particular job, because he’ll point to the facts to back up his claim. A better practice would to only hire competent females, to disprove their bias. A man might think a woman can’t possibly know how to do his job, but once a woman is hired in his office and does a good job, that will break and disprove his mental bias.

            An article published by several authors, titled “Exploring the Asymmetrical Effects of Gender Tokenism on Supervisor–Subordinate Relationships,” explores further into the concept of how “token” people work in an office. Token meaning you are the only one of a certain category, either your race, gender, religion, etc. The authors conducted surveys on a number of people. They found that when women were proportionally underrepresented, they reported feeling less supported by female supervisors than male supervisors. This seems to run contrary to normal human behavior, as one would think that since women were fewer in number than men in these organizations, that the women would look out for each other more. But the opposite happens. Maybe that’s because humans are rarely ever rational. Maybe it’s because the female supervisors were so busy looking after themselves, trying to survive as a minority, that they honestly didn’t have time to properly support the female workers. As with much of human behavior, unless we asked every single female manager in the study specifically why they didn’t do xyz, we simply won’t know the reason why.

            Being a token seemed to hurt women more in other ways as well. The article continues with a second study, and found that showed that women who perceived they were gender tokens in their organization were less likely to support an outstanding female subordinate than an identical male. Again, another instance of a perceived minority shooting themselves in the foot. The study showed no reason as to why this has to be a female only problem; then one would logically assume that if men were the minority in an organization, then they would do the same thing too, unfortunately.    

            Amanda Koch, Susan D. Mello, and Paul Sackett talked about gender bias in what is to be considered “male dominated jobs” and “female dominated jobs.” Their study was titled “A Meta-Analysis of Gender Stereotypes and Bias in Experimental Simulations of Employment Decision Making.” In English, that meant they looked at who had more “bias”: females in majority male job positions or males in majority female job positions. They found that the latter had more bias than the former.

            But what do they mean by bias? Unfortunately, the authors were not clear on that, and that is a major problem with this study. “Bias” is a non-tangible concept that is abstract and is not quantifiable. Therefore, it up to the opinion of what the authors think is a bias, based off of, their words,: “the effects of decision-maker gender, amount and content of information available to the decision maker, type of evaluation, and motivation to make careful decisions on gender bias in organizational decision.” That means gibberish to the average person, so when the average person doesn’t understand your terms, it is easy to manipulate findings to suit what you want those findings to say.

            What does this mean for the average manager? Let’s say the authors were right. That means you, as a manager, have to be extra careful and be on the lookout for these bias if you run an organization/department that is majority female, and then, you hire some males to come and work there. That, the authors say, is the instance where there is the most potential for gender bias that negatively affects everyone. You have to be vigilant to snuff it out before it causes a real loss in productivity or some other negative aspect is affecting your department/organization.

            In the article titled “Who Gives? Multilevel Effects of Gender and Ethnicity on Workplace Charitable Giving,” authors Lisa Leslie, Mark Snyder, and Theresa Ghomb look at the effects that gender have on how much a worker donates to “work related charity.” They talk about ethnicity too, but that is not related to the topic, so we’ll just focus on the findings related to gender. They find that women usually give more than men. That means that if you’re a manager and you want workplace charity to increase, then you’ll hire more woman.

            A rather interesting study was done about apologizing in the workplace. This may seem trivial at first glance, but apologizing has a great influence on how well people can work together, i.e. productivity. In “Do you really expect me to apologize? The impact of status and gender on the effectiveness of an apology in the workplace,” the study finds that an

apology is most effective when the apologizer is a male, a manager, or is a male apologizing to a female.

            So do any of the findings from these studies have any specific actions that a manager can take to make sure his/her workers get along? Technically, yes they do, but the problem is, which ones do you pay attention to and which ones do you ignore? If you pay attention to all of the findings, it’ll be impossible because they clash with each other. One study tells you to not have tokens, because that will cause problems. But then you also can’t just hire people based on their race/gender/religion, etc, to avoid tokens, because then you might get incompetent employees. And it goes on and on like this. All of the studies looked just as valid as the others. How could you choose which ones to follow and which ones not to?

            My takeaway from all of these studies are that the findings are interesting, and should be kept in the back of one’s mind as a manager to help and avoid conflicts in the workplace. But none of them are definite enough to shape behavior. There are so many other factors at work at all aspects of work. That is the problem I have with organization theory, and social science on the whole. What findings people find rarely can translate into actual actionable steps in the real world because the real world has too many other factors to consider when making managerial decisions. To hire or not hire someone because their gender is better/not better at apologizing to managers is bizarre and will get you laughed at by any co-worker that you tell. That’s because you’re taking one factor and putting it above all other factors when making a hiring decision. So to answer the original question: “Does the ratio of male to females in a group/team affect the quality and speed of their work?” the answer is: Yes, it does, but none of the studies show what ratio will eliminate all potential problems.

            A better hiring practice would be to have the employees conducting the interviews be a very good judge of character. You want employees who honestly want to do a good job, are flexible, tolerant, not bigots, respectful, don’t freak out at little things, etc. These may seem like no brainers, but yet so many companies have employees who are none of the above. That is because the hiring interviewer was not a good enough judge of character in the interview. They thought the candidate had these certain qualities, but they didn’t. I would much rather work with a person who has these qualities, no matter their race, religion, gender, etc. Like previously mentioned, these qualities in a person would make them respectful and thoughtful to another employee who is a token in the organization. There, you just solved the “token problem” that the studies talked about, without having to follow all of these complicated suggestions from the findings of the studied. You just hired good people, and the rest just followed naturally.

Sources

            Blau, Peter. “A Macrosociological Theory of Social Structure.” American Journal of Sociology. Vol. 83, No. 1 (Jul., 1977), pp. 26-54.

            Hom, Peter. “Challenging Conventional Wisdom About Who Quits: Revelations From

Corporate America.” Journal of Applied Psychology. 2008, Vol. 93, No. 1, 1–34.

            Kanter, Rosabeth. “Some Effects of Proportions on Group Life: Skewed Sex Ratios and Responses to Token.” American Journal of Sociology. Vol. 82, No. 5 (Mar., 1977), pp. 965-990Published

            Koch, Amanda. “A Meta-Analysis of Gender Stereotypes and Bias in

Experimental Simulations of Employment Decision Making.” Online First Publication, May 26, 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0036734

            Leslie, Lisa. “Who Gives? Multilevel Effects of Gender and Ethnicity on Workplace

Charitable Giving.” Journal of Applied Psychology. 2013, Vol. 98, No. 1, 49–62.

            Ranson, Gillian. “Gender, Earnings, and Proportions of Women: Lessons from a High-Tech Occupation.” Gender and Society. Vol. 10, No. 2 (Apr., 1996), pp. 168-184.

            Ryan, Katherine. “Exploring the Asymmetrical Effects of Gender Tokenism

on Supervisor–Subordinate Relationships.” Journal of Applied Psychology. 2012, 42, S1, pp. E56–E102. 

            Ryan, Michelle. “Think Crisis–Think Female: The Glass Cliff and Contextual Variation in the Think Manager–Think Male Stereotype.”  Journal of Applied Psychology. 2011, Vol. 96, No. 3, 470–484.

            Walfisch, Tamar. “Do You Really Expect Me To Apologize? The Impact of Status and Gender on the Effectiveness of an Apology in the Workplace.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology. Volume 43, Issue 7, pages 1446–1458, July 2013.