The World As It Is

Somebody once replied to a big change in my life I was ascribing to X, that no, if it wasn't X it would have been Y. Or A, B, C, and so on and so forth and more of the same.

And it's so true. I didn't make the change because X, I made it because me.

It took me a while to get here but here I am.

It's been a few months, let me tell you, but when a woman I'd been talking to recently asked, "But are you healing?" my mouth answered, "Yes".

It wasn't really a question but later I thought about it and realized she was right. I am healing. That's the point, not the hurt, the healing.

It's the job of life, isn't it, healing. Healing and letting go. Or maybe it's the letting go that brings the healing. I don't mean letting go of people, even our dearly and not so dearly departed, I mean letting go the stories of who we were then and who we'll be later.

My daily gratitude practice helps me stay focused on what's real, as opposed to made up, so right now.

I had a friend who decided not to care anymore about the world as it is. My mother was the same. Once, in her very old age, she looked at me, that steely look still in her eyes, even though they couldn't see anymore, and said, "I don't understand you". It was a confession, a laying down of a mother's burden, and a relief to us both.

I wish I could say that's when I learned to stop explaining myself but of course it wasn't. I was doing it with the woman I'd been talking to recently. It's why she asked if I was healing.

Ah, breakthrough. No more explanations. I understand me and that's enough.

Thank you, universe, for this addition to my daily gratitude practice.

Anyway, I've been watching a variety of therapy videos over the past few years and I've noticed a couple of therapists, and this is just recently, no longer shy away from the world as it is for fear of offending someone.

Anyone.

It's always bothered me, the careful avoidance of how it is in the world by therapists, as if it has nothing to do with our grief, fear, anxiety.

Substance use disorders.

Every time a friend gets sober I grow wings.

One therapist is even pointing out now of other therapists that they're not doing their job if they're ignoring how it is in the world, because it's WHY so many of us have trouble healing. It's not crazy to care, it's crazy-making to be told we'd heal faster if only we didn't, as if the world as it is has nothing to do with us, with anybody, it's just... how it is.

There's a scene in The Sound of Music, I've never forgotten, where Max wants Maria to tell Captain Von Trapp to try and get along (with the Nazis), and she says, "I can't ask him to be less than he is".

We're not being asked, we're being told.

I can name at least three people of my close acquaintance who died prematurely, recently, due to decisions made by successive governments in Ontario to reduce the quality of healthcare available to us, even though we're collectively wealthier than at any time in our history.

Meanwhile it's tax breaks and means testing because we really only take the world as it is when it suits us.

Doug Ford's a demonstrable crook, an ignorant bully, and he's Premier of Ontario because people don't care enough.

The last thing we need is people caring less.

My mother used to say I was upsetting myself. My friend used to put it similarly of others, they did it to themselves. It took me a minute to realize she meant me, too, because what am I to her if not an other.

There's that old line, I say you're driving me crazy, you say it's a short drive.

So here's what I think, and yes, I'm aware of the daily threats of takeover by our fascist neighbours - who were never not fascist in one way or another so let's not kid ourselves all over again - we DON'T have to take the world as it is. We're just being told we do by our latest Prime Minister, who views himself, and so the country he was elected to lead, as somehow apart from, or maybe even above, it, the world. But we're not above it, and we are a part of it, and, as such, we're responsible for why the world as it is.

OUR world.

We change our behaviour, we change our world.

It's funny. I didn't see it until I did, and it was a personal experience with our much ballyhooed dental care program that opened my eyes, but if we didn't already have universal healthcare in Canada (and I use the word universal loosely) our government today would be telling us we must take the world as it is, and no, we can't have universal healthcare, it's too expensive.

There is no way in hell a government of Canada would bring in universal healthcare now and we need to be asking ourselves why that is, not shrugging our shoulders and saying, oh well, it is what it is.

I don't think I've ever written my Member of Parliament before but I decided now is the time. I can deal with it, too, so I'll take it to the wall. It's not really about dental care anymore for me, although I'll be out not a bit of money. Fortunately, I realized a while back, I have enough.

As Peter Gzowski once said of the healthcare he received after a heart attack, "It's nice to not have to worry about money". But of course he had the resources to afford the recovery. It's not the same for a retail clerk heading up a family and renting an apartment.

I just mean we're not as good as we could be and never have been. A lot of what we believe about ourselves is, well, kind of made up.

All the concern by our government right now about this industry or that, cars, oil, canola, while Canadians are dying on gurneys in hospital hallways, or living on the streets playing Russian roulette with addictive pain killers, or just finding ourselves unable to go a day without crying because taking the world as it is hurts our hearts too much to bear.

Because we're a middle power I guess is what we're supposed to buy now.

Don't get me wrong. I voted Liberal. Because whether Canadians are ready to face it down or not the choice is Liberal or the Neo-Nazi Separatist Bitcoin Anti-Vax Freedom Convoy Plus Michael Chong Party.

I mean, can we not be real, ever? Stephen Harper's been Chair of the IDU for a decade now, an international laundromat for the dark money funding the rise of fascism all over the world, including Canada and next door where the regime he helped elect is executing democracy activists in the street.

He was a Prime Minister of Canada ffs.

So no, I don't accept taking the world as it is, not when no one who can is calling out the fascism we can do something about right here at home.

We have an entire media chain that's been nothing more than fascist propaganda for years, kept alive by government funded bailouts as if it's good for democracy. It's even free online, and has been for years, while decent media is paywalled. And we wonder why so many people have been radicalized into believing fascism is freedom.

Postmedia alright. Postdemocracy too.

No, I don't agree with Mark Carney we have to take the world as it is. It's a choice. It's always been a choice. LAVs for Saudi Arabia because $$$ for Canadians. And it wouldn't be so bad if it was a choice that isn't also taking us ever further from the promise of a society that measures itself by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. But it is. What has changed since the pandemic that resulted in reservists ending up with PTSD from the conditions they encountered in nursing homes?

I always think of something a friend entirely dependent on social assistance, so poor, said back when we were in one of our financial crises, "It's times like this when I can take a bit of a breather from worrying about not having any money in the bank."

Anyway, it's no one government's fault, and certainly not Mark Carney's, but I'm not going along to get along anymore either. We don't HAVE to take the world as it is, we CHOOSE to, as we've been choosing to do for decades, and to no one's benefit.

You can't care too much and don't let anybody tell you otherwise.❤

To You

Several months ago I referenced an experience in a piece I later deleted (the reference to the experience, not the piece) because shortly after I'd put it out there I regretted it, so if you're the hurt party reading this now, please accept my apology.

I'm sorry.

Anyway a reel came up on my Facebook page this morning reminding me we don't start over from mistakes, we move on with the insight gained from them.

"It couldn't have happened any other way because it didn't" so "live and learn".

That's what I'm doing, accepting what happened, and living and learning from it.

When I wrote my book "That Looks Good on You - You Should Buy It!" (serialized in Galaxy Brain) I made myself a character in it. And in the writing I'm doing for the resurrected Galaxy Brain (Michael Murray having left us for the Divine last year) I'm continuing in that vein, pulling from the past, a story I tell myself, wherein I'm a made up character.

It came to me in a flash. I'm not writing memoir. I'm writing fiction.

I always thought I couldn't write fiction, but that's what my writing for Galaxy Brain has been, fiction.

I feel good about it. It's more than enough, Galaxy Brain. It's community.

But blogging isn't the same animal. It's political, so personal, and it's why I've decided to leave off it now.

It's loneliness, the need to write, but it's a particular kind of loneliness that fuels a blog. It's advice I would give to anyone who's lonely, write, and if you're lonely in a particular kind of way, blog. Getting published in the real world is tough, it's a job in itself, and maybe writing isn't your thing. So put photographs on your blog, art, poems, brain farts, whatever helps get you through to the other side, which for me has been recognizing myself in others, in their writing, their photographs, art, poems, brain farts.

Out on our streets live and in person. There go I. Oh and over there. Hm, over there, too.

Good Gord I'm everywhere!

Loneliness is a state of mind, not being, and blogging can help us feel connected to ourselves. I blog therefore I am. For me, for a long time, writing, particularly blogging, was my friend, always there, any time, day or night.

The world wide web my penpal.

But I don't feel lonely anymore. I'm enough for me. And then there's everybody else, as I've come to realize, a whole world of company, too.

Maybe I'll try a blog of a different feather one day, maybe I won't. But whatever comes, I want to thank you for reading, and, to you, again, I'm sorry.

Live long and prosper.

Love, Kathryn

Mother's Day

"It couldn't have happened any other way because it didn't."

That's something a fellow calling himself The Mind Architect, Peter Crone, said in a reel that came up on my Facebook page a while back.

I like it because it's so simple, not that it being simple means it isn't hard.

S says I'm a writer, and I guess I am. But while working on a piece for the resurrected Galaxy Brain, Michael having left us to join the Divine, and having to drag myself back to the past again for the material, the theme being love and monsters, I realized I don't want to go there anymore.

Tough for a writer, S pointed out, when I told him of my dilemma.

So I re-read what I'd written, thinking maybe I should give it another go. The starting point had been me waiting with Bernie, our elderly third wheel of hound/lab/beagle/? heritage, while S returned his empties - we'd had Bernie's toenails trimmed, which he doesn't like - and hearing "Wish You Were Here" waft across the parking lot from a couple's truck radio.

We think they might live in their truck in our not quite urban but not suburban 'hood here in our nation's capitol.

And, of course, it was "Wish You Were Here", which, if you let it in, will just overwhelm you with sadness for it all, everything, everybody here and gone, and regret for all the love we thought we had to let go so we could move on.

It was like a wave of sadness washing over me, then through me, I felt it pool in my heart. Really, I just wanted to lie down in that parking lot and cry until I woke up back somewhere in time so it could all happen differently. But when? There are so many times along the way I didn't do the right thing.

So many mistakes, regrets, love lost.

And because I'm a writer, I decided to mine that sadness for Galaxy Brain, a couple of thousand words of this happening and then that happening and, oh, ah, okay, on a re-reading just generally missing the message, well, let's pretend it was a message, a message Michael sent me from the Divine through the couple in the parking lot.

Wish You Were Here.

I deleted the story.

I've left, and I've been left, and I didn't know until just now, right this second, while I type this, that I had it all wrong.

We don't leave love and love doesn't leave us. Love lights our road ahead.

This little light of mine

I'm gonna let it shine

Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine

Also, I may be a writer, but it isn't at all good for my eyes.

Wartime

"The Courage To Be Disliked", a book I just finished reading, is a bit of a mind bender, in a good way.

Like you, maybe, I'm holding my breath re the upcoming election. It still shocks me how much support there is for Conservative politicians in this country. I don't know how you could be paying any attention at all and want Pierre Poilievre to be Prime Minister.

A party born of guns, the Bible, and white nationalism.

Preston Manning is the Devil.

So "The Courage To Be Disliked". It's a dialogue between a philosopher and a youth. The youth is very negative, dislikes himself, thinks life is a competition, is at odds with his father, doesn't like his job, wants to be special.

Your typical young man, in other words.

The philosopher is a philosopher.

But the good life is about loving ourselves, developing horizontal interpersonal relationships, and contributing to the community in some way so we experience our innate value to it.

I had a United Church minister tell me the same thing years ago when we were living in Belleville, but it's something I have to re-learn. It's the contributing to the community part I think I've finally figured out to take less literally.

There are lots of ways to contribute to the community. It isn't all about making money. That's just one of our "myths of normal".

But the interpersonal relationship part is tricky too because they should be horizontal, not vertical. I think young people today are probably closest to living this way. A little trickier, maybe, the older we are.

No one person is more important than another.

I'm working on it.

I'm coming to terms with estrangement, heeding the advice of a friend.

"It isn't about you."

I play it on repeat in my head.

My older sister was estranged, decades ago now, although she was back in touch, off and on, later. With our mother dead, though, the relationship is in the past.

It's fine with everybody.

It mattered to me so much at the time but now I wonder if it was just everybody getting caught up in the drama of it all. She lashed out at my mother but then at the rest of us. I understood it with my mother, but there was no reason to lash out at the three of us, her siblings.

They didn't get along, my mother and older sister. Never had. No two queen bees in a hive.

Families can be a lot of work. Divorce can make it even trickier trying to keep everybody in the fold. I don't know what it would have been like had my father not died, but I imagine it would have been better.

It was a bit of a combat zone in my original family, I realize now. They were alike, my mother and older sister, but of different generations, with different values. There was a constant clash of wills. It didn't matter that my mother was very modern in her outlook. Growing up poor at a time when people, never mind female people, didn't have the rights we do now is such a far cry from how my siblings and I grew up.

My father didn't grow up poor but he was overseas in WWII fighting the Nazis for King and country.

The Greatest Generation was a study in trauma. The Depression, WWII, the Patriarchy.

No birth control. Women wanting careers being housewives. Men doing jobs they hated so they could provide for their families they didn't necessarily want.

We were all wanted. My kids were all wanted. That's the jackpot right there, isn't it, and yet still it's not enough.

"The war killed your father."

I thought for a long time my mother said that to my older sister who relayed it to me, but my mother might have said it to me, to calm my hypochondria. I might have been pestering her about cancer, which is what my father died from. I was obsessed with fears of cancer. That's where my eating disorder likely came from too. Cancer, cancer, cancer. Pesticides, pesticides, pesticides. Food, food, food.

Anyway, I've watched enough Dr. Gabor Maté's videos, and read his book, "The Myth of Normal", to know what my mother meant by, "The war killed your father".

It's tragic, to think of this tall, thin man, an academic who became a lawyer, fighting in a war.

I hope he at least met a woman, had some tender, loving care.

We're all being terrorized by Israel's slaughter of Palestinians and Russia's slaughter of Ukrainians. I have Facebook friends who no longer have relationships with each other because they believe one is more or less justified than the other.

They'd argue that's an over-simplification but it isn't.

Go argue theories of original sin to the war dead and its traumatized survivors.

Meanwhile, we're being trolled by Donald Trump and the Nazi architects of Project 2025, all of them owned by the Russian and/or Israeli Mobs, threatening us with invasion if we don't roll over, none of it making any sense, nobody important seeming to understand there's no arguing with trolls.

DNFtT. Do Not Feed the Trolls.

Nobody else has pointed it out, I don't think, so let me be the first. Stephen Harper constitutes foreign interference in our election. He's head of the IDU, an international laundromat for global fascism. He interfered in the American election, too, on behalf of Donald Trump.

Seize his bank account(s) someone who can, please, and apply the appropriate sanctions. Enough pretending he isn't a traitor, too, because he is.

Anyway, I don't have any answers for the state of the world these days, but I understand what my mother meant.

The war killed my father. It broke up my family. Nothing was the way it was supposed to be.

And around and around and around we go.

Voting Begins

The Orange Goon doesn't do the rallies anymore and I wonder if MAGA is missing them.

Seems they were a big part of the draw.

I'm going to predict not doing the rallies will prove to be a mistake. I don't think Project 2025 can be sustained without the rallies. And unless it's the Orange Goon doing them MAGA won't be impressed.

Up here it looks like voter turnout this election is going to be really good.

Conservatives tend to benefit from a low turnout so hopefully it'll be a win for decency and the Liberals will win a majority.

Yup. I want a Liberal majority. No more NDP holding the balance of power. They had their chance and threw it away when we were most at risk for a Conservative majority.

I hope Poilievre loses his riding. Odious little shit. He deserves a big fall.

I suspect he'll keep up the rallies though. He's addicted to the attention. The thing is, I'm not sure his followers want him to win as much as he wants to win. Certainly the arrested development cases who follow him online are unlikely to make it to the polls in great numbers. They'd have to do something. And they like being angry, disaffected, complaining blamers mad at the world - especially women.

Do they really want their guy to be Prime Minister?

I doubt it.

And his rally attendees have most likely noticed by now the Orange Goon, now he's President (again), doesn't do the rallies anymore. And they like the rallies, they like the rallies a lot. One woman I saw interviewed in line outside the auditorium where Pierre Poilievre was performing said it was like going to a concert. She was really excited.

My guess is she'd rather Pierre Poilievre lose so he keeps doing his rallies. She knows he's not going to do them if he wins.

She's been left behind before. She doesn't want it happening again.

And Maple MAGA wants to be the 51st state so if Poilievre does win he'll either have to betray them or betray the rest of Canada.

Watching the debate, something I've almost never done, was interesting for me. I was able to actually watch it, for one thing.

I think it's because Mark Carney seems so competent. It's very reassuring, his seeming competence.

I also credit all those therapy reels that come up on my Facebook page. I'm learning to not take everything to heart, as people used to say back in the day.

"Stop taking everything to heart."

Being sensitive was totally asking for it.

I'm reading a book called "The Courage To Be Disliked" by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga. I love it. It's based in Adlerian philosophy (I have no idea who Adler was except he wasn't Freud).

You can't change other people but you can change yourself simply by changing your outlook. It's all up to you. Don't like how you are? Be different.

We get in our own way, is the problem we're all having.

I'm working on it. For sure I'm tired of caring what other people think of me. And being anxious and worried and catastrophizing. I'm tired of all that too. And thinking I'm responsible for how other people feel.

Ridiculous.

I'm also intrigued these days by the Swedish death purge, getting your affairs in order so as not to leave a mess for others when you shuffle off this mortal coil.

I hope it's a while away but I've decided to be all about now and looking forward with curiosity as to what comes next.

Hopefully not a Conservative government.

Comedy of Terrors

Quite a while ago now I purchased some cannabis gel capsules and beer (0 % alcohol) but it wasn't until yesterday I actually tried the beer.

I had half and my blond companion had the other half.

It was super fizzy and tasted beer-like so a great product if you like beer, don't drink alcohol, and want to get a cannabis buzz on, but I found I didn't like the cannabis buzz part anymore. At all. Not even a bit. No, no, no. Don't mess with success, said my vagus nerve to my brain, you enjoy the straight and narrow.

I've come a long way, baby.

Our neighbours are temporary foreign workers and recently our other neighbour (who has a Conservative sign on his lawn even though they're not even remotely political people, and I don't think she can even vote, as she's American, so I guess they were taken with the Conservative candidate going door-to-door the other day) added a bathroom and bedroom to the basement, and now I can smell cigarette smoke in our house at all hours.

I'll try to make it to spring when we can open windows. I've already asked them to keep down the noise, which was coming from a tv at full volume with nothing else in the living room to soak it up, so I don't want to come across as... difficult.

I really deserve a single detached home. I have the ears of a bat and the nose of a hound.

I was initially concerned I'd be responsible for their welfare, but it's not been an issue. I've met the owner of their unit, who is also,their boss. He's okay and his wife is very nice but still, I feel a certain responsibility anyway. The workplace is in the neighbourhood and I've been there a couple of times and everybody seems into it so yay.

On the flip side, it's certainly a good case for eliminating the Temporary Foreign Workers program.

Total. Absolute. Bullshit.

The other night I couldn't sleep, I was so worried about the possibility of the Conservatives winning the upcoming federal election. The next morning, though, I felt more rational about it. I have an ego that can trick my brain into thinking saving democracy from fascism is all up to me. It's a control issue with catastrophizing on top. Madness. Absolute madness. But I catch myself at it now and use the technique of staring at a picture (I've invested in a bit of art) to change the channel on my brain.

I recognize reading that back I sound as deluded as Bill Maher re his "book report" on his dinner with the Orange Goon - haha "My Dinner with Orangé" - in which he describes him as a gracious host by way of blaming Democrats for the fact he's MAGA now.

We know this because he insists, twice, he isn't.

He should watch his podcast. He's not MAGA like Lindsay Graham's not gay.

Another trick is to just face down the worst case scenario. So a Conservative majority government. Will it kill me? No. It'll be intolerable, having that odious little shit, Pierre Poilievre, strutting about, being Prime Minister, but he'll destroy CBC, so I won't have to watch or listen to him.

And what do I know anyway? I thought Mark Carney would be terrible at politics but he seems to be better at it than the pros he's running against. A young person recently commented to me she likes how he's kind of prickly and hopes he doesn't go achangin' to please critics of his prickliness. I hadn't realized it until she said it but I like it too. He's smart. People are stupid or he wouldn't be running against an odious little shit like Pierre Poilievre to be Prime Minister of Canada.

Rob Anders we hardly knew ye.

Carney's prickliness is reflecting how a lot of us feel, I think. There's so much "gotcha" bullshit out there. He's basically doing us the favour of a lifetime.

Would you want to run against an odious little shit like Pierre Poilievre to be Prime Minister of Canada so you can save an ungrateful nation from its corrupt and/or treasonous Conservative premiers and invasion by the Orange Goon Gang south of the world's longest unprotected border?

I have friends who are currently expressing their outrage Carney doesn't refer to Israel's ongoing slaughter of Palestinian civilians as a genocide, insisting it'll cost him when they vote NDP.

Of course those same people blame Democrats for Americans electing Republicans. I mean 80 million Americans voted for the Orange Goon, a well documented rapist, racist and traitor. How the fuck is that the fault of Kamala Harris? Joe Biden left a record behind some say rivals FDR's. I agree he got it wrong on Israel but that's not why 80 million Americans voted for the Orange Goon, who wants to turn Gaza into his own personal resort devoid of Palestinians.

I know what they think they mean, but it's no less a denial of reality than Bill Maher believing he's not MAGA when he went to dinner with the Orange Goon, at the invitation of his friend, Kid Rock, and who knew Bill Maher was friends with Kid Rock, and then blamed it on the Democrats for wanting civil and human rights for trans people, that he enjoyed himself more than he would if, say, Obama had asked him to dinner.

I mean, ffs, Republicans are disappearing people off the streets of the United States of America and their Canadian Conservative cousins are running to be the government here so can we all just agree we shouldn't elect them to government just because Mark Carney shies away from using the word genocide on the campaign trail?

He's an internationally recognized financial wizard who has long advised businesses and governments of the need for policies to mitigate the effects of climate change, is well known for keeping his cool in a crisis and being able to work with all sorts of lesser beings, AND he's a parent to a transperson, AND he's taking a significant pay cut for what he refers to as the privilege of running for election to public office.

FFS WHAT THE HELL ELSE DO CANADIANS WANT IN A PRIME MINISTER?!

It's Only Money

I'm a good Canadian saver of pennies. Always have been. And born female into the middle class I've never known what it's like to not have enough money to house and feed myself.

I say female because I've had boyfriends who managed somehow to not have sufficient funds to get by. I put it down to me having to be that much more independent.

I also grew up with a mother who said, "Never depend on a man for money."

She wasn't dissing men. And now I think about it, she never did diss men. But it was something her father said to her before skipping out on my grandmother.

Did I tell you I have (at least) eight half uncles a few to several years older'n me running around out there?

My grandfather was one mangy slut man, let me tell you, internet.

So have you looked? I haven't looked. My Blond Companion said not to and I'm heeding his advice. It's all upsetting enough. I don't need to see how badly Republicans have screwed up my financial future on behalf of their Russian Mob bosses.

If this was happening at an earlier time in my life I think I'd be beside myself with rage. I remember even when COVID hit I didn't have the "we're all in this nose dive together and nothing we can do about it now" feeling. But I was still working, nose to the grindstone, and my thoughts were all about amassing as much fortune as I could before the assignments ran out.

Not long into this stretch of unemployment, which I guess is retirement, but before I'd applied for old age security, which is what I live on now so please don't vote Conservative, I had an interview for a government temp job that sounded so hard I decided to just out with it, "How desperate are you?"

Being government people, but it also being some time in 2022 (or was it 2023?) the slightly startled looks soon shifted to mildly amused chuckles, "Well... we wouldn't say desperate."

"Okay good. You need somebody better. This job sounds impossible to me."

And that was that. They tried it on for a bit (because they absolutely were desperate) but it only solidified my opinion further. Nope. I'd rather hunt down a good recipe for stone soup, thanks.

Also, the stock market had recovered and the future was looking, well, none of us would need shades but we weren't dead, either, so, bright enough, I guess.

Whoever would have thought Americans would re-elect the Orange Goon Gang all over again?

Well, I guess more than a few students of American culture, but nobody I knew. And when they did I remember thinking I should put my savings in a safe-from-the-market-goes-up-the-market-goes-down spot but I didn't get around to it and now it's too late. What's a surprise to me is how I feel about that, which is a kind of easy come, easy go shrug.

Years ago, now, circa 2008, a Facebook friend who's never had money and depends on disability payments to stay afloat, joked about never worrying about big financial crises because he doesn't have any money anyway. His quip has stayed with me over the years in an odd vicarious thrill kind of way, because it's been such a lifelong obsession, a burden, really, saving for the future.

How much is ever enough? I hated working, too. I've only ever wanted to be at home. And not working from home, either. That just ruined being at home for me.

Well, the future's here, I guess, but my mission now is to liberate myself from that lifelong obsession and burden. It's what my latest guru, Stephanie Harrison, refers to as "Old Happy", the fallacy that having more will make us happier when we know now the opposite is true.

Cripes, all we need do is look at the wealthiest people in America and around the world, the much referenced 1%, and the desperate wannabes trying to gamble their way into their exalted circle, to get it.

We're only as wealthy as the governments we elect to improve the living conditions of the most vulnerable citizens - and wannabe citizens - among us.

And, unfortunately, for ALL of us, Americans just elected a government that's disappearing its most vulnerable citizens - and wannabe citizens - instead.

For me it's only money. For them it's everything.