The other cheek

The Christian message says to love your neighbor and even those who persecute you which is a tremendous challenge. 

Turning the other cheek is probably the hardest thing we are asked to bear. It's certainly a difficult one for me. 

As I got older my cynicism increased but so did my ability to see behind facades and into people's suffering. Life isn't easy and many take the road of aggression as a short cut to temporarily alleviate their pain. 

It doesn't work but for a time they can feel superior to someone else. 

If we recognize this we can be empathetic and not take glee in their suffering. 

Trump voters are finding this out the hard way and there's no point rubbing their faces in it for some may still draw a lesson from it.

Chess with an idiot

Trump is making sure that Canada moves permanently away from major trade deals with the US. This doesn't mean that all trade will stop between us only that our dependence on deals not worth the paper they're written on is over. 

We are moving towards Europe, Asia and to some degree China although the latter with some reservations. 

The latest Trump imposition of 50% tariffs on selected Canadian goods means Americans will pay even more for items they used to buy from us. Citizens already burdened with the highest inflation in the G7 will continue to shoulder higher costs. 

The justification for these tariffs changes day to day and is then posted on social media by the mad king. 

"America First" has turned into "America Alone". 

The problem with strongman tactics is that they can only work if there is a tactical strategy at play. Using bully tactics only meant to scare has resulted in Mark Carney's shrewdness and intelligence coming to the fore. 

In other words, Carney is playing chess with an idiot who doesn't know how to move the pieces but Carney plays nice and doesn't taunt because he knows better not to. 

The Republicans already face a daunting challenge in November and despite attempts at cheating likely will come out losers. They have played Russian roulette with the livelihoods of people who are being hurt by the geopolitical realities affecting all economies. 

They are of course also plagued by having tied their fortunes to a clown with a long history of failure and it will cost their party plus Americans as a whole very dearly. 

We in Canada have a highly motivated and educated population here that will not be bullied.

Arsenic

Sometimes I will pop in on toxic podcasts warning of the big bad transgender agenda.

They are all highly predictable and usually include a detransitioner who swears that they were guided by a bad gender therapist. It is the equivalent of saying I got a bad nose job (a much higher regret rate) and now no one else should either. Except that no one can force you to do anything.

In other words, it's all breathtakingly stupid and full of malice.

Blanchard is still making the rounds saying that the transgender legions refuse to acknowledge the reality of a term he invented. It would be comical if it weren't so badly intentioned but at least it allows them to high-five in their echo chamber.

I always go back to one point which is that their efforts are like putting drops of arsenic into a huge city's water supply. Their aim to do harm is insufficient to stem a tide that can't be stopped.

Do people sometimes make decisions in life they later regret? Every day and for the foreseeable future that we are on this planet. Besides, not all transgender people medically transition nor should they by default.

However not everyone is the same and lumping them all together for the sake of an agenda is beyond disingenuous and just plain evil.

If only

A FOX News reporter on perenially smug Jesse Waters' program, was featured visiting a homeless encampment in New York city for the purposes of attacking Zohran Mamdani. 

The propaganda network of America was seen belittling people on the presumption that they want to live in squalor. The reporter after touching the belongings of the people who lived there, proceeded to push a microphone into the faces of those sleeping on the pavement asking "why are you sleeping here?" 

The smugness was deliciously punch worthy. 

The exploding global crisis of inequality is getting ready for payback and blaming the victims as lazy is not going to fare well. 

The world is in crisis and the desperation is growing among people who used to be able to keep up. As the middle class dwindles down to a nice idea that once existed, we are ending up with a scenario that is untenable. 

The relative economic stability a large swath of North Americans experienced growing up is now increasingly reserved for people who have much more money than they know what to do with. 

At one point the reporter pushes his luck and asks a homeless man "Sir what do you do for a living?" 

The man responds sarcastically 

"I hold up news reporters at gun point" 

If only.

Calculated risk

Personal growth isn't measured by how safe we were in life but by how willing we were to step outside our comfort zone. 

This I have learned in spades and I am now finishing a cleanup stage that is resulting in what I feel is the best version of me yet. 

I am never going to be perfect but the little steps taken always in a forward direction have moved me closer than ever to the most authentic version of myself. 

If I hadn't taken calculated risks I wouldn't be where I am.

Into the void

There's an early episode of Futurama where professor Farnsworth invents a hat which gives a monkey superior intelligence including the ability to speak. It's one of the funniest of the series because of the dislike between Frye and the monkey leading to some hilarious exchanges. 

Larer, the monkey becomes disappointed with his situation. His parents are brought into a social function where they proceed to engage in mayhem. Some poop may have also been flung. 

Near the end of the episode the hat is damaged just enough to reduce the monkey's superior intelligence by half. He is happy beyond words and asks the professor not to repair it. 

He wants just enough intelligence but not more. 

The philosophy behind here is spot on. We can spend time analyzing everything to death but then not live. There is a balance to be had between instinct and introspective thought such that we can enjoy the best of both human capabilities. 

As a serial over-analyzer it was a bit of a touche reminder. 

At the end of the episode the monkey is asked by Farnsworth what he will do now. 

"I think I'll study business" he says gleefully. 

Farnsworth, shocked from disappointment, screams into the void. 

"Noooooo!"

Cut to black.

Asshat

Alberta is getting set to build a data center which will consume the equivalent power needed to service the entire city of Edmonton. 

The problem is that Alberta already pays the highest electricity utility rates in the country and in a largely unregulated province, premier Danielle Smith is telling her citizenry not to worry about increasing electricity bills. 

If you believe rates won't go up after the center's completion then I have swamp land to sell you. 

The Alberta government is our MAGA light province meaning that they have the same penchant for conservative hard-headedness and acting before properly thinking things through as Texas. Smith made the announcement wearing a cowboy hat perhaps thinking it would carry more gravitas. 

My province of Quebec has its power generation governed and operated by the province (hydro Quebec) and any data center built here will be paying the highest price per kwh of any facility to make sure that citizens are not burdened. 

As a general rule we aren't overly keen on having any built here.

When asked by the media if Alberta would ever push for any forms of renewable energy, Danielle Smith emphatically said no making sure that at some point in the future it will come back to haunt the province. 

Needless to say, climate change was duly unimpressed by Smith's certainty.

 

Not controversial

I watched part of a talk by Julia Serano which dealt with the accusation that transsexuals were deliberately reinforcing the gender binary. This is actually true but then it's inadvertent since transsexuals are all about identity. 

Once they transition their expression is as varied as anyone else's. In other words, some are ultra-feminine while others live perennially in a T-shirt and jeans and don't wear a stitch of makeup unless they absolutely have to. 

The fact that this should spark any controversy especially within the world of gender variance is surprising because if we understand the differences between identity and expression, the question should be immediately settled. 

Plenty of people who don't have core identity questioning can have a wide range of expression. However, settling a disconnect of core identity is something else entirely. 

I understand the general public being confused, but gender variant people should know better.

There are politics everywhere. It's unavoidable.

Outcome

When we look back on our lives we remember incidents where we might rethink the way we acted or failed to act. 

They can stay burned in the memory without knowledge of how a different action from us might have altered the outcome. 

This is the could've should've we humans love to indulge in our attempt to second guess. 

Two things come to mind here. One is that we are imperfect beings and the other is that the better outcome we imagine (had our input been different) might not have come to pass. 

We like to think we are to blame for much but sometimes forget to factor in that we had no ill will or malice when we reacted. 

We let our judgement of a hair trigger human response stew in the brain sometimes for years without a satisfactory conclusion. 

The English poet Alexander Pope coined the phrase "to err is human, to forgive divine" and I try to remember that when I fall into the trap of trying to go down conceptual rabbit holes.

Forgiving also includes ourselves.

Hoopla

Christopher Nolan's new film "The Odyssey" has got the MAGAverse's panties in a bunch. 

Not only did Nolan have the audacity to cast a black woman (Lupita Nyong'o) as Helen of Troy but he also put Eliott Page (a trans man) in his movie. This was of course a bridge too far for right wing pundits but also for the incels typing nasty comments from the safety of their basements. 

Blaire White, one of the right wing's token trans persons, was of course also amongst the horrified as she fumed through her video using her artificially injected lips.

Both the critics and audiences are giving the Nolan film rave reviews which is even more infuriating for people who love to stew in grievance as their primary pastime. 

The "woke agenda" backlash is what helped get Kankles McTaco tits elected (thank you Jennifer Welch!) except now the shine is big time off the apple. Things are going very badly for a regime that promised to get the country on track while simultaneously pissing in the corn flakes of the most disenfranchised minorities. 

That hasn't turned out too well.

People are getting tired of the whining and the moaning from people who for years now have made a living from spewing negativity. 

All this hoopla over a movie about an 8th century BC fictional epic by Homer prompts me to kindly invite the naysayers to go get a life.

Tonic

I do feel empathy for people standing at Jehovah's witnesses kiosks. They believe earnestly that they are doing the right thing. 

Religion for many works as a pacifier. It provides them community and a dogma regardless of its veracity. 

This is the way it has always been. 

The problem is that it also breeds a type of vulnerability which is ripe for abuse by the powerful. Prosperity gospels arise which contort an essential message of peace and love into something more earthly and even sinister. 

Cults are built where people will do anything to avoid thinking critically (assuming they are able). 

For centuries the powerful used faith as a way to keep the masses from seeing how much of their misery and enslavement were man-made. They were told to hope for salvation as tonic for what ailed them and to keep praying while they were being bamboozled. 

We haven't changed one bit.

There is only one truth, except that no one here is fully privy to it.