Fun With Feminism

Kidding.💁

In my yet-to-be-published book, "That Looks Good on You! You Should Buy It!", yet-to-be-published because if I knew how to get it published I'd be a completely different person, I joke in a scene that takes place in "Chestertons" (pseudonym for the ladies clothing store I worked in from 2013-2015) about not knowing what wave of Feminist/Feminism I am/we're in.💃👵👰👸👺

In real life, though, I long ago decided to swim through the waves as a plain old Feminist, thanks.💪

At the end of my first year of university, circa 1978, which I realize now was just a dozen years before my first child was born, I went out to Banff, Alberta, where there were summer jobs for the asking and a much higher minimum wage.👍

While there, I had the terrifying experience of being pinned down in the hallway of the men's section of the staff annex I lived in for a bit by a scrawny guy not much bigger than me. He was sexually assaulting me, other men watching and doing nothing to stop him, when a manager finally decided the show was over and told them to get him off me.💀

Of course I blamed myself for assuming his invitation to come up (men were on the second floor, women on the first) was friendly (we'd hung out for a bit at a street party), as opposed to an easily laid trap. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I was a young woman. He was a man. I should have known he was a sexual predator who would try to rape me.👤

Oops. Feminism 101: Rape is about power, not sex.

And so it is. But whereas the Boomer women who transformed our society may have meant "power" more figuratively, I felt it literally, the upper body (particularly) strength differential, a strength differential I would have had to spend 24 hours a day/7 days a week trying to overcome.💪

So the lesson I learned was how easily a scrawny guy not much bigger than me could get me pinned down on the floor, and how hopeless it was trying to free myself and get away.👩

Oh and the other lesson I learned was how indifferent men can be to a woman being sexually assaulted by a man even when it's happening right in front of them and how easily they can put a stop to it as proven when they did so after another man told them to do it.👥

If I told you I'd experienced a similar assault by a man at a university party, while other men sat around and did nothing, you might think it was me.💃

No, it was him. I know because he went on to become a lawyer charged with attempted murder of his girlfriend (he was an amateur boxer). I found that out from the newspaper when another lawyer sued a "win a bachelor contest" and he was her prize.💩

Talk about not winning for losing. It was for charity, too. Ah, but this happened way back in the 90s and I'm sure even lady lawyers are done pretending bachelor auctions are empowering as opposed to quite the joke on them.👮

For my part, I have never assaulted anyone, man, woman, or child, nor have I failed to intervene when witnessing an assault, sexual or otherwise. In fact, while working at "Chestertons" I did many a closing shift, which meant waiting for a bus on Rideau (downtown Ottawa) and intervening in altercations every other night.😇

To be fair to men, it's easy for a middle-aged woman, we're invisible until we're not. Then - SURPRISE!👻

But it isn't unfair to men to point out how little they actually do to make our world safer, not for women, not for children, not even for themselves. And they could, you know. They have the power. If men wanted to, they could change our world from a Patriarchal prison to a Feminist paradise.💅

I heard Dolly Parton tell another one of her outrageous fibs the other day, "Ah luuv mehn." This after casually mentioning the beatin's and whuppin's and backhands from them for lookin' like she looks, the leavin' a couple of boyfriends behind (unsaid, "cuz Ah was tired of 'em tryin' to trap me in the shed"), and determination to get richer'n any of 'em all on her itty bitty lonesome, laughing at their misogyny all the way to the bank.💃

She doesn't "luuv mehn", of course. Women don't love men any more than men love women. And men hate women or we'd be living in... wait for it.... Dollywood! No... wait for it again... Barbieland!

So yes, I saw Barbie the other day. Ignore the naysayers ("it's not Feminist enough!") and "The Angries" ("it's man-hating!") and go see it. It's not just a visual dessert tray, it's the soft serve of existentialism you may not have realized you craved.💭

I left the theatre feeling more connected with other people and our shared human condition than I have in years.💖

Barbie 101: We all die.💘

And there it is. So simple, this life of ours we've made complicated, wasting it jockeying for power over each other, men accepting that women should live in fear of them rather than with love for them, as if we don't hate them for not helping us smash this Patriarchal construct imprisoning us all.👺

I didn't mean to write this, by the way, and it's but a scratch on the surface of the misogyny privileged white middle-class fourth or fifth generation Canadian me has experienced over her 64 years, but there seems to be an ever increasing disconnect out there as to the effect Patriarchy, a death cult, has had on all of us, and continues to have on all of us, as if it doesn't deny all of us the freedom to live as ourselves by its insistence women world over live in fear of men.💣

Also Barbie 101: Life doesn't have to be this way. Choose Feminism. Help make a better world for our children before we die.💞

Hurting in Ottawa - Updated!

Updated: The fellow from Quebec is pleading guilty to charges. He's not yet been convicted. I've changed the piece to reflect this.

The fellow from Quebec who claimed the Global Elite/World Economic Forum/blah blah blah were setting forest fires has been charged with setting forest fires. I personally think Pierre Poilievre should be charged with him for fuelling this life destroying madness, but I guess then we'd have to charge the groomers and radicalizers of Pierre Poilievre, too.

Oh, and while I'm on the topic of Pierre Poilievre's groomers and radicalizers, has Stephen Harper claimed credit, as head of global fascism's laundromat, for the election of another racist misogynist populist, the new President of Argentina, yet?

Sorry, but if the IDU isn't a laundromat for global fascism, I'm Mary Poppins.

I foolishly got into it on Facebook over Pierre Poilievre's lack of a security clearance so he can be read in to national security information - like a normal leader of His Majesty's "Loyal" Opposition. If you're buying it's because he doesn't want one, be careful, lots of scammers out there, not just in our Parliament.

In the meantime, what's wrong with me that I engage with men online but also in real life who'd argue the moon is made of green cheese, they love gaslighting me so much.

What's wrong with me that in spite of the hurt they cause I still need them to like me? Is it being fatherless? Well enough. Grow the fuck up, Kathryn. You've been fatherless for 60 years now. You don't need one to protect you from all the other fathers out there. They're dead, too.

Whoa! Breakthrough!

Grown men, all my life, since I was a little fatherless feminist growing up in Sault Ste. Marie, have gotten a charge out of showing off how little they care if Conservatives are elected to public office. Why? They consistently pooh pooh the threats Conservatives pose to our (women's) health and well-being, as if we're a bunch of hysterics. Why? What's with the smug superiority, the laughing off of our concerns, the pretending the threat isn't real?

Yeah, I'm talking to you, men of the Left. Liberal/Tory same old story. GFY. There are no Tories in Parliament and there haven't been since Stephen Harper created a party in his angry white Christian male feminist-hating image in 2003.

Fact: If Canadian men cared about violence against us, his Christo-Fascist gun lobby wouldn't be enjoying Official Opposition status in our Parliament. His disciple, Pierre Poilievre, would've had to resign in disgrace years ago, not be elected its leader following an attack on us by a bunch of Neo-nazis - including Diagolon Accelerationists, ffs - he, along with Trump and every fascist shithead online and off PUBLICLY supported, and certainly not after being outed secretly handshaking with Men Going Their Own Way, violent misogynists who want to eliminate us from society.

Instead this odious creep is leading in the polls to be Prime Minister of Canada. Wtf, fellas? What's wrong with y'all? Mad at mommy for having sex with daddy? What is it? Why do you want a Christo-Fascist gun lobby to be the Government of Canada?

Anyway, I don't get it. I just know I'm done pretending it doesn't hurt. Because it does.

Remembrance in Ottawa

It's an unpopular opinion, certainly one considered gauche to voice on Remembrance Day, hence linking to it on November 12, but how can we claim to be honouring the sacrifice of the fallen, specifically with regard to WWII in which my own 60-years-dead father fought, giving me the gift of reflected glory, no small inheritance, when so many us are voting, whether intentionally or not, for the latest iteration of fascism brought to us by conservative populists opposed to liberal democracy?

Because lest we forget the more recent past, the Freedom Convoy was a three week white power rally supported by Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, Putin Puppet Donald Trump and his treasonous Republican Party, Vladimir Putin and his Russian Mob/Mafia state, Hell's Angels, Sons of Odin, Diagolon Accelerationists, and so on and so forth and more of the same down to every vile, hateful and treasonous shithead, homophobe and woman-hater online and off all over our endlessly warring world.

Veterans for Freedom, by the way, is not just on the side of it, it's part of it, so Christo-Fascism, as are not just a few of our publicly funded police and armed forces members from coast to coast to coast.

They're my declared enemy, anti-democracy. That makes their number one supporter in my Parliament, Pierre Poilievre, my enemy, too. It's not a right/left thing. It's a Christo-Fascist/Liberal-Democracy thing. Please, I beg of you, stop voting for my enemy. I get it, you don't like Justin Trudeau. Well pretend it's not his name on the Freedom Convoy's hate flags but mine, my daughters' - your daughters'.

Heck, my son's, your son's. Because gender IS a social construct, Patriarchy a death cult.

Pretend those nooses were meant for my neck. Or your own. Because there's nothing democratic about nooses, not in the hands of a mob, which was also what the Freedom Convoy was.

As I keep pointing out, because I do remember, the entire time we were being terrorized by the Freedom Convoy - and make no mistake, we were its target, civilians living in a LPC/ONDP riding in the aptly named Centretown in Ottawa, the capital of Canada - Russia was readying to invade Ukraine, which it did shortly after the Emergency Act was invoked to finally end the occupation and drive the Freedom Convoy mercenaries out of our downtown and back to Alberta from whence most of them came.

Ten million dollars amassed in a few days. Meanwhile they shut down our economy for three weeks. Ordinary people unable to access public services and private businesses. They swarmed us in our grocery stores, ffs, causing them to close, ripped our anti-COVID masks off, polluted our air, assaulted our ears - as everyone in Canada should know since it was all proven, testified to under oath, during a mandatory Public Inquiry into the invocation of the Emergency Act - voted against by the law and order Party, doncha know - as per the legislation governing its use.

They weren't truckers. They were sign-ups once CERB ran out who got really angry when at least one city councillor suggested stopping the flow of funding that kept their engines running and horns honking - not that he, the recently come out mayor, Black police chief, and Liberal/NDP MPs weren't already receiving death threats aplenty.

They went to his house. Not his public office. His private residence.

Oh, and one more time, there were a lot of flags being flown by the Freedom Convoy, including American, Confederate and yes, the swastika, but not one of them was Ukrainian.

Lots of nooses alongside "Fuck Trudeau" flags flown from massive rigs (not to mention a few cranes, just in case we didn't get the violence inherent in the message, which was they they were there to lynch our leaders and take over our government) that may as well've been tanks for all local law enforcement seemed capable of dealing with their drivers.

Please, anybody else would've had their vehicle window smashed, door unlocked, and been dragged off to Ottawa's detention centre at the first parking violation. It's Ottawa, ffs. You can be fined AND have your birdhouse-sized free library ripped out for it being considered too close to the sidewalk for by-law enforcement to turn a blind eye and just let it be.

And just in case you haven't been following along with the trial of the ringleaders here in Ottawa (although from Alberta, ground zero for this latest iteration of fascism, Christo-style) Ottawa Police have likely blown the prosecution's case because, gosh golly gee, a software update deleted all their relevant text messages with the parties on trial.

Meanwhile, a party born in 2003 of guns, the Bible, and white nationalism, Stephen Harper's Conservative Party of Canada, is leading in the polls to form the next government of Canada. This in spite of the fact - the fact - its leader can't even get a national security clearance and publicly supported the Freedom Convoy while it terrorized civilians living and working in downtown Ottawa - later hosting its insurrectionist leaders in OUR Parliament - in the very spot our national Remembrance Day ceremony takes place every year.

Dying for News

I'm not a REAL military strategist, but, if the current Israeli government really wanted to whack Hamas leaders, instead of carpet bombing Gaza and wiping out its captive population of Palestinian families, while we watch helplessly in horror, just as we watch helplessly in horror while Russia's mafia state does the same to Ukrainian families, why isn't it bombing 5-star hotels in Qatar or deploying its world famous assassins to off 'em in their 4000 thread count sheets, instead of pretending it's still David and not Goliath, slaughtering helpless, unarmed, and trapped Palestinian families - just as Hamas did to families in Israel on October 7?

No, please, stop. The facts are quite clear. Netanyahu is a proven unconscionable liar, crook and autocrat who should be in prison, his government openly genocidal in its rhetoric, the settlers homicidal fundamentalist zealots, many of them from Russia, armed to the teeth, who've been terrorizing Palestinian families for months. Years. Israelis themselves, ordinary families like the ones slaughtered by Hamas terrorists, have been in their streets, demonstrating against Netanyahu and his genocidal government for months. Years. They know how dangerous he and his government are and they want him gone. He's their Trump. Period. End of.

And now we know - we know, ffs - he and his government have been deliberately and with intent empowering Hamas for years.

Years? Decades.

The fact is, and it is a fact, not a conspiracy theory, not anti-Israel/pro-Palestine sentiment (which is no such thing, it's pro-citizen sentiment, but whatever, it wouldn't be a pointlessly divisive war of words without incendiary labels, would it) a fact, Netanyahu and his government have been in bed with Hamas leaders for years. Why? Because extremists are always on the same side against civil society, they're against you, me, the Israeli citizens demonstrating against their corrupt government, the Palestinian citizens just trying to survive from day to day without going stark-raving mad as I surely would be by now, that's why.

It makes no sense, no one is safer, and it doesn't matter to the dead children and their bereaved parents which extremist pulled the trigger.

I. Would. Be. Insane. With. Grief. And. Rage.

What about you? Pretend for a minute instead of defending this eye for an eye for an eye and so on and so forth and more of the same etc etc on Twitter, slandering and attacking people who don't share your apparent zeal for reactionary slaughter, you're facing down the fact - in real life - that you and your children have no place to be on this Earth anymore, that even this open air prison you've been consigned to is being destroyed, and no one is offering you and your children refuge because the leaders who can are pretending the Goliath bombing you is still David and supplying them with ever more bombs and you with, well, what difference does it make if they send you food or not. There's nowhere to eat it anyway.

Sorry, but there's only one side to be on here, mine, your own, humanity's, and if you think by slandering your co-citizens for pointing out the insanity of responding to a terrorist attack on Israelis by carpet bombing Palestinians trapped in Gaza, which, by the way and in case you haven't bothered to google while you mindlessly rah rah this so-called defence, is 41 km long and 10 km wide, you need to climb down off your virtual hobby horse and get a life.

It's painful watching the news. I still take it as my responsibility, the least I can do, bear witness to news delivered conveniently to my home by journalists, many of whom are killed in the process, targeted for slaughter now by terrorists and governments alike, such is the decreasing daylight between them these days.

Ukraine is defending itself from Russian state terrorism.

Israel isn't defending itself. It's raining death and destruction down on Palestinian families. Families just like yours, mine, and the Israeli ones slaughtered by Hamas terrorists.

And You Are?

So I just finished another Liane Moriarty book. This one was called "What Alice Forgot". It starts off with Alice falling at the gym and hitting her head, whereupon she loses her memory of the past ten years.

At first it kind of freaked me out, in an existential way, but as the novel progressed I started to enjoy the concept. By the end I was transformed into a whole new person.

Kidding. Sort of. Not?

It came to me (via a free library!) on the heels of another book, a Canadian one, "Courage My Love" by Sarah Dearing, which reminded me (a teeny tiny bit) of an Anne Tyler book I read years ago where an unappreciated wife and mother leaves her life in one town to start a new life in another. Although it was an Anne Tyler novel so our protagonist returns to her old family, leaving her new (and better) one somewhat in the lurch (in my opinion).

I always hated that about Anne Tyler. I'd be getting such a vicarious thrill from the protagonist's new tidy life, chock full of appreciation, and then, boo, she goes back to the old messy one, chock full of petty grievances. For a while I even knew a real life wife and mother who left hearth and home to live in a bachelor apartment with no tv, no internet, just library books and a landline. Everybody in her old family was mad at her but she'd left because she had to and it was fascinating to me, her downsizing. Fast forward a couple of years and she was getting married again and moving into a big stupid house to be a wife and stepmother to a bunch of teenagers. I must have looked so disappointed at her news she actually apologized for it, albeit while gushing with happiness.

The Sarah Dearing novel is no Anne Tyler novel, of course. It's grittier, not always comprehensible to me, and takes place in Kensington Market, where I thought I wanted to live once upon a time until I started viewing its available apartments.

During one such viewing the landlord asked me as my head grazed the ceiling, "How tall your boyfriend?"

Ugh. I hated apartment hunting in Toronto in the 80s. It was always a nightmare, you know. Dodgy and over-priced with rent tribunals backed up to the eyeballs. We did win a case, though, against O'Shanter Developments. The judge even came to inspect the non-existent repairs cited in their reason for jacking our rents 10%. In the end I believe they got 2%. And we got a tenant association (until the feisty go-getting woman who organized it moved, and it fell apart, 'natch).

Dearing's novel has a rough (and, in my opinion, rushed) ending that didn't sit well with me in the same way Anne Tyler's return to home and hearth doesn't, either. Although the last Anne Tyler I read ended in divorce and death, so there's that new twist to her plots.

I guess even Anne got tired of wrapping her books up in a family-sized bow.

(The one time owner of "Courage My Love" had a crush on my older sister, if memory serves. I bought a few bits and pieces from there, none of which survived my wash and wear for long, being pretty much exclusively dryclean only.)

A Liane Moriarty novel is no Anne Tyler novel, either (and I've enjoyed them all) but she pulls off a trick in "What Alice Forgot" that got me thinking so much I believe I actually think differently now.

Spoiler Alert!!

Most of "What Alice Forgot" is Alice being puzzled by how much she and everybody around her have changed, and not for the better, in the ten years she can't remember happening. Her memory has left off at her being an easy-going and fun newlywed, happily looking forward to the birth of their first child with her loving, easy-going and fun husband.

Fast forward the ten years she's forgotten and she's a keyed-up and no-nonsense divorcing mother of three, whose relationships with others have changed, too, and not for the better.

Now, as an aside, until I read this book - I guess there's a reason Liane Moriarty is so popular (she's the author of Big Little Lies) - I'd really not appreciated how reading novels expands our horizons, changes us, sometimes in ways so profound it's like we emerge a different being.

I know! How daft is that? But it was like my brain lit up all of a sudden. All those characters, their lives, their stories, they're part of my life, my story. Finally, I get it. Never again will I think of reading as something to do only when everything else is done.

The remains of the day indeed.

But that's not what this entry is about because this entry is about letting go of the past and all those petty grievances with each other some of us cling to like grim death, how freeing it would be to just... forget about them, like they never happened, wipe the slate clean and go forth in the grace of innocence.

A couple of nights ago I attended a housing association meeting, our housing association having previously caused me a kidney stone, and it was fine. Better than fine. Reassuring. Maybe even pleasant. I realized the people who've been on the board since I walked out of an annual general meeting a few years ago were much better at this thankless volunteer job than I could ever hope to be. And in spite of my concern there'd be no one naive enough to take on the job after them, there were more people running for election than positions to fill.

A miracle. Quorum. Candidates. The newbies all Millennials as Gord intended. And I had nothing to do with any of it beyond encouraging my neighbour to run, which she did, ignoring all my "I'm running because" advice and getting herself elected anyway.

My Blond Companion and I walked back home from the meeting (we'd gone with our other neighbour who never walks when he can drive and has more gas powered tools for his postage stamp sized lawn than an 18-hole golf course but also knows how to do stuff we don't, so...) and while we walked I thought about "What Alice Forgot" and I could practically feel myself letting go a million and one memories that had been weighing me down for years.

It brought to mind a Macedonian of my acquaintance once upon a time consistently, and accidentally, referring to "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", a topic of conversation in our 80s office, as the incredible lightness of being. That's what I was enjoying feeling, the incredible lightness of being.

The next day I thought more about the whole forgetting thing and how freeing it would be to let it all go, memories of past relationships, as in memories of relationships that are part of the past, not the present, as well as memories of people as they were in the past, not the present, and relationships in the present that I want to put in the past.

Anybody reading the book would find themselves enjoying the life of Alice who'd forgotten the past (bearing in mind she's otherwise perfectly fine) and rooting for her to go on without it. Cripes, even Alice is torn about regaining her memory of it, so fraught does knowledge of it seem to have made everyone else's present.

Are those cosy memories of reading to three little kids tucked up in bed, playing store with buttons as money, and vowing to live, all of us together, forever and ever lifting me up, lightening my mood, freeing me to embrace how it is now? Or are they really just holding me down, dragging me back, stopping me from fully appreciating my life now, who I am now, how it is now.

Anyway, this is all coinciding with my increase in caloric intake, having finally made the connection between eating to soothe the soul (like reading fiction to expand it), weaning myself off the 10mgs of fluoxetine (Prozac) I've been taking the past several months, and getting geared up to go out and about in this world I suddenly appreciate being just another random cog in the wheel of.

And to prove it, I'm just going leave that preposition dangling, like an illiterate slattern, yes I am.😀

Canadian Politics 101

Believe it or not, I try not to get too political with this iteration of my blog, and I'll keep this short, but it strikes me as absurd that Conservatives are getting away with pretending Pierre Poilievre doesn't want a security clearance by claiming it's so he can talk freely about security issues he'd need a security clearance to know anything about.🙈🙉🙊

Never mind all the easily disproven other lies he's been telling for years now, how the hell is he supposed to be Prime Minister without a security clearance?💁

The fact is, he can't get one, knows he can't get one, and everyone else knows he can't get one.💩

So part one of my question is: Why can't Pierre Poilievre get a security clearance? And part two is: How does that fact (because it's a fact) not make him a national security risk?💣

Because the other glaring fact in all this is his public association with and public support from the far Right (we used to call them Neo-Nazis, but whatever) both foreign and domestic, along with the other glaring fact he's been criss-crossing the country raking in money, a lot of it dark, for years now, too.💀

And now we have poll after self-selecting poll predicting this dark money funded phoney bullshitter who can't get a security clearance will be Prime Minister in 2025, a scant ten years after Americans elected Putin, I mean, Trump President?🙅

Hello? Publicly funded Canadian security apparatus? Is anybody home?👿

Moving On - Not

The trial is finally underway for a couple of the Freedom Convoy ringleaders, but I'm mostly ignoring it. They're my kryptonite. Time to leave it to the judge.💪

I continue to ride my bike to the pond every day and have a swim. The other day I had it all to myself. Then a couple of people showed up and we had a pleasant chat about what a great season it's been. But just as I was leaving, two women showed up, one with what sounded like a Russian accent, although I'm not great with eastern European accents, talking at the other about her "practice", how she's helping people heal. The other woman I recognized as a regular, although we've never spoken. She keeps to herself.🙅

Anyway, the one with the accent was aggressively spewing forth all manner of anti-vaxxer garbage, right down to the vaccine infecting us with the virus, sterilizing her "clients", and so on and so forth and more of the same etc etc. The other woman was allowing herself to be splattered with it, even volunteering she'd been vaccinated because her doctor suggested she should due to her auto-immune condition, but then got the virus and was sick for a couple of weeks.😷

"See!" shouted the other woman. "The vaccine gave you the virus!"💩

I muttered "oh shut up" when I went by them, but it was involuntary, as I long ago made myself promise to never engage with an anti-vaxxer, having figured out in early days it's what they want, and there's zero percentage in it.🙈🙉🙊

But she just continued on with her proselytizing, anyway, likely not having even heard me, as she was in full spew forth mode by this point.💩

Then, as I was walking towards my bike, my eyes filled with tears. It's so frustrating, the irrationality of it all. No, more than frustrating, terrifying. So many adults, lots of them parents, some of them in positions of power over us, either fervently believing anti-social irrational garbage, or pretending to believe it. And they're everywhere. In our faces. Freedom Convoyers attacked us, in our streets, on our properties, ripping off our masks, tearing down our PRIDE flags, threatening our children. And the people we pay to defend us from attack - the Freedom Convoy may as well have invaded in tanks, ffs - either couldn't or wouldn't.👮

And that's when it hit me, why their unconscionable co-opting of the suffering of Jews during the Holocaust, wearing their yellow stars, claiming persecution and victimhood even while they invade our school board meetings and picket our schools and libel and slander anyone who stands up to them, flipping reality on its head while they attack us, turning truth into lies. It's projection. The fact is, people who believe anti-social irrational garbage cause Holocausts, they don't suffer them. Always in the back of my mind now is what it must've been like to be Jewish in Nazi Germany surrounded by anti-semitic white nationalist Christian mobs believing anti-social irrational garbage about them, how terrifying it must have been, no reasoning with the unreasonable, and nobody who can defending you from them.👮

At its core, anti-vaxism is anti-semitism, the same anti-semitism that's plagued our societies forever, the horrifying facts of it learned when we studied the Holocaust in elementary school. The Freedom Convoy travelled from Alberta, home of the Reform Party, our Bible Belt, and a known hotbed of anti-semitism to punish us, residents of a Liberal riding. Of course I'm having panic attacks. Anne Frank, a girl just like me once-upon-a-time, was murdered because adults in her society believed anti-social irrational garbage.💀

Putin and the Russians who support him have for years now been spewing forth anti-social irrational garbage about Ukrainians. And just like our anti-vaxxers and their Freedom Convoy, he believes, or pretends to believe, the opposite of the truth, telling Russians they're the persecuted ones, even while he deliberately murders Ukrainian children with his indiscriminate bombing of their homes.💀

It's all so crazy-making. Trump, Trump, Trump. Canadian Conservatives wanting Pierre Poilievre to be Prime Minister. Why? He publicly supported the Freedom Convoy while it attacked us, ffs, Canadians. He's a fellow traveller of Jordan Peterson, a certifiable nutcase and supporter of Putin's genocidal war on Ukraine. According to our pollsters, if a federal election were held today, Pierre Poilievre would be elected Prime Minister of Canada.💩

In the meantime, instead of being on Twitter, I go to the library and take out books, often based on their cover, and read them, the key for me being the deadline of a due date. Even though it's artificial I still respect it and return the books, read, within three weeks. I also pilfer from free libraries and buy new (almost always used but occasionally new) books to store in my glass doored bookcases. I do this because I know not to subject myself, not just to the back and forth between the sane and insane, but to the equivocators.🙈🙉🙊

There's no middle ground here. There's no truth to be found in the anti-vax "movement". It's the same anti-social irrational garbage that resulted in the Holocaust. I witnessed the Freedom Convoy. I know what I saw. It was a white power rally, Christian nationalists who may as well all have been waving swastikas and Confederate flags, and Pierre Poilievre and Andrew Scheer and Maxime Bernier and Candice Bergen and Randy Hillier and Hell's Angels and Diagolon Accelerationists and so on and so forth and more of the same etc etc were all there and cheering it on. And the publicly funded police we pay to protect us from violence, our most ballyhooed and well-funded of all first responders, were either unable or unwilling to do it - even when our healthcare workers and their patients, the sick and dying, were attacked.😡

I want people to like me, it's my achilles heel, and I don't always speak up when I should. So I'm doing this now, screaming into cyber space, while I wait and watch for the next panic attack I hope not to have.😱

Sorry, I didn't mean for this to be my post but here we are anyway. Again, I guess. Thanks for reading.💗