so, with the debt thing, to clarify.

the goal should be as follows:

1) public universities should be subsidized entirely by taxpayers.
2) it should be hard to get into these schools, and they should regulate their supply of professionals based on what statistics regarding market demand exists for them that government can conjure up. so, free university shouldn't mean an influx of fine arts grads, but should also mean a more centralized production of professional workers.
3) private universities should eventually be phased out.

so, the reason you leave the private school debt in place is because you're ultimately trying to nationalize these schools. universal debt relief doesn't make sense in the broader context of this, unless it comes with a total socialization of education, which nobody is currently talking about. but, in the end, it's that socialization that you really want, and what the policy ought to be angling for.

if you set up a system where one type of schooling is "free" and the other one isn't, the expectation should be that the best students will gravitate to the least expensive option, so long as it is just as good, leaving for profit schools for legacy students of the rich and stupid. that is, you set up the public schools to push the private schools out of the market, over time.

so, i'm not concerned about income as a dividing line, here. i'm not complaining about giving hand-outs to rich kids, or pushing for a "progressive" approach over a socialist one. what i'm doing is pointing out that the universality doesn't make sense so long as the market continues to function, and that if you're going to leave the market in place you should be starving it rather than funding it.

so, go ahead and bail out the public school students, but make it clear to everybody that private school students will receive no such treatment, not now and not ever in the future, either.

there's really a 0% chance that i'm going to back biden, bootigeg, booker, warren or harris.

and, the more i hear from sanders, the less i like him.

i would like to support a serious socialist candidate, don't get me wrong. but, i do not think that trump is a particularly bad president (in comparison to his recent contemporaries) and will probably opt to support giving him a few more years to throw wrenches into the system over giving biden an opportunity to reverse what he's already done. the way i'd do that is by supporting the socialists....

and, i've already pointed out that there's not any real possibility that i'm going to support the democratic nominee for president, so the debates are not particularly interesting to me.

i'll watch them when they come up on youtube.

but, this space is probably going to be pushing one of the socialist parties this cycle.

annnnnd....

i'm staying in. it's official.

i was kind of half planning on making it home last night, although i realized i'd probably end up in midtown, and so was actually thinking about stopping at the magic stick for some late drinks. it depended on how things progressed. i mean, i wanted to catch the 9:00 bus, initially.

for tonight, there's no way to get home - the bus stops at 9:00. so, i'd have to find an after-party, and i can't even find a late party. i would have wanted to stop by the great lakes coffee shop to see some experimental techno sets, but the night dies after that - if i can't get home, and i can't, it's going to be long and tedious. and, yes, it is finally actually nice out, but this would be a waste i should avoid. it's a wednesday, so i can't complain too much about it being a slow night, although it is. but, the actual problem is the bus - if it was running, i'd go to the early show and come home. alas. i hope they do more sets of this sort in that space. for right now, it's better for me to wait until the weekend.

i need to catch up on some eating, and try and push ahead on the listings, instead.

what did i do last night?

i tried to catch a jazz show in hamtramck at the last minute, and made it to the bus stop for the 9:30 bus. it didn't come. so, i waited for the 10:30 bus. it didn't come, either.

i asked around and realized they started the construction back up on the tunnel on monday, and the last bus was at 9:00. dammit.

so, i stumbled into an open mic night at villain's, instead. a few people got to hear me pound on the drums for a few minutes, but it was otherwise kind of a blown night.

and, i'm back to what i was doing, now.

the angry, homophobic arab.

it's a problem that we've mostly resolved as a society in my experience (although i have little experience living in rural spaces), but that continues to exist in this demographic in rather noticeable numbers. which isn't to say that you don't also have passive, queeny arabs or even just secular, tolerant arabs, too - or that one negates the other in some way - but just that this is a lingering problem that doesn't really exist in any other segment of society and that there needs to be some serious intervention into in order to try and alleviate.

i shouldn't have to live fearful of angry, homophobic arabs getting violent with me, but the truth is that i actually do. that's what's actually real. so, when i speak of islamophobia being rational, there's an experiential basis to it; nobody else goes after me like that. and, it's consistent over a long period....

the most recent encounter occurred last night on my way out of a bar on my corner of downtown, which is shrinking and kind of dying. i decided to take a walk around the corner to get a smoke before i left or maybe talk for a bit and found some people outside of the bar at ouelette and university, under the newspaper building.

"could i buy a smoke from one of you?"

they said the smokes went inside. so, i thought to myself that i could wait for a minute for them to come back out, but the conversation quickly turned to my gender expression, and, more precisely, the way my gender expression made this particular male feel, which i was apparently supposed to care about.

i was making his thoughts race, apparently. did i know what i was?

"i know exactly what i am."
"well, you've got me thinking."
"you'd better keep those thoughts to yourself, then. i don't need to hear them; your thoughts are not my concern."

i understand what happened. this is an individual that appeared to be drinking, and so wasn't particularly religious, but was still holding to the idea that if i turn him on by walking over to ask for a smoke then that's my fault. well, that's what he was taught. unfortunately, what he was taught is wrong, but how do you make him understand that? the reality that he was reacting to an attractive trans-female rather than to a male aside, that is that he was attracted to me because i'm a hot girl in a perfectly heteronormative way, the fact is that it's perfectly normal to have random moments of sexual attraction to people of the same gender, and that doesn't even actually make you gay so much as it makes you a normal, healthy human. these thoughts are not sinful, not immoral, not unnatural, but rather the opposite of it - every human has them, and you're acting against your biology in trying to suppress them.

so, i had nothing to apologize for. i was hot, and he recognized it. high five?

no - he became angry and agitated that i was arousing him, and being insolent about it, as though i both had no right to dress like that and yet an obligation to submit, nonetheless. nope - fuck that.

so, i take a walk towards the bar, thinking there's somebody around the corner, and the other guy pulls out a smoke. i guess he had some smokes after all. he won't take the change for it. but, as i'm lighting up, i start to smell something.

"heeey. you guys are smoking a joint aren't you?"

this seems to have triggered the angry, homophobic arab. not only did i come over here and arouse him with sinful homosexual thoughts, and not only am i rejecting his masculine authority over my servile femininity, but now i'm trying to get in on a joint, too? infidel! he actually literally started swinging at me and yelling at me to get out of there, and i hardly wanted to get into a fight so i left, but i yelled to his friend as i was leaving:

"is this acceptable behaviour?"

and, he frowned at me. he knew it wasn't. and, i think that mr angry, homophobic arab got a talking to from his friend when i left, which is as good a starting point as any in dealing with this.

again: i approached these people because i'm not going to judge somebody by how they look. i'm not going to walk around avoiding arabs, under the assumption that they're all violent and misogynistic and anti-queer, that would be a shitty way to live, even if it wasn't completely wrong. but, nobody else acts like that. really. nobody.

in the end, i just hope that this guy is able to get the help he needs in better understanding that it's ok to have the thoughts he was having - that they weren't sinful, and that the people who told him that are wrong.

see, this is why we curse at the liberals under our breath and then vote for them anyways.

the bastards.

really.

this is not good enough, but i'll take it. and, then, what do you do?

because you know that retrofitting a school is an excuse for broader renovations, right? so, if this is just a scheme for school funding, what is there to actually complain about?

scheer's plan is a joke, and i'll leave it at that. trudeau's isn't much better, but you're stuck with these relativistic choices. let's hope the money actually gets there...

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/carbon-tax-school-retrofits_ca_5d1251d1e4b0aa375f544dfb?ncid=other_trending_qeesnbnu0l8&utm_campaign=trending