Painful

Watching Trump talk incoherently while playing an invisible accordion is like being forced to endure nails on a chalkboard and I give kudos to those reporters who interview him one on one as if he were a normal human being instead of a drooling imbecile. 

I would be tempted to say "what the flying f*ck are you rambling on about" and feel sick for needing to suppress that urge. 

It's not like they're not aware they are talking to a confused person, but the act must be maintained to give the illusion that he has the same gravitas as a normal president who can name world leaders and find their countries on maps. 

If you had told me in the 1990's that someone much more ridiculous than Dubbya would be president one day I would not believe you but then it happened and the world has had to endure it for almost a decade. Suddenly Bush reading "My Pet Goat" upside down as he is informed of the 9/11 attacks makes for just be a quaint gaffe by a better president; one who many Americans rightfully considered a war criminal for invading Iraq without just cause. 

Trump is the useful idiot for those with agendas that he champions. He keeps his base happy with his rude antics as the project 2025 authors and other schemers are busy re-imagining the kind of country they want; one which is free of undesirable minorities and where every classroom is obliged to post the 10 commandments on the wall. Never mind that the American Taliban don't follow them.

I try to imagine what a true Trump fan sees but I can't because that would involve me removing too many IQ points I still want to keep.

Imagine saying "best President ever" and actually meaning it.

Elbow grease

The secret to life is not to chase anything too intensely but to let the universe come to you which went against the way my generation was raised. As the eldest, I was also taught to be dutiful, reliable and to fulfill a role. 

Later one realizes much of that chasing is unnecessary but while I lived within that model, it allowed me to thrive and have a career which met the needs of my then spouse and children. 

I have no regrets and yet understand much better how lowering expectations and existing more in the moment is the right way to live. We remove social irrationality and move inwards to find our core and honor it as best we can with more trust than we dared have.

No one teaches you this until you learn it for yourself through trial and error. You come to the realization that everyone else is also lost and scrambling; many much more than you. 

Somehow in the end with a lot of elbow grease and little luck, you end up being who you should have been all along.

Two perspectives

Most transsexuals in the past would tell you they suffered from a medical condition which we now term dysphoria (gender identity disorder before that). This was something they had felt from earliest memory and needed tending to. 

We would call this viewpoint transmedicalism which is the concept that some intervention needs to happen to make the individual feel whole. 

Others might speak about a way of being which isn't constrained by societal ideas of a gender binary but involves less internal struggle of identity and thus they may reject transmedicalism as a concept. 

However, I think that both things can be true at once. 

Those whose dysphoria was affecting their quality of life to the point where they would rather not continue living would have seen their suffering more from a medical stance. Conversely those who found a formula which worked within the existing framework of their lives would be less prone to see their situation as a condition. 

Some of Harry Benjamin's patients did see their tranvestism as a curse but I suspect this was mostly due to shame and social stigma rather than a need to have medical interventions. However, some blurred the lines between transvestism and transsexualism and ended up in the middle of his 6 typology scale.

For a very long time I have been convinced that gender dysphoria has a solid aspect rooted in biological predisposition but can also be affected by social factors. It is how those factors combine and their tenacity that will yield a very different and unique result in each person.

You're on your own

As tornados, flash floods and record heat hit the US, the Trump regime is busy defunding organizations like FEMA so they can help the wealthy with tax cuts. If you are hit by a weather event and you don't have insurance, you're plum out of luck. 

The States who vote red are always typically the hardest hit and it breaks my heart when I see interviews with people with the earnest but misguided belief that their president genuinely wants to help them. 

They're been spoon fed by regime media FOX news for years now that climate change is a hoax and not to worry since it will all blow over. Perhaps literally.

Falling in line

Most Republicans fell in line like MAGA sheep and voted for the awful Trump budget bill which will strip health care from millions of Americans so that the richest Americans can get a tax cut. If it passes the senate things are going to get uglier as people begin to feel the consequences. 

Pure evil. 

This will eventually come back to haunt the GOP as working Americans already struggling to keep up with the cost of living are impacted. For some, the passing this bill will mean a death sentence if they are relying on Medicare to keep them alive. 

Add to that deporting grandmothers and sick kids and possibly ending birthright citizenship, and you can see how the wheels are rapidly falling off the bus. The cruelty is part of the plan. It's not a bug but a feature. 

Your nation is only as healthy as the most vulnerable members of society are treated which means that it is going to be increasingly on life support.

Meanwhile in Hungary thousands defied Orban and marched for pride which then grew into a general government protest...

I am me

This morning on the metro platform a young man about my son's age walked by wearing a long dress, a purse and pearl earrings. He was sporting a beard a little sparser than my son's and moved about unassuming in front of an older couple in their 70's who I noticed didn't even bother to bat an eyelash. 

This type of gender variance is more common than ever and very likely free of dysphoria. The person doesn't feel like they suffered a mistake at birth but simply may have no interest in respecting an enforced binary. 

If I were to query him he might tell me he's non binary or gender fluid. His body language? I don't care what you think of me which the other passengers seemed to understand very well.

It also doesn't hurt that it's 2025.

Optics over substance

"Professor Dave Explains" is a youtube channel dealing with debunking science deniers and charlatans. It's fascinating stuff and this installment dealt with the appearance of Eric Weinstein and theoretical physicist Sean Carroll on Piers Morgan's right wing agenda program.

Weinstein is a mathematician by education, is clearly very intelligent and yet is on the payroll of tech billionaire and JD Vance mentor Peter Thiel to act as a publicist for why academia is failing society. In other words, stop funding ivory tower "do nothings" which is very much a push from the political right.

Here Carroll sits patiently and humbly while Weinstein spins heads with advanced physics jargon which is supposed to substitute for his lack of credentials as a published scientist. When finally given his turn, Carroll undresses Weinstein with his expertise. 

This whole episode is a perfect illustration of the problem we face today with social media and its optics.

Weinstein is a favorite on Joe Rogan where he can cast spells but not so much on subject matter experts like Carroll.

Record high

Today my blog received over 3,600 views which is an all time high since I began writing back in 2012 with my old blog. 

I have no explanation for this surge but I suppose I will take it 

Far from a sure thing

When Ray Blanchard was first proposing his two type taxonomy of male to female transsexualism in the 1980's, the world was certainly a different place. For one thing, many gynephilics had married and were deep in hiding. They had suppressed their dysphoria and thought that marriage and children would cure them. I was among them. 

As a result some were presenting to clinics like the CAMH in midlife and in distress. The effects of testosterone had done their work and it was easier to typecast them as males suffering from a misdirected sex drive. 

Fast forward to today and the model looks atrocious. Not only are youth more open with their sexuality but all cases are presenting to clinicians far earlier than we did. The result is that transitions are far less easy to categorize into neat little packages within a theory where female gender dysphoria need not even be acknowledged.

If your science is good then social change won't impact it so significantly and while cross gender arousal is most certainly a thing, it is not so easily ascribed as a main motivator for gender transitions. Only the person themselves can understand their own experience and what means will make their dysphoria better. 

Some people have mistaken their sexual motivations as a sign that transition might be right only to discover that hormone treatments killed their desire for cross gender expression. Others have found relief in those treatments. 

Far right podcasts and channels still sell AGP as a sure thing because they need ammunition to discredit transgender people which is a shame when we should be only trying to offer helpful solutions to those who are searching for answers.

Company

When I was younger I could intellectually understand why older people once alone for a while were more hesitant to embark on a relationship but I didn't feel it viscerally as I do now. 

We get to a point where we know ourselves better than ever but also understand human nature. By now we may have already lived the ups and downs of couple life and understand the benefits as well as the risks. 

We get to like who we are and know what compromises we are willing to make which don't infringe on our core essence as individuals. In other words, what makes us tick isn't negotiable. 

If we have done our internal work honestly we recognize our strengths and weaknesses plus what we bring to the table for others. Also by now, the biochemical instinct which drives procreation is gone and we are more lucid about the reality of life as never before. 

It's not that we want to be alone, it's that we value our peace much more than the wrong type of company.

The coming reset

We currently live in a horrendous timeline. I love the catch phrase "it's the stupidest day until tomorrow" which is so fitting for what we are witnessing. 

The primary cause for what troubles the world is geopolitical instability driven by economic uncertainty. Less people control more wealth than ever before while the remaining  90% face increasing difficulties with basic needs which is unsustainable at this pace.

America is right now the most obvious example of what happens when you allow this excess to grow worse. As more people fall off the grid their frustration pits them against others facing the exact same struggles. At the same time, darker forces take advantage of their situation by unraveling the democratic institutions which used to keep the country more equitable with respect to trying to help the most people. 

All empires decline and they do so through implosion. They overreach and their own hubris does them in. Near the end chaos reigns as people there scramble for solutions to salvage the greatness they once had. 

People aren't smarter or stupider than they ever were but instability seeds panic which then impacts critical thinking, basic decency and empathy. You end up feeding a descending spiral which cannot be stopped. 

That decline must get to its inevitable bottom before you can rebuild something better. But it's not just the US as the whole world will need to be reset.

Descent continues

Hiding prejudice behind religious freedom. It's like saying "my faith permits me to devalue and discriminate against you".

This awful supreme court keeps taking the country backwards.

Next is birthright citizenship.. 

Live

I run into people every day on public transit who are cuckoo for cocoa puffs and no one pays them any mind which should give you confidence. 

Their secret? They are confidently crazy.

Live your life.

Fraud

Impostor syndrome is the number 1 enemy of transgender people and the older you currently are now the more it will plague you. Having grown up under a very rigid binary will only make things worse. 

I am not sure it ever goes away but it can be mitigated into becoming a low hum which sometimes rears its head. Under its spell your brain says "you are a fraud, you don't belong here and everyone can tell" 

Ask a gender therapist and they will tell you this is the most common issue with their patients; including those who fly perfectly well under the societal radar. The reason is that it doesn't matter how well you blend in but what your psychology tells you about yourself that governs everything about you. 

The good news is that everyone walks around with insecurities we can't see. They wear a mask that they operate with but once you get behind it there is an individual who is unsure about many things; unless of course they are a narcissist which most people aren't. 

One day I stopped trying to figure out what people were thinking about me as I was speaking to them and it made all the difference in the world. Their energy towards me improved greatly as did my sense of confidence and calm.

If all goes well one day we realize we aren't a phony but are simply uniquely ourselves.

Pleasant surprise

My traffic has increased quite a bit lately which surprises me since what I say here is direct and isn't always popular. Still, I am glad if some of you find it interesting. 

My aim has always been the same: get to the root and the bottom of issues and concepts. I am interested in what lies behind the mythology of any subject plus human behaviour in general.

Passport

My next passport is something I have put some thought into. I have reflected on the photo plus I have imagined how I will travel through customs. This is far less complicated than it used to be but nevertheless transgender people are right to be cautious and maybe justified in feeling a bit stressed. 

I won't be traveling to the US anytime soon but western Europe is not out of the realm of possibility and next year could be that opportunity. 

Gender variant and transgender people travel every day all over the world so I won't be breaking any barriers but it is best to stick to countries which have been designated as very accepting according to the international agencies monitoring such things. Thankfully, my natal country of Spain is a firm green in that respect. 

I have decided not to officially change my gender marker (although I reflected on this at length). Putting an X for gender is permitted in Canada but could be an issue at some port of entries. It would be great if gender was removed from passports altogether as I don't see its relevance when traveling. 

I already look androgynous even when I try to present as male (thank you genetics) so that won't be an issue for the picture.

The tip of an iceberg

Before you retire you live on action and highs and lows of work deliverables, family obligations plus weekends and vacations that are invariably far too short. These are major distractions which can help us to avoid facing unresolved issues. 

However once you get off the hamster wheel there is nowhere to run. I thought during pre-retirement that all the dust had settled but was completely wrong. The distractions had simply blocked the remaining internal work. 

Every person will be different but core issues cannot be outrun or mitigated half way.

Believe someone who tried their very best to do it.

Blinded

Hatred can blind our ability to think logically. 

JK Rowling recently made a statement regarding policing transgender women in bathrooms saying that decent men wouldn't go in there. Thus whoever did would be doing so for some devious purpose and women would simply monitor them and take pictures they could then put on the internet. 

You can see how this is both abysmally stupid and dangerous. Your lesbian aunt suddenly ends up on a most wanted page for failing an inspection. 

There is no pragmatic way and no good reason to police anyone using a public restroom and should there be a security issue someone would inform the authorities responsible for the facility. 

Not long ago a tall Walmart female employee was followed into the ladies room by a customer who said she shouldn't be there and the resulting brouhaha got the employee terminated. 

Stupidity is often the result of the abandonment of basic common sense by people motivated with some result they want to see happen. They become blinded by their own goal into lapses of critical thinking. It is why you will see otherwise rational people gratuitously bathe in idiocy. 

Rowling has a psychological block in her head because she has trauma involving men. This blockage has had her invent her own logic involving transgender people to the point of becoming obsession. She probably doesn't see what the rest of us do regarding her pathology which is a shame. 

She might sleep a whole lot better if she addressed it.

Nightingale

 

What makes us human

Today, particularly in the western world, the gap between men and women has never been narrower which is why the right wing is up in arms. 

If I just look at my last company, men and women work side by side with a livel of equality that didn't exist when I began my career. The push for diversity and inclusion is everywhere and the current pushback in the US won't stop it because it is too late for that. 

I have discovered for myself that living as a man or a woman on a daily basis is not that much different especially when one is retired. The same hopes, fears and aspirations exist for everyone which different clothes and a bit of makeup won't change. If anything you feel more cohesive in your skin because you have addressed a gap which existed within you. You now allow yourself behaviour and mannerisms which came natural to you but suppressed.

Nevertheless, what makes us human is universal and exists below our external shell.

Tide turn?

New York city voters have spoken and elected a democratic socialist in Zohran Mamdani. It is a victory against the democratic party establishment, moneyed interests and against Trumpism which he addressed in his victory speech. He will now be the democratic party candidate for mayor which no one expected could happen. 

Americans are going to backlash hugely against the GOP and the status quo and this is a sign of a possible tide turn in the country. 

Mamdani wants a fair and affordable city for all New Yorkers and let's wish him the best.

Fingers crossed.

Alone

 

Mikayla

Young Mikayla Raines took her own life the other day. She ran the YouTube channel Save a Fox with her husband who found her unresponsive and proceeded to perform CPR on her to no avail. 

She was on the autism spectrum, suffered from depression and borderline personality disorder. In spite of this, her videos show a vibrant soul with a zest for life and a deep love of animals which she regularly rescued from fur farms. 

She received countless toxic online messages despite having mostly exuberant support and it was that hatred which pushed her to suicide. 

We live in a difficult era where people's confidence and security have been deeply impacted. We need to be especially kind because of it.

It doesn't matter

There are two schools of thought. One says that to be transgender you need to experience an incongruence with birth sex (dysphoria) while others say you don't. 

It doesn't matter. 

The reason I think that this is not a very relevant discussion is that the focus is put on a definition which can and has shifted over the decades. Thus you can use any definition you like for yourself, but it won't tell you what to do about your situation. Expanding an umbrella with the addition of terms to describe forms of gender variance, cannot and should not impact how you live your life.

Yes, there will always be circumstantial barriers (access to care, societal prejudice, family issues, etc)  which are present in every era but they have nothing to do with the language or descriptions we use for people, some of whom, have a very big challenge on their hands in terms of how to proceed.

Lagging behind

Whatever significant changes happen in your life sees your psychology always lagging a bit behind. The reason for this is that the brain thrives on repetition and routine which when interrupted requires there be an adjustment period.

This is why the combination of retirement and living more authentically than ever before has taken a while to become a steady normal. It's a series of miniscule and constant adjustments taking place.

People say that transition (whatever form it takes for you) is a journey and not a destination and indeed they couldn't be more correct. It is an iterative process of more and more becoming yourself.

Everyone's life is like this; or at least should be if we are earnestly examining it as we go.

Fool me once

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 500 times after telling me exactly how you'll fool me, I must be MAGA.

Of course Iran retaliated. 

Hand in hand

The Trump administration has eliminated the suicide prevention hotline for transgender youth effectively making sure that their lives are made even more difficult than they currently are. 

Those unfortunate enough to not have support at home will have it removed by a regime that doesn't even acknowledge their existence. Half of US states have laws on the books which restrict or outright ban gender affirming care despite a century of experience by medical experts that gender dysphoria is very much a real thing and shouldn't be ignored. 

Youth don't have the perspective and maturity to deal with the rot in society without being transgender. Add their reality to the mix and it is made far worse. 

In this era where expertise in a field can be substituted by voodoo witchcraft, right wing fanatics running the government at both the federal and state level are going to make sure their opinions and religious beliefs govern. 

Unfortunately, cruelty and stupidity often go hand in hand and we are in no danger of running out of idiots.

Underestimated

Hitler's world war I fellow soldiers thought he was completely nuts and indeed he was. Little could they have imagined that one day he would reign over Germany. 

Many world leaders have ended up being psychopathic loons and their rise is underestimated because of it. Their drive comes from a deep seated need for adulation and vengeance against what they hate. 

Most people didn't give Trump a chance because besides being a blithering idiot he has a penchant for embarrassing himself. What they failed to realize is how much this appeals to a segment of the population who take this as endearing instead of unpresidential. 

It's also a bonus that he hates the same people that they do. He gives them permission.

Pockets of joy

When you come to the realization that humanity isn't fixable it can be a letdown. The optimistic ideals of youth that we would become increasingly enlightened fades with age and experience which is why our internal work becomes so important. 

People have behaved the same way for millenia and will continue to for as long as we exist on this earth. The same hopes, fears and aspirations drive them and within society the same bad faith actors and charlatans will continue to operate as they always have. They will prey on the most susceptible. 

We are fundamentally emotional sheep who seek comfort within the herd but every grouping has mavericks who want out to make their own path. That is universal and unchangeable unless they find a new operating system for humans. 

My job now is to make sense of my life within the disappointment by finding those little pockets of joy, goodness and intelligence which are everywhere if we just notice them.

Patience makes perfect

People who irritate us expose our blind spots and weaknesses ultimately doing us a favor. The fact that we are forced into management tactics to deal with them only helps improve us in the long run. 

The type of people who most unnerve me are erratic and overly emotional. They speak too loudly and lack decorum and take us back to childhood when we felt embarrassed by them. They upset the peace of mind we are trying to maintain and we become frustrated when they succeed. Our composure has fallen victim to their ways and we must yet again adjust our technique. 

My mother is one such character who lives on the edge of emotion and with age becomes even more unfiltered (if such a thing was possible). Perhaps it makes sense that our parents are most able to unsettle because we have been testing our mettle against them for our entire lives. 

Over time we become the parent and they the child and we must be more patient with them than we sometimes want to.

Congrats

Well we knew this was going to happen. A psychotic narcissistic imbecile has bombed Iran and things will only get worse from here. 

This is on the brain dead MAGA cult, congress, the senate and a radical supreme court who saw fit to give unchecked power to someone who has more trouble finding Iran on a map than a fifth grader.

The imbecile was posting like a 10 year old in all caps and has once again made the world a more dangerous place particularly for American citizens. If distracting from his horrendous domestic record was his plan I don't think it's going to work. Time to get this idiot out of office and preferably the entire administration.

Let's see how Nazi Barbie and FOX spin this.

Trump sold himself as someone who wanted out of foreign entanglements but nevertheless the cruelty cult will slurp up the Kool-aid with glee.

Human stupidity and gullibility are boundless and even then that 77 million voter figure is surreal.

Time to rise up.

Please explain

Scott Bessent stammers here like an idiot but Bernie has him dead to rights...

Say nothing

I don't acknowledge other transgender people. After having a light breakfast with my mother in my hood I went to the local thrift shop where I saw a young transgender woman in her early to mid-twenties. I don't stare but I stole a couple of glances in her direction marveling at her steady calm and comfortable sense of self. 

It's what happens when you are spared decades of repression. 

She had an assured hippie vibe about her and was as casual as you could be on this very hot day. Not a stitch of makeup that I could detect as she rubbed shoulders with other women her age combing the racks for buried treasure. 

I don't acknowledge but appreciate and am very glad for them at a safe distance.

Wounded child

YouTube is full of relationship and mental health advice. It is a bonanza of podcasts and specialty channels dealing with childhood trauma, anxiety, addictions, depression and every other condition one can think of. 

It's not a secret why these are popular because we are highly complex creatures susceptible to being bent out of shape and needing to heal. 

Everyone has a wounded child in them who surfaces every once in a while especially when conflict strikes. Our attachment style is even influenced by how we were parented and the messaging we swallowed whole. 

By this age I am very aware of all this and as I spoke to an ex-colleague over coffee lately about his new relationship with a newly divorced woman with two small children it made little alarm bells go off. Suddenly I had visions of arguments over children with an ex-husband who doesn't appreciate his meddling. His new wife's wounded child then emerges in the melee and he takes the shrapnel from both sides. 

Who said life was easy.

Q&A

I was watching a Q&A where someone brought up a question regarding the connection, if any, between what they thought was a fetish and identity. They wanted to know whether something which started off as a kink could develop into a transgender identity. The answer from the video host was that it could but I have my own thoughts. 

Many if not most transgender people present to clinicians after knowing for a long time that something was amiss with their identity often before hitting puberty although not everyone discovers it early. 

However there is a subset of people who have an interest in cross gender expression and its repetition brings them comfort with the right chemical hit to the brain pleasure center such that they begin to question core gender identity. 

Of course no one can tell you who you are but if there isn't any significant discomfort with living as a male most of the time then nothing needs to happen other than to find a personal formula which works for them. 

Some people keep asking whether they are transgender thinking that it offers some magical recipe when it doesn't. It certainly does not tell you whether you should take hormones or transition. 

It's a term not a road map for what to do and never was especially when we know that dysphoria, if it exists in a person, tends to be a graded phenomenon.

Day by day

It gets worse day by day and Obama says the country is dangerously close to autocracy.

It's already there my friend...

Lingering looks

People will look at you for all sorts of reasons. It's curiosity mostly or sometimes boredom of staring into space and its our reaction which matters most. 

I like to play a game where when I notice someone lingering on me I make sure they know their insignificance. By now I can read faces very well and can tell when it is well intentioned and when it's creepy. 

Years ago I would always assume the worse case scenario until the lady asked me how tall I was or how she liked my top. The very rare time it's been whether I was a transsexual or transgender. It doesn't matter once you realize their opinion is irrelevant all the more when you know that even cisgender people get misgendered and usually laugh it off becsuse it's not a soul crushing thing to have happen.

I will let you know just how insignificant your opinion is with my expression and body language but for you lovely people I have all the time in the world.

Know thyself.

One person

In retrospect that retirement party feels almost surreal. Even five years ago I wouldn't have dared to come out in front of so many who knew me years ago. In front of strangers would have been completely different and I have plenty of those experiences behind me. 

People of my generation had to develop many dysphoria coping mechanisms and for me outings needed to suffice because there were no other options. So I settled for increasing the bravery and the frequency particularly once my marriage was over. 

It's like the training wheels come off and you test what being yourself really means which wasn't obvious before. Was the person I had been brought up to be the real me and Joanna the mask or vice versa? 

That can take a very long time to answer and it's almost a saving grace to have obstacles slowing you down. 

In the end for me authenticity meant transparency which was the biggest hurdle to overcome. Living any kind of  secret life was doing a disservice to my psyche and my many coming out discussions only bolstered the idea that I was absolutely right to trust. 

For I am one person and not two.

Options

Might some binary transsexuals have taken a different route to deal with their dysphoria if their decision were to be faced in today's environment? 

I know that androphilic (man loving) transsexuals with high intensity dysphoria tended to be ideal candidates for medical transition but how about those more on the fence living in a very binary 1950's or 60's. Harry Benjamin developed his scale during a time where gender variance was strongly frowned upon. It is almost certain that were he alive today, his 6 typology measuring stick would look much different and would include genetic females to boot.

When you loosen the definition of man and woman you suddenly open up the terrain for a wider array of options. It's not to say that all of these older transsexual patients would have chosen differently only that perhaps some of them might have.

Harry Benjamin was correct to think in terms of a graded scale because today's society proves it. We see it every day.

The same

Donald Trump personifies stupidity and now the consequences of electing him twice are more dire than ever. 

As war looms between Israel and Iran, he jokes about whether he will enter the conflict and help destroy the nuclear facilities of a sovereign nation that is easy to vilify. It's of course a distraction from his abysmal performance at home and red meat to an ill-informed base which grows increasingly restless as his unrealistic election promises remain unfilulfilled. 

If the US enters yet another Middle East conflict they are toast. The bill trying to make its way through the senate would add 3.4 trillion to the national debt and a war would only make things worse. Think about Iraq and Afghanistan and how long it took to extricate the US military presence from those nations. The cost in terms of lives and money was extremely high. 

As the situation in Gaza continues to fester, both Trump and Netenyahu need rallying support from people who feed off jingoistic instinct to feed national pride. 

When I was young I didn't comprehend human machinations the way I do now; how the calculating manipulate the hapless masses through propaganda until disaster strikes and the damage collapses nations. When the Spanish and Roman empires collapsed both suffered overreach before they imploded and the same is happening here.

It's always the same because people are the same.

Lesson learned

I did the right thing by going. 

People were extremely welcoming and some even shared their own personal struggles when I explained my battle with dysphoria. 

It couldn't have gone better and there were a few anecdotes which made me laugh as well. 

One of the brothers (my friend is the oldest of 10) thought I was one of my sisters and did a huge double take after finding out who I was. He had asked my friend right in front of me if I was coming and didn't realize I was standing right in front of him. I explained all later and being a doctor I wasn't the first transgender person to cross his path. 

The wife of the youngest sibling is 6'2" and absolutely lovely. She used to play basketball and asked me where I bought my shoes admitting she wears a woman's 13 and sometimes 14. So I wasn't the tallest one there. She also didn't realize I was transgender. 

People were kind, sympathetic and exceeded my expectations proving once again how we can be our own worst enemies when we cave into fear. Some of their own children are also LGBTQ and so no one batted an eyelash and simply rolled with the punches. 

I hadn't seen my friend's siblings for 15 years (since their mother's funeral) and it was like we had seen each other recently. Everyone was so glad that I was in a much calmer and better place. 

Lesson learned.

"Trust your feelings Luke"

I am a renowned overthinker and cannot count how many times I have been reminded of it. I dissect and pull things apart to get to the bottom of concepts and ideas but then have trouble with just letting go. 

I don't know if this is engrained genetically or developed over time. My father no doubt had a hand in this plus my engineering training. 

However once you have burrowed to your heart's content and have hit bedrock its time to stop and just feel. Your instinct and trust in the self must take over with a bit of blind faith. 

Tonight I have the retirement party of my very accepting best friend of 40 years which will be attended by some of his siblings plus others I don't know. I am going for broke and trusting my gut because it is time to do so. None of these people have ever met Joanna. 

The time for analysis is over and it will go only as well or as badly as I desire to.

Bombs away.

He's absolutely right

 

Game face

For anyone who is living openly and doesn't quite fall under the radar, a game face is pretty much mandatory. 

I would describe it as a calm and comfortable but friendly nonchalance where you just focus on the current moment and where your head is at. When I walk into a metro car at rush hour at 6'1" I am hard to miss and yet people will glance up at me and go right back to the phones, books or staring into space. They have made the judgement that I own my own immediate surroundings. I also know and take solace in the fact that I am not the tallest woman in Montréal by any means. I know because I run into them sometimes.

Today anyone can be confused for being transgender and some women in the US have been attacked in bathrooms for not passing femininity inspection. But we can't forever live in fear of that occurring and must claim our authenticity. 

My game face says I will not put up with your nonsense and infringement on my life. On the other hand I get lots of friendly smiles from people who feed off my energy. 

If you don't have a game face, get one.

Please:)

The insanity of this moment

 

Boundary line

There can be a problematic boundary line between being a masculine woman or feminine man and being transgender. The issue is identifying it in the self and deciding what to do or not. 

Back when the binary was very rigid, gender variant people couldn't explore very much but once we loosened the rules more people stretched the limits of what it means to be a man or a woman. 

However this introduced a new element where many began to very seriously question what their penchant for variance meant and where it's battery limit lay. Some began to transition and succeeded while for others it wasn't the answer at all.

For me the core question comes down to comfort with one's birth sex and whether the person can navigate life within that framework. In a world that has the most malleable view of gender ever I believe this is more than possible. 

Many of us have known people who pushed the envelope of acceptability openly within society and the reception wasn't always kind. However they seemed to have enough self-esteem and courage to suffer the slings and arrows of people who love to mock. It also appears they were comfortable enough with birth sex to continue life that way. 

Today we have expanded a transgender umbrella which doesn't offer easy prescriptive solutions and people with varying degrees of dysphoria (or none at all) are wondering what they are supposed to do once they realize they are 'trans" (whatever their understanding of that is).

Sometimes there isn't that much to do at all besides accept themselves. But ultimately only they can know.

Dreams

For the longest time my psychology was so blocked and non-accepting of my being transgender, that I was never female in my dreams. 

Never. 

This eventually changed after many years and I was reminded of this just last night when I was dreaming about working again in an office with young employees. Clearly there was nothing special about the dream except for the fact that in it I was female. 

This happened slowly over time as I unblocked my thinking on who I am and became a sign that I was progressing into my authenticity.

It turns out that there are different stages of acceptance and often when you think you're done, you're not.

Sometimes much more than you thought possible is still to come.

Uneasy

Right now society feels like an untethered boat drifting along in te waves. People feel less sense of purpose because everything is in flux and the order we used to count on is no longer there. 

Everything has been put into a question and is being re-examined. The nature of work and relationships were put under the microscope during COVID and we have yet to understand how they will be brought into some new and predictable formula we can count on. 

Everyone I talk to feels the same in that we are in a stasis mode with no clear resolution until a new world order is established which humans can depend on for stability.

The world is the reverse of when I was the age of my children. We had economic certainty and a way forward except that people outside the social norms felt trapped and were largely repressed or in hiding. Today the human mosaic has been revealed to us openly but it needs a safe and stable environment which can provide for everyone. 

You can tell that eventually the tumblers will fall into place but it will take time. The end of these historical cycles are often messy and regretably they tend to end with much tumult.

Wedding

My brother understood why I couldn't go to his eldest daughter's wedding as my sister in law's family are the type of people who would not understand why I am suddenly wearing women's clothing and might call for an exorcism. He knew this had nothing to do with him or his daughter but I said so clearly in advance and his response did not disappoint. 

He is a very good person. 

My sister in law's eldest brother is a particularly objectionable sort whose job as a teacher was threatened when his caustic online posting was discovered by his students (mirroring Jordan Peterson). I cannot tolerate him and these days my loose tongue and razor thin patience for idiots could possibly get the best of me. 

I work on calming the volcano. 

Interestingly the daughter of the bride is now 17 (she had the baby in high school) attended the wedding in a suit and tie and uses they/them pronouns. My sister-in-law cannot make sense of this because, despite not being a bad person, she is as thick as a post. Her gay son, who is close to my own son, remains an enigma for a limited thinker with a black and white oriented brain. For her he might still be able to find repentance one day provided he prays hard enough.

My daughter attended with Ben and had a great time but everyone on my side of the family understood why I wasn't there. 

This is about respecting one's integrity and preserving peace of mind. If you cave in to people you feel bad about your lack of courage and if you come as you please your patience for intolerant idiots is tested. In other words, It’s lose-lose no matter what and others I checked with agreed. 

David's wedding (for my sister's eldest) in August will be a different story.

                     A maybe for August 

No one cares about you

This sounds like a very depressing title but I promise it's not. 

Most people live inside their own heads and are preoccupied with their personal affairs; a reality which, after you retire, becomes doubly evident. Those you thought might have more free time for you don't which makes perfect sense as they are still very much running inside their own personal mazes. 

This simple realization should liberate us to focus more on what we need and forget what people think. For they are not spending much time at all thinking about us. For strangers we barely even exist.

This is a universal theme of humanity and with this knowledge you can become more free than you ever imagined. You were educated from birth to worry about what others think and most of us fell into the same trap. We are busy inside our heads fussing about our acceptability to society instead of focusing on our own internal needs. 

Our sense of self should improve and our authenticity will blossom because instead of thinking about how we are being perceived we are able to be present for others more than ever before.

Don't waste your energy. Just be real.

Brave

Sara Bareilles has a highly infectious song called "Brave" which was a huge breakout hit for her. Recently it ended up on my feed and listened to the lyrics which were about finding your courage in a world of conformity. 

I thought about bravery and how sometimes it isn't borne out of singular defiance but out of a fatigue of a status quo we can no longer stomach. We are disappointed with ourselves and must break out of a situation which no longer works and perhaps never did. 

Many of us live that kind of experience where a tiny spark of courage ignites a bigger fire which is then thankfully very difficult to put out.

It can also spread.

City Song

 

I will remember her

I'm a little chatterbox these days and so it was nice to find someone who is like minded in the young woman I met this morning in old Montreal.

She was from India and now living in Singapore. Her sister lives here and she told me how lucky I was to live in a beautiful city. 

She is a 33 year old systems engineer, well-spoken and sparkly eyed and we talked about how our technical professions have changed and how life has as well. She has only recently found a partner who she hopes she can make a life with. 

I cannot overstate how much I love these impromptu exchanges with souls who are open and kind. 

"I will remember you Joanna" she says warmly as we part company. 

I will remember her as well.

Having it all

Having it all in life is impossible and so a series of trade-offs are constantly being made with the self. To complicate matters, what we think we want versus what we truly need are contained within the same bucket and we must parse through it to weed out what is truly essential and beneficial to our core. 

Regretably many of the lessons we need to learn are absorbed after much trial and error in life which can leave us bitter if we aren't careful. 

Having much reflected on this issue I have come to some conclusions. 

Firstly our self-respect and authenticity must be maximized such that we don't feel we are losing sight of who we are. Secondly we need to ignore public opinion as much as possible to arrive at the aforementioned things. Unfortunately it can sometimes take a lifetime to achieve these goals. 

The human animal only craves two things: to love and to be loved but we often try to achieve these desires through means that effectively block them. Our childhoods can be marred with issues that remain unresolved and cloud our vision thus diluting the purity of these noble goals. 

Getting to the core of the self involves constant examination and reseting of goals and priorities without losing sight of what is truly important.

In memoriam

 

Based

This 18 year old woman is pissed and I do so admire her attitude and smarts. Let's have more of this!

No kings!

Escalation

The direct result of Trumpism and its violent and divisive rhetoric. For fuck's sake, enough!...

Jung was right

Carl Jung wrote that certain people are gifted to us temporarily and we cannot hold on to them. We may be drawn to them like a moth to a flame and then become despondent when they prove to be elusive and leave our lives. 

Jung says they were meant to teach us something about ourselves and weren't destined to stay in our lives. They were there to help us find personal insight.

He was absolutely right and I can arrest to this. People come and go and help us open doors of self-understanding.

The script

As we get older we realize that our lives should have been less scripted. We aimed for goals which were either not attained or were but perhaps disappointed. What should have happened was an openness of spirit which involved less expectation as to how our lives should go in favor of a little more trust in the sometimes benign chaos of the universe.

Here I exclude our need for a job or career which keeps a roof over our head and food on the table. 

As the eldest in a large family there was lots of expectation and I learned to think that my life was going to go in a certain direction; a premise which turned out to be partly incorrect. Yes I had a long and successful career in my profession but many other things came as surprises which derailed because they perturbed my sense of order.

Now I know better of course and leave the expectations at home.

The subtlety in letting life surprise and allow us to roll with the punches turns out to be the right way.

A solution

Some of you may relate to what I am going to say here and I have addressed this before many times in the past. 

I knew since very young that there was something up with my gender. What that meant was eventually  discovering that I wasn't what society then described as a "crossdresser" but my dysphoria seemed to be manageable enough to be able to avoid medical transition. 

Thus for a long while I ended up labeling myself a Benjamin scale type IV transsexual (ie. someone who ponders on but hesitates regarding transition). Plus my life was so busy with career and raising children that I could plunge into distraction and avoid facing the issue as much as possible. 

Falling into a difficult spot on the spectrum is not easy especially when one grows up under a very strict binary. I sometimes think how my life might have been different were I the age of my children today. 

For example I see gender variance expressed openly everywhere and yesterday I was behind someone I was sure was a young female. As they turned I then discover they had five o'clock shadow they weren't the least bit perturbed about. In every other way including the long hair and the purse they looked perfectly female. 

The trick for an older person is to reconcile with their upbringing and their programmed ideas about gender and make sense of a new path which for me needed to include transparency and authenticity because hiding felt dishonest and devoid of self-respect. 

Feeling some discomfort with the way forward is going to be expected because being part of a tiny and unwelcome part of humanity is not for the faint of heart. But ultimately 2 key questions needed addressing 

Who are you?

What do you need to do to respect that identity? 

Here is where neuroplasticity came in towards formulating a vision for my life that was finally cast into place during the pandemic and before retirement which became a make or break moment for me. 

My gender dysphoria was serious business and could not be ignored but my response to it needed to be measured and take account of my history and how to close the loop with my past including friendships.

Young people have more options today than we did but they don't possess the maturity and life experience that I have and so there is no perfect scenario in this life which is why it took so long given there were so many aspects to be weighed. 

I will be tweaking this formula until the day I die. It's called life.

Why the educated can follow dumb ideas

I am very familiar with this phenomenon in discussions with some individuals. When people's beliefs are threatened, they will rationalize away inconvenient facts...

Don't complain

I don't complain. 

Today I came up out of the metro and a man in his early 50's who had lost both his legs stopped me and wanted to chat. I didn't have change but he was just happy to have someone listen. 

Later as I waited for the bus, a woman with a cane started chatting with me and gave some some of her health challenges. She was very sweet and very philosophical about it all. 

I don't complain about anything..

Icky

Icky's latest video ended up on my feed and it was about her brainworms; or at least what she calls her lack of confidence and body dysmorphia. 

She looks terrific and transitioned at age 23. I will occasionally glance at her content to see how a GenZ navigates being transgender in this era. It's gratifying to see that people remain the same and that the insecurities which plague us in youth are universal. 

Icky doesn't see what others see. Instead she sees broad shoulders and hears a voice that isn't to her liking. Anyone else would view this as nitpicking and yet we are our own worse critics. Her fans give her glowing praise but it doesn't matter what they think and instead what we do about ourselves.

If you aren't relieved by her self-appraisal you should be because it's proof that we have myopia regarding ourselves and we should just stop it and simply live. 

I wouldn't want to go back to my 20's if for no other reason that there is so much focus on what a fickle public thinks about us which is completely irrelevant.

But we need to live a little to learn that lesson; one which over time she undoubtedly will and her sense of self will only grow.

Surrender

Lawrence O'Donnell consistently calls Trump the stupidest president ever because he just keeps proving it day after day....

June 14th

This Saturday will be very busy. A huge US nation wide protest for "No Kings" day, a papal mass in Chicago and a military North Korea style parade for a draft dodger who insults veterans. 

It's wonderful that the focus is taken off Trump's birthday with the pope being no fool in making a counter statement against the cruelty and stupidity of the regime. The boos for the dear leader at the Kennedy center were a reminder that his approval rating has fallen off a cliff save for the most unreachable. 

The LA protests which are being touted on state regime media FOX as the entire city falling apart, are occupying 1% of the real estate of the county. But don't try to convince the cult who will swallow every Trump pronouncement hook, line and sinker. 

The beginning of the end is here and, as Rand Paul finally realizes the pettiness involved after not being invited to the White House picnic, maybe other GOP senators and members of congress will grow temporary spines to help derail the worst administration in the history of the country.

A visit with Sonia

This morning I was invited for a 7:30 light breakfast at the residence of Sonia and her partner Rene who are both in their early to mid 70's.  She and I met by happenstance at the Jean Talon market where he hit off and now meet once a week there for coffee. 

The reason for the early visit was because of the current transit strike which obliges we work around it.

Sonia knows nothing of my history which I don't feel obliged to share because it's not immediately relevant to our friendship. Still, meeting her husband this morning at their place reminded me of how stressful meeting new people can sometimes be for transgender folks. We can be tempted to brace for impact when it is not warranted.

The public will take you at face value with the caveat being that you know who you are. In other words, if you doubt it so will they and it will impact your mannerisms, your speech and your facial expressions which will betray something is off. I know because I lived it for a very long time.

People can tell.

It was a perfectly lovely visit with two very nice people and I was as relaxed as I could be because I was just being myself.

The moral of the story is always the same and we should just relax into authenticity and let the universe take care of the rest.

Trust me on this :)

Don't lie to me

Someone made one of those "America's Got Talent" highlight videos using some AI content which even said so when you clicked on it as YouTube obliges it. But even then it was obvious that the young man about to sing was AI generated. What wasn't was the footage of Simon Cowell and others reacting to what would have been some other act. 

Despite this the comment section was full of genuine praise for this brave young man who had lost his entire family and now presented himself on the show to sing in their honor. 

It would have been heartwarming had it been true and only a handful of comments bemoaned the fact that so many had been duped by the technology. 

This is where we are today in the era of echo chambers and now manipulation of images and voices which will even more test our ability to think critically. An ability which was already lacking to begin with.

Lighting a match

The fallout of Trumpism will include the permanent loss of friendships and family connections because in the aftermath people will realize that many moral compasses are broken and this discovery cannot be lived with. 

After the fall of WWII Germany sociologists and psychologists sought answers as to how the population could be so easily led to being informants and succumb to cruelty and the answers will be exactly the same this time around. 

The combination of stupidity, self-centeredness, callousness and obliviousness are all part of the human condition for which there is no simple cure. 

The most mportant issue is of course the lack of fairness which is motivating much of the anger among non-Trumpers. Thus it is now Chicago and New York which are experiencing chaos which will move on to other major centers as the people revolt and demonstrate.

It's what happens when you light a match on a powder keg.

Eventually the entire odious and cruel administration will unravel itself because people will not stand for this.

What does it mean?

I continue to see a lot of commentary about the presence of cross gender arousal and what it means and the answer is a highly personal one. It's mere presence could be part of a much broader picture or conversely part of a guilty pleasure. 

Thus to look to someone else's experience would be a mistake. 

We are sexual beings and that reality forms part of a very complex portrait of what it means to be human. The fact that gender dysphoria can be tinged with longing that ends up with sexual overtones is hardly surprising. 

Our job is to determine what lies behind our cross gender experience. 

Some people are given cross sex hormones which then kills all desire for cross gender expression. It shows them that their identity wasn't tied to their proclivities as much as they may have thought. For others it confirms something they already knew deep down regarding their feelings and possible medical transition desires. 

Each situation is different which is why exploring beyond isn't just a whim but an absolute must if we want answers.

Good to yourself

I'm going to say that most people aren't sufficiently good to themselves. We are wired to please (some of us more than others) and we will deny personal needs to our own detriment. 

This lesson hits hardest once we retire and the world slows down for us just enough that we can reflect on how our formula wasn't working. The people who used to depend on our efforts are less to be found and the realization becomes more stark. 

It isn't just transgender people (although they tend to be chronic pleasers) but anyone who was taught that duty and responsibility came before the self. This is a great quality to have and yet it can tip in the direction of putting yourself last. 

I don't put myself last any longer and it has bolstered my sense of self. The hard part became figuring out where the needs of others bled into a denial of self which threatened both my authenticity and my self-respect. 

Love of self isn't narcissistic although for some people it can be. It should be about protecting a spirit that dwells within us which then breeds a joy we can extend to others.

Not taking the bait

Andy Bashear doesn't take the culture war framing used to distract voters...

Leeches

Trust in expertise has collapsed and we will soon return to using leeches for curing ailments. This is living proof that humans don't get any smarter. 

All of this happened slowly and insidiously greatly expanding with the proliferation of social media where skeptics found each other. Suddenly those with tin foil hats had kindred spirits and could regale in flat earth theories and why horse paste was good for curing COVID. 

During the pandemic the channels of simpleton Joe Rogan and histrionic shaman Russell Brand took off because they were selling what people wanted to hear. Dumbed down messaging they could understand was welcome which exacted revenge on the intelligentsia they deemed part of the oppressing class.

Studies have shown that many people crave authoritarian rule and want strong leaders to tell them what to do. The strict parenting they received appeals to them as does the messaging that people who are different are to be mistrusted and even hated. 

It is the 21st century and yet we are pedaling backwards into chicken pox epidemics driven by people who think science is a hoax but are fine with unsubstantiated conspiracy. 

It's like we are actively pleading to have bad things happen.

Not a drill

This is not a drill. 

Authoritarianism has a solid foothold in the US. The classic playbook has been applied where you create a bad situation which generates protest and you react with an extreme response to deter and frighten. LA is now that boiling point. 

It's been done before and the situation  will continue to degrade until perhaps martial law is enacted and you end up with a fascist regime. 

Walking this back is going to be extremely difficult because the dark forces that wrote and promoted project 2025 are not going to give up without a fight. The "cruelty is the point" crowd has officially taken over and they are dogmatic right wingers committed to their cause of taking America backwards to some utopia of their own imagination; a sort of Christian nationalist mecca modeled on a past where minorities knew their place.

I try to get past the stupidity but it's impossible because this world is replete with idiots. 77 million people got this very wrong and it should have been obvious that you don't re-elect a despicable criminal into the highest office in the land.

As empires crumble fingers are invariably pointed internally because you need scapegoats. You need the Woke, LGBTQ people, college professors or immigrants to blame for a malaise that was already well in place. They always do it to themselves.

An unjust society cannot continue in health until the underlying cancer is addressed; one which took 40 years to metastasize. It will involve major surgery to cure it in the form of major societal overhaul but until then many innocent people will suffer.

Same old song and now it's up to the people like it always is.

John redecorates

The original and one and only...

Authenticity is transparency

Over the years I came to the conclusion that authenticity is synonymous with transparency. In other words, who you are should be a known commodity. This can be scary but the alternative is to damage your psychology through the paralysis of fear. 

Thus an identity is established through ultimately claiming your space with unapologetic confidence. You tell people who you are and they must accept it because this is something so fundamental to your nature that it cannot be changed. 

This is where your own self-examination comes and you decide whether you have lived with suppressed identity issues as opposed to someone who enjoys playing with gender (which there is of course nothing wrong with). 

Here the mind can trick us because we have invested so much time developing a personal narrative which may not be correct. We either make much more of the situation or conversely underplay it and suffer in silence. The latter is the more harmful of the two. 

It has taken me many years to arrive at an understanding of my identity because my life started out with so many variables which were antagonistic to who I was. The eldest in a very religious household born during an era where gender rules were strictly enforced. 

Your situation may be different but the core question remains always the same as does the work to answer it. 

Who are you?

Jordan vs Kermit

Too delicious....;)

Run

It is when we stop running and being distracted that facing reality becomes inescapable. Whatever has been left undealt with in life begs to be examined and the circle closed. 

We are all disysfunctional creatures because we are human and were raised by imperfect people within the framework of an irrational world. Our task over our lifetime seems to be to make sense of it and find perspective. 

In retirement I am more aware of how people are constantly running and distracting themselves. It looks more odd to me than ever and remember my own participation with a detachment that is fortified with the passage of time. 

As I become older I care less about feeding the world what it wants and focus on what I need. That those things are often in opposition shows how much of our lives are often organized against our own best interest. 

It can take sometimes take a lifetime to understand this and some never address it at all.

Single

People have never more single in our history and the mechanics of how we got here are easy to understand. We removed the business model aspects of marriage which necessitated that each person bring something to the table. Once women became more independent many men became expendable. 

It is why we have a crisis of masculinity and why hypergamy which is what sees 80% of women compete for the top 15% of men dominates the dating marketplace. If men have height, looks and money they have their pick of more women than the men who are left behind. 

In addition those people who are older and understand all too well the benefits and the pitfalls of couple life are deciding to not enter it again unless it falls into their lap. Some make friends with benefits arrangements that don't involve cohabitation.

Whether this changes has a lot to do with how society restructures itself once we come out of this 100 year historical cycle.

Let it rest

Some older transsexuals spend a lot of time complaining about other gender variant people. Buck Angel is one of them but there are a number of others. Again, much of this is because their psychology has been locked in since their youth into binary thinking. 

When these people transitioned there were no other options but what is regrettable is that they haven't moved  past it and just leave well enough alone. 

There are also younger examples like Blaire White who has become the token transgender person for the right wing. She gets to look down on others and tips her hand at her own deep seated insecurities which perhaps elude her. For obvious reasons, a right wing transgender person should be an oxymoron. 

People who are content with themselves don't need to bother with others however this phenomenon will never go away because it forms part of the psychology of many.

Idiocracy

The inevitable always happens at the collapse. After that there is a new reset....

Just be

Stepping away from binary thinking is the best thing you can do if you are a gender variant or transgender person. Firstly it takes the pressure off "passing" because it doesn't matter. You are simply embracing and being yourself. 

If your cross gender expression moves beyond a past time or a guilty pleasure it will benefit you to work your psychology to where today's youth already is. 

Once that baseline coordinate system is abandoned you think of yourself primarily as a person who belongs somewhere within a continuum or a mosaic which frees the mind greatly. 

If blending in is your goal I don't blame you but we just need to remove pressure from attaining something which can encourage obsession or at the very least become an over distraction. 

Today I passed a young transgender woman who blended perfectly (including some very ample breasts) except for her booming baritone voice. She didn't care and neither did those around her.

Just be.

The stupidest day until tomorrow

Well the inevitable happened and two pathological liars and opportunists are now at war. The most clownish administration in US history has taken a direct hit by the world's richest man who himself helped elect it. His DOGE cuts are right now making sure that people continue to go hungry in famine stricken parts of Africa while food rots sitting in ports. 

I for one couldn't be happier if it helps derail the cruelty and the incompetence that has taken over the government. Yesterday the idiotic Howard Lutnick was being grilled in a committee hearing regarding the erratic tariff policy and was shown a banana to illustrate that not everything can be made at home because you can't grow them in the US. Lutnick had nothing in response but a placid expression. 

Incompetence and stupidity. 

Of course Lawrence O'Donnell had a field day with this. One of the few honest and hard-hitting journalists left, he knew this was coming and said so yet again. You cannot trust people who don't have good intentions but only want to enrich themselves.

I think this is where the wheels of the clown car finally come off and the disintegration of this regime begins in earnest.

It couldn't happen to two nicer people.