You’d think something as ‘macro’ as a Paradigm Shift would be a little more apparent to the naked eye. Where’s the Earthquake, fer fuck’s sake? Where’s the Tsunami?
Where’s the Krakatoa-like explosion that creates a species-obliterating Ice Age?
If I didn’t know for a fact that a full on Paradigm Shift WAS happening, I’d get nervous about it. Maybe when it’s over with — and (as a result of the shift), women are AT LEAST 50% of our elected officials and business leaders and spiritual leaders — and we achieve a State of Mind where it would never OCCUR to a man to EVER place his hands on a woman (or even another man) in the workplace (or ANYplace for that matter) without some very good reason or the express permission of the person being handled — maybe then we’ll appreciate the enormity of what is happening and has already happened.
For now the Paradigm Shift is most noteworthy for the sudden and fearless rise of the #MeToo Movement — where forced acceptance of what should NEVER have been acceptable in the first place suddenly burst free from its bonds and spilled over into our collective psyche. The days of acceptance of male physical dominance over women in any and every environment is dead — and good fucking riddance to it. The days of Male Privilege are over. The days of Men getting to do what their penises tell them to do — without any kind of repercussion whatsoever — just because that’s the way it’s always been — gone. Gone, gone, GONE.
And while a way to measure responses to sexual harassment and predation is still very much a work in progress (one size fits all clearly is not going to work), a near Zero Tolerance of demeaning and illegal practices is going to be the norm — pretty much from here on out. Get used to it.
But WHEN exactly did this happen — and (most importantly) WHY and WHY NOW?
So happens — I have a theory. Shocking, I know.
The election of Donald Trump — well, the theft of the election by Donald Trump — set things in motion in large part because of his own long, sordid (and CONFESSED!) history of sexual predation, molestation and harassment. That did not sit well at the time and it festered. Trump’s win made that wound even more present. And, of course, every action Trump has taken since then — in concert with a republican party that openly backed a CHILD MOLESTER — made it that much more apparent to America’s women that, at long last, a line had been crossed.
But before things got so nuts that a Democrat could get elected to state office in Red-As-Can-Be Alabama, a decision was made in a boardroom far, far away from that side show. As they contemplated what to do about BILL O’REILLY, the 21st Century-Fox Board of Directors saw something in the tea leaves that scared the bejesus out of them and made them choose to jettison their Number One Cash Cow because the alternative — clearly — was corporate death.
The 21st Century Board received clear signals from their ADVERTISERS — whose money they need to satisfy their ‘business model’ — that Bill O’Reilly was no longer acceptable to them because THEIR clients — the companies that SELL THE PRODUCTS they get paid to advertise — saw that Bill O’Reilly was ANATHEMA to THEIR CUSTOMERS — mostly WOMEN. Women, companies like BMW, Advil, Esurance (Allstate) refused to have their names associated with Bill O’Reilly and his show because he had become THAT toxic to the MAJORITY OF ECONOMIC DECISION-MAKERS in most American Households.
That day, the 21st Century-Fox Board of Directors took a vote — and their decision wasn’t so much a ‘decision’ as a ‘verification’ that ‘something had changed’. A Paradigm had literally Shifted.
And American Women were now in control of the conversation. ARE now in control.
Fact of Life.