Friday, June 1, 2018

the door mat is still there.

hrmmn.
funny.

no pot again tonight.

there's heavy nicotine, but the source is somewhat unclear, and it might even be partly smog.

i'm going to "check my mail" and see what's going on down there.
kathleen wynne is hillary clinton.

she wasn't last month, but she is now.
to be clear: it's not that she's saying one thing in one language and something different in another. that's not the problem, in principle.

it's that she's advertising herself on the right in specific communities that lean that way, essentially selling out the party's value system for votes - and that this is a potentially serious problem in a country that is experiencing an immigration-based value shift to the right. it's opening up debates that i don't want opened.

it was hash. ok. but, it could have been sex-ed. it could have been abortion.

i need to hear the liberal party stand up for liberal values, not pander to ethnic conservatives using right-wing talking points. and, i know that's what she was doing anyways, but she didn't make it that explicit - she just sounded like she was floundering. by targetting explicitly, she exposes a strategy that i must reject in the most vehement terms as divisive, backwards and racist.

so, i'm explicitly rejecting the kind of coalition between white liberals and brown conservatives that exists in the united states. i don't want the liberal party to be that, i don't want to vote for that and i don't want to be governed by that. i want a coalition of white liberals and brown liberals and purple liberals and green liberals, and i want to tell conservatives of all colours and creeds to fuck off and join the conservative party if they don't like liberal party policies.

sorry.
i mentioned early in the campaign that i would withdraw support - perhaps on a long-term basis - if i saw one of the pseudo-left parties trying to appeal explicitly to wandering ethnic minorities by using right-wing messaging. it's not about the hash exactly, it's the tactic. it could have been pushing for opening up sex ed, or it could have been something else. this is just crossing a red line, for me.

this party is dancing with the devil in the pale twilight; i can't support this, and i can't support this trajectory.

i was more worried about the ndp doing this.

it doesn't change my electoral analysis: if the liberals can hold their base in toronto, they will maintain a voice in parliament, and could even still win. the polls outside toronto to a large extent don't matter a lot.

but, they've dealt their hand on where they're moving if they do win, and i'm not voting for it.

https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2018/06/01/liberals-raise-doug-ford-drug-allegations-in-campaign-ads.html
http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/05/j-reacts-to-speculation-on-what-jesus.html
broadly speaking, when political parties suggest that there may be vote rigging, it usually means they're up to something.

this should be interpreted as a red flag that doug ford is trying to rig the election.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/pc-concerns-ontario-voting-machines-1.4686946
http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/05/j-reacts-to-whether-nate-silver-is.html
http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/05/shit-hillary-said-vol-56.html
http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/05/j-reacts-to-whether-kentucky-is-similar.html
http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/05/j-reacts-to-west-virginia-its-opposites.html
no, she's home down there and stinking up the place, again.

ugh.
http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/05/j-reacts-to-misplaced-confidence-in.html
http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/05/j-reacts-to-donald-trump-perpetuating.html
http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/05/j-reacts-to-elizabeth-warren-sounding.html
http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/05/shit-hillary-said-vol-55.html
http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/05/shit-hillary-said-vol-54.html
the contemporary idea amongst liberals - which nobody on the left considers to be on the left - is that you should implement this idea of multiculturalism, where you have all of these tribal identities in coexistence with each other, and i guess they just ignore their differences and live in harmony (even when evidence is clear that they don't).

but, that's not the abolition of racism. that is the definition of a society that has institutionalized and normalized racism. and, i'm not going to write this essay - i'm just going to ask you to think it through carefully.

when you have a society where muslims and jews and christians and atheists are all segregated, that is what racism is. and, that is the multicultural model in canada: the institutionalization and normalization of racism under the banner of 'multiculturalism'. and, so it's natural that you attack the anti-racist activist as a racist. that's the world we live in, today.

what abolishing racism means is abolishing race as a concept, which science has already done. but, that's impossible when you have these ethno-religious identities enforcing it from childbirth and the state sanctioning it or looking the other way.

the leftist vision is not one where we pretend to ignore our differences, it's one where we evolve past them together; it's not a world where we accept each other's superstitions, but one where we leave them behind and move forward together.

again: i'm not telling you what to think. not exactly. we can have competing visions and try to convince each other of their correctness. but, i'm asking you to be more careful in how you categorize yourself, and more careful in how you categorize others.
so, is islam racist? yes!

is judaism racist? yes!

is christianity racist? yes!

is sikhism racist? yes!

is hinduism racist? yes!

is buddhism racist? yes!

is animism racist? yes!
no.

listen.

religion = racism = nationalism = tribalism = exclusion. religion is racist, by definition - they're the same thing. or, that's what leftists think, anyways. if that sounds crazy to you, stop calling yourself a leftist!

leftists believe that all religion is inherently racist.

but, further, understand that, as a leftist, i can't make any sense of your claim that i'm racist for not accepting any specific religion, because rejecting all religion is the definition of abolishing racism. to a leftist, fighting racism and fighting religion are the same thing.

i'm an anti-racist activist because i'm an atheist, not in spite of it.

now, i understand that people are going to get upset by this. they're going to argue i'm attacking their identity - and they're right. but, in attacking their identity, i'm attacking the tribalist, exclusivist, nationalist basis of it - because their identity is incompatible with an egalitarian future. put in more contemporary terms: tolerance does not mean accepting intolerance, and the root of all intolerance is religion.

of course, as a leftist, i understand agency. i want to argue with you, not force you. i don't want to convert you by sword or threat, but i want to convince you that apostasy is the way forward.

and, if i can't convince you of this, i have to come to terms with the reality of it - that you are my political opponent, and that we will be in conflict with each other until you relent and denounce your tribalism.
http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/05/j-reacts-to-another-example-of-why-no.html
http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/05/j-reacts-to-free-university-vs-debt.html
http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/05/shit-hillary-said-vol-53.html
http://www.socialiststudies.org.uk/sandr%20islam.shtml
and, no.

there's nothing "alt" about a leftist critique of religion.

you're just not a leftist, and should deal with it.
again: i'm the leftist. leftists reject religion; it's really the fundamental aspect of being a leftist. if you don't reject religion, you're not a leftist.

religion correlates on the right with authoritarianism, capitalism, hierarchy, heteropatriarchy and class division. that's what religion is. you can't separate it from these things, and it's the reason capitalism is so reliant on it to enforce itself.

atheism correlates with anti-authoritarianism, communism, egalitarianism, feminism and democracy. that's the point of being an atheist. and, you can't get to ideas like democracy or feminism without tearing down religion, first.

so, i'm perfectly happy to argue with you if you want to stand up for religion, but i'm always doing it from the left, and you're always defending yourself from the right - whether your spectrum is restricted or not.

fucking reaganites...
i made a quip about doug ford being the offspring of homer simpson & an orangutan - in fact, a retarded orangutan - so i ought to say something about roseanne.

first, i wasn't exactly a fan of the show. whether roseanne is roseanne or not, roseanne is pretty obnoxious, and that was obvious to me, even as a child. i'm not obnoxious; i'm wry. there's a difference, there really is. it's the difference between good british wit and simple american barbarism.

for example.

anyways, is my comment racist? well, i'd probably have been a little more careful if ford was black. i might have suggested he was the offspring of homer simpson & an enlightened bull, instead - an enlightened bull being of roughly the same cognitive abilities as a retarded orangutan, or at least that's a reasonable hypothesis. i guess it's an empirical question, really.

see, now here's the tricky part: i'm telling you i know better than to make ape jokes about black people. i'm just not doing that. but, if i can make an ape joke about doug ford when he's white, do i have a defense of making the same joke when he's black, and then telling you to imagine he's white? or pointing out that it really shouldn't fucking matter - while acknowledging it absolutely does? it's just something to think about.

i meant to say that doug ford doesn't come off as having very evolved policy positions, and i think that's clear enough.

and, what i'm going to say about the roseanne quip is that i don't actually have the insight into valerie jarrett's politics to get my head around what roseanne said. is valerie jarrett a fundamentalist muslim with unevolved policy positions? i don't know; i get the impression it's unlikely, but i don't know. so, i don't know if it was racist, or if it was witty.

...although i might have advised her against forcing people to try and figure that out.

i think it's clear enough that it was pretty stupid, whether it was racist or not.
i've been kind of bed-ridden the last few days, reading a lot, but i'm coming back to and building a plan around things.

as mentioned a few times, i'm close to a hook-up on the rebuild, and i kind of want to get there. i'm at may 7th; the hook up is june 19th. so, i think i can finish that before monday. and i'm staying in this weekend...

so, i'm going to try to blitz over that for a bit, and then do some cleaning when it's done.

and, then i'll put a dominant focus on looking for a better place.

how's the stench, anyways?

well, i spent much of the weekend in detroit; i was out midday on the 25th and come back early in the morning on the 29th. while i slept here in between, and even stayed in on sunday, my complaints were muted. the reality is that i smelled bad myself, from partying. i'll reiterate that i was not smoking inside, or even going out for smokes when i was here, but i was smoking when i was in detroit partying. that said, i noticed the smell of marijuana pretty much every day and every night. i just wasn't upset about it at that particular time.

that's not a pass by any means, it's just a truth statement. the precise situation this pisses me off in is when i'm trying to read and i can't because i'm stoned from the second-hand smoke or when i can't keep my eyes open because i'm burnt out from it and don't want to be; the smell itself is rank, but when it's hot like this i keep the windows open and sit in my own sweat, so in the broader scope of things i might care a lot less if it wasn't having a physical effect on me. if i'm between parties, or nursing a hangover, the effects are kind of bordering on trivial...

of course, i eventually come out of those hangovers and want to be clear-minded. that's the difference between the tenant downstairs and i - i like to have fun with intoxicants, sure, but i deeply value the long stretches of sobriety that i have in between. i even call those stretches of sobriety life. the tenant downstairs wants to be stoned 24/7 and seems to go into "panic attacks" (called withdrawals.) when she gets sober. as marijuana builds tolerance with frequent use, she smokes more drugs in a day than i might in an average three or four month season. and i'm not exaggerating.

but, while i'm nursing a hangover? yeah - i could smell it. sure. i could smell it all weekend, and i could smell it all week. but, i actually haven't smelled anything yet tonight. note that it's the end of the month. so, it's got me wondering if i got lucky and she left...

but, am i some kind of hypocrite? i don't think so. smoking isn't binary; i think a lot of people have a hard time getting their head around this because it's presented to us that way so often. you smoke or you don't, right? but that's not true. just because i like to smoke a little at the bar once in a while doesn't forfeit my right to sobriety and clean air for the other 25 or 27 days of the month, and the idea that it does is really just ridiculous. if you like a glass of wine at christmas does that make you an alcoholic? so, why do we have these weird ideas about smoking? i don't see anything inconsistent or disingenuous about this. and, i might even argue that i'd stil have the right to complain even if i was a habitual smoker, if the amount coming up from downstairs was legitimately bothering me.

i think the key point is showering. i haven't showered since i got back on tuesday morning; it's now been about 55 hours since i woke up on tuesday afternoon. i've been sleeping, napping, sweating, drinking water, typing, reading, eating - but i haven't really gotten up and out of bed for any substantive purpose, yet. it's time to start thinking about that shower. and, once i get out of it, i'll be wanting to have that focus on sobriety again for the next 10-15 days or so, and not be dragged down by the second-hand smoke.

the tenant downstairs may be getting very frustrated by the heat in the unit, and the inability of her a/c to work properly when i have the windows open like this. well, it's the same basic problem. there's no flooring. so, the a/c is no doubt useless down there for the same reason the smoke comes right up - it's like running an a/c in an open barn with all the doors open. was that enough to get her out? well, i'll be here all summer, anyways, at the very least...

like i say: right now, i want to get a bunch of that rebuild done. let's hope i can get season 6 done before the sun comes up.