Every bit helps

Zohran Mamdani is putting his money where his mouth is. 

His latest announcement is about municipal grocery stores in NYC. His campaign against hunger is about helping the people in most need, which is turning him into a pariah with the right wing. 

A Muslim making them look bad is a slap in the face, which is why FOX News is working overtime to turn him into a villain and Stephen Miller must be grinding his teeth at night at the sheer chutzpah.

Mamdani's city-run grocery stores will have basic food staples set at prices 30% below the cost of what other grocery stores charge. This will help people who are struggling with feeding themselves every month. 

Maybe it's a small drop in the bucket compared of the problems of the world, but it is an example of how government can be charged with helping people improve their lives rather than tell them why it can't.

Protect this man.

Myth

 

Vulnerable

I've had to work on reducing my intensity. For years I developed a life script based on duty, performance and keeping things under control. 

Life doesn't take kindly to being controlled. 

Vulnerability wasn't really something I could indulge in because it meant dropping my guard and divulging who I was afraid to be. As a result I played the social game so perfectly that I fooled even myself. 

People of my generation and older didn't have much elbow room to maneuver. We were raised by parents who knew hardship and who adhered to social norms like they rules never to be broken. Many of those rules came with religious damnation attached to them. 

Performance for society is no longer in my playbook and vulnerability towards the right people is something I work on because it's good for all of us. 

A good friend of mine before she died of cancer at age 63 told me how she had benefitted from dropping her defenses and allowing people to help her. 

She embraced vulnerability completely and her message has stayed with me ever since. 

Today I take up much more space within my surroundings than ever both metaphorically and physically, except that "look at me the wrong way and I'll smack you" as a primary reflex isn't the correct way to be.

End goal

No matter the type of gender variance involved, the deeper questions need to be answered: Is this more about expression or identity? Is this something I should want to control and why? Is this something which has always been intrinsic to me since the beginning or am I just experimenting and having fun with it? 

Without answers to these and other similar questions we cannot build a road map towards action. We will not understand the end goal or whether one should even exist. 

Some people say "I just like to feel pretty sometimes" which is innocuous enough but then it could increasingly become life occupying. That statement can also be an underestimating of how deep our sentiments run. 

When we are proceeding in the right direction we should be increasing life balance and a sense of calm. That doesn't mean that achieving authenticity won't come with tempestuous times because divulging something can imply risk and risk is something older people are less willing to undertake. 

Our lives are our own and living them in fear of judgement isn't the right way. Secrecy also has impacts for the psyche that can be quite harmful which I myself experienced. 

So we ask the deeper questions to establish our motives and our end goals to better understand ourselves and what we must do (or not do) going forward. 

What we don't want to have is stagnation which means we've stopped growing and maturing. This can lead to frustration and resignation that our lives are stuck. 

Instead we work towards self-knowledge until some sort of balance point is reached.

Gender variance has always been a normal part of the human mosaic. The tricky part is knowing where we reside and what we do about it.

It means answering the question "who are you?"

Logjam

We have hit a perfect logjam which was a long time in coming and yet entirely foreseeable. 

Climate change, the loss of jobs to automation (AI), income inequality and the nature of human relationships and family structures have all met at a crisis point which threatens to derail many societies. 

The change in the old world order has scared the living daylights out of stupid conservatives who are in panic mode. Their antidote has been to bear down even more by refuting science and generally being all around bad eggs. 

The revenge of the white boomer has been to stall as much as possible what was inevitably coming. 

The diversification of the world has hit hard. Immigration patterns and changes in family dynamics has meant a loss of power for white men who thought they owned everything. With that order threatened it was time to elect more right leaning politicians who would restore social order. 

It didn't work. 

Trumpism has been an abject failure largely thanks to the deception of the working class and the flow of capital moving upwards towards the already wealthy. 

The experiments tried in Brazil and Hungary didn't work either because culture war smoke screens ultimately don't work when working people's lives grow progressively worse in the process. 

Thus we are facing a multi-faceted problem which needs addressing before the world can begin a new era of relative prosperity. 

Making villains out of visible minorities hasn't worked and people who can't afford basic necessities are tired of hearing the term "woke" from idiot online influencers being paid handsomely by billionaire capitalists.

Time has run out for people who thought this plan would work and the next few years will be very chaotic. 

Just ask the people living next door to data centers. But you'll need to speak loudly if you want them to hear you.

A shot in the veins

Yesterday I got caught up watching a few older episodes of the series "The Undateables". 

What stayed with me afterwards was the charming optimism and exuberance shown by people that much of society outright dismisses. 

Some are deeply autistic, have down syndrome, learning disabilities, genetic conditions which affect appearance, their height or some other physical feature which hampers their search for romantic companionship. 

Some have been disappointed before and some have never dated and yet there is sweetness there that melted away (at least temporarily) my negativity towards couple life. 

Their genuine hope springs eternal which I find very soothing. 

These people are devoid of masks and false bravado. They wear their heart on their sleeves and are giddy beyond belief when they get the call that a potential match has been found. 

Yes, their first dates can be awkward but then no more than anyone else's. The difference is that their efforts to make a genuine connection are not spoiled by learned techniques which would derail their earnestness. 

They simply want to be loved for who they are which they couldn't hide even if they tried to. They very rightfully are fully themselves at all times.

We should all be so lucky.

It's also a shot in the veins for someone who has let a little too much realism seep into their circulatory system.

Hello

Aileen was walking her beautiful husky in my direction as we crossed paths on the sidewalk. 

"Hello there and where are you going on this fine morning? To work?" 

"No I'm retired" I responded and I could see she was surprised since she had clearly underestimated my age which I then divulged.

"I need to get out of the house and get my energy out otherwise I go mental" and she laughs. 

Aileen is 67 and works at the daycare attached to the school directly in front of my house. We have never spoken before other than a brief good morning or a comment on the weather. 

This morning it's a solid 5 minute conversation as I head to the metro early as usual. I leave the house at 6 am because I love the fresh air and lack of extreme summer heat.

She gently scolds her 4 year old husky "don't get hair on her" and pulls him back which then prompts me to pet him to show I'm not quite so sensitive. 

Building a neighborhood life is an organic process. People see and recognize you and they say hello as you process where you know them from. You slowly but surely become a known commodity.

It's been one of the pleasant things about my transition.

"Normal"

What was considered "normal" within a culture has been historically determined based on its prevalence of occurrence. The smaller the percentage of something being observed, the more likely it was that it would be seen as an anomaly or as a disorder. 

Our knowledge of science wasn't very advanced at the time but today it is at its highest point in our history. Suddenly "normal" isn't such a simple thing to determine because nature has shown itself to largely operate on a series of continuums. 

For a human being, at each level of the chromosomes, gonads, endocrine system and the genitals we find possible variations which contradict the concocted idea of a perfect binary. 

Add to that the behavioral aspects of gender (which includes the inner workings of brain chemistry) and you have a slew of possible combinations for producing a human being who challenges what "normal" is. 

Historically we haven't used science as the ultimate barometer but instead cultural norms which simply decided what was acceptable. Depending on what culture you were born in would determine your social suitability and ability to lead a peaceful life. 

Regretably the western world's Judeo-Christian model was for thousands of years among the most rigid. 

It is now 2026 and when gender criticals say that "sex matters" it makes me chuckle a bit because they aren't basing themselves on our latest scientific reality. They are relying instead on their own determination of what should be permitted based on simplified criteria we espoused decades ago and beyond. 

In that case their 'sex matters" catch phrase loses its potency and becomes meaningless since science isn't on their side.

Instead, they want to go back to an outdated "normal" that has very little to do with the reality of our natural messiness as a species.

Cynic

You could say that a cynic is ostensibly a disappointed idealist.

They were optimistic starting out in life but were burned enough times such that their positivity melted into resignation that says "there is no point in getting one's hopes up" 

As we get older we have had our share of deception and it's very tempting to feel deep disappointment. I work on the balance point between my knowledge of human nature and the acknowledgement that fortunately it also produces the besr of us. 

In that sense I don't consider myself a cynic but instead a person who recognizes what's coming from a long distance by virtue of my life experience. 

I don't hold out false hope but neither do I dismiss things in advance before knowing what I am facing and give the benefit of the doubt first. 

Experience doesn't need to breed cynicism but that doesn't mean we don't burn off a naiveté which doesn't serve us well at all in this life.

You've met just one

I don't follow Ray Williams and his retransition but when a short pops up on my feed I click on it. 

His insistence that AGP (as part of the Blanchard taxonomy) is responsible for his transition path is interesting because instead of focusing primarily on personal wellness and wholeness it seems he is looking for solace by being categorized as a typology. 

I find it tips his hand by saying "I am doing something I cannot help" rather than stating "I am moving towards affirming my identity" which is very telling.

I don't criticize his decision and his motivation is his own only that he is just feeding into the hands of gender criticals who want sexual dysfunction to be a significant aspect of the "trans ideology". 

Imagine if we spent all our time looking at human dysfunction and variability as a whole (which is plentiful to a point I had dared not imagine when younger) so we could take aim at groupings of people for eradication. 

Human beings are highly complex and cannot be readily put into boxes. This variability ends up in every facet of what constitutes us which means when you meet a person you have met precisely one person and not a typology.

Normalcy

At the Whitehouse correspondent dinner, Trump spoke incoherently for over an hour berating people and generally being the humorless and loathsome moron we've come to expect. 

Everyone has had enough of him except the minority of Americans who are unreachable. We even have some of those here in Canada. 

This dinner is supposed to be a celebration of the 1st ammendment where in the past some good natured ribbing could be had at the president's expense.

However these are different times. 

The WSJ reporters win an award for exposing Trump ties to the child molester Epstein and, in a moment worthy a Twilight Zone episode, the winners shake the hand of the criminal president who must think by now he is untouchable for all the escaping from the law he has managed. 

Slurring his way incomprehensibly through speeches has become routine and Americans must be desensitized after 10 years of this. It's become strangely normal to have an incompetent fool at the helm. 

There was a time where country was placed over party and, despite the imperfection of political systems, people on the whole felt a sense of normalcy that no longer exists. 

Every previous president looks almost like a star by comparison. Yes, even Bedtime for Bonzo and "My Pet Goat" Dubbya.