Pro-tip: True happiness is out there, if you’re willing to chase it

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(The following is a public service announcement)

Pop songs, podcasts, movies, commercials, tweets, memes, even vines make it crystal clear that everyone else has it all figured out. Love, sex, money, looks, health, charm, popularity, likes, shares, followers, and more – tied up neatly in anywhere from 6 seconds to 90 minutes (or maybe just 140 characters). So…if they have it all, why has happiness eluded you? Could it be you have the wrong job? The wrong skin color? The wrong body? The wrong attitude? The wrong news feed? Or are you just too stupid and lazy?

Don’t you realize all those brave men and women are over there dying so you can be happy? Why are you letting our gallant heroes down? You’re not an anti-American loser, are you?

Everyone else lives in a huge, clean, nicely furnished home. If you don’t believe me, just turn on your TV or computer or smart phone and see for yourself. Their kids are cute and funny. Their mates may have a few minor (humorous) imperfections but that’s what makes them just fuckin’ perfect. Their car is shiny and doesn’t break down. Their pets never shit on the rug. Their bosses respect them. Their friends support them unconditionally. They own all the latest gear, the latest fashions. Their butts are firm, their biceps bulge. They always say the right thing at the right time. Their selfies are simply sublime. You, on the other hand, are a complete fuckin’ loser. But there’s hope for you, if you’re willing to chase it.

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The right apps, the right clothes, the right car, the right slang, the right hashtag, the right diet, the right hairdo, the right cause, the right behavior, the right placement of solidarity: every bit of it can be purchased now…for a limited time only. While supplies last. First come, first served. Buy one, get another at half-price. But make sure you buy, spend, consume, and chase, chase, chase. It’s your turn…unless, of course, it’s not. Unless you’re a complete fuckin’ loser. In that case, pay very close attention to the next section.

You must chase harder. Much harder. The most important move you can make is: Always. Keep. Chasing. Happiness is out there. You see it every night on your TV screen, iPad screen, iPhone screen, or whatever screen you waste your sad life staring at. You don’t want to be like those people who live in bad neighborhoods with lousy jobs and criminals for kids, right? They’re in that mess because they asked for it and they got exactly what they deserved. They are complete fuckin’ losers. Not you. You have potential…the potential to spend and consume and buy and chase until you’re just like all your fabulous friends on Netflix.

And another thing: You know all those treehuggers who tell you about the negative impact of your nonstop chasing? They’re the biggest fuckin’ losers of all.

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You deserve the best so get out there and chase it…chase it all day long…chase it until your last, dying breath. If you don’t keep chasing, your web traffic and SEO presence will vanish and you know what that means: the terrorists win.

When it comes to true happiness, you’re either with us or against us. Time to choose, losers: Which side are you on?

(This message is brought to you by, well, the same people who bring you all the messages.)

What do most “lone gunman” assassins have in common?

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Like many of you, I went through an intense JFK assassination conspiracy phase. I’m glad I did as it helped normalize, for me, the reflexive questioning of “official” stories.

It’s been many years since I last delved into such material, but recently, I caught up on some of what’s been written and filmed on both the JFK and RFK assassinations. I’m glad I did as it helped me realize how intensely my critical lens has changed.

And thus, the title of this article: What do most “lone gunman” assassins have in common?

Check that: What do the vast, vast majority of “lone gunman” assassins have in common?

Who was accused and/or convicted of killing or shooting JFK, RFK, MLK, Gandhi, William McKinley, George Wallace, John Lennon, Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul, Abe Lincoln, Julius Caesar, Harvey Milk, etc. etc. etc.?

Go ahead, read the shooters’ names and allow the reality to sink in. They are virtually all (maybe 99.9 percent?) males.

Which brings us to the largest, most enduring, and deadliest conspiracy of all time: male supremacy.

So yeah, while the “lone gunman” trope is mighty useful in keeping us from conjuring up images of a government-corporate nexus running their business like the Corleone Family, it has a much deeper function. It allows us to believe that acts of violence are carried out almost exclusively by deranged individuals and thus never recognize the bigger picture of male pattern violence.

When we willfully delude ourselves in such a way, the connections remain invisible. The connections get stronger by the day.

What will it take for us – particularly us men – to finally open our eyes, to name the problem, and the end the problem?

Help Wanted: Pro-Feminist Proofreader

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On Thursday, May 12, Morgan Lowrie penned an article called Child-sex tourism continues to rise in Canada and abroad: study for the Globe and Mail. Below you will find that piece, along with my notes, in the hope of highlighting the urgent need for radical proofreaders and copy editors everywhere!

  handpointRTig Please click here to read my full article!

“I got up to go to the front to speak. I was not on the agenda.”

Published on by Mickey Z.3 Comments

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Some twenty years after my last leftist meeting, I went to a memorial service at the United Nations Chapel for Petra Kelly. Petra was the daughter of an Amerikan father and a German mother; she was a pacifist and a feminist. Living in Germany, she founded the Green Party, which was devoted to ecofeminism, nonviolence, and anti-pornography politics. She brought one of the first lawsuits against a pornographer for slander, libel, and hate. She put up a hell of a fight but lost the case. The lefties within the Green Party didn’t support her. Before her death, she was doing antiwar work in the Balkans.
The memorial service was organized and attended by my old pacifist friends from the anti-Vietnam War days. Petra had been shot to death by her male companion-lover who then shot and killed himself. The companion-lover had been a general with NATO in Germany; Petra had been responsible for his transformation into a pacifist. Cora Weiss was the emcee of the event. There were seven or eight invited speakers, most of them male or maybe all of them, but Bella Abzug.
Many of the speakers, touched by the conversion of the NATO general to nonviolence, spoke a length about his courage and honor; his stunning contributions to pacifism and world peace (through renouncing NATO). Some of them mentioned Petra in passing. One or two did not mention her at all but called him “brother” and nearly dissolved in tears. (And we thought that boys couldn’t cry. )
The sentimentality on behalf of the male convert to pacifism was astonishing. Many of the speakers appeared to accept that Petra and her companion-lover were the victims of a plot, probably CIA, because the CIA saw him as a turncoat and wanted to kill him – she was, as monsters say, collateral damage. Others thought that there had been a mutual suicide pact, that Petra had agreed – ladies first – to be killed by the former NATO general.
I waited for Bella Abzug, one of my heroes, to speak. She spoke last, I think, but nothing she said challenged the notion of Petra as a helpmate who wanted to be killed. She even managed to say something nice about the boy, though she nearly choked on the words. I was devastated.
I got up to go to the front to speak. I was not on the agenda. Cora motioned me back to my seat and said in a loud whisper that there wasn’t time for anyone else to say anything. She gestured in a way that implied she couldn’t be more sorry. I forced myself through the ropes that marked the speaking area and kept it sacrosanct. I turned to face the audience of mourners. Here were men I had known since I was eighteen – from my earliest days in fighting against the war in Vietnam. I couldn’t believe that nothing had changed – peace, peace, peace, love, love, love; they did not understand nor would they even consider that a man had murdered a woman.
I said that while Petra’s life had been extraordinary her death was not; it was an ordinary death for a woman. Petra had been killed by her lover, her intimate, her mate. She was killed in her bed wearing a nightgown. (I knew but didn’t say that Petra would never commit suicide by any means while unclothed or even partly exposed – the pornography of it would have been repellent to her. She also would never have used a gun or allowed its use. ) She had probably been asleep. Nothing could be more commonplace or cowardly. The audience of pacifists started hissing and some started shouting.
I said that there was probably no conspiracy and certainly no acquiescence on the part of Petra; everything in her life and politics argued against any such complicity. It had to be faced, I said, that pacifists had not taken a stand against violence against women; it was still invisible to them, even when the woman was Petra Kelly, a world-class activist.
I said that the male’s life meant more to them than hers did. By this time the pacifists were in various stages of rage. No pacifist woman stood up to support me, though Petra would have. I said that, hard as it was, one had to understand that Petra had died like millions of other women around the world: prematurely, violently, and at the hands of someone who was presumed to love her.
I said that nonviolence was not possible if the ordinary, violent deaths of women went unremarked, unnoticed. However extraordinary Petra had been in her life, I repeated, her death could not have been more commonplace. The mourners were angry. Some were shouting nasty names at me. I said that I had to speak because not to do so would be to betray Petra’s work and the work we had done together, in concert.
I ran from the room. One woman grabbed my arm on my way out. “Thank you, ” she said. That’s enough; it has to be enough – one on-site person during a conflict showing respect. I felt that I had stood up for Petra. I knew she would have stood up for me.
(excerpted from Heartbreak)

“Either they will give us the government or we shall take it”

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“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.” Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini may or may not have said this, but there’s no doubt he lived it and imposed it.

  handpointRTig Please click here to read my full article!

Thank you, Andrea Dworkin

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As someone who eschewed college and instead embarked on a long journey of dedicated radical self-education, I find it quite illuminating that it took so long for me to encounter the work of Andrea Dworkin.

   handpointRTig Please click here to read my full article!