Today, we seem to face two complementary, although seemingly contradictory mandates – the need to root out dominators and support protectors within organizations. But does the need for one form of masculinity require the perpetual endurance of its darker underbelly?

Of course not. I believe the who and the what of confrontational roles, while related, are not deterministically so. This is as position and identity are distinct propositions; and so long as some form of accountability is present, protective and predatory forces can be disentangled.

Of course any mode of formal observation that could sanitize or obscure what is being monitored poses a danger of abuse for the purpose of laundering appearances, and, for this reason, I believe that in the future, the question people will focus on posing of organizations will not be “do you have a diversity-focused job titles within your organization?” but, rather, “what guarantees of outside auditing in the area of human rights do you have in place?”

On Deflection

Modern-day wokeness – to the degree it is deployed unevenly and according to a political litmus test – is not about human rights. It is arguably much more about power-accumulation.

There are countless good people hailing from a broad variety of backgrounds with good ideas to share and perspectives to be considered. And what may be deemed a temporarily un-American organization need not necessarily become a permanently anti-American one. I personally love the media industry; I simply believe it requires boundaries and accountability.

It is arguable that many voters have made some more-maligned decisions recently less because they fully supported a particular political candidate than that they opposed what was perceived to be the threat of permanent occupation by a corrupt media sector; but this need not be a perennial problem.

On Refraction

The senior executive largely responsible for what I consider to have been my monstrous hire by Larry King Live – with almost no regard for my well-being, no notification of the drastic change in programming tone she had planned, and no protection offered from the immense influence the scenario she proposed would offer a dating partner over my life – was a woman. So far as I know this person was never held accountable and even after I reported further details to the company about my experience, evidently managed Jake Tapper’s program in Washington.

One reason I continue to believe talking about practices like this woman’s, and those who declined to stop her, can be helpful is that the strategies employed to harm and exploit young employees are so uncreative that the only quality they seem to have going for them from the perspective of corporations prioritizing profit at all costs is secrecy.

I believe the fear and intimidation predators inspire is misplaced. Just as there does seem to be immense power to be garnered in the short term by pretending to be a news outlet, it is arguable there is similar power to be gained by pretending to be a bank security guard. But all such influence disappears once the vulnerable are informed and able to recalibrate their expectations and understanding accordingly.

On Distortion

There was a time when, due to constraints on communication methods, debate needed always to be conducted by the proxy of two political parties. And, to a degree, decision-making by proxy – as occurs in the case of elected officials – is still needed for the sake of orderliness.

But there are no technical restraints that justify claims that debate must be conducted by proxy as frequently as it is today. Speech, of course, must be limited to a degree, but it is essential that the reasons for this be defined clearly and adhered to consistently.

I believe that, to the degree that we limit dialogue to the critique of people as proxies, we are liable to miss key points. Just because a person is wrong – and, maybe, terribly wrong about many points, that does not mean that all of her or his ideas or contributions may be dismissed. I disagreed with a large portion of what one recently-popular politician had to say about many things. But Trump had valid things to say about media.

I do believe one reason publicly-traded media companies have sown division among Americans in recent months – misusing legitimate issues such as the essential need to better recognize the rights of vulnerable people – has been to draw attention away from media companies’ own culpability. But I do not believe we are exactly a permanently imperiled country as a result. By simply talking through business model requirements that would enable journalistic organizations to better support democracy, I believe many solutions will become self-evident.

On Automation

Just as it is important not to scapegoat individual people for what could be called sub-optimal outputs of a poorly-designed informational infrastructure, it is equally important not to gloss over or forget about the potential each one has to reject pre-defined roles that perpetuate an outdated system.

It is a big concept, but I believe it is arguable that every time one of us refuses to express sacrificial love by standing up for our principles, we are essentially further notching in a groove of mediocrity for an artificially intelligent tendency to follow the path of least resistance to more easily automate later.

Just as, at CNN, I felt I was denied the basic human right of equal protection, at his private school, Jordan was arguably denied the basic human right of being taught – not just told – basic concepts of right and wrong requiring the recognition of women’s full humanity. These violations were not equivalent, although I believe we both deserved protection from exposure to environments in which power differentials were defined by fixed characteristics.

It does seem to me that so long as our country is governed by the artificial intelligence of a broken ratings- and click-based media apparatus, a serious game of musical chairs amongst identity groups selected for scapegoating will be inevitable and, rather than structural evolution, an endless process of patchwork and contortionist stopgap and short-term fixes to what was once a clearing window to a vision for our collective and collaborative future could become more difficult to halt. (There is no question there was a need – and an urgent and continuing one – for a renewed African American rights movement in recent years. But I worry one reason the media bloc bolstered only portions of this movement and did so instead of – rather than in addition to – continuing support for the women’s movement was less out of a purely altruistic motive and more out of a desire to stop solution-sharing. I believe the media bloc would drop the African American rights movement, and even its relationship with the presidency, like rocket boosters, should either cease to serve its purpose of power-accumulation.)

Moving forward, I believe it will be important for every individual basking in the temporary sunshine of safety under such a system to speak up for others and to ask, remembering how cold it can be in the shadow, anytime a villain is required – who (or what) has written the script?