Girl Free in a Boy's Body, gagablog 170

I finished this 3 days ago - it is now March 21st, 2019 - but I never said certain things I wanted to mention, here, to put it all in context. This is mostly about gender roles and how I developed my own ideas of gender in the 1980's in America, a time when America had gone through a couple decades of challenges to strict gender stereotypes and in many ways was reasserting those stereotypes. One message the mainstream culture put out there was that being feminine or gay was a result of being a "girl trapped in a boy's body." I rejected the sexism and other hierarchy implied in that formulation and saw myself as a"girl free in a boy's body." I felt this way because of who I am, because of my physical, effeminate form which made other people remark about my "girlishness" and because of my heart, because I cared about things - which also made people remark, or increasingly stood out as Counter-cultural. American culture demonized caring as Feminine which made me care, value the feminine, and reject that aspect of the culture. Plus the people expressing those ideas were mean ("If she's rude and offensive maybe she is your mother," Arthur just said to Maude as I typed that.)

The main things I left out were that, at age 10 or so, I decided to rebel against this cultural genderization by growing my hair out, at first like other kids who rode skateboards in the early 80's and then, after being ridiculed for it, growing it longer so by 1987 it was shaved on the sides and back and about a foot to two feet long from the top, and it stayed that way for most of my life. It was a pretty unique haircut that didn't become known, popularly, for a decade or two thanks to some musicians. But at the time, in my pre-teen and teenage years, it made me aware of a small portion of the sexism and homophobia in America becuase some of it was directed towards me. For my long hair. And then as I developed Caring in a culture that puts Violence and Power, first, I came to realize that it was THIS that made me Feminine and ultimately showed all the problems of the world were the result of Male Domination, or, simply, The Masculine. "Toxic Masculinity" is redundant.

This is the story of how I came to and deepened that conclusion. The other thing I forgot to mention was a meme I saw and loved while writing this, based on that Brain being more active in four stages meme - with increasing light-beams coming out of it at each stage, if you haven't seen it when/where you read this. The four stages of the text, in order of increasing illumination, are "I Wish I was a Girl -  I Could Just Be a Girl - I Always Was a Girl - Destroy Capitalism" and this sums it up nicely, exactly how I've felt since I was 10 - I just wanted to go ahead and skip to stage 4.

The last thing i will say, now, is that recent events, since I finished writing this 3 days ago, have further emphasized the points I make: Trump has recently criticized "Mr. Kelly-Anne Conway" ("there was actually a man who wanted to be in the gay section of the cemetary? That's where all the laughter comes from." Lola just told Maude. Also as I started this it was the introduction of Joey Lawrence on Gimme a Break, a con-man scamming for "Jerry's Kids" -  which made me think of Trump and how he could grow out of his bratty, crook ways, too, if he had an Aunt Nell.) because Kelly Ann Conways' husband has been tweeting about how Trump's mental condition is "getting worse." I could, and probably will, write a whole edition on Narcissism  - Trump is a poser Narcissist in my opinion, but I'm not a doctor, either, I'm more of a mystical buddhist Narcissist - I'm obsessed with ALL of our self, collectively. But the important, pertinent thing to mention, here, is that over the weekened Trump's attempts to diminish Mr. Kelly-Anne Conway by calling him that reveal his sexism, the type I've been writing about, here: ashamed if a girl drives the car, like Wally in "Leave it to Beaver" - see last 2-3 editions.

I also felt vindicated, verified, in my predictions that John McCain would Haunt Trump when news reporters reported that John McCain is haunting Trump. Apparently he has been tweeting about John McCain all weekend and I have no idea why or I don't really care except to say all these various levels of fascism will help us destroy them by destroying themselves. And Ghosts, Nature, The Goddess, is on Our Side.

The worst part of the White House response to criticism by Mr Kelly-Anne Conway was that they were trying the same tactics they did against Cohen at his testimony: It was all about suggesting that THEY, the Trump Defenders, are Insiders and the ones who are criticizing them are Outsiders. It just sounds exactly like the Mob or the Klan or a Fraternity to anyone who IS an Outsider and sees the club they are protecting as Disgusting and Evil - sees it for what it is, White Supremacy. (The Maude episode, now, is about the Exclusive Golf Club Arthur belongs to.)

One thing being Girly, Feminist, a Longhair, and Revolutionary did for me, all my life since I was a young kid, was make me an Outsider. As an outsider I have had a Whole perspective on the culture I live in, not one infested with the evils of that culture. This is the story of how that developed, around Gender, for me - thanks for reading, commenting, sharing!

 

I grew up in the 1980's and developed a keen understanding of gender and stereotypes from a young age. I was raised without the same strictness of gender stereotypes in my family as the wider American culture thanks to my parents being liberal,, my mom studying feminist theology while becoming a priest and my dad being an open-minded preacher in the Disciples of Christ church. But I was very aware of gender stereotypes, sexism, and homophobia in the culture from going to school and watching TV.  I don't want to recreate the era in text, plenty of folks lived through it and unfortunately too much of the same damaging and archaic ideas still persist, and even remain dominant, today. At least they are built into the racist, sexist, and dominating system, even if most of the population is evolving past them. Since that system is hopefully in its death throes, now, and is exerting the last of its hold on our culture there has been a big "debate" in recent years about gender with thoughtful people agreeing gender is a spectrum and thoughtless, bigoted, climate-change denying idiots insisting, meming, posting that there are only Two Genders. These Nazis are even promoting this message by marching - as our new Supreme Court Justice's fratbrothers marched to say "No means Yes" - protecting their rape culture, and "There are only Two Genders" propping up their toppling patriarchy and sexism.

There are plenty of examples of why the folks who insist there are only two genders are wrong based upon the other things they "happen" to believe - especially if you realize it is not all coincidence, it is part of their programming: flat earth, white supremacy, male domination, greed war and pollution are good, the world is disposable, God chooses leaders and authority even if they are evil, etc. But I want to address how I came to my own ideas about gender, even in the 80's, which I think the rest of the world is waking up to, because I believe that's a better way to prove it is all true - and I talk about how evil the Agenda of Evil Ideas is all the time and should address it regarding how sexism and sexual repression poison our lives and culture at the very heart - its the very core of evil. But I will talk about all that later, this is mostly about getting out of that way of thinking.

As you can tell by watching any of the TV shows from the 20th century there were ubiquitous stereotypes about sexuality and gender. Specifically, being gay was girly and included cross-dressing and various other associations. These stereotypes change and evolve in the development of television, too, both challenging and reinforcing themselves. Maybe I should point out that for most of these decades TV was the main factor shaping culture in America - it's always been mostly how the culture is reinforced yet there are always creative shows and developments that challenge and change the status quo. I won't get into too many examples but wanted to mention a few.

I should also mention how much music, radio and then MTV and the general marketing of the music industry, also served to mostly reinforce but occasionally challenge gender and sexual stereotypes. Instead of focusing on the numerous examples of the patriarchal reinforcement I will mention the significant impression on me, and the world, from Boy George. Boy George took the world by storm and is a huge icon, especially in the 80's when The Culture Club had some of the decades biggest hits. My aunt gave me a Dan Fogelberg cassette, my big brother got Michael Jackson's "Off The Wall" and my little brother got Culture Club's "Color By Numbers" and we listened to those two a lot. I would have been 7 or 8 in 1983 and was unaware of sexuality but I was aware of gender roles and was already suspicious of them.

I was a skinny kid and had an effeminate voice - I still am and do. I was mocked and made fun of in school for this, not excessively but enough to get the message, that I was girly and therefore gay, even before I knew what that meant. I realized an attraction for girls at a very young age before I even knew about sex, too. But mostly I was sensitive to the fact that being called a "girl" was supposed to be an insult and instead of trying to avoid that I decided the problem was with the mean people calling names and with the very idea that there was anything wrong with being a girl and nothing wrong with me, personally. Since I was sensitive to this, and it was encouraged by some feminist upbringing in my home, I was aware of sexism at such an early age I developed with it in mind that it was wrong my entire life.

I think the example Boy George set for me, the reason I could relate to him, was not based upon sexuality but more on fashion and rebelling against gender norms. I was sheltered enough in my home and society at that age that I don't think I was aware of "homosexuality" at that time, I didn't know what "gay" meant other than the stereotypes of being "girly" that applied to me - but once I was aware of it, again probably thanks to Boy George and a rare few other examples in the media, I realized immediately how wrong it was to be bigoted against gay people from the same sensitivity that made me know sexism was wrong.

I didn't feel a personal desire to dress as a girl but I couldn't deny and didn't have any reason to feel shame for my effeminate characteristics, so instead I embraced them. And I certainly looked up to Boy George for being the shining example, at the time, of defying gender stereotypes. And I also just loved that style, I liked Cyndi Lauper a lot, too. It might be that I never wanted to dress as a girl because I accepted the society notion that this was all "gayness" and while I didn't think I had negative associations with being gay, I felt and knew homophobia was wrong, I couldn't personally feel physical attraction to other boys, and did feel ever increasing attraction to girls, so I knew I wasn't gay, myself. But also knew that these things weren't all connected in the way society insisted, so I didn't believe I wouldn't dress like a girl unless I was gay  - but I didn't have the inclination to dress "as a girl" to rebel against the stereotype, like I did with my hair. I saw "Glen or Glinda?" as a teenager and thought "that makes sense." Not because I was justifying my own desire to wear "girl's" clothes without "being gay" but because I knew that one didn't necessarily mean the other, based on my own inner experience.

But I certainly looked up to Boy George as a hero. I realized what he was doing was important, politically, culturally, for gay people, for girls, for boys, for everyone, including "freaks and weirdos" - which I always identified as. And I realized it was threatening to "some" elements in society which was an indication that those elements were wrong. It was as if Boy George and the Culture Club got so famous because of the quality of their music, his singing and songwriting talents, but also because the world needed a hero like this. And he broke through all sorts of barriers by filling this role. Certainly there were other Pioneers who helped pave the way but I believe most of them were "sexually ambiguous" for much of their careers or somehow not broadcasting their sexual identity as flamboyantly as Boy George did - but that is what was needed for the MTV decade of visual presentations of music. I remember watching the A-Team episode where Boy George was a guest star - we regularly watched that show. He was Murdoch's friend, I think, and what I remember is that he was treated well and helped play a role in the mission and sang. That show is mostly all about "male" fantasies of heroic deeds of action but it was also anti-authoritarian and anti-fascist in many ways and themes, and non-violent to the extent that they blew up a lot of stuff but never killed people. But it was a pretty "manly" team, the A-Team, and it was nice to see them getting along well with Boy George - not bullying him to "prove their manhood." Just having Boy George as such a famous icon in the culture had all sorts of ripple effects, such as this, the notion that "manly men" can get along fine with "girly boys."

I wasn't allowed to watch Three's Company when I was a kid, I believe that is because my parents were liberal about social issues in many ways but due to religious upbringing and cultural norms themselves weren't "liberated" about sex and presented the message that it was for "after marriage" with one person in your life - it doesn't sound liberal at all to say it, but they were liberal about most everything else, especially relative to the surrounding Southern society. That might be the reason why sexual repression and phobias stood out to me as the root of the problem, in humanity - good, smart people, my parents, who had seen through so much of the bullshit of the world, still suffered from the effects of cultural repression of sex, in this case mostly through religion.

This led me to the conclusion, years before I had any personal sexual experience, that the foundation of all evil misinterpretation of scriptures was the demonization of sex and right along with it the demonization of the feminine. My conclusion after a few decades of pondering this, which I came to a few years ago but was always in development, is that Masculinty is a Dangerous Myth, like a trick we have played upon ourselves for no good. But I'll come back to that because it took me a long time to realize it.

The reason I mentioned Three's Company is it came on my TV and of course there are already some of the constant gender and gay stereotypes presented: Since Jack, who pretends to his landlord Mr Furley that he is gay, is in this episode is pretending for Janet's parents that they are married. When he tells Furley the ruse Furley says "Well THAT's a Fairy Tale!" This reminds me of the "fairy" association with being gay, which is another thing i just defiantly went with -I might not be gay but I AM a fairy - and it magically evolved in my life into and stronger and truer identity.

Mr Roper was possibly even worse with his jokes about Jack being gay or a girl but it's the standard joke for both him and Furley - and basically every character if the subject ever came up on any show that ever aired in the 80's, to my recollection. I've watched pretty much every episode of Three's Company in syndication but I didn't see the show "Soap" when it came out - but I've seen a lot in the last year since they started showing it on Antenna TV. I wanted to mention it because of how much Billy Crystal's character, Jody, represented that "junction" of gay stereotypes. Jody is gay and in the first episode is described as a cross-dresser and by epsiode 2 is getting a sex change operation in order to marry his boyfiend. He is basically "a girl trapped in a boys body."

Because that was the conclusion at the time when the mainstream culture only presented "three" options: Boy, Girl, and "Fruit." If you were gay you were basically a girl, was the idea, and neither of these were "preferred." And there was only one way they talked about the "whole thing" - "a girl trapped in a boys body" is the oversimplified way being gay was presented.

Of course there were already counter-cultural examples that defied these stereotypes but I'm talkin about how mainstream culture was presented and fashioned by Network TV, etc, the molders of mainstream culture. The culture caught up to more nuanced ideas of gay and lesbian people as different depictions were made in TV. For most of the 80's the representations were still pretty close to stereotypes, and even as stereotypes were expanded and challenged somewhat by "revolutionary" shows - and some probably do deserve to be called that without quotes, even, as actual art - mostly the same stereotypes were reinforced.

Editing in on the 21st: Some examples to give the flavor of gender and sexuality in the 80s: Bosom Buddies: Tom Hanks and ... (Michael from Newhart? I only saw the show once or twice, probably, when it first aired) dress as girls to live in the Girl's Dorm - to be near the girls, because they Are Not Gay. Jack Tripper pretends he is gay to get the landlords to let him live with two girls, but only when the landlord is around, the rest of the show is mostly about his dates with girls. Nicole has two dad's on My Two Dad's but it isn't because Joey and Michael are gay it is because they don't know which is her father so when the mother dies the Judge decides they should both be her Dads. I don't remember why Kate and Allie lived together or if they even did or were just friends but they weren't lesbians, openly, or I was missing the jokes. 

As I type this, on Monday March 11th at 4:13 PM, there is an episode of Maude on. Vivian's husband, whose name I forget, he becomes Mr. Drummond on Diff'rent Strokes- Arthur! - just said "Walter and I are men, it's not like we sit around all day like you two." I just wanted to mention this stereotype, from the 70's, and how even if he is being the jerk for saying that, the joke is supposed to be "on him", he is still openly putting that idea out there. It's like the Archie Bunker character saying all sorts of unevolved, racist, sexist things. Maybe the joke is supposed to be on him, maybe people are supposed to learn by hearing him say these things, and being really stupid about them, and see the stupidity of the ideas. But even if it challenges these ideas in this way, plenty of people are too stupid themselves to get the joke and end up cheering on Archie, cheering on these ideas being so openly, brashly expressed on their TV. You can see how it becomes a recipe for Trump, to keep and increase a population of people who are dumb enough to cheer along with the bad ideas on TV and just don't get that the joke will always ultimately be "on them."

Unless they get enough of the world's power to destroy us all. Then it won't really be a joke, after all.

3-21-19 Edit: This is also how the internet is being used for evil - as Tim Berners-Lee said recently that the first 15 years of the internet had been "For Good" and the 2nd 15 years was mostly "For Evil" I see this as the essential factor: People ARE "too stupid" especially if you make a lot of effort to keep them that way. Plenty of people hear the Archie Bunker lines and aren't smart enough to realize the joke is on them - and when you have trolls working to promote stupidity and Facebook, the main platform of social interaction, favoring those trolls, systematically, and censoring people and messages that educate and enlighten people, you see the nature of the problem being "people's stupidity" is not as easy to solve as it SHOULD be - but the solutions are still the same, enlightentment, awareness, education, communication, expression, storytelling, songs, art, etc.

I took two days and nights off from writing this, which is why i gave that update. There were a few things I heard on the radio I wanted to include, here - but the truth is there are reminders of gender stereotypes everywhere, not just in this (and every) episode of Maude but every episode of everything - they are all part of maintaining gender "norms" with minor alterations through the years.

Repairing stereotypes is still essentially the opposite of breaking them. As I typed that Walter was explaining to Maude that he went back into business because The secretary of ... went on Television and said the recession had bottomed out, the secretary of... went on television and said... and the President went on television and said... - all about how the economy had recovered. But now his business folded. The joke is Maude saying "well you can't believe everything you hear" but it emphasis the point I'm writing that we do listen to the television and what it tells us about how the world is.

The things I heard on the radio I wanted to mention were these: They were interviewing an owner of an Austin BBQ restaurant and asking her about when she was vegan. Why were you vegan, having grown up in a family that owned a BBQ restaurant? Was it a rebellion? And her answer was "well it just went with being a lesbian, is the best way I can put it" and the audience laughed knowingly. This is, in 2019, another example of stereotypes about being lesbian and how it goes with other beliefs. And I said the same thing when I started writing this - accepting gay people, being accepting of people, generally, is a "leftist" and not a right-wing "thing." And it "goes with" other left wing - true - things. If I were to object to this sterotype, that being gay or being feminine means you also care about the environment or your health, MY personal objection would be coming from my own feeling that I should be vegan, because I believe in it, both for health and Goodness, but still eat meat and dairy. I feel somewhat "chastised" by this stereotype  - but in a helpful, healthy way, it's good to be reminded to improve your diet. I don't feel any more chastised by it than the lady who said it felt -because she went back to not only eating meat but running a wildly successful BBQ shop.

The stereotypes associated with being feminine/gay - and therefore, in our culture, demonized by association with being feminine/gay, such as: being artistic, caring, expressing feeling, environmentalism, seeking justice, equality, and peace - all of these are good things. Veganism is Good -sorry - even if I don't live up to it I know that goodness is true, for individuals and the world. And you don't have to be gay to be on the Good Side of things, and being on the Good Side of things doesn't "make you gay" AND there's nothing wrong with that. (3-21-19 edit: want to take credit for my response to the "alt-right" claim that AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, "wants to take your hambuger away" to which I added the Fry meme, but with a Hamburger, and saying "keep talking and take my hamburger" camption)

I write all this stuff to challenge the way language has been used to trick us into limited and bad ways of thinking. Even though they used sexism and homophobia to demonize other "unrelated" beliefs, such as environmentalism and pacifism, the truth is that all of these things are Good and the demonization of them, the demonizers, are bad.

This reminds me of the other major news story of the days since I've been writing this, the second crash of a new Boeing 737 model plane. The plane just came out last year and one crashed last October in Malaysia and now another one in Ethiopia. They never determined (or rather, Reported) exactly what the cause of the first crash was but the second one, yesterday, seems to be the same situation, the same cause - which suggests, logically, that it is a flaw with the plane. The other part of the news story was that China and Ethiopia, so far, have grounded all of that model of plane - almost 5,000 were sold worldwide. But when the news anchor asked a representative of the airline industry (actually an "expert" - she re-appears later)  if it suggested a problem with that model of the plane she said it was too early to make that conclusion and "we shouldn't demonize a model of plane." I was reminded of this by using the same language, just now. We shouldn't "demonize" anything, maybe - but if there is a flaw in a plane, and a flaw in a company that doesn't reveal and recall the flaw, would rather let more people get killed by it - well, that situation the plane, the company, has demonized itself.

"I got nothing against queers but they make me nervous" a customer in Archie Bunker's place just said. After more homophobia and homophobic "jokes" Archie asks the cop, black cop, "why don't you shut those places (gay bars) down?" "Too many of our leading citizens want to keep them open" Now when Archie asked if there is Fruit in the kitchen he says "I see fruit out here." Now Archie's Jewish partner Murray is telling him their new gay Waiter Fred is not a problem - he's never brought his friends around there. Archie asks him - this is probably 1982 - "do you want 3 torlets in here? His, hers, and theirs?" Now their solution is just to turn him "Let him look at playboy magazine - he'll see what normal sex is like, then we will fix him up with a hooker." Archie says they need a nice girl to torture him by saying no - "the minute he's tortured he's as normal as the rest of us." But now Murray admits he was only kidding, you can't change these things - he was putting Archie on but just got Archie going, and now he's trying to fix Fred up with Linda.

This is just another example of how there were Only 3 options in the 80's - in the most mainstream culture representations, anyway. Straight Male, Straight Female, and Fruit, or girl trapped in a boys body. And it wasn't presumed that all gays would want a sex change to become "normal girls" - but that idea WAS promoted, it was "basically" understood that way. Soap, for instance, is supposed to be an "over-the-top" spoof of soap operas, but it's still based upon a common idea, and oversimplification.

Why did they have that oversimplification, in the 80's? Because gayness and gender non-conforming were starting to appear in the television representation and construction of culture which challenged the "traiditonal" depictions and beliefs that There are Boys and Girls and that's it. The idea of gay or trans people had gotten "out of the box" and the mainstream culture wanted to put it back in that box as much as possible, go back to Boys and Girls - and never the two shall meet. Or we certainly better not talk about it in the "one case" when they do meet, sex, the taboo they are talking about now on Archie Bunker "the fun things, that you're not supposed to do until after you got married, know what I mean?"  - ALL of this is to promote an idea of male superiority and using women for sex and as property. It's not like a gay couple "threatens" someone with traditional views - they aren't trying to have sex with him  - but the very IDEA of it threatens their wrong worldview. They want to deny it, or say it is wrong, because to admit it, to acknowledge it, to respect it, at all, would be as "bad" as "respecting women" - their whole belief system would crumble. Because that whole belief system is based upon repression of sex and the feminine. "My wife and I have been doing everything for years and we're not even friends" Murray just said. "I'm different/ You're not ready for different...I am what I am, it IS different." And it turns out Tom, the customer complaining about him, had hit on him at his old place and Fred rejected him. "Why didn't you tell us about Tom when he called you a fruit?" "Would you have believed me?"

To get back to my story - the culture, America in the 80's, said that it was bad to be girly and bad to be gay. I knew I wasn't gay but I knew I was girly and didn't feel bad about it, decided the ones who said that were actually being bad, were wrong, and they were just as wrong about being gay and ultimately wrong about everything. And it wasn't just my voice or my skinniness that made me "girly" - those were just some of the ways I was reminded of it by other kids. I realized that had been my focus in writing this but my actual experience, all my life, was that the thing that made me so "girly" was caring. I cared. In one way this manifested in loving my stuffed animals and never giving them up, for continuing to watch Sesame Street and kids shows and movies all my life, continuing to play and value play all my life, staying Young at Heart. I mention these things not because they show I "cared" so much but because they are examples of things the culture insists you, as a boy, grow up and put aside: stop playing and start work. Stop caring and do what you HAVE to do. I rejected that message, those ideas, from a very young age and I'm happy I retained that youth by refusing to accept the lies.

Now, before I finish my story about my gender identity, I want to mention the other two things I heard on the radio since I wrote the first half of this. One was a study they did in rats where they mixed up the broods of rats and gave some rat babies to a "high-licking", affectionate, mother and others to a non-affectionate, "low-licking" mother. They discovered that the genetic benefits of getting affection, a cascade of genetic effects, would happen whether the rats were from a "high-licking, " affectionate gene pool or not - that is, it actually changed their DNA to receive affection. "he doesn't like taking care of me" Stephanie just said about Archie, who backed out of a promise to sing with her on Father Daughter Day at school.

It changed their DNA to receive affection. There were other stories on the radio, too. Some were about attachment, raising kids with autism or who had reactive attachment disorder from neglect in orphanages as kids - I have too much to say about that to get into it here, since I worked for years with kids like this in an institution - but the one I wanted to mention was about a psychologist who proved the existence of love and introduced it as a concept to psychology.

I had heard the story about the rats the night I started writing this. I wanted to include it because I felt it supported my theory that Masculinity is a Myth, a dangerous myth. It suggested to me that the genetic benefits of receiving care prove that care, affection, are good. "Take That!" I say to 1985, "I don't have to give up my stuffed animals, Care is Good, I can prove it, with science!"

The program of sexism, the way it works, is to demonize Care as "feminine" and a lesser concern than Work or War or Greed or whatever, "personal advancement". Ambition, Drive, Achievement - these are presented as not only Masculine Concerns but therefore Superior to "feminine concerns" of basically caring for or about Anything: Art, health, Nature, kids, family, etc.

("Is there any rule against a girl having two fathers?" "I don't think so, Amy Plume has two fathers, and Diana Fitch has three mothers." Archie decided to sing with Stephanie, after all, and Murray will play piano. )

I've been suspicious of Masculinity, of God, all my life, since the young ages of becoming sensitive to these things. When I was very young I had an idea of The Goddess and very quickly decided that I would focus on the Goddess because the Goddess had been repressed and denied, I didn't want to see the Goddess equally to God - or, in the Christian tradition, "compromise" and see the Holy Spirit as the feminine aspect of the Holy Trinity with God being "male" and Jesus being "male" or something - I just decided that, with so much focus on God if I were to ONLY focus on the Goddess it would only help make up for the extreme repression and wouldn't hurt anything at all. This perspective highlighted all the ways that the patriarchal ideas of god were all damaging and dangerous and for years I gave the benefit of the doubt to God, to the masculine, by saying maybe there was just something I didn't "get" about it - but I would leave him up to folks who were into that sort of thing.

But the more I asked the question, is there ANY value in masculinity? the more I became convinced that there isn't. I realized that every quality that our society praises as "masculine" - such as Protection - are actually feminine qualities, too, but with an important difference: the masculine version is the same quality but with the addition of Violence. The increased ability or willingness to commit violence in the name of Protection, or Advancement, or whatever the quality is, that is the defining characteristic of what makes it masculine.

And I felt like the rat experiment addressed this - if you provide affection, beings become more loving, if you deny affection you miss all the benefits of it and become "course", less caring - more "manly", even rats. This confirms my suspicion that masculinity is a dangerous myth, and one we have embraced and replicated over many generations - but I was shocked and enlightened even more, and my suspicions confirmed, by what I heard next, last night, on the radio.

It was about a psychologist named Harlow who "proved the existence of Love" to modern psychology. The way the story was presented they said that early psychology did not account for Love because they couldn't measure it - they didn't even include the concept, it wasn't in the indexes of any psychology textbooks - psychology didn't believe in Love. Until Harlow "proved it to them" in the 1940's. This was surprising to me but fit with my understanding of the patriarchal nature of early western psychology. But what they said next was really eye-opening. They said that for decades, in America, from the late 1800's, I guess, until the 1940s, there was a consensus among psychologists and the medical community: affection for infants and children was Bad. It would lead to psychological problems or weakness. They cited one prominent psychologist who claimed that over-kissing a child would result in whatever kind of "imbalance" later in life - over-kissing was more than one kiss per year, according to him. And it wasn't just psychologists bandying these ideas about for decades - partly because doctors were getting an emerging knowledge of germs they noticed that babies that were handled more frequently would get sick more - but they weren't actually aware of how germs worked so they attributed it to "affection" making them weak - and probably just weren't washing their hands. So the medical and psychological communities agreed: affection is Bad. And they didn't just agree in their journals - they got the Government to agree - Or did the Government arrange this the whole time? - so that there was a national campaign - for decades - with flyers sent out and taught to people at the doctors - to make sure that no one touched their babies.

In an individual, like neglected and abused orphans, this kind of neglect produces trauma. If the entire country is instructed to do this, for two generations, it produces a traumatized culture. We had new communication ability in the early 1900's - you could foresee a time, soon, when we could communicate around the world and solve the world's problems, together, by caring - make a world where girls, where everyone, is accepted and safe. We had that opportunity just from inventing telegraphs and telephones. And again, at the start of the 21st century, with the internet, there is a promise we can all connect and Heal the whole world - and there are forces that want to opposed this, to make sure we don't get together and solve all the problems, because they profit from the problems staying in place. (3-19 edit since Facebookkk banned me again: And they spend that money to thwart or attempts to make progress, by paying trolls to attack us on Facbeook and paying Facebook to focus its censorship on US, working with the trolls to censor us.)

So they traumatized a generation or two by insisting that to be a good parent you can't love or care for your children. That attitude hasn't worn off - Groundkeeper Willie's dad, when asked if he wanted to cut the cord at Willie's birth, says "Let him cut it himself - it's time he learned life isn't one great big party."

Why ISN'T life a big party? Because of some Party Poopers, Major party poopers, who threaten ruining the entire world to avoid confronting the reality that maybe the masculinity they are trying to protect is merely evil bullshit.

If I had been born a bigger, more muscular guy, with a deep voice, and got into sports and other "manly" pursuits that kept me in the "traditional" Boy role, I like to think that I would still be natural and sensitive enough to remain sensitive and caring instead of growing into an insensitive and uncaring "man". But if I had, that still would have made me stand out from the other Boys - just because I CARE - about anything. Even if it was just my own art, caring about art could be ridiculed by the rest of the football team, for being "girly". This is to point out how much CARING is presented and demonized as "feminine".

In the 80's, and still today, there is a concept of men "being in touch with their feminine side" which is presented as an acceptable way for males to actually feel a little bit of emotion where otherwise this is prohibited by the Masculinity Code  - unless the emotion is anger or hate or ambition or lust that ensures the "target" is demeaned.  Today, 30 years later, the feminine and more open understanding of gender and sexuality HAVE developed, even in mainstream culture - yet there is still a strain of thought reacting to this, insisting that their are only two genders and women are subservient to men - and that strain of thinking is the one that is in control of the government and courts, all the "worldly power" is still allied against the better future. the more natural and sustainable ways of thinking - and will destroy us all if we don't overcome them.

But we do have REAL power, true Natural Power, not of the World of Man's' creation but from the True World that honors the feminine, nature, and Love.

How did the Government, Doctors, and psychologists all convince the population that it was bad to hold their babies and touch their kids - for 40 years or more? Was it just a "really bad idea?"

Or does it fit in with their whole program of bad ideas?

Women have been naturally raising and loving their babies for millions of years. All the sudden "psychology" comes in and says "You're doing it wrong" - and not only has the audacity to say that but has the power to convince the government and doctors to back them up. Or they were doing it all along as tools of the Government - whichever, it is a clear example of how the Evil System oppresses us no matter where the evil originates.

This is how patriarchy ruins everything, a smaller example of a larger trend. Medical science has pushed women out, pushed out herbal and natural remedies used by women for years in favor of the pharmacuetical and modern medicine industry which is controlled and run by men. The attempt by the government and "science" - successful attempt - to convince women to neglect their babies and kids is a perfect example of how Evil tries to replace Good with lies and "campaigns" - and succeeds in doing so.

Not only were these generations affected by neglect they were affected by that, traumatized by that, taught not to have empathy or compassion by that. It was a poisonous program and the poison continues to effect us. We might, as a culture, have accepted that hugging and holding babies is Good - yet there is still the fear and belief that "too much affection" can "turn kids gay" or "make them soft", in other words, "feminine", in other words, "Caring."

The problem is NOT that people might grow up and be Caring. The REAL problem is that people can grow up and be Uncaring - but that is still the goal of Mainstream, Conservative America.

"Let them cut it themselves, it's time they learned life isn't one great big party."

Harlow proved to the psychology community that Love exists and is crucially important in raising babies by having chimp babies with "two fake mothers" - a wire one that was uncomfortable but supplied milk and a cloth one that did not provide nourishment but the monkey could cuddle with it. He did many tests but the results were that the babies spent 17 hours a day with the Cloth, comforting mother and only one with the Wire Mother - and everything they tested suggested the baby monkeys needed the Love, even from a dummy mother, just because it was possible. And when they made the Cloth mothers "reject" the babies for some tests, after they had bonded, the monkeys would do anything to "win the cloth mother back"

This is an analogy, to me, of how our culture has deprived us of the Goddess and whether we know it or not it is the deepest need of our souls to re-unite with this Goddess. We would do anything to restore that feeling of Love - but in our world we are taught all the wrong things so we don't even know what to do. Get Rich? Exploit people and Power? The world is too much built on repressing the feminine, the Goddess, nature, for us to "think" of how to get back to it - but once we know it is possible then ways open up, magically, where we might most or least expect it.

So how could America spend a half century teaching people that Love is Bad, wrong, damaging? It wasn't just a bad idea, a mistake they stuck with for decades. It was part of other bad ideas. It fit the idea that War is acceptable. Maybe War itself is another bad idea we should have outgrown. And it fits the idea that Masculinity is Good - but maybe even masculinity is a bad idea we need to outgrow.

One way I wanted to introduce this edition was mentioning a song I heard on the radio, on KUVO Jazz, I think - a remake of Pat Benetar's "Love is a Battlefield" by Maysa. I just looked it up to get the artist's name and watched the video - maybe that is why the radio DJ said it put a Modern, Protest/Scocial Justice "Twist" on the lyrics, because the video certainly does, it's awesome.

At the time, months or even years ago, when I was contemplating this edition and heard that song, I came up with a phrase: "If Love is a Battlefield, Gender is a Neighborhood Association." By which I mean that beliefs about gender are all dependent on "your community", where you live, what others around you believe and express. The "There are Two Genders" crowd are in some gated community, or Lost Island - they aren't growing into a larger community, just putting up more walls and oceans to Keep Apart from ideas that threaten them and their beliefs. Ideas such as Peace, Caring, The Feminine, Nature, Sex, Love - all of these ideas threaten them.

But the rest of the world, despite the attempts of the bigots to keep us all dividing, fighting each other, the rest of the world IS coming together and will come together.

Kids all over the world are taking the lead in protesting and demanding governments take action to address climate change. Kids in America were leading the most recent campaign to get new gun laws to protect kids in school and people everywhere from mass shooters. The important thing is that Men want to ignore women and kids, have built a world on ignoring women and kids, ignoring anyone who CARES - but that world is coming to an end, to be replaced by a world where no one is ignored and Caring is encouraged.

The other news story besides the Boeing crash - that prompted China, Singapore, and Australia, so far, to ground these planes - but the FAA in America is still insisting they are safe, they are reporting that some Top Experts Agree - but other Top Experts DISagree - but we are going with the ones who allow Boeing to save face and money instead of the ones who are concerned about keeping people alive. I'm not demonizing them, I'm saying they are demonizing themselves and when the rest of the world bans your planes but you don't - well it becomes obvious that you DON'T actually care about people, just money. And that is obvious, already by the way people talk about it.

"When will the public demand action about these planes? Will they wait until after the report?" the news man asked the Expert. "Well, these investigations can take two years." The expert said.

Like Trump - are we supposed to wait two years and just keep letting everything happen until the report is finished? How many planes would have to go down, in America, before we changed that tune? Or, more appropriately, how FAMOUS or "Important" would someone have to be who dies in the crash to actually prompt America, or the Government/Corporations - to even PRETEND they care? How many more planes - and how much more protest in the streets - would it take to ACTUALLY MAKE them Care?

We have to undo the evils of this system. I was going to say, the OTHER news story besides the plane crash was in Algeria where -

It's been six days since I started this - I began it on March 12th 2018 and now it is March 18th - and some news needs to be mentioned that happened since then.

To finish what I was saying, and to speed this up: The people in Algeria were protesting for weeks or months that their President was running for another 5 year term. His name is like Butaflika, I don't know how to spell it I just hear it on the radio and talk a little with a friend who is from Algeria about it.

(on 227 just now: Brenda: "Mahatma Gandhi wouldn't have returned the dress" - "He would if he was my daughter... old enough to get a job, move out, make your own decisions." "See Mary, THAT's why I wanted a boy." Julian talks with the plants and Brenda does, too - he says they are better than wives.)

They have been protesting because the President was running for a fifth or sixth 5-year term, I think. But he hasn't spoken in public in 7 years. My friend says he is dead but the news reports that he hasn't spoken in years since he had a stroke and only just returned from seeking medical treatment in Geneva. In the time I have been writing this, about a week, he had announced he would still run but would have another election in a year - and the protests continued. So he announced he wouldn't run after all - but would postpone the election. And the protest turned to celebration, but also continued.

Why can't our president in America resign? Why can't we protest in the streets to make him resign? why couldn't he be the one who hasn't said anything in 7 years, at least?

That is what I was going to say, last week, to just make the point that Its a Good Idea to Protest Against Corruption and Injustice So You Can Help Stop It.

"In a world where the Berlin wall is coming down, The Russians are trying to make friends, some of the beaches in south Texas are finally integrating, why can't the Redskins ever win the Superbowl?" Lester just asked on 227 - which I had to mention because that was the state of affairs in the 80's, at the time of healing after World War 2 with the fall of the Berlin Wall, healing at the end of the Cold War with the Russians Making Friends, it was also time for more healing after slavery and the Civil War, with, finally, SOME of the beaches in South Texas integrating - all revealing how racial divides are deeper than almost all others, in America. But Why haven't the Redskins won the Superbowl? And why does he equate that as a form of "Justice"? If it had been any other shitty team the Joke would be the same - but not Ironic. Because he is praising the end of one kind of racism - segregation on Texas beaches - but unaware that the name and mascot of his favorite team is racist. In the second episode, today, he laments that he is in church instead of watching the Redskins game and will soon be dreaming he is in Heaven and Hell. I feel like I have written about both of these episodes in the gagablog before - I repeat it now to emphasize, with the "Heaven and Hell" idea, that much more immediately we actualize "heaven" and "Hell" in every moment, every day. Lester, the writers of 227, are doing a service to society by mentioning that beaches were integrating. They were exhibiting social conscience to mention it and increasing it letting people know, reminding people at the time that there were and are still SO many spaces in America that aren't integrated, that racism was still alive in the society. But Lester is never conflicted over the racism of the Redskins team name - the writers never address that issue. And while 30 years later we aren't too much "closer" to World Peace or Racial Equality and while there is wider known protest to the Redskins, they still haven't changed the name. As I wrote that they said "Redskins" twice and the Limo guy just asked "Are you still thinking of changing the name to the Washington Lesterskins?"  - this is supposed to be in The Future, when they are looking down on their kids from Heaven.

This is all intersectional feminism - we can't seek justice for women, for the feminine, without seeking justice for everyone, for the planet and Nature itself. Because the enemy is the same, the forces that oppress everyone are the same: Man.

As Lester and Mary looked in on the living, from Heaven, everything was Good. When looking in on them from Hell everything is bad - they are poor and live in squalor in the same apartment instead of everything nice. Pearl is there saying "If you were a real wife you could cook dinner without food." it is all a dream Lester is having in Church but it has a lot of meaning, magically.

Yes you can Look at everything from a "Heavenly" perspective, or a "Hell" one - and it will determine what we see. But we ALL know what the Hellish life is - the squalor and struggle. You can't just look at it differently and change it "'No Nice Haircut, Bernie!'?" Bull, from Night Court, the Host of Hell, just said. Meaning, you can't just look at poverty, or tragedy, or war, and Wish it away - but we CAN look at things differently and CHANGE things so that they DO go away. We know what the bad things are. If we say "well everyone is where they are supposed to be to learn the lessons of life - it just depends on how you LOOK at it" then we are accepting poverty and war just because "other people" are having to experience it, not us. If it is possible to see it it is possible for it to happen. Just because it is happening to "someone else" doesn't mean it can't happen to you - it already IS happening to You if you accept that we are all connected.

So looking at poverty and war CAN have the effect of convincing ANYONE who sees it or hears about it to DO something about it, to change it so it doesn't exist anymore. We have to convince people that is possible, we have to talk about things, to call things out, to be able to converse so that New, better, interconnected ways of seeing things can spread and win out over ways of thinking that keep us isolated and unaware.

When I started writing this, today, there was an episode of Benson on where they were calling to resolve some problem with Veteran Care. "Shouldn't we let the VA deal with it?" was suggested but the lesson was "if everyone says 'let them deal with it' and they aren't dealing with it, they never will." We need to talk about things, to open up discussions. 30 years later we still don't have good veterans care or accountability. Back then the Veterans could have mostly been Men - yet veterans care could have been called a "feminine" concern, while starting wars is Masculine.

But mostly this relates because if we Don't Talk about things, if we don't call out bad things and stop them when we can, they get worse.

Why haven't we been protesting against Trump's racism and fascism all along? Why haven't we forced a corrupt and incompetent leader to resign like they did in Algeria? It's been 3 years. Maybe it's because a lot of the stuff he is doing wrong HAS been going on before Trump, too. This doesn't make it right it just makes us more accustomed to it. But he's made it worse, too, and we aren't responding.

This weekend was when a terrorist killed 50 people in New Zealand. There has been a lot of news about it and "speculation" of his motives but he wrote a manifesto and some of his online activity has been scrutinized for hints. He was a white supremacist and looked up to Trump as a symbol of that. Other fasicts online are busy trying to emphasize that he "disagreed with trump's policies" or anything else to "distance" him from Trump, from Themselves. Except the problem is that they DO believe in the same things, in violence and White Supremacy  - in Fascism.

I've been calling Trump a Nazi, KKK, fascist, for years - because it's true. But the media won't address it. I take to Facebook to help spread awareness and get banned. I just got my third month-long ban, all in the last 6 months. (Fourth, now - 3-21-19 edit - for asking a Troll, John Agassi, whom everyone in the "Progressive Party" group he trolls calls him a troll, if he was KKK, Nazi, or Trumper and when he asked if there was a 4th option I answered "they are all the same option! are you really that dumb? #kkkonfirmed" and got banned from ALL activity for 30 days when he reported it.)  Facebook and Russia are certainly partly responsible for electing Trump, Brexit, etc - but we, the People, also lost an online war and to win, this time, we need to recognize Facebook as the Enemy, too- because that's who they serve. It is either their "plan" or just something they allow that fascists report and get accounts banned for the mildest choice of words while they spew hate-speech, threats and fascist propaganda with impunity. Maybe because right-wing trolls make missions out of reporting certain people and getting them censored but especially because Facebook favors and protects fascists with it's censorship of their opponents and not even enforcing the actual rules if the perpetrator is themselves fascist. It protects their obviously fake accounts, by the tens of thousands, until days before elections, once they've done their work to sway the election, if it ever deletes them. It takes their ad money for fake news stories and white supremacist propagande and can't even get disclaimers for them.

The day before the NZ White Supremacist terrorist attack Trump gave an interview in which he says "His" police and military, and Bikers For Trump, would "get tough" and things would be "very bad" for his political enemies. He was being completely fascist, threatening those who disagree with him with violence, both state violence and thug posse violence.

This is bad enough that he said this, that he believes in this and thinks this way. It's bad enough and proof that he is a fascist, a racist, and a white supremacist - especially how it fits everything else he says and does which is an example of that.

His base are all Nazi, KKK, too. They may not admit it - they may not KNOW it - but all of their beliefs come from the KKK-Nazis - they are all based on White Supremacy. And the Australian terrorist who killed those people in New Zealand didn't HAVE to read that interview, where Trump said his thugs would make it "very bad" - but he probably did. He probably took that as his signal or clue to carry out his attack - maybe he even had a more back-channel signal, from Trump, from the KKK, to carry it out. That is entirely possible - denying that underestimates the influence of White Supremacy.

But even if the terrorist had NOT heard Trump's interview the day before  - he was only carrying out the orders, the worldview, that Trump has been trumpeting all along. And we should have done more to stop him, Trump, before it got to that point. But no amount of right-wing denial will bring them back to life.

NOW we can still talk about the Evil of Trump, fascism, and White Supremacy to stop the NEXT attack. We can save the NEXT 50 people, the next 500 people, five thousand people, five million people, or more.

We CAN save them - by talking. The last thing I mentioned before I left off writing this, 5 days ago, was the Aviation expert on the radio who said it was "too early"

("You haven't let Vivian make long distance calls ever since they got male operators." Maude just said to Arthur)

"too early" to jump to the conclusion that the recent Boeing crash in Ethiopia was related to the one in Malaysia last October just because it was the same plane and seemed to be the same circumstances. She literally said, at that time, that it was like saying if a man walked out of his house and broke his leg in one country and another man broke his leg in another country that the same thing broke their leg. That is what the expert said - and I felt offended, you probably were too just to read that part - but I was offended that it hurt my sense of common sense, my sense of intuition and being psychic, that she would suggest that we were "jumping to conclusions" - that we can't demonize Boeing or that model of plane.

It really made me mad that she, the expert, would say that on BBC radio, to try to protect Boeing and the FAA and American airline companies, since the planes had not been banned in America at that time, only China, Australia, and Singapore. And it sounded to me, with my ear for truth, that this was exactly what she was doing: protecting the Corporations, the Government, trying to make sure they "still looked good" instead of trying to protect the people. Another example of this was when the BBC interviewer asked a different expert if the Public would protest and demand these planes be grounded or just "await the investigation" and that expert replied "these investigations can take up to two years"  - as if the Public would just continue to accept planes falling out of the sky "because the study wasn't complete."

But we feel that way about the Mueller Report, apparently.

And it's all the same thing, the same kind of thing: protecting the corrupt status quo from scrutiny. Now it is a week later and I'm glad the news since then has proven the expert wrong, that my instinct - and probably everyone's instinct - is true. There is a flaw with the plane. Now America and more countries have also grounded the plane and when asked about it the same expert said that was "absolutely the right idea." But the week before her appearance on the international radio news didn't give the impression that it was the "right idea" but rather that it would be jumping to conclusions. So now that the Government / Boeing have agreed to ground the planes she can say it is "absolutely" the right idea but the Government just took a few days longer to make this decision than China did - because our government doesn't actually care about human lives, only corporations.

So now that they've grounded them, and the first reports from the flight recorder has come in, they are pretty sure that it is a problem with a system Boeing installed to compensate for the new engines not fitting the old model very well, casing the tip of the nose to rise, risking stalling. So Boeing, instead of fixing the mechanical, design problem, installed a technological system to compensate for it. And they didn't tell the pilots about this - when asked they said "we can't tell the pilots everything" as if there was "too much information" when it seems like this is a major difference that should require some training - or not exist in the first place - but Boeing would prefer to let pilots "figure it out" or just hope it didn't malfunction instead of paying to train and teach pilots about it. And even after the first flight the news about that system change was not widely reported.

The aviation expert said that they knew that was the problem with the Malaysian plane since October and knew that Boeing wasn't training pilots or even telling them about the new system on the plane. They knew this, but weren't going to tell us, the public, apparently, until the second crash.

The FAA had cleared the planes, I don't know if they changed their mind or caved to pressure but before Trump or the FAA grounded the planes in  America the Flight Attendants Union was protesting keeping these planes in the air - there WAS some public pressure and if not they might not have grounded them. We have to give credit to speaking out and encourage it.

The same is true for Trump and White Supremacy - we have to call it out, and call out every part of it including denial and ignoring it. John Boehner, former Republican Speaker of the House, was giving an interview about how he now bought stock in and is on the board of a cannabis company. When asked if he regretted his previous votes and positions that resulted in people being incarcerated for marijuana, and it disproportionately imprisoning minorities 4-5 times more than white people he replied that "it never crossed his mind." (3-121-19 edit: and if you know my work, my name, Puffin, you know my belief that Weed is a Form of the Goddess who WILL save the world with our belief in her, which is emerging to show us the natural way - just wait until more folks actually smoke it and access it's mental and spiritual benefits with greater cultural acceptance! And read my book "All I Really Needed to Know I Learned from Smoking Weed.")

We have to talk about these things so we KNOW they always cross everyone's mind. If we had called out Trump and his supporters, more, we could have avoided his supporters who are terrorists from being so bold as to carry out their violent nightmares. And we still can call them out and avoid the next ones, be more aggressive about dismantling the network of White Supremacists and Fascists worldwide. (3-19-21 edit: I'm very pleased with the statements and actions of the Prime Minister of New Zealand who has started by calling out White Supremacy as a global problem and the source of the evil terrorism carried out there AND started banning certain guns to avoid in the future  - which will also piss off and let the White Supremacists know they are all, always, inevitably going to lose, including Trump - his obvious loyalty ONLY to the White Supremacists will soon be his undoing since he always doubles down on it and it keeps getting worse.)

They reported on the news that of the 50 killings in America in 2018 by extremists, terrorists, in every case the terrorists were White Supremacists or right-wing. But the article, in the Atlantic, was titled something like "The Terrorism there isn't an uproar about" - because there wasn't an outcry about this.They WEREN'T reporting on it, widely, until this mass killing in New Zealand - just that one article. Of course they would mention it in mainstream media, and deny it on Fox, whenever there were White Supremacist / Trump connections with the killers - but it didn't become a national focus. Just like the national protest against cops killing mostly black people isn't what is should be -  a unifying, national concern we are addressing  - but a "debate" because of how entrenched the racist side -the System itself - is. If there had been more of an outcry, more blame pinned where it belongs - on White Supremacists - and more scrutiny of Trump for egging them on and signalling to them, empowering them - we could have stopped more of them. And we still can but we NEED to do the things: Call out Trump, seek out the networks that are hidden but also further expose the ones that are in plain sight: the justice system, politics, mainstream media, the banks, etc.

The Whole System IS fraught with White Supremacy and Sexism - and the solution to both is the solution to fixing the whole system and saving the world. I didn't plan to focus on the racism as much as sexism in this edition about Gender but they are entangled by the same forces of oppression. And the solution is the same - expose the evils and discuss them and focus on creating the new, better system to replace the old, evil one.

To return to the Original Spirit of this edition, and conclude it, today I hope, I will say I'm glad it took me a week to write it. Partly to include the new events, horrible as they are, express sympathy for All the victims and assess the blame that CAN prevent more victims in the future.

The same dynamic that makes it a "debate" instead of a national concern that the system is so racist is what keeps us from getting action on climate change, too. The entrenched powers have put all their money and effort into keeping the fossil fuel industry in place instead of going green. They've kept us stuck in a "debate" phase just by paying to put messages out that keep a lot of the population ignorant but mostly by controlling the system itself. Yet this week also saw millions of kids walking out of school all around the world to join protests against the various world governments for ignoring climate change. It's the kids who care, the kids who will force us to change because they've decided to speak out, to create a Good Future instead of accepting an evil one.

3-21-19 Edit - in the three days since this was written there was a major cyclone in Mozambique killing hundreds of people, that they know about, submerging many kilometers of land, effecting thousands of people. The government says it was "not prepared for the magnitude of the storm" which suggests it was a "bigger storm than Usual" or "expected" which implies the effects of climate change - all severe storms suggest the effects of climate change. Meanwhile in America I heard one report of a storm in Nebraska, I think, that overswelled a river flooding farms and depositing fifteen-foot icebergs. The farmer they interviewed said his farmhouse that his grandfather built in 1907 was completely submerged and destroyed, that he couldn't tell if his farm would be saved or not and it was such a terrible disaster for everyone. He said he didn't have much empathy for people in natural disasters, before, but now, it was just awful and he discovered empathy for others who had been in disasters. I think of this as why we Need to develop empathy just because we WANT it, we want to take care of other people and see their sufferings as our own, so we can Stop Suffering  -and not just to stop it before it becomes "our turn" to suffer but to stop it all, everywhere. And we can - but we need to start developing that empathy while we still have a place to live, before we destroy it.

The last thing I heard on the radio last night that I wanted to include here was a lady who worked to preserve Grizzly Bears. The interviewer asked her about a Gender Divide in the support and opposition to her efforts to protect the Grizzly Bear. I thought she was about to say that in her work she noticed that a vast majority of people who contacted her to support the Bears were female and a vast majority of the people who criticized her or wanted to kill the Bears were male. She actually said that it was a "feminine" energy that wanted to protect the bears and also that it was the way of the indigenous people of this land, much older than the invader beliefs. She mentioned that 170 or 270 tribes had signed onto an effort to protect the bear in Yosemite and that thanks to various efforts the range of bears was increasing and isolated bear populations could finally reconnect after decades of being reduced. She said that the "masculine" spirit of frontiersmen "taming the west" was what opposed bear preservation. She mentioned the NRA and others pouring money into the suits that determined if the bears could be hunted.

To me this was the perfect example of how there are two ways, right and wrong, feminine and masculine, and that's exactly what they are.The Feminine is Good and the Masculine is Bad. If we criticize it, expose it, and change it, from the top, at the root, in the system and ourselves, we can fix everything at once and save the world. As I type this there is an episode of Alice where Mel is leaving the Diner and the three Waitresses are deciding to buy the diner and run it themselves.

The Good, feminine way includes cooperation, equality, harmony with nature. We don't need to enumerate all the things that are wrong with the opposite. We can say there are Good, Masculine things, I guess - none come to mind - but the point is that since the Evil System is built very primarily on sexism, Male Dominance, then by promoting the Feminine, at every opportunity, we open up to the New, Better World - the Future. We just can't go wrong or "overdo" it by seeking the feminine way as the Way To Be, there is just so much to break down, in so many ways, in the evil Patriarchal System.

For me, personally, I realized that it was Good to be a Girl at a young age. I guess I could say I have always been envious of girls, for what they are, but not envious of what they are subjected to. And I always wanted to change the system that allowed, demanded that mistreatment. And I wanted to change it to end war, and to end pollution, and restore living in harmony with nature. And I always thought these were "girly" concerns, in the same way that "girls like animals more than boys" in the America I grew up in. But I was proud to be a Girl, in that way - inside, to have a caring, loving, sensitive heart, the things my culture only "allowed" Girls to have - to mock them.

I was always proud of who I am, inside, and I was proud of who I am, outside - I really liked my body even if no one else seemed to. I always thought I was beautiful, a really beautiful boy. And I wanted girls to think I was beautiful, and be attracted to me, the same way I am attracted to them. And I always felt that ALL people are beautiful - but there is something More Beautiful, to me, about girls, maybe because of some universal aesthetic or just because I'm personally attracted to girls - maybe people who are attracted to boys think they are the More Beautiful people - but I kind of lean to the Aesthetic interpretation and think that people who like boys accept that they prefer the uglier sex, but still like them because that is their sexuality.

But even caring about beauty was a Feminine concern. If everyone is encouraged to Care For Beauty, in all it's ways, it's not hard to see how a Beautiful, Peaceful World will emerge. Everyone admitting to their desire for beauty and making a collective effort to make EVERYTHING beautiful would save the world. We don't have to make a "Universal" idea of Beauty, just access all the beauty that already exists, everywhere in the world. And get rid of the ugliness. Just stop accepting it - in the world, in ourselves. Getting rid of all the ugliness. For me, I can identify that ugliness as Masculinity and don't have to put "toxic" in front of it, just see it all as Bad in order to focus on the Goodness of the Feminine.

I grew up when the only way the idea of "Trans" was presented as a "Girl trapped in a Boys Body" and the idea seemed to be, now that it was medically possible, if you were like this you would transition, medically, and become "who you really are." And Gay and Feminine were "identical", too - we only had effeminate gay stereotypes and if you were feminine it was presumed you were gay. Since I was effeminate and attracted to girls it just didn't "add up" in these restrictive conditions: if I did become a girl I would be lesbian, still not "playing by the rules." It didn't "work" - but it wasn't my problem, it was the problem with Society. Its the same with "disability" - society creates problems for different kinds of people by failing to accommodate them. We can overcome this but only by realizing it is Society's problem - all of our problem - not "their" problem.

I'm grateful that I was encouraged enough in my family to be feminist and accepted for being feminine instead of pressured into gender norms, besides some jokes about my long hair. I had my own identity and felt good about it before there was a "place" in society for me, about 20 years "early." Which is what makes me grateful that other folks without the advantages I had, in their families, will have better examples in the culture to understand themselves in ways that are best for them. I think I was 10 or 11, so it was 1987, when I had the idea I was a "lesbian boy" which might be an acceptable term, by now, 32 years later. But the more terms we have the more people can realize who they really are.

I don't want to spoil anything but it was something in the Oz books I read when I was probably 9 that let me conceive of magically transforming gender. In the following years when it became an idea everyone was familiar with, as a medical procedure, it held no interest for me. By that time - largely thanks to L. Frank Baum / Oz and thanks to Music, too - I felt fine with my own identity, "Girl Free in a Boys Body" because I rejected the idea that I was "trapped" or that there was anything "wrong" with being a girl, or being a "girly-boy." It helped that anyone who said that as an insult always sounded like a jerk.

It also helped me, in 1986 or 87, to play Metroid on the Nintendo Entertainment System. At the end - "spolier alert" (I can say it in quotes, here, because you Already Know and I can't even say it about Oz because I don't want to spoil it / you most likely haven't read it-  please do!) it is revealed that the Hero is a Girl. She is in a spacesuit the whole time you are playing and no gender is assigned but I guess since all the video game heroes up to that time were male  - and patriarchy in general - one can be forgiven for thinking Samus Aran would be a boy. So I was surprised, pleasantly surprised, that Samus was a girl. I remember telling my dad, when I was 10 and discovered this when I beat the game, I was so excited to discover she was a girl. Also I think my parents were suspicious of video games at the time so I wanted to convince my dad that they were good, that there were going to be Good Messages in video games. I don't think he was excited, as I was, about Samus being a girl -he didn't seem to see it as an important moment, politically, culturally, like I wanted him to - or maybe he was just busy and didn't seem as enthusiastic as I wanted him to be.

But it made me realize how important it is to have heroes, to have examples you can relate to, for everyone. Samus is so well-known, now, since Metroid has continued to be a popular franchise for Nintendo for over thirty years. And there have been numerous female video game characters since then and I would suggest that gender equality has progressed faster in video games than in movies, for example, in part because of Samus's example, and success.

When I started this Captain Marvel was the record-breaking top movie of the weekend and was again this weekend, too. I still haven't seen it but get the impression that having a female superhero really feels empowering to people. And having it be really successful is a good lesson to disprove sexist ideas that it's not profitable.

It was only about ten years ago that I first came across the idea of Five Genders: Female, Male, Two-Spirit Female, Two-Spirit Male, and Trans. When I first heard about it the idea was presented that the indigenous people, here, all believed this and it "offended" the White Invaders whose culture insisted there were only two genders so they wanted to wipe them out and wipe out all traces and records of the five gender belief. When I looked it up the other day online it mentioned a number of countries in Asia that believed this -but that's all. It seemed true, to me, that it was what people in this land believed, too, until recent times - and seemed the more natural way to see gender. And it made sense that it was essential for the Patriarchy to eradicate this idea and keep "our" culture from being influenced by it. And it makes sense why the White Supremacists and Alt-Right have their chants and hashtags of "Two Genders!" to try to insist their way is right, to shout out the alternative. The problem is they are just wrong and the Better Ways, the Natural Ways, are returning to take over.

The Goddess is re-emerging in the world, in us, all the time. We help Her just by wanting Her, by believing in her, and even more by acting like it. Since She is the Goddess of Everything she emerges in Everything and this emergence is the most magical thing, ever, and enables all other Good Magic. You really can just envision Better Ways of being, communicate about them with others, and get these ideas out there in a way that Magically Transforms the world - by which I mean if you just do the dreaming and creating part the magic of the Goddess takes over and makes the world transform - you just have to go for it. Believe in it, Believe in Her, Believe in Yourself and Believe in The Goddess IN Yourself and yourself in The Goddess. Discover, reveal and share the magic that waits in abundance for us to come to it, to free us from the constraints that hold us back and threaten the health of the world. We just have to want it, be open to it, and challenge the ways of thinking that oppose it. The Feminine, Natural, Compassion, Beauty, Art - we can feel how these things are all part of the Good World that is merely held off by Evil. We focus on Goodness, we challenge and overcome the evil, and we WILL make a world where we ALL feel free in whatever bodies we end up in.

I've talked a lot, not as much recently, about Gaga as The Goddess but I've been neglecting that perspective in my writing, and more importantly neglecting the most important part of that perspective in my own life. I think Gaga is such a pure manifestation of the Goddess because the Way she Is the Goddess is a Way that Makes You the Goddess, Too. But I haven't been doing my part, I haven't been living up to my potential and true purpose as The Goddess, in My Form, as I was so grateful and responsive to her doing, in hers. I realized that was part of it, and a big part - because whatever was going on in the world to bother and enrage and distract me, the only thing that really blocks me from accessing Art, from conveying better Writing, is Me, holding myself back, letting anything "get to me" or give me an excuse to remain "the old me" instead of a New Me I'm becoming. And I can't wait for anyone to agree with my ideas or give me permission anymore, I just have to stop making excuses and stop holding myself back and write, draw, paint and sing.

One thing on the radio last night was about a "terrible" singer, Florence maybe (?) who was humored by her friends until she sang at bigger and bigger venues and was eventually a smash hit at Carnegie Hall and her music is still available. The report ended that while people were still laughing at her decades later - and it did make me laugh and chuckle again just to think about it - that her music would live on forever, they didn't know if she ever really knew she "couldn't" sing or if she was always "impenetrably delusional" that she could, her whole life. But the only clue they had that she might have "known" she couldn't sing was this, her quote:

"They may say I can't sing, but they can't say I DIDN'T sing."

Which makes me smile and cry to end this with, and reminds me to Sing. For my Soul, for the Soul of the World - and I hope you'll join me, in whatever songs you choose - but Sing!

Peace and Love over War and Hate: gagablog 169

This edition is inspired by an article I read the other day about Gaga's relationships.

Before I get into it, and I don't have much to say, this time, I wanted to mention Peace in Korea and Gaga's awards - she is apparently the first person in History to win all the awards, I don't know what they all were, but I think she won the Oscar, too, and just all the biggest awards this year for her song "Shallow" in the "A Star Is Born" movie. As someone who worships Gaga as The Goddess I could have been mentioning this all along, celebrating the world celebrating her, in their way, but I guess I was focused on other things - mostly world events and whatever was on Old School TV, Antenna TV and Me TV, which I watch a lot and while I'm writing, often. And I also have some opinions about the movie that make me not as focused on that song or present "incarnation" of Gaga. But I am really happy for her getting all the accolades and spotlights and news stories - I'll get back to this.

I think the awards season is over, now, and she "won it all" and made history, again. I'm so happy for her but I haven't given that enough attention. After seeing what seemed to me to be an abusive relationship in what's his name, Jackson Maine/Bradley Cooper's "A Star is Born" and seeing various examples of sexism since then that highlighted it I just don't feel "all about it" like I do most everything Gaga does. I still really want to see the original movie, with Judy Garland, to see how much is "the story" and what parts he "made his own" - but to me it was an abusive relationship, not a romantic one, that was being depicted and all the media talk about how "romantic" it is bothers me -but I might have to focus on all of that in another edition, I just wanted to focus on one aspect, here.

I was pleased that even though I was unable to complete my Shirley Fairies spell, here, last time, as I intended, before Trump's summit, to completely end the Korean War. Instead, Trump got "No Deal" and then the next day, after he came home, South Korea announced that they would be ending the military exercises with America, an annual event that always upset North Korea and threatened starting a war. It was one of their major demands in negotiations with America/South Korea and if Trump "got anything" for cancelling them he didn't brag about it, that I have heard, so I doubt he really had anything to do with it. As I said last time, as I have been saying all along, at least since the election of Moon, the people and now governments of Korea want to end the War between them - but they need America, and apparently China's, permission to end it. It seems to me that we, Trump, are the only hold-up - and yet we can't just keep a war that No One wants.

Once people see a path to Peace, a peaceful future, we will go for it. The insistence that we have to keep Wars will eventually be exposed for what it is - the murderous scam of the military industrial complex, in collusion with Governments and Oil Companies and all they influence. These evils of corruption and racism are being exposed in the political process and social media discourse despite Facebookkk being in league with the fascist system and trying to censor and divide us and much of the political parties doing the same thing. But we do have a chance, even in the flawed vehicle of the Democratic Party, to elect Tulsi/Bernie and we WILL do that, this time - we are too numerous and well-versed in their tricks to be foiled by them, this time.

We are too big to fail.

But this is a short edition about Gaga's awards and relationships, as much as I gleaned from that article, anyway. Because I know she doesn't want much, just certain parts, of her private life known to the public, I don't really think about it that much. I will admit to being envious of her lovers, every time, but not in the way that I wished I was them, but that I wished she was in love with me - I never had much respect for them because they never had enough respect for her, that I could see. But I didn't really have much details to go on until I read that article, which was just one page, but it reminded me of some things I heard on the radio and saw on TV the day before and after I read it so I wanted to mention it, here.

I wrote the gagablog a few editions ago about how sexism was alive and well - how Wally on Father Knows Best was ashamed to ride in a car driven by a girl, which seemed outrageous to realize was only 60 years ago, but in modern times it took 14 years to get a co-star for Glen Close as the lead in "Wife" because all the biggest stars turned it down - the most "modern" and "liberal" people essentially being afraid to be "driven by a girl."

I heard an echo of that in a radio story and then again in the Gaga article. The radio story I heard twice, before I read the article and afterwards, for emphasis. Earlier today i saw a Father Knows Best where they are watching a show, Father Does it Again, and he assumes his family is trying to rick, act, and manipulate him as the family on the show did. That stood out to me since I was going to write this, talking about how TV and radio are reflected in "real life", by themes or fairy magic, I call it. So the other day I heard this radio story, and again last night, about a girl who grew up in Queens and her mom dated a really rich guy who lived in the Hamptons so they spent their weekend there. For 22 years. The thing that stood out to me was this: Her mom and she lived their "normal/poor" lifestyle on weekdays but Silver Spooned it up on weekends - but she didn't take money from her rich boyfriend, she didn't allow him to support her. From the sound of it he could have supported many, many people, given hundreds an upper class lifestyle - but she stayed poor. Because her mom had a "principle"

The principle was "If you let someone give you money it means you have to take their advice." Now maybe I'm being judgemental but that sounded like bullshit, to me. Trying to give her credit I will say, for example, he could have just bought her a much nicer house in a "better" neighborhood - but since he could do that, if he did, he might be "pressuring" or influencing her on where she would live, and she didn't want that. Even writing it, it still sounds silly, like what a problem to have, someone buying you a house, giving you a lifestyle, just with the caveat that they might have input on your life.

But mostly I just called bullshit on that "principle" - because if she lived with him, weekends, she surely ended up taking his advice, to some degree, sometimes. That's pretty foundational to a relationship - to take the person's statements of concern for you with respect. You don't have to "follow" their advice or become obedient because you take their money - but it's respectful to consider advice even if no money is exchanged - it shows that you respect that the other person respects you. Maybe she never felt like they could mutually respect each other because he was rich, but I am just speculating here.

My point is that people react to stereotypes and standards in relationships in ways that are detrimental to them. I need to clarify, there are certain "standards" in relationships that are purely wrong, such as male domination, and they are so deeply entrenched in our culture that we need to reject them and root them out and be aware of how they poison and corrupt everything. One way to look at homophobia, in politics - trying to make laws to prohibit gay relationships when it doesn't effect you at all - is that these people are afraid of same-sex relationships because it confuses and confounds their belief in Male Domination - "who is 'the man' in that relationship?" they ask. And we live out problems with these deeply wrong "standards" in our own relationships, because they effect us all deeply, even if we are aware of the evil of it, it's hard to root out - and the culture, the system, keeps reasserting it.

But it is evil and unsustainable - but in this case, the lady not taking money from her rich boyfriend, what IS that? She doesn't want to be like... a wife?  A prostitute? A girlfriend? There are various ways to feel shame but we don't HAVE to feel them.

The institution of marriage is mostly reinforcement of these same "women are property of their husbands" evil system - but there ARE good things in marriage, despite this history and all the aspects of it. People still desire marriage, something in it, not THAT, to become property or to own someone - most people don't want that and no one REALLY does, just gets brainwashed into believing they do, sometimes. What people want, if they want to get married, really comes out - this was the theme of an episode of Alice I saw today where Vera realizes she and her fiance have nothing in common so they call of the engagement.

People want LOVE, and marriage, so much that they sometimes just go for it - the magic of love itself and their fantasies about the other person are enough to blind them to the incompatibility or lack of sufficient response from their lover, if that is the case. And GREAT LOVERS can be kept apart by the flotsom of all these "bad standards" in our ideas of Love, relationships, and marriage.

So the idea of "not taking money / advice from your lover" came up in the article about Gaga. I've always thought that girls I had a crush on, in my life, would one day hear about me as a famous musician or artist or writer and regret that they had not appreciated me - this is always how I felt Gaga's exes would feel about her. So I read that Nebraska, I guess, had given an interview in which he said something like "If you are dating someone who is travelling the world you either have to be rich or be willing to accept their money to go with them and I was neither."

That was just all I needed to hear to confirm all my worst suspicions: It's sexist, like Wally or Movie Stars being scared of being in a car/movie driven by a girl. It's completely unappreciative of Gaga, of her love for him, of his chance to be with her - it's just - I don't even want to think of words for it. But it's also sexist in that specific way about relationships that women are supposed to be the property of and subordinate to men. It's just at the foundation of all sexism and I think, you think like this and Gaga still liked you? You must have had other good things about you! But what if someone who had those good things about them, but also Thought much better, was smarter, more creative, more sensitive, more magical, more inspired -what if someone like THAT could be with Gaga? Wouldn't she, and the world, be better off? 

In the case of the mom with the rich boyfriend, it is "bucking" that tradition to refuse his money, and that is respectable in a way but also seems silly -why have that kind of pride instead of just "enjoying" more and maybe being able to help more people, too? In the case of Nebraska and Gaga its reinforcing those sexist ideas, you can't be a man and be with a more successful woman, it challenges your "manhood." Maybe it's not my business I just don't see how Gaga could be happy with THAT kind of man and it seems that is a theme with everyone she dates - from the little I know about it.

It has always been my instinct - when she was dating that Werewolf from Vampire Diaries, Chicago Fire guy, Bradley Manning or I'm sorry it's not coming to me, now - I was happy for her, for them, becuase she seemed happy - I just never thought there was a possible chance he could be "good" for her - Taylor Kinney! - because he just seemed kinda dense and not creative or passionate enough. The only info I got on their relationship from the article was something Gaga said about maybe having stronger feelings that he didn't really respond with the same strength of feeling? -which I think is what I suspected, all along. 

Because even if you aren't that.... artistic... of a person it seems like, in a relationship with Gaga, you would just Evolve, quickly, if you just had the heart and depth to do so.

Which brings us to Shallow. I only saw this connection a few minutes ago, I think I have been blocking out everything except Gaga from A Star is Born - but there were two more "media magic" events that happened today: I was at the store and saw a tabloid that Justin Beiber was suffering from suicidal thoughts and Haile was coming to his rescue. Then I came hoome and saw "Norm" from Cheers was a guest star on Alice. He was Monte and had a date with Alice but she broke up with him and he was going to kill himself until she talks him down from Mel's diner. He actually realized she had a 17-year old kid and changed his mind - basically he wasn't going to kill himself he was just trying to guilt her into marrying him. I just now remembered that this week I also heard a radio show about some song - but nevermind. I thought about this "echo" of men threatening suicide to get "their woman" to save them.

I thought, "what does that have to do with what I am saying about Gaga?" and didn't see the connection, until a few minutes ago. But I DID think it applied - it's all about the man trying to control the woman, to say that she will be "destroying" him if she does not obey him - and I'm not saying Beiber is doing this AT ALL - he is a real person who is likely going through real problems and I only hope the best for him and anyone who feels suicidal or depressed I only want help for everyone, to pull through and live to realize life can be good. But the way the magazine presented it, that his girlfriend or ex rushed to him, is based upon and reinforces this theme that the nature of a "relationship" is men dominating and controlling women. Because that WAS all the character, Monte, was doing. I just thought these were examples of some of the most drastic ways men can "insist" on controlling women in relationships, the fundamental wrongness of the idea since it can lead to this and other tragic and terrible outcomes.

But then I realized when I went out for a smoke break, while writing the part about the girl's mom's rich boyfriend/story by the rich guy's girlfriend's daughter - that's what Jackson Maine does. That's his kind of relationship with Ally: I'm better than you, keep groing MY WAY, don't overshadow ME, that will destroy me to have to put myself, my issues, aside to have to support YOU.

Again, I must have been repressing that whole movie except Ally singing. And I could write another edition - after I see the Judy Garland version, I hope - all about the movie, scene for scene - but I don't want to get into it, to remember it, now.

Because I LOVED seeing Gaga and hearing her sing on the Big Screen, I loved ALL her parts of the movie, but I hated the whole thing at the same time because it was, to me, like watching someone you love in an abusive, controlling relationship and not noticing it.

And it uspets me to hear Gaga playing into the "romnantic" idea of the movie - it's not just that I "wish Gaga would look at me like Gaga looks at Bradley Cooper" - it IS that, but "maybe" that is an act, to play up the publicity? Ok I wish she looked at me like that. But while I accept she is "talking it up" for publicity to talk about it as if it is all romantic, that she kept his shirt, etc, it also seems like she actually feels that way.

And that made me sad when I first heard it, before I read this article that mentioned her exes. I felt like she must have only had bad relationships to think this one seemed "good" - maybe it was better by comparison and that just makes you feel for her more. How can people treat such an amazing person so badly?

Everyone IS amazing in our own ways - how can any of us treat others badly? How can we allow a system that mistreats people to continue? I could go on.

But I want to just wrap this up so maybe it will be readable, for once. I want to say if we look for how badness has deeply corrupted us, is running the System we are all subject to, we can work against it by radically appreciating goodness in ourselves and others.

It DOES win if we want goodness and believe in it and seek it.

I feel very happy for Gaga winning her awards - they are so well deserved because she is so talented, passionate, honest and emotional in her singing and acting. Maybe, if she had found "better" love, she would not have the same "drive" to achieve so much -but I suspect she will, when she does, and be able to do even more, even better, with the power of love with her, comfortably. I'm not sad for her breaking off another engagement - it's not that "I have a chance" again as much as she has a chance to be with someone who is really good for her. I had exactly zero impression of her manager/boyfriend, except for that title, which led me to suspect the same pattern of men who want to "own her."

And that's not what love is. That's the opposite of love, pride, ownership, possessiveness, control. And yet it is mixed in with how we expereince love, because of how we are conditioned, how we are raised under an evil, sexist system. But Love wins, love is more powerful and will see us through these wrongs and the struggles they create.

I could go on about Love forever but instead I have to go to work and bring this to a close, for now. If I can try to sum it up, remembering Cohen seeking redemption by exposing how evil and corrupt Trump is, looking forward to Trump himself even doing the same - saying he knew in his heart he was doing wrong, got mixed up with the wrong people, Nazis - or not, but being exposed for what he is. I look to a future where ALL the evils are exposed, and disposed of, and we can live happily and well and meet the challenges we've created for ourselves.

 - If I can try to sum it up, Love Wins. The Future IS Love, Abundance, Happiness. The Present we are stuck in this wreckage of the past - we need to face it, address it, heal it and move forwards.

But the Future IS Love - the hateful ones will be exposed, held up as cautionary examples - and we will LEARN from them and be better, be different.

Bradley Cooper still isn't a good lover for Gaga, even the way she looks at him - that's Love but she is Love. She may have allowed him to convince her that he "drew it out of her" but Its All Her. He just got lucky, took advantage of his current fame. It hurts me to hear him say how "meta" it was that she encouraged his actual singing while he encouraged her acting, "like Jackson and Ally" - but I'm afraid the real "meta" aspect of the movie and their relationship is that it's the same abusive, exploitative structure and pattern - that she is "used to" and he is "better at" than her previous boyfriends.

But since I don't really want to talk about this, more, except to maybe analyze the movie in detail, I will say the media stories are also about his wife or girlfriend and how Mel B doesn't approve of Bradley and Gaga, etc. All I can say is Bradley is using Gaga for publicity, to make his girlfriend jealous, and possibly using her in a relationship the same way his character used Ally. And I want to call that out as bullshit and rude and unhealthy for Gaga, for anyone in this situation and I hope it can be a way to learn from it so people and relationships aren't like this anymore.

The power of love can make you look at someone like that even if they don't deserve it. But when two people look at each other like that, they both deserve it - and anyone CAN do this if they allow themselves. I'm the last person to argue for monogamy, as a standard, but I can appreciate belonging to someone exclusively. And I can certainly appreciate that this is the way most people in our culture understand relationships, exclusively. So Bradley IS being rude to his wife, because if they had "an understanding" we would know about it, such is the nature of fame and the media. And he's not doing out of "Love" for Gaga - all the Love is Her. He's just not any "better" than these other guys, not smart or talented or sensitive or caring enough to be Good for her - and he COULD be, anyone CAN be good for another, if they are willing to give in to the LOVE that the Stronger Lover is bringing.

Gaga needs a Lover who can Love as strongly as she does - and she hasn't met anyone like that, yet, or has somehow overlooked him, her, or them.

And it's none of my business except I wish it were, i wish WE could be in Love! But I'm talking about it, to respond to these "notices" in the media, radio, print, and TV reruns- and because it's a template for overcoming ALL badness:

We have LOVE in Us, magically, powerfully trying to come out. We Can meet with others who can Love us, Appreciate our Love, respond with LOVE - this can and WILL happen if we believe in the LOVE and not get caught up in The Person or details about the person that make them "the only one" or by contrast, "invalidate" them.

There is an Evil System we live under - one of it's main tricks is to get us to blame it's evil on individuals, on groups - on people. When even they, as evil as they may be (like Trump) are still victims of The Evil System. If we keep in mind that there IS an Evil System, over all of us, it allows us the Mercy to Forgive Others, to see them As Ourselves.

In the same way there is a Magical Love World, above, beneath, defying this Evil System - we just have to break through to it, believe in it, and see IT in ourselves and each other, instead of seeing the examples of the Evil System in each other.

it's just a magic "trick" - but it's real Magic. We Make Love By focusing on it, by believing in it - and by exposing and addressing Evil, but not "focusing" on it, believing in it, exposing it because it's roots are false and when exposed it goes away. But Love is True, even if we can make mistakes by only seeing restricted or restrictive versions of it.

Once we start imagining, expressing, and sharing the True Love that defies the Evil System we WILL win, and at every level, personal, magical, political, and artistic - in every form of work.

Un-Trump Summit, Cohen Flips: gagablog #168

As I write this the sun has come up over Colorado but you can't see it: the sky is grey and overcase all over and it's supposed to be cloudy all day. Meanwhile in Vietnam Trump is meeting with Kim Jong Un as I type this, and I'm eager to finish the Shirley Fairies spell, started here almost 23 months ago, on April 16th, 2017. Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, is scheduled to start his public testimony before Congress in about half an hour. Republicans are repeating a chorus of how dishonest he is and can't be trusted but the truth is he only stands to gain, and potentially redeem himself somewhat, by coming clean with the Truth about Trump, from one of his closest allies.

I hope Trump and Kim Jong Un make a declaration of Peace at their meeting: they apparently can't declare an actual Peace Treaty without China, as well - and maybe after coming through China the North Korean leader has that approval, somehow, but it seems like the very best to hope for would be the Declaration of Peace, starting the process to get that Treaty.

It's especially "timely" that even as Trump is at this summit Cohen will start testifying, possibly while Kim Jong Un and Trump are still meeting. It seems like "anything" is possible on a day like today, but I wanted to mention a few possibilities. There is so much bad news coming out all the time about Trump but it is coming even more intensely. In the last week these have included election fraud  - NOT "voter fraud" which doesn't exist - in North Carolina, reports of sexual abuse of kids who have been taken from their families at the border, reports that thousands of those kids will be "up for adoption" (kidnapped) after their parents were deported, and the Congress voting against Trump's national Emergency declaration.

Also in the last week there were two KKK-related stories that no one seemed to be putting the pieces together well in the way they reported it. One was an editor of a Alabama (Or Mississippi?) newspaper who wrote an article saying that the KKK should ride again through Washington D.C. and commit genocide to mass murder non-white people. He was fired and facebook posts gloated about how he had been replaced by a black woman (but who writes for that paper, anyway?) and NO mention of any kind of legal action against him for promoting terrorism, that I ever heard about. No one mentioned that he was arrested.

There was an arrest of a white nationalist terrorist, maybe on the exact same day or the next day. He worked in the Coast Guard, was amassing weapons and planning terrorist attacks, had planned ways to kill everyone on earth, and his goal was to start a race war to lead to a white nationalist state or form a white nationalist all-white Island or some shit. Trump absolutely refuses to speak out against him - yet he has time to tweet about the racist-homophobic attack on actor Jussie Smollet that the police reported they had decided was staged by the actor himself. This event took up a lot of media and social media attention and is tragic for many reasons but mostly because it gives "ammo" to all the racism-denying assholes who try to say it is "all fake".

But the important thing is this was a REAL attack being planned by a white nationalist terrorist but Trump refuses to speak out against it because he is also a white nationalist - and probably ordered the attack, himself, to try to get a "way out" of all the crimes and evil he has committed catching up to him. It reminds me of a meme I saw, recently, of Trump saying "You can't finish the indictments if I never stop committing crimes!"

Steve King was ostracized, and since my last gagablog the racist histories of Democratic Governor of Virginia, wearing blackface, was a huge media story - but they never carried the story over to the many obvious examples of Trump being actively KKK. To me, the lack of response to the white nationalist terrorist trying to start genocide and race war means only one of two things: Trump agrees with him and is sorry he was caught OR he actually personally ordered the attack and is sorry he was caught. Because otherwise he COULD say it was a good thing he was caught -or better yet, denounce all the things he has said, all along, that encourage racism in the first place.

Except that is his base AND the same white nationalism and racism IS the foundation of the Republican Party beliefs. Unfortunately the Democrats are too much "fake" opposition and allow the same racist system and policies to continue by putting up weak and ineffective opposition to it and promoting shoddy "alternatives" and cheap window dressing instead of fixing the problems of racism, sexism, and classism in the whole system.

A great example of that came on the radio last night when I was heading to a friend's house, all about investigations into the major banks loan practices. The figures they gave were from banks that had given tens of thousands of loans - the biggest bank in LA, I think - but had only given 3 loans to black folks and 11 to Latina folks. Out of like 14,000. And the same situation existed in Philly - a handful of loans to black and Latina folks out of thousands to white people. This is the same redlining, in practice, ever since the Fair Housing act, or whatever it was supposed to be, 50 years ago. These reports are coming out so that "everyone" is talking about them, the radio mentioned that Elizabeth Warren has added it to her campaign, to address this issue, so it will become even more well known. I'm grateful to her for that but the way she said it was "shocking" reminded me how this is news to White People but the fact that Black People couldn't get loans - well, they KNEW that without an investigation or report, it's something every one of them live with on a daily basis, for decades, and before that it was just more open. But it's still as prevalent and as racist and segregationist as ever.

To me Bernie Sanders has been addressing these issues all along and I'm really glad he is running again, and Tulsi, too - I have too much to say about this so I will save it for an upcoming gagablog, probably the one about Good Government I promised, months ago.

But just today, when it is only a few minutes away from Cohen's public testimony, I want to focus on these Evil Powers that have been "hanging over" all our heads that have been especially apparent under Trump - but have always been there.

There was another great meme/post I saw online, someone's tweet or post that while Trump was in Vietnam, and Pence is apparently in Colombia trying to orchestrate the coup in Venezuela, Republicans are afraid that Nancy Pelosi, who is the top leader actually IN America, now, will declare that "No Russian Agents" can come into America - blocking Trump and Pence from returning and taking power.

I don't even know if this is possible, or "just a joke" but the concept is amazing and hilarious - and fits in with my lover's theory that Trump will, ultimately, just try to escape, to run away from everything. I joked about this last night with my friend, that Trump could "drive off" in a white boat with Agents chasing him - or not. But as long as he runs away, if he escapes, and doesn't plague us anymore it would be for the best. If that happens while he is in Vietnam, just because of Cohen's testimony, he would be revealing he is a crook, admitting it - not that he really has any "face" to save. If Nancy Pelosi DID take over the Government, somehow, it would fit Trump's "agenda" better - it would leave his supporters "angry" at someone, which is what they all like, and it would leave the rest of the public thinking that "the government works" - instead of realizing where it is broken and rigged against most people so that we fix it.

As I typed those last two paragraphs the hearing started - I changed from Antenna TV when Dennis the Menace came on to watch it as I write. At the very beginning Republicans tried to postpone the hearing by saying new information came out overnight and they are due, by the rules, 24-hour advance of any new information, but Democrats overruled them and chose to lay aside the rule and continue the hearing. As they explained this one of the pundit / announcers from NBC - "would ya'll close that door please?" the congressman just said - the announcer said "if there is an impeachment of Trump this could be Day One" - but I wonder if enough WILL come out that Trump just doesn't want to come back, even if he has a Victory of a Peace with North Korea.

In all honesty, as Elijah Cummings says "it should be troubling to all Americans" in his opening statements, Trump deserves little credit for Peace in Korea - both Korean Leaders Moon and Kim were working all year, in 2018, to make peace. Both had agreed they wanted to officially end the war by the end of 2018 - but apparently its not up to them as much as it is to America and China - so if they had their way, there would already be Peace but it needs Trump's approval, and China's, and Trump is mostly making things more difficult. "Our lives begin to end when we become silent about things that truly matter" Cummings just quoted Martin Luther King - now the ranking Republican has his opening statement time and is using ALL of it to try and protect Trump and discredit Cohen - as if "because he lied, to protect Trump - which is what they are doing - he can't possibly tell the truth, now." When  - if everyone admits he was a liar, for Trump, he CAN have a chance to clear his name "fraudster, cheat, convicted felon" the Republican just called him, trying to say the whole thing is "staged" by the Clintons. And whoever Lanie Davis is. But he is saying Cohen "Will" lie, to get Trump in trouble, instead of recognizing what he himself said - that he lied - but his lies were to protect Trump. He's whining about rules, now, after yeilding the floor and realizing he forgot whatever point of order he wanted and he is all butthurt about that, too.

Cohen is swearing in. If he tells the truth and it is different than his lies before and it gets Trump in trouble, and helps clear his name, I think we will all know it is True - he just asked for protection for his family from Presidential Threats so it sure sounds like he will come clean - I will watch instead of "reporting" as I go, it will probably be too much information - he just said he regrets helping run a campaign of hate and intolerance - and how ashamed he is.

It's like a template for what ALL Trump supporters and enablers and defenders will be saying - and he "knows what Trump is, a racist, a con man, and a cheat." This is too good, the moment when he comes clean about everything. I want to introduce the notes I took, just now, as Cohen is saying what eveidence he will present and say he wants to start a path of redemption. "The Last time I came before Congress I came to Protect Trump" but this time he is coming to tell the truth about Trump.

He's busting Trump for lying about the real estate deals with Moscow and saying he did so because he never expected to win the election.

I want to introduce the notes I took on the Father's Knows Best episodes I watched while waiting for this to start, which I thought magically significant. But Cohen is TOO GOOD right now, I feel he WILL be redeemed by this, and I appreciate it - it's a condemnation of "naked ambition" itself, now, as he talks about how working with Trump "monopolized" his life then was brought into Trump's personal life and dealings. "he is capable of kindness, but he is not kind." "trump would often say 'this campiagn is going to be the greatest infomercial in history."

Here are the notes I took for Father Knows Best - the first was an episode where Cathy writes down what her father says about the mayor, signs his name to the letter and sends it to him.

The mayor is asking him about the letter in the final scene:

Since when is "cook" spelled with 2 K's (reference to the KKK in the White House, magically - as I type this in, live, to the notes I took earlier, Cohen is laying out how racist Trump is - "he once asked me if any country run by a black person is a shithole, said only black people can live in poverty and would never vote for him because they are too stupid"

Reading the letter the mayor says:- "Im a krook, I should be standing with a monkey and a hand organ, I'm imcmperant - I'm also a grafter - So Im a grafter, incompetent - the reason we have incompetent government is that the public doesn't hold them accounable"

Cohen is now saying he is sharing Trump's documents, how he inflates and deflates his assets, and proves he is a con man, or Krook.

Cathy: "I'm sorry I said those things, you can't help it if you're a crook." Cathy is so sweet.

Cohen is bemoaning how, as Trump did these things, "yet I continued to work for him" and just said one of his greatest regrets was lying to First Lady Melania who he respects and says is actually good and kind.

In the second episode Bud tells the truth at his father's urging but has some bad consequences from it and decides Truth is NOT the best option, becomes cynical, at one point telling his sister "Take what you can get and it doesn't matter how you get it."

His dad says to his mom, after that: "I was afraid he'd react this way - we've got work to do." This is what we have to do, work, to overcome the negative effects of a racist and corrupt leader and the belief systems he stands for.

Cohen just pointed out, looking at the camera, that Trump lied to avoid the draft to Vietnam, but is currently in Vietnam. If I were him I wouldn't want to come back.

After I finish these notes, on what Cohen says, I will finish the notes on the fairies in Shirley, and the spell to end the threat of War -with Korea and everywhere - which could very esily coincide with the end of Trump's administration - AND ALL the evil it represents.

As Cohen points out Trump's mobster ways of threatening his family he looks at the Republican side of the chamber and says that on "both sides of the aisle" they should agree that intimidating witnesses is wrong. He concluded by saying that he wants to set an example, a good example, for his kids and to redeem himself in the eyes of History and the American people.

I don't know what the DEmocrats are going to ask him, other than to get more details, that can be any more damning than his opening statements - they are just getting it all laid out, now. But I can't even imagine what will happen when the Republicans get a chance to ask him - will they just dig their own graves deeper?

The Republican, Jordan, is taking his turn, now, saying his crimes are "not to protect Trump" and pointing them all out, all the other things he did, that weren't associated with Trump. It's all really pathetic that he is trying to "change the narrative" and everything he is saying reflects on HIM< too, for continuing to protect Trump - even now Cohen is saying he tried to preserve attorney client privilege, which the Republicans are claiming is being violated by the whole hearing. He just made himself seem crazy, as if Cohen was just bitter that he didn't get a WHite House Job - it sounds EXACTLY like he is in some Bully Club and trying to shame someone for leaving it, turning against it.

DWS just asked about Russia and this Republican Green asshole isn't asking anything, just bitching about what he can ask and saying he will only lie - "will do whatever he wants to accomplish his own personal goals" - which is what they do, for the Trump and KKK's goals. Because he isn't getting anything out of this other than redemption, he is still going to prison. He and his family SHOULD have protection even if he was going to continue protecting Trump.

It's going so badly for Trump it makes me wonder if he will have more pressure to declare as much peace as presidentially possible to try and make a news story to detract from this - but would they even cut away? It's too compelling, what Cohen is saying - but of course they would break in to report it, or run something at the bottom of the screen - it does make me think he will try to do as much Good as possible to mitigate how this is going for him - and since Cohen already laid out a lot against Trump the Democrats ARE getting more details, exposing more of the evil and nasty ways - but I still think the most important stuff, from here on out, will be how the Republicans try to "dismiss" this when they are guilty of the same, of worse for continuing to try and protect Trump even in the face of the truth.

This next Republican is doing the SAME thing the previous one did, now that it is Colier, he is also asking about Cohen's personal crimes and asking if he blames them on the President, which he doesn't but it's also not what anyone is interested in. But it's all they have - you have other crimes that don't compare with what you did for Trump AT ALL but if we focus on them we can make you feel bad and look bad - it's the same treatment for ANYONE who betrays the trust of an Evil Klan.

Holmes Norton is asking him about Trump's response to the release of the Access Hollywood video.

I feel like this will go on wth no breaks for some time, I should pick a smoke break - but also get my notes on Shirley fairies, too, and finish that project to complete the Peace Spell.

pg 6480 was my last note, so the next one is

Wait, this is good, the Republican Meadows saying he has talked with Trump 300 times but never heard him say something racist and challenging Cohen that some lady he helped get into the administration has also said that Trump is NOT racist - and she grew up in Alabama and says she would not work for a racist, how could he explain that? His response, the same way he could as the son of a Holocause survivor, shut the Congressman up on that line. And so he just tried getting mad and being far less charming than Cohen, claiming the record shows he is "not nice" which some unkindly looking lady behind the Congressasshole smiled at like it was such a great joke.

Now Clay is saying America is tried of being lied to, including the Congressional Republicans STILL trying to protect Trump and con America.

And Now "weve brought this committee to its knees in terms of credibility" Hice said. but the Democrat is calling the Republicans out for "running away from the truth" now asking about Moscow.

Now Jordan is complaining that Rosenstien wanted to remove Trump using the 25th Amendment  - which just sounds like a better and better idea as this goes on. "Ive never known a lawyer who will wait 3 years to get paid" - "I guess he thinks it's important."

Now Rep. Gosar is trying another Republican tactic, saying he basically betrayed their Klan. "This is MY time, when I ask a question I will ask for an answer" - You can tell Gosar's dad beat him. "America is watching, I get texts right and left saying how can we listen to him" and is suggesting it is for his Twitter following??? They are just terribly ridiculuous claiming that THEY believe in Truth and ven just sad "Liar liar pants on fire" like ANYONE can ever take him seriously - terrible brats.

This is interesting -what was the breaking point to start telling the Truth? "Helsinki, Charlottesville, the daily damage..."  - and Cohen REALLY go them by saying they Republicans are saying the the same things, doing the same things he used to do.

Cohen had already listed numerous Trump acts that SHOULD have caused him to quit, which implies he did have a conscience about those occasions but it wasn't enough to overcome his ambition or enamourment with Trump. Of course he was still working for and protecting Trump AFTER Helsinki and Charlottesville, too - but mentioning these suggest that they were turning points that STARTED to awaken his conscience to empower him to want to tell the truth. Helsinki refers to the meeting with Putin, when Trump said he believed Putin, not American intelligence agencies, showing he is in league with Putin - Cohen started to doubt when it led to Treason.

"The American people don't care about my taxes...not one question has been asked about Mr. Trump" - by the REpublicans, Cohen just said. "All of them depend on someone who has turned" and that is undone if you believe someone who has lied "can never tell the truth" - which is also an important fundamental belief, can people change or not? Can people be redeemed? It's "ironic" - part of the irony of their whole existence - that these False Christians, the Republicans, are the ones who claim to believe in Jesus and redemption but their actual belief, and actions, are based upon denying redemption, denying change itself. That point about "liars" never being able to tell the truth was made by a Democratic congressman, I missed his name.

Now Republican Massie is trying the same thing but kind of asking about Trump, asking if he was a good lawyer to him, and even throw in something like "if you have a conscience, which apparently YOU DO NOT" - I was thinking as he started talking how All the Republicans are basically like a Klan rally turning on their defecting member and the Democrats act like a Congress.

Another Republican, Higgins, just made a fool of himself asking about boxes, as if Cohen had held onto them, even after Cohen told them the authorities returned them to him to search, he keeps asking just to show he is a complete idiot.

It REALLY does show these Republicans as a Bully Klan Kulture, shows what is wrong with ALL such structures even if they aren't the very worst, the White Supremacist kind - like they are

Republican Cloud is repeating an earlier theme that since he wasn't in the campaign, or White House administration, Cohen was upset, like he was left out of Trump's inner circle, and is somehow seeking revenge.

A pundit, during the break, said that the Court/Congress doesn't pick the witness, the Criminal, Trump, picked the witness. Now, DEmocrat Raskin pointed out that the Republicans are not upset that Cohen is lying to Congress, they are upset that he STOPPED lying.

AOC is onscreen, while DEmocrat Rouda asks about connections with Seder, the Russian Mob, and the Kremlin - Seder having an office on the 26th Floor, Trump's Floor, rent-free. Now Cohen confirmed Trump lied under oath about their relationship, keeps saying "convicted Russian Mobster" to counteract how much the Republicans are trying to smear Cohen for being a crook. "Sater" is how his name is spelled, NBC was helpful enough to share a picture of.

Seeing AOC I must say how beautiful she is, I maybe could have left it out but now, in the corner over the shoulder of the Republican Amash there is a girl who looks like a vampire. He's asking why he hired him, how he knew trump's signalled wishes - and he said he understood his code - then he asked some strange questions - what Truth does he know that Trump fears most and he couldn't really answer. Now he's asking what principles he lived by and if they have changed and Cohen responded that it was a question that acknowledged redemption.

Now Republican Gibbs is "just an old country folk, not a lawyer" and JUST told him a "real man would serve his time and not make allegations" - just classic mobster, Klan talk. And he was about to cry when he said he was talking bad about Trump while Trump is overseas trying to make Peace, mad at the committee for even holding it today - reminding us they tried to postpone it at the start. Now they are complaining about his "lucrative deal" and 3 or 4 of them have asked him to say under oath that he won't profit from a book deal or movie or TV job - and when Oliver North took over the NRA and other criminals get influential positions, why do they care? Cohen just schooled him that he has known Trump for 10 years while he hasn't.

Now Jordan is sarcastically questioning him that Cohen didn't start his campaign.... and some minutes later Republican Miller is possibly sinking to the worst depths of crying over Trump, acting like it is a waste of time, asking no questions, until now - asking about a book deal, saying "wow" at the money, acting like HE is the one lying, merely because he questioned Trump - NOW she is claiming she would rather have hearings on separated families, when she is protecting Trump who separated the families! She is just the new stereotype for hypocrisy, I can't say she is worse than the others just her performance was absolutely awful and should make EVERY Republican embarassed to be associated with them.

Now Kelley (D) is asking about Trumps payements to Stormy Daniels and ended by pointing out he is going to prison for what Trump did - but after that Republican Armstrong is about to die or cry or lose his shit over "attorney client privilege" and how sacred it is, confirming that all they care about is protecting Trump any way they can.

The last Democrat, I missed her name, mentioned how Trump threatened his family and these mob tactics are illegal - but now the Republican, Chip Roy, asked a bunch of summary "Yes or no" questions then went off on a tirade about how it's "not important" compared to other things they could, took a few seconds to remember to say "I yield back" he got himself so worked up.

Now Democrat Plaskett has mentioned possible charges against other Congressmen for trying to intimidate or threaten Cohen out of testifying. Republicans just continued to be the worst and now it's going to a break, for an hour, so I will smoke a bowl and find my DS copy of Shirley.

Oh and twice they mentioned Prague and whether or not he has been there, like some secret side story line or mystery that no one actually knows about.

During the break they are mentioning a Tweet from Don Jr. that "only democrats could hate someone so much that they would ... (disrespect? Sabatoge?) ... nuclear peace talks"  - but of course they were GOING to have this hearing on my birthday, Feb 7th, but it got postponed due to Trump and his supporters threatening and intimidating Cohen.

After the 2 hour break Ro Khanna (D) is questioning him about the payments - I haven't been able to find my DS with the books in it though I looked for most of the break so I will continue with impressions of this hearing while it is on. Now Khanna is laying it out that there are "garden variety" financial conspiracy crimes committed by Trump, Don Jr, and another one - and Cohen is the only one facing charges for it - so far. This seems to me to be a signal to Don Jr to get out while he can and for Trump to stay in Vietnam or flee from there, but not come back.

Now another Democrat gets a turn, Gomez, even though up until now it always alternated between D and R - he is asking about taxes and whether or not he is being blackmailed by Putin or a foreign government.

Now Meadows is reading tweets from people who claim Cohen really wanted an apointment in the Trump administration, as if that is important.

AOC asked about insurance fraud and got some names to investigate further. She did a great job and stayed on target, now the next Democrat, Pressley, is using her first minute to justify the entire proceedings, striking back against the Republicans dismissing it - she did a great job highlighting the racism at the end, too.

Now Tlaib is doing a great job summing it all up, saying how out of touch the Republicans are for trying to dismiss it, saying Trump only cares about himself and is hurting the country to enrich himself and his brand - when Meadows threw a hissy fit and tried to have her comment that mentioned using a black woman as a prop, which he did, is racist be stricken from te record - he mentioned that "not many people know his niece and nephew are 'of color'" - which makes you wonder, WHY don't many people know that, he is a public figure! Why the "family secret" - because of racism?

They "cleared it up" so he recalled the request to have it stricken from the record - but not before calling HER a racist, which seemed to be his complaint in the first place, that a "personal attack" broke some sort of rule, but he was fine being the white man calling the "person of color" a racist a few seconds later, as if THAT doesn't break the same rule: Republican hypocrisy at EVERY turn.... and the proceedings seemed to end on those "fireworks" and a whimper.

All the TV stations, NBC, FOX, and ABC, just quit any broadcast after the break so we saw the end on CBS - but even CBS cut off the end and we watched it online. Cohen's closing remarks were amazing, poignent, and even caled out Trump, directly. Then that Jordan asshole tried to make it all about "lying" and pointing out various minor things they try to interpret he said as "wrong" - just the weakest attempt ever.

Thanks to CNN online stream we got to see these closing remarks and so far, half of Elijah Cummings final remarks, reloading to see the second half, now.

I got to see the second half, still missed what Cummings "tells his kids" - but it was good, I'm glad I watched it all. I wrote all of the above yesterday and was going to finish this when I found my DS book and could finally conclude the Shirley Fairies spell - but I never found the DS "100 Classic Books" game so I couldn't do it - the notes are all based on page numbers for that format, to begin with. So maybe I will get another copy, or write it when I finally find it.

So last night, before I had any further news, before I went to sleep, I thought I would just finish this off with my speculation that Trump would go for whatever Peace Deal he could get with Kim Jong Un and try to have some sort of Victory in the face of Cohen's testimony revealing some more of how terrible he is. But the other option we talked about was that he could come back with no deal and blame the hearings for "distracting" him or whatever - just whine about it and pretend that it is keeping him from doing good things, that it is NOT the result of his actions and natural consequences catching up with it.

But we also speculated that he would be using the trip to Vietnam to escape, just to run away from America and all the things he has done. Now, waking up this afternoon, I see that Trump is going with Plan B -no peace deal, no "victory" but blame the Democrats and Cohen, I'm afraid that means he came back. But before I know for sure I wanted to publish this, as I almost did last night, saying that if he HASN'T come back to America yet I think Trump could STILL be "getting a head start" and running away from all of this - I hope so, good riddance.

The only other news story I saw was about Netenyahu being arrested  - I hope, at least subject to charges - for corruption. I made a comment how all fascists and Nazis should be arrested, because we have a lot of them running our country, too. Someone tried to "argue" with me - that's all I will say about that, for now - but it was good news to wake up to, makes me look forward to the arrests or other deserved ends for Trump and his cronies and enablers - including every one of the Republican congresspeople who "interviewed" Cohen yesterday -

In EVERY way it was EXACTLY like if the Klan or Mob was trying to discredit and shame a defector, every time the Rape-ublikkkans took a turn. They just revealed themselves with their words and faces. They didn't need the hoods, you could see them.

As I typed these final paragraphs there was a Benson on where he is his own lawyer, defending himself against a robber who is suing him because Benson caught him after the robbery and broke his arm. There were, of course, many magical echoes, in this 80's TV rerun that happened to be on, but one of the best ones was the robber's lawyer - who had that classic "I'm just a country lawyer" Louisiana accent that numerous Republicans used, yesterday. It's just like Preachers have certain verbal "traditions" all Klan Lawyers talk like Foghorn Leghorn, apparently.

It's just the lawyer of the Krookk, spelled with THREE Ks, not just two, Cathy, - the defenders of the Krookk and the Krookked system will ALWAYS resort to the same lies of Shame, Diversion, Distrust, and Discredit - one of their major tactics has literally been, for years, to get dumbasses to accept a flat earth and deny climate change - it's the only way to keep people stupid enough to remain divided and fearful of each other, to prop up their racist system.

I came across a facebook post I made a year or two ago: "Violent revolutions are SO 19th (20th??) century - they don't work. Bad Governments just fall, stop propping them up!" - something like that.

You could see in every comment by every republican, yesterday, that they are all propping up an evil system. The Democrats certainly presented an actual agenda, to get to the Truth of Trump's crimes, but of course anything looks aggressive compared to a dead fish lying there not even rotting fast enough.

But if they just STOP propping it up, come clean, stop lying, stop defending racism - like Cohen just did - we can change the system without any "extreme measures" - just get the bad folks to wake up and feel the natural shame of their evils.

Even Trump himself could just Turn, seek redemption - it doesn't seem likely but at least Cohen set HIM a good example.

Before I close this i remembered one more point I made talking with my lover last night about how they "questioned" Cohen yeserday:

If they thought he was lying about Trump, now, if they believe he is lying, wouldn't they try to ask him questions to trip him up - ask him questions about those "lies" to trip him up - but they NEVER asked him about that - why? Because they KNOW it is all true.

If they thought he was lying, they would have asked him about it. They KNOW what he is saying is true. And yet they defend him.

The republican with the Most Evil look was a tight contest - but it was probably Jordan. He just looked so evil. And today, on facebook, he has drawn enough attention to himself that the story is going around how much he knew, when, about kids being sexually abused, I believe on a wrestling team. So he will have charges coming against him, too, soon, and we can see how much he squirms and whines on his OWN behalf compared to for his KKK master.

The rest of them - the sherriff who arrests hundreds of people but can't realize that the authorities RETURNED the boxes to Cohen, the guy whose "people of color" relatives are so secret he has to wear his glasses on the end of his nose - I was literally seeing images of all of these evil people before I went to sleep last night and thought they would haunt my dreams, give me nightmares - but the nightmare is here, when we wake up.

Sexism "then" and "Now": Gagablog 167

Some media magic last week prompted me to write this, another interlude, this one short, before getting back on "the right track" with this gagablog. It was two things I saw and heard, maybe a day apart, that prompted me to write.

The first was an episode of "Leave it to Beaver" that was probably from 1959 or so. In it Wally is going to a dance but his only way to get there is if his date, a girl, drives. This is totally unacceptable to him, being driven by a girl, and he fears it will make him a social outcast. Lumpy does try to get the other guys to harass him for it and everyone seems to understand why he is upset about it and the way they all talk about it - except his date - shows that this is "the way everyone thinks" that it is embarrassing for a boy to be driven by a girl.

But of course watching this 60 years later it seems so archaic, such an ancient and outdated way to think, that a woman can't drive a man. I speculated there are still people, today, who think this way -maybe they request male drivers on their Uber apps, or are shocked if a female driver arrives and orders another Uber. But it seems unlikely, as if only one in a hundred people would do that, today.

But in the 50's, apparently, by the way everyone acted, it was completely horrifying to a boy to be driven by a girl. Even in the episode, filmed in the late 50's or early 60's, the girl Wally is dating makes the comment that "Wally won't mind - he's not like the other boys, he's different."

This "difference" wasn't being "mature," in those days - Ward, Wally's dad, certainly understood his concern and could relate, had not aged out of this concern, in that culture. She was saying Wally was different because he was not influenced by those concerns, that he was more advanced than his "era" not just more advanced for his "age."

She was wrong - he was embarrassed and had to be told to keep the date when he was throwing a fit an refusing to go  - but he did learn, through the course of the episode and standing up to Lumpy, and ends up breaking spades on "letting girls drive" as a group of other kids end up riding with her, too.

She thinks Wally is "woke" and even though he isn't he starts to wake up, and wakes up other kids in the community with his example. The best thing about the episode, to me, was that she could assume he was better than the other boys, that he was Good where the others were faulty. This went against the current, that "everyone" thought boys should always drive girls, not the other way around. Even in the 50's there were some people who recognized injustice and KNEW, intuitively (in their hearts, where Justice originates) that girls and boys should be equal, and will be equal.

I find it easiest to say that this Good Future, that will be, is just what we all know, deep down, will happen. It makes it easier to think that way, to believe that way, but takes forever to talk that way because we aren't trained to use language like that, backwards from the future. That's why it's fun to find these moments in time where "past" and "future" meet, which happens all the time but we can notice it when the past shows us how far we've come - while we remember how far we still have to go.

I was feeling smug about the "progress" we have made, in 60 years, that it seems silly, now, to worry about a girl driving a boy in a car. But within 24 hours I heard another story, on the radio, that made me realize how far we have to go, how we really haven't changed at all, deep down, compared to the changes we need to make, to reach the Future.

There was an interview on the BBC radio with Glen Close who starred in the movie "Wife" that came on the next night. They mentioned that it had taken 14 years to make the movie because they could not find an actor to be a supporting actor to Glen Close, the lead. The interviewer seemed astounded by this, couldn't believe it, and mentioned how famous Glen Close was and how many awards she had won. When asked why they turned down the role Glen said basically "ego." She also mentioned how the business is still designed and people's perceptions are such that it's not good "business" to be the supporting male actor to the female lead and noted that the actor who did agree to do it did a fantastic job but was overlooked in awards even though she and the movie are nominated - it's apparently a great movie. And she says he is a great actor but it's true I did not recognize his name, Gregory Price maybe - but I can think of dozens or hundreds of other "lead male actors" who are more famous - and must have turned down the role.

Of course they didn't ask EVERY male actor but if you imagine that they DID ask numerous "Big Name" actors - and ALL of them turned it down, over the course of 14 years you know they weren't "busy" the whole time. The reason was the sexism of the business, of the culture, that makes it "not a good idea, professionally" - and the egotism and built-in sexism of each individual actor.

They didn't name names but if you imagine who they would have approached to be in a movie with Glen Close you can imagine all sorts of famous actors and know that at least some of those, and others, turned this movie down. For 14 years.

Why?

It's the exact same principle as 60 years ago, on "Leave it to Beaver" and accepted in "Golden Age America" - as so many morons see it.

It's the same things as a boy not wanting a girl to drive him in a car. In 1959.

The Boy Stars didn't want a Girl Star driving them in a movie. Until 2019.

And even now Price is the first Star to do it, like Wally was the first one to break this taboo in his school.

So in 60 years we went from Boys not letting Girls drive them in a car to Boys riding in Girl-driven cars - but not letting Girls be the lead in a movie.

Wally is a Good Kid, well-intentioned, fairly nice and raised to be respectful and kind - but still suffers from the sexism of the times he lives in though that Goodness helps him overcome it. His dad is even "better", as a person, but is still a product of such a sexist age he never challenges Wally on the sexism of his situation but accepts that this is how the kids are about "these things."

But Wally, as a character, DOES come to see things differently, to awaken and help others out of these bad ideas.

The movie stars of Hollywood and the world aren't "just characters" - they are famous, rich, powerful, influential people, some of the most influential people on the planet, potentially. And they even enjoy a reputation for being "liberal." And yet, today, it still took 14 years to get one of them to take a supporting role - to Glen Close! You would think, if they weren't just being egotistical, they would know that being in a movie with her as the star would give them a lot of attention and consideration for awards - unless they know that "it doesn't work that way" - due to sexism. Still, keeping things this way instead of being the one to change it is ALWAYS wrong.

It's wrong for Wally, who is "just a character" - because he is supposed to be good and become better in the show. He's a Good Guy, basically. But all of these boy actors are wrong to refuse to support a girl lead in a movie, too. And they are "more wrong" because Wally is just "some schmuck" by comparison, a likeable enough kid in school but not particularly powerful or influential. But all these stars KNOW they are the ones holding back gender equality and just live being wrong and thereby increasing and prolonging wrongness.

The stars aren't just holding back the movie by refusing to make it - for fourteen years. They are holding back the moment of "breaking through", of being the first male star to play a supporting role to a female lead actor. I like the word actress, by the way, for the same reason I call myself a witch even though I'm a two-spirit boy.

And actors, movie makers, are some of the strongest influencers and creators of culture.

That episode of "Leave it to Beaver" was designed, at that time, to change these sexist attitudes, to modify them slightly at least, and was intended to change behavior of the sexist population who accepted that "no boy would be seen being driven by a girl" - at least for driving. By comparison I recently saw an episode of the Partridge Family that addressed "Women's Liberation" "head-on": it must have been a decade or two later and brought up some ideas but was really awfully "neutral" in a lot of ways and contained "warnings" about taking it too far.

The Movie Stars know that they create, craft, and steer culture and the ideas we live by - we still refer to levels of Gay Acceptance in society as "pre-Ellen" and Post-Ellen, for example. And they know that if they are the first one to star supporting a female lead it will make it easier for future actors to make that decision, too - the only way to end the sexism in the system is to start working against it.

And I'm not writing this to condemn modern movie stars as "nowhere near as liberal as they need to be" - it's about recognizing how deep these ideas and attitudes go, how persistent they are.

I was feeling smug, for humanity, that in 60 years we can look back and see refusing to ride with a girl as being silly. But a quarter of that time, 14 years, we still didn't have an actual movie star in the real, Modern and "more progressive, tolerant" world who would be in "Wife" with Glen Close. (As I type that Loni Anderson is doing a commercial for WKRP In Cincinnati and it reminds me she is the Only reason most people probably ever saw that show.)

But my smugness was gone a day later when I realized the Boys still won't let the girls drive the movies. And I knew that, anecdotally, from the way people have pointed it out more in recent years and from my own lifelong sensitivity to sexism. But I was still shocked to hear that it took 14 years to make "Wife" because they couldn't find an actor to do it.

It's just that we haven't actually changed, deep down, haven't changed enough - we still have far to go.

We can see the perfect examples of everything wrong with us in Trump: sexism, racism, and unscrupulous greed and abuse of "power" required to maintain such an unhealthy system. But we have to root it out of the deepest parts of Ourselves, not just the highest offices of government - we need to become our best selves to do EVERYTHING that needs to be done to save the world, we can't rest on thinking "I'm Woke, I let a girl drive me and only threw a fit for a day, first."

As I typed this, wanting to keep it short, there was an episode of "Wagon Train" on and it caught my eye because June Lockheart was the "mother" in it and I'd spent many hours as a kid with her as my TV mom watching Lassie. The episode was intense, she had been raped by an Indian while her husband was on an Indian-scaring raid with his racist friend who believed Indians had killed his dad and driven his mom to silence so he was stoking up anti-Indian sentiment all the time. She was pregnant and her husband insisted she give the baby to the Indians to raise because the society would be against the kid. He made some poignant comments about how it was okay to be alone when they were on the frontier, when "no one else lived there" but it was terrible to be alone with other people around, people who wouldn't talk to him. He tried to keep his friend, or anyone, from knowing about the baby but the hero - from the Wagon Train - got the midwife, his friend's wife, against the man's wishes. And when they find out the baby is Indian the racism takes over and they shun them. The Hero kicks the man out of his house for abusing his wife, threatening to take the child when she will fight him to keep it, and she thanks him. Then he goes to get the friend, they have a fist fight and the blood shocks the racist man's mom out of her stupor. She reveals that the Indians did not kill his dad and destroy their farm, it was a White man. Then the racist checks himself and apologizes, to the Hero, then to his friend and explains to him "You know how I had to hate all Indians because one Indian killed my pa? Well now I have to figure out how to hate all white people because that's who it really was, a white man."

Of course he is being "sarcastic" in a way but it points out the insanity of racism, how it just doesn't make any sense. The husband makes it make all kinds of sense why they can't keep the baby - recognizing the racism of the town and even says, if they take the Wagon Train, they still have to give the baby away because "people are the same all over" and no one will accept them.

But when his friend realizes how wrong he was he has a change of heart and it changes the whole town, around him. This is how it has to work, the wrongest of us needs to wake up to the wrongness - but we all have that "wrongest" part in us that needs to wake up, the "town" in the show, or America in the news, is an analogy for what is wrong within each of us.

I wrote months, years ago, that Trump was a Troll but as such, a useful tool for overcoming our own ego - because Ego is the problem, blocking our access to the Heart.

The end of the Wagon Train episode has the racist family visiting the new baby and when their little girl says "That's an Indian baby! I guess I shouldn't have touched it" and they all seem embarrassed - though the parents were saying far worse an hour before  - June Lockheart sums it up by saying something like "They learn to hate and love what we teach them and the younger they are the faster they learn." No one says anything beyond that to correct the little girl, June just looks at her baby - almost to say "well that 7-year-old has already learned racism pretty well, better focus on this new one."

Of course, the Parents, the Husband - all of them are New to not being racist after decades of practicing it and teaching it - but they were not beyond redemption and neither is their little girl. Still, they have to be redeemed, to transform - and we all need that, at any age.

That final scene, like the whole episode, was emblematic of looking fearfully at the past versus looking hopefully for the future, but also knowing that we are all on the frontier of it. We all have a role to play to make the future happen - some of us need to change who we are, overcome evil ideas, and others need to live out the goodness we know about ourselves and become even better.

The best thing about that show, to me, was emphasizing how this baby was innocent  - the definition of innocence, a baby - but was subject to the evils of people and their wrong ideas of Justice. Racism makes people say some people are "guilty" or its worth it to punish innocent people if some people who are "like them" are deemed "guilty" - but everyone is innocent like that baby, just born to be who they are and introducing the judgment of "guilty" on people you don't even know is the source of the Evil, the cause of the evil, that gets perpetuated throughout society.

We just need to Cut It Out, all of it, and we can grow, evolve, into paradise, the best dreams for humanity. We need to cut it out of our government and that seems tough since it is so entrenched.

But we CAN do it, magically, if we believe that we have SOME to cut out of ourselves, too, and seek to find that and remove it - that quest will have magical effects and teach us magical lessons about how to do it in the "Outside" world, too.

Dreams are from our hearts and for Everyone, they bring us all together - give them a chance, give up on the things that hold us all back, let's learn to love and trust each other!

Thanks for reading, sharing, and doing something! Paws up, Gaga, I love you forever!

PS: My spellcheck doesn't recognize "Uber" but also doesn't recognize "Wagon". Also it was racist but when Red Hawk's wife came to take the baby she said "I take care" to reassure the mother and when she gave him back she said "You be Very Happy Now"