let's do vitamins first, as it's really the most important thing...

this is my starting point, reduced to a total minimum, with question marks removed:

	banana 1	strawberries 6	kiwi 1	soy milk 300 ml	ice cream 200 ml	red pepper 1	tomato 1	caesar 200 ml	eggs 2	cheese 50 g	margarine 1 tbsp	whole wheat bread + germ 1 slice	sum
a
b1 (thiamine)
b2 (riboflavin)
b3 (niacin)
b5 (pantothenic acid)
b6 (pyridoxine)
b7 (biotin)
b9 (folic acid)
b12 (cyanocobalamin)
c
d
e
k

we'll see how that works itself out, first.

do i need things like blueberries, really? what do i need to pay attention to?

and, we'll build it up from there...

the human rights case against the property owner is a different matter.

i should expect something or other in the next few days.

i also have no clear direction regarding the case in divisional court.

they lifted the limitation periods on sept 14, which was monday. but, they're not rescheduling in-person dates, yet. so, i'm at risk of the limitation periods running out, with no legal recourse to address it.

obviously, that's not an acceptable outcome, and i'll appeal to the next court up if i have to. i'm only avoiding a complaint against the judge because i don't want to slow it down; i could still launch one against him, when i get a decision.

in the mean time, they've asked me for patience.

and, i have no option but to provide it.

so, we're now at three firm nos in the windsor region regarding the voluntary orchiectomy, unfortunately.

it's legalized discrimination that they can refuse this, but i'm more concerned about solving the problem, just right now.

ok.

am i awake?

let's see if i can back to crunching some numbers over night.

again, it's the definition of insanity...

their numbers are coming down; ours are coming up.

but, the world is full of idiots.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-us-border-closure-extended-1.5725589

so, the americans just got away with a month of tariffs, and we're not doing anything about it?

as far as i can tell, what they've done is put together an algorithm that will allow for them to impose tariffs for a few weeks, then stop, then reimpose them, then stop - essentially extracting maximum concessions, without dealing with the consequences of retaliation. if we don't stand up for ourselves, they'll keep doing this, indefinitely.

we just got sucker punched, and we seem to be taking it, like the suckers we are.

so, i would call on the international trade minister to either:

(1) introduce unilateral sanctions for a one-month period to recoup losses and indicate that we will not allow ourselves to be taken advantage of like that or
(2) launch a lawsuit in a world body seeking calculated damages through proper mechanisms.

what we've done is no victory; it merely exposes us to further abuse, at america's whim.

and, tell that idiot evan solomon to shut the fuck up.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/aluminum-tariffs-trade-trump-trudeau-1.5724391

the first wave of feminism, as it developed in europe from the writings of wollstonecroft, was really indistinguishable from the rise of libertarianism.

it was all the same people pushing it.

and, the ideas are really indistinguishable from each other...

if you really think we're all equal, you think men and women are equal, too - otherwise you're just exuding hypocrisy. and, at least, the writers of the period seemed to be able to figure that out, even if the politicians didn't.

sarah and i had a rule that we split equally on everything.

if we went for lunch, it was 50/50. rent was 50/50. we'd split beers. if we shared a smoke....ok, maybe we weren't that militant.

but the intent was to try to undo as much of the concept of patriarchy as was possible.

she liked it at first, and then didn't. but, i had no desire to retreat from it, even when she did.

*shrug*.

what you call "third wave feminism" is really just inverted heteropatriarchy.

but, listen.

i'm not a "feminist guy".

i don't want to be a "feminist guy". i never did, and i would have rejected that label at any point in my life. if that's what you thought, you were wrong. sorry. and, if you want to measure me by that metric, you can fuck off - i don't want to be what you're projecting on me, at all.

so, i neither want to be the nice guy that's trying to get laid via careful psychological tricks, nor the asshole that's trying to get laid via brute force. i don't want to have sex in a male gender role, at all.

i'm a trans-female, and a "radical egalitarian", which means i don't see the issue of gender equality from a male perspective, but rather from a female perspective. i neither want to abuse nor protect women - i see them as equals, entirely. no caveats. i am merely one of them.

i am well aware that they don't always see me that way, but what's important is what i think of myself, and not what other people think of me. this isn't a democratic decision; i make these choices, whether you like them or not. and, you can accept it or fuck off. i'm not going to internalize your oppression.

and, what that means, in context, is, more often than i'd like it to be, emancipating myself from the expectations of specific types of behaviour pushed down by heteropatriarchy. it means looking you in the eye and saying "i entirely reject any expectation you have of me, at all".

so, again - you can call me names for that.

but don't be surprised when i embrace an identity that you seem to think is inferior, because i never wanted to be what you're accusing me of not being in the first place.

i am a first-wave feminist, in the sense that i both exude and expect radical forms of complete egalitarianism. i acknowledge that this will likely lead to negative outcomes for some women, but i encourage them to embrace that, anyways; equality is scary, but that doesn't mean giving into existential dread, it means conquering and overcoming it. i don't want the state or the religious bodies to protect anybody, via positive law or via informal social control mechanisms like heteropatriarchy. equality means women do not need protecting. equality means men do not have fiduciary responsibilities, and carrying forward with them out of some bullshit concept of chivalry is just enforcing further systemic sexism and gender inequality. the fact that radical egalitarianism and total equality may lead to poorer outcomes for some women is not an argument against it. i won't be consequentialist about it. i am not interested in concepts like "equity". i am in favour of a baptism by fire into the world of free decision making, and in letting those who will fail, fail. the safety net should be broad and catch everybody, including women failing to succeed in a world they are free to succeed or fail in. and, i understand that neither religious groups nor their mirror reflections in the fake-left progressive movement will like me much for this perspective; but, i don't like them much, either, and don't really care.

when i say i want to abolish patriarchy, i actually mean it.

i don't want to adjust it, or cherry pick data, or tweak it to anybody's benefit.

i want to uproot it entirely and flush it down the drain - even if that means women die on the street.

because my feminism is radical egalitarianism, not a desire for a system that gives women a helping hand to get ahead - which i think is sexist.

sorry.

why, all of a sudden, are the geriatric facilities seeing smaller case numbers, anyways?

is it because of measures that were introduced that are different than in the general population? if so, what are these measures? i don't see them...

is it because everybody died? i don't think the numbers suggest that.

or is it, actually, because a level of herd immunity sunk in amongst health care workers, who are no longer spreading it?

i'm going with option #3 as the most likely.

and, that's what the numbers people tried to tell you from the start, and that you ignored, because you're too stubborn to listen: it's not a question of prioritizing one thing over the other - the lockdowns are simply not going to work.

suggesting that the lax measures in sweden were responsible for higher death counts is not a mathematically correct argument; the death toll was not the consequence of higher spread in the general population, which saw very low death counts, but rather due to a failure to prevent spread in geriatric facilities, which saw very high death counts.

if they had done a better job in keeping it out of the geriatric wards, they would have had much lower death counts.

but, the same thing is true in canada, which implemented much stricter measures and essentially got the same results, up to reasonable amounts of error.

it hasn't done any better yet. but understanding the swedish strategy always meant looking at the long run.

i don't want to say they intended for a large amount of people to die up front, because that is not true. they've admitted that it got into the care facilities - like it did everywhere else - and that they could have done a better job isolating the elderly. but, these are targeted lockdowns on the population groups most vulnerable, which is exactly the point i made from the start about what should have been done: protect the weak. and, i don't even want to say they didn't try. but, like everybody else, they weren't initially able to do that.

that 5800 figure is something like 98% over the age of 70.

the takeaway is, rather, that the lockdowns seems to have made little difference - this virus hit the elderly in high numbers just about everywhere, regardless of what was done to try to stop it, save literally ordering people to stay inside by gunpoint.

and, that's really the question - what kind of society do you want to live in?

as we move into the next phase of this, we're finally able to provide a testable question, and will have the answer we want by saturnalia if they have done well, and by samhain if they have not.

- if the swedish approach worked, and there is greater immunity in the swedish population, or in large areas of sweden at least, they will avoid or greatly mitigate a second wave, and the numbers in countries like france will far exceed them by the end of the year. that is the hope, in sweden.
- if the swedish approach did not work, and there is not enough immunity to stop the spread, then they will go through a second wave while everybody else finishes the first wave that was postponed by state intervention.

i have every reason to think the former is the right answer, and the swedes will finish the marathon ahead, as they jog by exhausted nations that fall off due to exerting too much energy on an early sprint. but, we do experiments in science because we prioritize data over deduction. we'll find out.

but, let's try not to be stupid about this. everybody wants to minimize the total loss of death. the swedish approach was designed by experts in the field that picked the approach they did because they honestly thought it was what would kill the least number of people, in the long run. it wasn't "haphazard" or "risky", it was an educated guess to do what they thought was the best thing to do. and, we'll see in the end who got it right....

we can't, yet.

but, i'll repeat what i said previously: what is happening in canada today is essentially what happened in sweden six months ago. we've already conceded that perpetual lockdowns are unworkable and we're going to have to adopt the swedish approach, in some abstraction. and, now, they're just six months ahead of us, and we're playing catch-up in trying to adjust to what they've already adjusted to.

the question we need to test is if they are actually less vulnerable or not.

and, the antibody testing i've seen suggests that, while the numbers are a little lower than hoped, they are still much higher than elsewhere.

we'll find out in the next few weeks and just need to wait for the data to come in to know.

https://newseu.cgtn.com/news/2020-09-14/Does-Sweden-s-COVID-19-experience-support-the-herd-immunity-theory--TL82pOjfpe/index.html

i call myself an enlightenment liberal, but i'm also a romantic at heart.

so, i can't help but hate this world - romantics would have no choice to. we're just not built for it, we're not built for market theory, for transactionalism, for the materialism, for the emptiness, for the shallowness, for the meaninglessness...

we want something with purpose, something deep, something meaningful.

it's hard for us to drag ourselves through the irrelevance.

so, call it drama, but at least it's an opportunity to feel something, in a society that frowns upon it.

i don't like the society that exists around us, and don't want to live in it or measure myself by it's standards.

i don't care how the world judges these comments, and would ultimately think most reactions are borderline moronic - i reject everything you believe, everything you feel, everything you intuit.

so, you can cram your pop psychology and pseudoscience up your ass.

friendship is something that's supposed to transcend shallowness, materialism and the vacuousness of modern existence, and what i liked about her is that she had views outside of the mainstream on those topics. she wasn't the type of person to judge somebody by the empty metrics we use to judge people in contemporary late capitalism. she was more intelligent than that.

alas.

no, it doesn't matter - i rip myself up, but she proved a long time ago that i'm mourning something that only exists in my own mind. she's not the person i thought she was. and, i don't want to be friends with shallow, materialistic idiots.

but, your mind plays funny tricks on you.

i want something that doesn't exist, and hasn't existed in a long time, and there's no solution.

that doesn't mean i can't complain, or that i intend to stop complaining any time soon.

i am happier by myself.

don't be confused by these ramblings. i'm a loner because i prefer it. and, i'm clearly going to great lengths to repress, suppress and ultimately permanently remove my own sexuality.

i dumped her because i was done with her. i was over her before i moved out. the kids just made it impossible to even consider changing my mind....but my mind was already made up...

but, i needed her friendship, on some level - something that shouldn't have had anything to do with conventional concepts of attraction.

and, i'm ultimately hurt by the decision that i'm not any more valuable than my penis, that that's all i ever was to her.

i really thought she was a better person than that.

hi.

jessica.

this is an update on the situation. i'll try to be terse. i presume you have the story available in previous faxes to jog your memory.

1) my emergency supply of cyproterone, as provided to me by an empathetic pharmacist, runs out at the end of september. i have re-halved to 100 mg/day out of necessity rather than free will and, while i'm certainly feeling it, i'm suffering through it stoically with the hope for better days. i don't know how long i can last. regardless, i will be back in a point of crisis at the end of the month unless something is done, if i make it that long.

2) as i am billed until mid-october, a new rx for 100 mg is not enough, even if i can suffer through the reduced dosage for that long. if medication is the only solution, i need it upped in order to merely pay for the reduction. but, i really want to go back to the 200.

3) i have called every urologist in town that i can find, and it does not appear as though i will find a urologist willing to perform this procedure (which can be done in 15 minutes and doesn't require a hospital visit) on short notice. i have been told by two local urologists that they will not perform the procedure at all (three, if you include the one from a few years)

4) given that fact, i am going to start contacting endocrinologists today.

5) as there is no bus service, it is not clear how i would access surgeons outside of windsor. this is again pointing to medication as the only real alternative.

6) i believe that dr. ===== faxed an rx for generic estradiol to university mall. this medication is pharmacologically indistinguishable from a placebo due to an inability for the estrogen to make it through digestion. it has essentially 0% bioavailability, unless taken sublingually. i have recently been able to find pharmacologically useful estrace by calling around. i will need to provide that information to the office as it is available, tomorrow or the next day.

7) while i don't really need to see dr. ====== exactly, i would appreciate some clarification regarding any evolving views on the matter, including (i) views on overprescribing the cyproterone and (ii) suggestions regarding how to get to an endocrinologist and/or willing urologist on short notice.

well, i mentioned that, of the six doctors, two of them were muslims, or had muslim looking names.

i'll give them credit for being the first to reply, but they both provided absolutely firm nos.

so, we're down to four - although i've dropped a few lines for some retired doctors, and even a couple of expats in michigan, as well.

next step is to try areas like leamington and chatham.

the greyhound is canceled, so i don't know how i'm going to get back; i could hitch-hike in, but how do i get out?

i'm going to send my doctor a fax explaining the updated scenario.

i was just horribly adverse to trying to tell her what to do in any context at all, and it clearly pissed her off.

ok - the one counter-example was science. i knew she knew nothing of science, so i'd push the point when i had to - like getting b12 when you're pregnant. she'd been vegan for years, she needed a talking to on that. but, that had nothing to do with the relationship component, and i'd have done the same for anybody else around me that i cared about.

otherwise, i wouldn't tell her what to do, if she asked - i'd just help her look at the options to make choices. i didn't call myself an anarchist yet, but...i just didn't want to tell her what to do. i had enough trouble telling myself what to do.

she expected it, though.

and, again, she kind of didn't get it when i wouldn't do it.

so, when your boyfriend (secretly female identifying or not) refuses to tell you what to do, and you crave it, what is that? is that beta? 'cause the lower alphabet levels ought to have to do with attempting dominance and failing, rather than rejecting hierarchy, on an ideological level. she could plead with me and cry and yell, and i'd just make the point that much more clearly - you make your own choices, don't pin that on me, it's not my responsibility to live your life for you.

that's maybe, conceptually, something more like alpha^-1, or -alpha, than beta. it's the reverse of dominance - the conscious rejection of it - rather than the inability to succeed at it. and, so the situation flips over - she ends up craving something i won't give her, and the more i refuse it, the more she wants it.

but, i'd need a brain transplant to act like that. really. it's just not me.

and, like i say, i'd hate myself for even trying.

that's what happens when you try to date a tranny, ladies.

i don't think she wanted me to be an alpha guy, exactly. she wouldn't have stuck with me that long if that's what she wanted, and i think she'd get bored with a guy like that pretty quick.

i think she would have settled for beta.

but, i was barely willing to give her gamma - and i'm naturally zeta.

the gulf was just too wide.

so, you want to tell me i'm not alpha, i'll agree with you.

no thanks.

gross.

i'd rather be a submissive gay male, if you're going to force me to be stuck with these things.

speaking of which, it's time to get to making some calls.

i mean, that's the basic truth about macho guys, right?

they don't respect the people around them, because they don't respect themselves.

it's frustrating that we've taught a generation of women to crave that, but i hardly have any interest in conforming to it. yuck.

i just couldn't respect myself, that way.

i don't respect guys that are like that now, i would hardly respect myself if i turned into that.

i'd hate who i was, and i'd hate her for doing it to me.

i would kill myself before i became the person she wanted me to be.

like, i don't even want to be a "nice guy".

to hell with being a piece of shit asshole.

i'm an emotionally wrought whiny little bitch that wants to connect to people on an intellectual level, and i'm not interested in being anything but it.

it's left me damaged, clearly.

i know that most ciswomen aren't exactly like sarah, but it's only to the extent that she was a kind of a caricature. she was an extreme example of something that is lurking under the surface in virtually all women under the age of, like, 40, nowadays. it's cultural; it's pushed down.

but, more to the point is that i've learned to see the kinds of warning signs that i missed the first time through, and realized how ubiquitous they are - she may have been an extreme example, but she was basically normal, as well. if i had seen what was coming, i would have maybe gotten out before i got so badly damaged by it.

it's the clear desire for toxic masculinity, even in self-identified transwomen like myself, that i've noticed is really, truly ubiquitous, even when it's somewhat suppressed. most women probably won't ambush you with outside penises, like that. but, it's only because they don't have the nerve to do it.

i understand she was most people's fantasies, and i was happy to let her go be everybody else's fantasy, if that was what she wanted.

but, she wasn't mine.

everything else aside, she was a friend when i needed one, and that's what i miss, and why i keep rambling about it.

she wanted to be an accessory to somebody who didn't understand what that even was.

i do think i kind of get it, but it took me a long time to get my head around it; i just couldn't comprehend why she thought i'd react differently than i did. to me, a lot of what she did was just horrifically mean, but she really, really didn't see it that way and really, really didn't understand why...

....she didn't understand why i wouldn't act like a man.

she had all of these concepts of toxic masculinity internalized, to the point that she thought that that kind of behaviour was "normal" and "natural", and all she had to do was trigger it in me, and it would magically come out - like there was some seed existing in me that needed to be nurtured, and it would just pop out.

and, she seemed to honestly, legitimately think i'd get some kind of power trip over it.

like, here's my hot, slutty girlfriend, look how alpha i am, sort of thing.

and, instead i cried.

and, we just ended up baffling each other.

it's a good question: why did she keep coming back? because she thought she could convert me into the kind of toxic asshole guy that she seemed to want me to be, while maintaining the nice gooey emotional core when it suited her.

and why did i keep falling for it? because i thought she'd grow out of it.

and we were both wrong. clearly.

what happened to sarah?

she runs a relatively successful at home daycare service, which was a smart enough way to deal with the situation in front of her. i'm pretty sure i know who daddy #1 was, and while he was much, much, much older than her, he kind of adopted her as a daughter-wife and took her in. he had some cash, but he never got over his ex-wife, so that was maybe actually the ideal scenario for her, in that sense - he didn't seem to have the emotional investiture to bother, which gave her the freedom she wanted, if perhaps at the expense of the love she craved. he was closer to three times her age then twice it. and, he had children that were older than her.

daddy #2 is an open question, but i think daddy #1 was led to believe he was it. i'm not sure how that worked out. that's not really my business.

i would suppose that she's at a stage in her life where she's probably looking beyond this older guy, who may even be nearing the end of his life, if she hasn't already.

it's been a while since we talked. but, she was doing ok financially, if perhaps lacking in emotional support. but, i can't do anything if she won't talk to me.

there's some small but non-zero chance this song might be about me. i dunno. you'd have to ask.

it's true, though - everybody likes to see a show. sometimes...

and, if my intuition is right, there's something astute in there.

that's why i go to these concerts, and i bump into these girls that fall all over me and it's just...

maybe i could get to know you a little, first?

like, i'm here to see the show, not to get hit on. sorry.

i think everybody has a place for somebody in their lives, if it makes sense to them.

but, i'd rather stay at home and read a book than engage in empty, meaningless displays of pointless hedonism.

and, there's proof of it right here.

casual sex, as a concept, is just boring.

i've just never seen sex as this hedonistic, pornographic, self-serving sort of thing the way she did. i always saw it as an expression of emotion, and i just couldn't grapple with the reduction of it to base hormonal release.

the way our society treats sexuality just strikes me as disgusting, through and through.

so, i don't just need a couple of dates before i'll fuck you. i need weeks - months. otherwise, what's the point? the process just grosses me out.

the reason i know that she'd have invited me if i wanted to is that she tried and i said no. so, she just went ahead without me, and expected me to sit at home and wait for her to come back. which i of course just couldn't handle.

and, she kept trying after we broke up, too.

she seemed very interested in having a threesome that involved me and a straight male; i would have rather thrown myself out the window into oncoming traffic than reduce myself to some kind of dirty ape, like that.

if you had sent me to a psychiatrist every day for ten years at the age of 20, might i have eventually become comfortable enough with my body, and figure out a way to deal with some concept of masculinity, that i could deal with something like a spontaneous threesome by the time i was 30?

i dunno.

it's possible.

but, you'd have to convince me to want to do it, first.

right now, i'm 40, and i'd still cry if presented with a spontaneous threesome with somebody i cared about, i'm sure of it - but it's because i'm in the wrong body to deal with it, because i never transitioned.

i think i'd probably be a happy slut, if i had the body parts to facilitate it.

what's impossible is just approaching the issue with concepts of corrective rape and expecting me to "behave naturally" or something. that's not going to happen, i'm just going to get overwhelmed and malfunction.

there's this idea called "sex positivity".

i'm just about the most sex negative person you could imagine.

or, at least i am when it involves myself; you do what you want, i don't care. just don't invite me. gross...

the other thing i need to point out is that it's not like sarah didn't try to involve me in her rather outrageous sex life. to an extent, the sneaking around was a reaction to my own disinterest, because i'd made it clear that i couldn't handle it, and she just wasn't ready or interested in settling down. it was essentially the same impossible choice: she didn't want me to walk away from her, but she didn't want monogamy, either. but, that choice had to be made, because i couldn't psychologically handle it.

there were several situations where she asked me to participate in threesomes, or foursomes, and i got up and walked out. i was so overwhelmingly self-conscious about my body image, and so uncomfortable with my sexuality, that i could barely even have sex with one person that i knew. the idea of sex with strangers made me want to vomit and cry. it wasn't just unattractive to me, it was legitimately scary to me.

on some of these occasions, she even followed me out of the room, which was indicative of where her mind was at - she wanted to experiment, but not at the expense of alienating me. she understood that it bothered me, but she did not understand why i was crying, and tended to make demeaning comments to me about it. but, she didn't want to upset me, either.

it didn't help that she kept ambushing me because she wanted everything to be spontaneous and a "surprise". but, i would need to know somebody very, very well before i'd even feel comfortable being naked with them. it's the kind of thing i'd need to sit down and talk about. just springing it on me like that is going to make me retract and cry, every time.

like, i was the kid that went back to class in dirty gym clothes because i was too self-conscious about my body to go into the change room.

so, it was just really unworkable. like, legitimately...

the way you beat a really badass motherfucker is you find someone even more badass.

it's not what they teach you in sunday school, i know. well, there's that other sunday school, too, and maybe it has better lessons....

but, it's the truth.

nobody was going to beat the nazis by taking the high road.

that's just how it is.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/05/08/dont-forget-how-the-soviet-union-saved-the-world-from-hitler/

reality's a bitch.

so, yeah, you could read the wiki page on japanese atrocities in world war two and get sour and bitter before you turn 40.

or, you could go watch reruns of friends.

whatever.

it's the old cliche about stalin.

yeah, he was a real sonofabitch.

but, he saved the fucking world - we'd all be dead without him.

you need a certain level of stomach to wrestle an angry bear. i don't have it - i wouldn't last a second. but, i'm sure glad there are people that do, and that those people sometimes take the right side.

japan is a majorly strategic set of islands, and i certainly don't propose abandoning it, even as i realize they'd rather we left.

but, i have essentially no solidarity with the japanese people in the face of rising chinese aggression.

deep down, i hope the chinese enact their revenge.

one day.

when the time is right.

and, maybe you can sort of get a grasp of why i stand where i do on specific issues, like iran.

i don't want to bomb iran. or not yet, anyways. i don't currently see them as a threat.

but, they're a cause for some concern, sure - and the way they treat their people is atrocious. if we can get the worst of the fuckers out of there with minimal damage...i'm not going to push back against it...

i'd just want it to be all or nothing. if you take out a general here and there, they just replace them, and you probably make the repression worse. if you bomb the academy, and a dozen other places all at once, maybe you're getting somewhere.

whatever anybody else says, america retains air superiority - what i'm saying is feasible, even if it's an endpoint. which is all i'm actually saying.

i can't see a way i'd support an occupation of iran, at this time.

the reason i'm agitated is the nature of the question.

were we too tough on the nazis?

like, fuck off.

actually, i'm firmly opposed to capital punishment in a law enforcement sense. that is, if you have somebody locked up in a cage, that's enough - you don't have to kill them. and, you shouldn't, if it's solely out of retribution.

but, you don't always have the opportunity to capture.

sometimes, you have to shoot to kill - and you shouldn't feel bad about it when you do.

the reign of terror was probably not a lot of fun, even if you weren't a member of the ancien regime.

but, it was necessary.

and, no remorse is required.

should we criticize ourselves for our own wrongs, and try ourselves for our own crimes?

sure.

but, not at the expense of defeating evils that were greater - that is when we need to be relativistic about it, and when we cannot be constrained, or feel bad about our own necessary atrocities.

so, we should criticize ourselves for our slavery, for the trail of tears, for the theft of indigenous land, for defoliation in vietnam, for iraq, for libya - yes. those are our crimes, and we should be held accountable for them in ways that are reasonable.

but, we should not criticize ourselves for dresden, for tokyo, for bombing isis or for anything else we had to do to wipe out forces that were much more evil than us.

we made hard choices; they were the right ones, and we should pride ourselves in having the resolve to push them forward.

and, do you know what the most truly fucked up thing about it is?

they won't even apologize, not even today. they still go to their shrines, and worship their dead.

and, we're the ones without a moral compass, apparently.

right.

so, was it fair to inflict a collective punishment on the japanese for what they did?

i think that there's a better argument for it than virtually any other place in history, including the nazis. the nazis targeted specific groups for extermination, and it was vicious. but, the japanese killed or enslaved the men and raped the women, leaving systemic levels of control and domination that are really, truly only rivaled by the mongols (and only eclipsed by them because the mongols won, and the japanese did not).

i understand that the reason that truman did it (and, a dying fdr likely had little knowledge of what was happening before the bomb dropped, although it's not clear if he'd have even wanted to stop it; i have the benefit of hindsight, and i'm not sure i'd have wanted to stop it) was to get to tokyo before stalin got there, which was the same reason that america went to germany the way it did (as a canadian, my history is a little different, as we declared war on the germans when they invaded poland, and fought in both theatres from the start). it was a race not just for territory and dominance, but for industrial capacity, for scientific know how, for engineering designs and for the scientists themselves - denazified, under project paperclip. it was nazi technology that got america to the moon first, and america doesn't seem to be as good at that, anymore, now that all of the nazis, save kissinger, knock on wood, are dead. they don't tell you that.

but, it doesn't even matter.

and, why?

that's the question.

because they fucking deserved it, for what they did.

so, who are the bad guys in history?

- mongols
- nazis
- romans
- persians
- christians/muslims

and who are the good guys?

- greeks (usually.)
- scientists
- anarchists
- anglo-americans (usually.)
- what the romans called 'barbarians'
- russians (usually.)

the greeks had to defend themselves against the damned persians, which is why alexander did what he did - he destroyed an empire that was in some ways worse than rome. the persians left us very little writing, sadly. but, they were white aryans, just like the romans - warlike, barbaric, hierarchical and in need of utter annihilation by the forces of freedom, anarchy and democracy.

and, the greeks are almost unique in their lack of hypocrisy, too. if you are convinced that power corrupts, that the new boss is just the old boss, then they offer a counter-example to history - because they read books. education is the solution we don't understand, because we don't read. see how that works?

they really hated war, in a way that we can only point to ourselves as analogues to; their world was created by the sword, and yet they refused to live by it.

they did not expand their borders. they did not launch imperialist conquests, or military adventures. they understood their borders as historical, and were content to trade with their neighbours.

unique.

well, almost.

i'm still waiting for the capital of our own empire to move to ottawa.

i will not glorify war.

and, i will mourn those who died, rather than lionize those who did not.

but, i understand necessity. and i know what we did, what our ancestors did, was right.

it seems like my unwanted style editor removed the phrase that:

the romans were seen as destroyers of civilization.

it was in the paragraph about the greeks & mithridates (a very late hellenized achaemenid from the pontic region that launched the last serious resistance against roman hegemony); i'm not going to edit it back in, but you can do it yourself, mentally.

and, this is true.

you probably know about the temple scattering in jerusalem, but that is ironically the one example that is probably overblown. the jews were not scattered, and in the end they just converted to islam. the descendants of the ancient hebrews exist in the region, still, today. we call them palestinians, ironically after the name of a group of greek colonists called philistines. and, maybe you know that story about the giant indo-europeans, too. the one with the rock; it's very silly, but a fun children's fairy tale.

they burned corinth down, too.

and carthage.

they slaughtered armenians, celts, britons, germans - anybody that gave them the slightest bit of trouble.

that was why the rest of the world ganged up on them, in the end, and destroyed them - they were horrible.

but, what i meant in context was that, at the end of the hellenic period, they brought war back to a culture that had largely vanquished it. it is true that the various alexandrian successor states in the hellenic period had squabbles, and that cities would sometimes change hands, but they didn't fight wars. they considered it uncivilized. after all, they were all hellenes, right? let the barbarians fight their wars. have an olive, my friend. let us debate existence, instead.

yes, the greeks - truly a few strands in the genome ahead than the rest of them. the brits could only offer a weak emulation, as much as the shakespeares and bacons of the world desired otherwise.

so, this idea is all over the greek historical literature, or what survived the muslim rewriting and christian burning of it. the romans admired the greeks for their superior intellect, but the greeks viewed the romans as barbarians.

catholics are still taught that the romans created the world.

but, the greeks would have claimed they destroyed it.

crying about dead nazis.

pfft.

fuck off.

number of dead allied civilians, mostly slaughtered defending themselves: 49.3 million
number of dead axis civilians, mostly killed as collateral: 3.4 million

it's not even close to being equivalent.

at all.

just a reminder of what the facts are...

83% percent of deaths were allied forces - and 58% were allied civilians.

and, we scold ourselves for the 4% dead axis civilians, which were necessary to save the world from fascism.

it's absurd.

take a perusal through this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes

several of these attacks resulted in hundreds of thousands of dead, at one time.

they were horrific - and they had to be stopped.

so, if the question is "why did americans accept this?", the answer is to look at what the japanese did, first. and, i can't help but think that anybody who seriously knows the history of japanese war crimes in the second world war would be less than empathetic about what happened to them, in the end.

the easy answer is that if you don't want to get nuked, don't try to conquer the world and slaughter hundreds of thousands of people at a time, repeatedly, while you're at it.

you know, i listened to this and i'm just baffled how you can have this discussion (and even go so far as to absurdly claim that dropping the bombs on japan was 'racist') without even bothering to talk about the atrocities that japan carried out in manchuria and nanking and all over china, and really all around southeast asia. they killed twenty million chinese civilians, in a vicious imperialist war that intended to wipe out or enslave every ethnic type that wasn't them, and they literally refused to surrender unless they were killed.

but we're racist for trying to stop them? it's absurd.

so, this entire discussion is based on what's called a false equivalency and it's an idea that the left has generally been pretty good at working through, but these two guys are just failing at, horribly.

killing a nazi (and the japanese were nazis, too - just as so many muslims are, today) is not the same thing as killing an innocent person, and if you walk around with that kind of mentality, we're going to end up enslaved by fascists in no time. we can't put these crimes on the same level, morally - it's not comparable, and shouldn't be considered that way.

regarding germany, attitudes did change after what was called the "phony war". and, the reason that happened is that the germans started sending v2 rockets into london. the british - quite reasonably - decided that if the nazis were going to bomb their own civilians, then they would bomb theirs, too. if we address our enemies with superior moral convictions, they're just going to wipe us out. that's not "taking the high road", it's taking the dumb road.

what's important is not instigating and, for that reason, i have more criticism for a rumsfeld or cheney than i do for a truman or eisenhower. the nuremberg trials explicitly specified a difference between self-defence and "planning and waging an offensive war". they got it right; kuznick doesn't.

now, i just have one further thing to point out, which is that, while world war two was particularly vicious, it was not the first time we saw millions slaughtered, and attitudes towards this kind of mass murder is something that shifts over time. it's an attitude that comes in and out of history. so, the mongols, for example, destroyed entire cities to the ground. they wiped out irrigation systems, so the victims couldn't rebuild. they raped millions of people at a time. the romans carried out repeated genocides against multiple people. the muslims and christians gave people the choice to convert or die.

but, the greeks were very different and the british were - sometimes - a little more humane, as well. the wars that happened during the hellenic period often occurred without any fighting at all. it was partly why the romans were able to conquer so quickly - and were view as such ruthless, violent killers. that was, after all, what mithridates fought against - and eventually lost the battle against.

so, i don't have a lot of sympathy for the dead japanese civilians, given what their empire did to the area around it.

and, i find it rather ridiculous that we spend our time complaining about interned japanese, and scolding ourselves for doing what was necessary, rather than condemning them for what they did.

https://theanalysis.news/interviews/why-did-u-s-public-accept-barbaric-slaughter-of-japanese-civilians-peter-kuznick/