I’m ba-a-ack…

OK, so it didn’t take me this long to eat lunch; I’ve had some other things to do, and wanted to let the first post settle a bit. Since I got that all out, some of my urgency has abated, though I still want to tie the subject up, until/unless there are comments where we can discuss and enjoy however long we want.

Lunch was brunch. My plate was frambled eggs with toast. I know I said it wasn’t a cooking post, and look what I’m doing. When I make frambled eggs, I cook the eggs as if for over-easy (yolks runny, whites cooked.) Turn the eggs when it’s time, let them get a bit of heat on that side, then gently drag your spatula through, to break the yolk and drag the white through the yolk. My personal goal is not a hard-cooked yolk, but what I guess they call a jammy yolk; you get a bit of liquid, even, but it’s not drippy. You just keep gently lifting and turning until you like the consistency of the eggs. I had whole wheat toast, and oatmeal that I apple-pie spiced, and sweetened with honey. We’ve been having a rain “event,” so I’d got the laundry to the laundry room to run and to dry between/before rains.

Our laundry room is at the front of our front carport, front being the direction the front end of the car points; we park in front of the laundry room. Our house is a whole post in and of itself, but not quite as Scottie’s and Ron’s house; they may run theirs by crisis and we rarely have a crisis, but their house is nicer and more modern than ours. Also, while Sat. and Sunday are fitness rest days, I still do 10 min. every hour on the rebounder to get my steps. So, lunch hour took a little while. It’s a rest day! 😎 And the first day of Standard time, so everything’s a little later because our bio clocks are still running on Saving time. 🕰

So, up till the 15th of October, I was all,

FoxTrot by Bill Amend for November 03, 2024

FoxTrot Comic Strip for November 03, 2024

But I’m past that, and have said enough about the election, really, I think. I don’t know who can’t use a Calvin fix, so:

Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for November 03, 2024

Calvin and Hobbes Comic Strip for November 03, 2024

I wonder if everybody has that one or two commercials that the last time it airs cannot come too soon. For me, right now, (and I know the winter holidays commercials are coming…) it’s that Wegovy commercial. I just want it to stop. Interestingly, while I’m not a big fan of Big Pharma, one of the ads I enjoy, all its versions, is the Jardiance ad! It makes me dance. Well, the newest one’s tempo is too slow for fun dancing, but it’s still a nice ad. This is neither a plug for or against either drug. Those have their place and may be discussed with a person’s doctor. This is just about the ads. The ones that use music from my youth especially tick me off, so I just ignore them and dance to their background music. I hate that King Harvest’s “Dancin’ in the Moonlight” is one that’s been appropriated. It’s been one of my top favorites forever, and they can’t take it away from me!

I turned all the clocks back last night, except one. But our son came out, noticed, and said, “Aren’t we supposed to turn the clocks back? The bathroom clock is an hour fast.” Truly, I’d turned the clocks up. I find the semi-annual time change abhorrent and stupid, but I disdain Saving time the most, because there goes another hour of my life, every year, that doesn’t come back, not really, so I guess changing the clock put me in a negative mindset and I went the wrong way. Anyway, it’s been enough years of my life now that I don’t care which we have, we simply need to pick one and be done. I don’t change the analog clock in the kitchen; it’s over the kitchen table, and I can’t reach it unless I stand on the kitchen table. Some day there could be a reason for me to stand on the kitchen table, but I’m not doin’ it to change the damn clock. The guys will get tired of it sooner or later, and I have the stove clock. And my Fitwitch on my wrist.

Well, that’s a sort of round up of trivia and drift. I hope readers have enjoyed it, at least smiled or giggled, and maybe feel a little better.

We can do this stuff. It’s still way too early to let Republicanism mess with our mental health.

Sunlight and Butterflies, or Some S–t Like That

It has struck me that we need a reduce-stress-be-in-the-moment-self-care sort of thing. Some of us have chronic conditions, some are recovering from surgery, some of us are physically fine other than great stress that may be getting the better of us, and some of us may have a combination of some or all, or even something else. I’m pretty sure we’re all aware of tools, but sometimes things are so worrying that we forget about that, as we urgently try to fix things, or even submit to our brains’s workings with cortisol and fear and what all. So. I don’t know what, if any of this, might help someone, but I gotta try. So here’s what’s likely gonna be a long post, with a mixed bag of stuff. Actually, I think it may turn into 2 separate posts, because I see I’ve only got one item covered, and it’s already post-length. So there may be Part 2. And maybe yet another one.

I think I should first refer people to the hotlines where professionals want to and can help. Maybe someone thinks they don’t need or want to call, or maybe someone thinks they’re not there yet. It’s just good to have the resource at hand, is all. Some gain strength from knowing they can call. So, of course, there’s 911, or whatever the 3 digit emergency number is where you live. Then, more specifically, there are numbers for mental health assistance, like 988 where you can text Q to 988 if you want an LGBTQI+ affirming counselor. National Domestic Violence Hotline , (800) 799-7233. Crisis Text Line ,Text HOME to 741741. National Sexual Assault Hotline , (800) 656-4673. SAgE’s Farmer Support Hotline , 833-381-SAGE. Veterans Crisis Line , 988, then PRESS 1 Text 838255, Chat online. Much more at https://www.apa.org/topics/crisis-hotlines . Also, https://glaad.org/resourcelist/ . No doubt I’ve missed something, so please put it in comments.

I will share a bit about myself here. I’ve been diagnosed with generalized anxiety. Could be brain chemistry, could be that my life has not been a calm flow, both, something else. Whatever it is, I have it. Having treated and therapized, I know which tools work for me, and I use them, sometimes unconsciously. Anyway, I don’t like seeing people having trouble, or being troubled, or being hungry, sick, cold, hot, traumatized by war, etc., etc. My mindset has always been to do all I can to fix. Mostly to fix things immediately for the people I’m trying to help, but also the bigger working to fix. We’ve all seen my posts where I’ve shared some of the issues and items on which I work.

The thing about that is, it helps me to feel like I’m doing something that can help somebody else. It overrides anxiety and introversion when I have a reason to be “bothering” people for the greater good.

In regard to current events stress, which is weighing on all people everywhere, there are many of us around the world who are able to do just that one thing that seems so tiny-an hour on the phone, say-to make a difference, and reduce our concerns and stress. So, here is the volunteer page for the Harris-Walz campaign: https://go.kamalaharris.com/ . They still need people to make calls. Making calls to voters in other states is one of my favorite parts of helping a campaign! With a cell phone it’s almost cost and pain-in-the-neck free. Again, I’m aware of various medical issues around the commentary; that’s why I say even one hour will help the campaign, and will also help us. In addition or instead of this, one could contact campaigns of legislative candidates, like Sen. Brown, Sen. Baldwin, Rep. Sharice Davids, Colin Allred, and so many more. An hour of calls will help. And, again, you will feel better having spoken with people to further the greater good.

Now calling is a thing I’m putting forward. To me, it’s personal for each of us, what and how much we’re doing about the stress of the things in the world. I neither need nor want to know if/what anybody’s doing. I’m only putting this out as a thing from which to take our power, to put our power to work.

Since this is this long, I’ll put the first post I read this morning, it inspired me. It’s good-one of those things I needed to read, though I didn’t know it until I got started. It reminded me that while I didn’t necessarily learn or have these experiences in the same way or as early in life, I know these things, and I can do them when needed. I bet we all do, and can. I’m going to share a goodly snippet, but we should read it all if we can. Then, I’ll stop for lunch, then bring back another post part. Well, unless any- or everyone comments that they’re good, and please no more! 🌞 😄 And now from Vixen Strangely:

Maybe We Will Just Protect Ourselves

I tell this about myself because its true and a little weird, but when I was small, my dad taught me how to hook my fingers up and around an eyeball in its socket–just in case I ever had to. I knew what a xyphoid process was at six years old. I knew where to drive the heel of my hand into a human nose. I was taught that I didn’t have the physical strength advantage in life, so I had to have the will. I was taught that you have to walk in awareness. I was taught you watch your drink. I was taught to carry improvised weapons. I was taught to see the world in terms of potential improvised weapons.

I was taught this because some boys never get told what they should never try. Or get told but don’t really learn it. (You don’t use your knee–it’s inexact. You grab them by it. You can squeeze and disrupt a generation of losers. And I never had to do any of that. Not once. Because it’s really only a small percentage of men who are actual monsters–most are reasonable and not actual sociopaths. I like men, really. They are interesting enough and some have valuable skills. They care for the people around them and often are smarter than they think they are. It’s a confidence issue. When you are told to value muscle over brain, you know.)

I was raised to think, more or less, there wasn’t anything I couldn’t do. Math, science, art, politics. Sports. And it simply never occurred to me women were just out there, somewhere, either not voting because their husbands said they couldn’t or voting for exactly what their husbands told them to, until I heard about that in my early adulthood–because why? That’s crazy: we’re fully-fledged adult people, right? Even if I knew I was born just before Roe and just before women generally could even get credit in our own names.

I’ve been married twice. The idea of a man not knowing what he’s even getting politically going into a relationship is weird to me–this is me. We are talking politics. You don’t know me and not know my politics.

I was told to put in the work. Show it. Show up. I learned how to put a little bass in my voice. I learned respect is earned, not one time, but every time.

Donald Trump never had to earn the respect that he has from the bottom up, in any environment where respect wasn’t just his for showing up. Women can see through it. Do you not see his relationship with Jeffery Epstein? The couple dozen claims of sexual harassment or assault? How he speaks about women all the time? The religious right (that he has allied with) desire to end no-fault divorce and the grinning sadist desire to monitor our menses and try to punish us for our fertility and even stop us from travelling to other states to save our lives? (snip-More)

Peace & Justice History for 11/3:

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorynovember.htm#november3

Peace & Justice History for 11/2:

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorynovember.htm#november2

‘I had to get out’: the US military officers filing for conscientious objector status over Gaza

Disillusioned members of the US military have turned to Vietnam war-era policy to terminate their service because of religious or moral convictions

For Joy Metzler, a second lieutenant in the US air force, joining the military had felt like answering a calling. An adoptee from China who was raised in a conservative Christian family, she believed she owed a debt to the United States.

But the Hamas attacks in Israel last year, and Israel’s war that followed, rocked Metzler’s convictions. Within months, she filed for conscientious objector status, one of a small number of US military personnel seeking to end their service because of their moral opposition to US support for Israel.

“I didn’t know Palestine was a place before October 7,” Metzler told the Guardian.

“All of a sudden it felt like a light clicking on for me.”

As the war in Gaza enters a second year, some disillusioned members of the US military have turned to the Vietnam war-era conscientious objector policy to terminate their military service because of religious or moral convictions.

There are few avenues to express dissent in the army. Earlier this year, Harrison Mann, an army officer assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency resigned in protest of US support for Israel. In a far more extreme gesture, 25-year-old US airman Aaron Bushnell died after setting himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington in February.

The conscientious objector route is a seldom-invoked alternative that few service members are aware of – though some advocates say there has been an uptick in interest in the last year.

The defense department referred questions about the number of conscientious objectors to each branch of the military. A spokesperson for the air force said that it has received 42 applications since 2021 and granted 36. Applications since 7 October “are on trend with pre-conflict averages”, the spokesperson added. (The army, navy, and Marine Corps did not respond to requests for comment.)

But while the numbers remain relatively low, the war in Gaza is top of mind for those service members who have considered conscientious objector status this year, said Bill Galvin, a Vietnam-era objector and director of counseling at the Center on Conscience and War, one of a handful of groups that helps military members navigate the complex bureaucratic process.

Galvin said his group helps roughly 50 to 70 applicants a year, across military branches, and that there’s been more interest than usual this year.

The US has subsidized Israel’s war in Gaza to the tune of nearly $18bn over the last year, and is growing more deeply entangled as the conflict spills into the broader region. The Biden administration recently announced the deployment of 100 troops to Israel to man a missile defense system in anticipation of an escalation against Iran.

“Almost everyone that I’ve talked to has at least cited what’s happening in Gaza as a factor in causing them to rethink what they’re doing,” Galvin said. “Some have actually said: ‘I know that the airplane that I’m doing maintenance on is delivering weaponry to Israel and so I feel complicit.’” (snip-MORE)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/01/military-officers-conscientious-objector-status-gaza?CMP=share_btn_url

Peace & Justice History for 11/1:

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorynovember.htm#november1

Peace & Justice History for 10/31:

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryoctober.htm#october31

Peace & Justice History for 10/30:

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryoctober.htm#october30

Only The Decent People Can Save Us (Again) by Oliver Willis

Decency Is On The Ballot Read on Substack

(Plus Kal El bonus at the bottom.-A)

In the last few decades, we have been witness to systematic failures in American life. Time and time again the guardrails we believed existed turned out to be illusions, or at best, guardrails without any teeth. The courts, the financial institutions, the legislators, and especially the media – entrusted as the watchdogs of democracy – have absolutely failed.

There is only one group that, more often than not, has been up to the task: The people. The people keep showing up and at the very least, voting to put people in charge to clean up the messes. Of course, once those people are in office they too often respond with timidity and reluctance and don’t go as far as necessary to exercise the mandate they have been given, but the people did their jobs.

In every presidential election since 1988, with the exception of 2004, a plurality or majority of the public voted for the Democratic candidate. That is a data point you rarely see repeated and I am quite certain that if it was Republicans with such a popular vote winning streak both the party and the media would never shut up about it. That is a triumph of decency. It would be easy for voters to be snowed under by the right’s avalanche of lies and hate, ably amplified by their buck-chasing friends in the press, but the voters keep seeing through it.

To be certain, there are structural barriers. Neither Al Gore nor Hillary Clinton became president even though the will of the American people said they should have been. And the presidencies of Bill Clinton, Obama, and Biden have had too many missed opportunities to push the ball forward, even though all three of these men had mandates to go quite far.

But what matters is that enough voters saw through the haze of absolute bullshit to send a message to do the right thing.

Here we are again. The Republican Party has always glowed bright with a hateful intensity, but Trump has allowed them to move that hate from Mitt Romney’s “quiet rooms” to spotlights like Madison Square Garden. The press and the oligarchs that own it at institutions like The New York Times, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, CNN and others, are quite happy to make billions of dollars from GOP fueled hate, as long as they can make a buck. They just don’t care about the consequences.

Voters still care. It may be naïve or cringe, or corny, but they believe. Voters have shown us that a majority of them are opposed to hate, opposed to racism, opposed to misogyny, opposed to treating people as second class based on their orientation. And a majority of them are pro-decency.

Yes, most of the pro-decency vote has a liberal ideology but it is more than that. There are people who just don’t like being crude bigots that spend all of their time shoving the faces of the vulnerable into the dirt. There are more of us than there are of them, and they have to effectively cheat or rig the rules to overcome our numbers.

Decency is on the march, but we are at a breaking point, again. Election day or week is not a “fever break” moment. No matter the outcome, but especially if decency is victorious again, we cannot go to sleep. The bad boss at the end of the game has not been defeated. 2004 showed us that. 2008 showed us that. 2012. 2016. 2020. The forces of darkness and depravity do not respect the will of the people and if you retreat, expecting that everyone will finally accept the supremacy of decency – the other side will see that as an opening.

The decent people need to stand up for what they believe in and then keep standing, keep pushing back, until the other people are broken – and then decency most continue to advance and remain forever vigilant.

I voted for decency, and I always will. I know I’m not alone.

If you like this newsletter, please consider becoming a paying subscriber by clicking here to join. I won’t be putting any of my regular columns behind a paywall and they will always be free. Thanks to everyone who has subscribed so far!

— Oliver

Follow me, Oliver Willis, on Threads @owillis1977