Where I live, public transportation is spotty at best.

City buses can take you throughout most of the uptown and downtown areas, but outlying villages and suburbs are not included on their maps.

We’re too far outside the city limits to walk, and biking along the highway is dangerous — not to mention unreasonable for people with mobility issues. My arthritis leaves me pretty isolated on days when I don’t have a reliable means of travel.

A taxi costs between $30 and $40 to travel from where I live to where most of the city’s amenities are located.

Thus, owning a car is virtually a necessity here. Almost everybody works in the city, myself included, so there’s no other option.

The village is a patchwork of roads and driveways situated off a major highway, and the traffic in and out is ridiculous. I’ve found myself sitting at the turn for fifteen minutes or more, waiting for a chance to join the stream of cars heading into the city limits.

It’s the only way to leave our area. There is no alternative route. A single accident on the road can leave us completely screwed for hours, and if storms knock down trees and block the streets, we’re completely cut off until we clear them.

The more cars making the trip in and out, the worse congestion gets — and that’s not even considering the air quality or the amount of roadkill on the highway.

Imagine if we had the option of just hopping on the tram instead.

Public Transportation in Washington, D.C.

When my spouse and I visited Washington, D.C., a few years ago, we barely drove anywhere at all.

There was a convenient bus stop right beside the parking garage where we stashed his car for the week, and it was only a short walk from the front door of our hotel.

The bus carried us across the city to the nearest metro station, and from there, the entirety of D.C. was at our fingertips. We made our tour of the city either on public transport or on foot, and the only time we used his car was to run and grab some snacks from a local grocery store.

Now, the Washington Metro is not perfect. While the air within the trains is filtered and clear, the air within the enclosed underground stations often isn’t.

Particulates from the tracks fill the space and pose a health risk to frequent travellers, and that’s something that needs to be addressed. It’s a common problem across metro stations worldwide.

That said, the public transit systems in D.C. have a lot going for them. For one thing, a surprising amount of its infrastructure runs on electricity rather than fossil fuels.

While most electricity in the city is still based on biomass and fossil fuels — not great — there is hope for that to change. Solar is rapidly becoming a prominent feature in Washington’s electrical grid, and the city is open to further renewable energy development.

The energy consumption of the city is still far too high to be counted as sustainable, but the idea of public transit based on environmentally friendly energy is not out of the question.

We all know that the Metro system runs on electricity, for example. The easy availability of public transport also reduces the need for cars, allowing high numbers of people to travel with fewer vehicles on the road.

This helps reduce carbon emissions and also cuts down on traffic congestion — and it doesn’t hurt that the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority is working on some promising sustainability initiatives.

They’re working on incorporating solar panels into their car parks, and they’re even in the process of completely replacing their gas-powered fleet of buses with electric vehicles:

As part of our Better Bus initiative, Metro is transitioning to a 100% zero-emission bus (ZEB) fleet. ZEBs have no tailpipe emissions, which means improved air quality, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and quieter buses throughout the region. We’re also modernizing our bus garages to support zero-emission operations and training our workforce to prepare for this transition. — WMATA Zero-Emission Buses

Coupled with the Transportation & Climate Initiative Program proposed by the Department of Energy and Environment in the District of Columbia, there is a very clear path forward toward greater sustainability.

Public transportation is cited as a huge part of their future plans, and for good reason. The addition of everything from electric vehicles to new bike lanes for the able-bodied will help reduce traffic on the streets considerably.

Less traffic is beneficial for everyone.

How Do Vehicles Contribute to Climate Change?

Cars are bad for the environment. Most of us know that already.

They produce emissions, and they mostly run on fossil fuels — transportation accounts for a whopping 28% of the United States’ greenhouse gas emissions. That’s not a small amount.

Even our electric vehicles still draw electricity from a fossil-fuel-based electrical grid, though that should hopefully change in the future.

But it’s not just the vehicles themselves that cause problems for the environment; it’s all of the infrastructure required for them to work.

In 2022, there were 283.4 million vehicles registered in the United States. Think about how large a vehicle is. Think about how much time you spend driving on any given day. Now think about all of the things that have to exist just to get around in your car — and how much space in a city is devoted to storing cars when they’re not in use.

Parking lots and highways are a nightmare for the environment, and they pose substantial risks for humans and wildlife as the world’s temperature rises.

For one thing, parking lots are basically giant heating pads.

What do you think happens when you take a wide, flat plane of land and cover it with heat-absorbing black asphalt, and then you pack a bunch of shiny metal objects on top of it on a bright sunny day?

If you’ve ever wondered why birds love to hover over car parks on warm days, it’s because of the thermal lift generated by the concentrated heat — it gives them a break from having to flap their wings.

This phenomenon is called the Urban Heat Island Effect, and there’s more to it than just car parks — most city infrastructure, like skyscrapers and roads, also contributes to the problem. These Heat Islands pose significant dangers to our health, on top of just being inconvenient.

Nobody likes walking across a hot parking lot to find out their car has turned into an oven while they are away. During heatwaves, those temperatures can easily lead to serious illness and even death.

And that’s not even taking into account how high heat can increase air pollution, too.

Large areas devoted to parking can also pose dangers during certain weather events, such as flash flooding caused by heavy rainfall. Paved ground doesn’t allow for rain to absorb into the earth, and it isn’t uncommon for storm drainage systems to be overfilled near parking spaces.

Imagine if we didn’t need all that space devoted to parking. Imagine if, instead of personal vehicles, public transportation covered all of our transit needs.

Imagine if those parking lots were replaced by public parks instead. Imagine if they were replaced by urban agriculture or community gardens.

Green Spaces In Cities

Have you ever heard of Forest Bathing? In Japan, it’s called shinrin-yoku, and it’s a marvellous activity for your mental and physical health.

It turns out that when you pack people into concrete cities full of noise, lights, and constant stress, they tend to get sick. Depression, high blood pressure, sleep disturbance, anxiety, you name it — our modern world has uncountable benefits, but it does have its share of problems.

Getting away from the city and spending time in a natural setting has repeatedly proven to be a reliable way of managing stress. It’s a well-known fact, to the point where you probably read that sentence and rolled your eyes at how I cleverly stated the obvious.

Shinrin-Yoku takes this basic idea and turns it into a therapeutic practice to improve our mental and physical health.

When I was a kid, my dad would often lead me out into the woods for exactly this reason. He’s a big believer in the concept, and he made sure to instill the idea in my head when I was young.

His advice turned out to be pretty solid, and research backs it up. Regular Forest Bathing reduces stress, improves sleep, alleviates symptoms of depression and anxiety, and helps improve immune function.

It’s comparable to regular meditation practice, with the added benefit of removing yourself from the largest sources of stress and distraction.

The human brain thrives in green spaces. So, imagine if that big parking lot outside of your workplace were a wooded park instead.

Imagine taking your lunch break under the shade of a beautiful tree instead of at your desk, surrounded by coworkers and the constant reminder of the work you have to do.

Bonus points if you leave your phone behind or turn it off.

It’d help with the Urban Heat Island problem, too. The cooling effect of green spaces is very real; trees and grass cool the air instead of heating it up. Something as simple as installing gardens on top of high-rise buildings can help cool them down significantly.

Incorporating community gardens and urban agriculture into these green spaces could also go a long way in reducing the prevalence of Food Deserts. It’d be helpful for the environment in multiple ways, reducing the need to ship produce long distances.

With more public transportation, there’s far less need for expansive parking spaces. We could cut the need for parking lots and improve the health of our cities drastically by making public transit more accessible.

Public Transportation Benefits People and the Environment

I love travelling by train. The metro system in D.C. gives you a beautiful view of the city as it crosses back and forth — at least when the tracks take you above ground.

The first time I took a trip to the United States, I entered the country by way of the Adirondack train from Montreal and into New York State. It was easily the most relaxing trip of my life.

All I could see when I looked out of my window was nature. Vibrant green forests, majestic cliffs, deep blue lakes and rivers. It’s no surprise that this is considered one of the most scenic routes in North America.

While the Adirondack is currently powered by diesel for the majority of its route, I’d love to imagine a utopian future where the whole system gets a greener upgrade.

When I wasn’t admiring the scenic routes of the Hudson Valley from the window of a train, I often travelled through New England by bus. It was easy enough to make the trip over the border and hop coaches across the country.

But everywhere I went, the traffic was awful.

The roads are packed with cars. There’s the occasional bus among the throng, but every highway seems to be bumper-to-bumper, full of exhaust and tired drivers.

My village is the same way; even with our tiny population, there are constantly cars rolling up and down the street.

The cars, the infrastructure needed for them, and the amount of land we dedicate to them are terrible for the environment. Transportation accounts for over a quarter of the greenhouse gas emissions produced by the United States.

Under Trump, it’s set to get worse, not better. So many of his sycophantic followers keep parroting the idea that Climate Change is a hoax, so they can continue to emphasize profit from fossil fuels.

It’s expensive, it’s bad for the air, it’s stressful and draining on our mental health. I know I don’t feel great driving a long commute, and I don’t imagine you do either.

Now imagine if we didn’t have to.

Public transportation is better for the environment, and it’s better for us. I think it’s worth the investment.

Solidarity wins.

Today is a bit of a mixed day. We’re starting off with a personal note from my family life, as today, I will be losing a relative. One of my elderly grandparents is passing on, as I mentioned in our last episode.

We’re going to be talking a little bit about a common bit of anti-Canadian propaganda that I…

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When did you become World-Weary?

On the internet, there’s a common meme that pops up now and again where people post what ‘radicalized’ them. What was the moment that made them realize how inequality is not an accidental side effect of our society, but a built-in feature designed to benefit those in power?

For me, there wasn’t a single moment. It was a lifetime of small realizations, experiences and situations.

I didn’t suddenly turn hard to the left out of the blue one day, marching in the street with a sign and bright-dyed hair. I don’t think I’ve ever made a protest sign, actually — I’ve been to protests, don’t get me wrong. But I always wound up joining as a spur-of-the-moment thing.

I never had time to make a sign. I just turned up on the street and lent my voice when the cause was right. Also, the nearest thing to brightly dyed hair I’ve ever had is burgundy.

My first big ‘moment’ was in Middle School. I was born into a relatively poor household. We weren’t constantly struggling, but we had lean years and good years, and we did the best we could.

Fresh vegetables are a treat for me, because when I was little, they were often too expensive for us to buy. If you’ve ever heard me rant about food deserts and feeding poor kids in school, you already know this about me.

The concept of ‘School Lunch Debt’ still boggles my mind. Seriously, what?

Anyway, I remember walking onto the campus one day in ratty old pants that didn’t fit me right. I was in a growth spurt, and stretchy fabric was all I had. I was in between hand-me-downs from my cousins, so I was making do.

I remember some of my friends stopping, looking at me weirdly, and asking why I was wearing that. I’d obviously get sent home for being improperly dressed. I didn’t have anything else, I said.

Which is what I told the office after I predictably got called in and asked to change. Luckily for my parents, they assumed I was being a shitty kid rather than a neglected one. They gave me pants from the lost and found and ordered me to wear them.

Hot damn, new pants! Hell yeah.

I then got shit from another friend about having no sense of style and how I needed to go shopping. That was, apparently, something they could just…do.

That was one of many, many small moments I had where I realized I was perhaps not as well off as the other kids around me.

It wasn’t much of a leap then to start wondering about why.

I was always a Woke Commie Scumbag, per the right-wingers that occasionally turn up in my comments and get blocked before anyone sees them.

In High School, I was the kid who chose to do a social studies essay on the prevalence of child predators working in schools across North America. Yeah, there were never any signs that I would turn out to be a Social Justice Warrior when I was young. Not at all.

I have this pesky thing called ‘empathy.’ It makes it hard to see other people struggling and keep walking. I remember how awful it feels to not have the money to buy a small meal, and the intense gratitude I felt when the cafe owner — who knew me well — told me to take my food and pay another day.

That one simple decision on her part was the difference between me being able to eat that morning or going hungry until I got home to my mother’s house that night. For other people, it could be the difference between eating or going hungry all week.

That’s the kind of thing that runs through my head. There but for the grace of the gods go I, as they say. As long as there are people suffering and barely scraping by, if that, then none of us are safe.

As long as the basic necessities of life are locked behind a paywall, then none of us have the right to live.

And that’s why I can’t stand the insane wealth disparity that now exists today. There are people who live such wildly different lives that they cannot conceive of what it feels like to go hungry.

I have a friend who insists she’s not wealthy. But when my other friend and I talked about buying our food for the month, she was confused. Why aren’t we buying the ingredients we need for the meals we want on the days we want to make them?

We looked at each other in surprise. There’s no way we could afford to do that, we explained. We buy in bulk whatever is cheap and cook what we can out of what we have available.

She was floored. She could never live like that. She couldn’t fathom not having the freedom of choosing exactly what to cook. Having to plan ahead based on sales? Not a chance!

I told her I couldn’t imagine having enough money that I could make a full multi-person meal and dessert every night like she could, with ingredients bought on a whim. Especially not complex, bougie meals.

She eats well. I’m jealous!

It’s that kind of disconnect that showed me how wide the chasm between poverty and wealth can really be. It seems small, but damn. That puddle is deep enough to drown in.

I didn’t get radicalized by one small moment. It happens to me over and over again every time I read the news.

Every headline, every gossip column, every out-of-touch social media post by the latest celebrity heartthrob.

When I see the wealthy talk about their ‘struggles.’ When I see how out of touch they are, how utterly clueless they are about the reality of our daily lives.

When my family is splitting our grocery trips up so we can buy as cheaply as possible, expanding our ability to preserve food to eliminate waste and try to stretch everything we make to last as long as possible — people like Donald Trump are posting about ballrooms and gilded bathrooms.

People like Elon Musk are throwing money around like it’s a fucking meme, talking about ending world hunger — because he absolutely could, at least for a year — and then randomly deciding he won’t, even when he was presented with a plan that could work.

Yeah, that’s a real thing he did. I’m not making that up to make him look bad.

You want to know what radicalized me? Being a human fucking being in this fucked up world we live in.

It was learning how far greed can twist us out of shape. How the basic superpower of our species, community and cooperation, goes right out the window under the corrupting influence of avarice.

Money and the pursuit of power supersedes even our basic compassion for our fellow man, let alone the animals and plants we share our planet with. We wind up placing more value on the numbers in one’s bank account than we do on human life.

And that, to me, is outrageous.

But what about you? When did you become World-Weary? When did the reality of all of this light a fire under your feet and drive you to want to take action? When did you realize things needed to change?

I want to hear about your moment.

Solidarity wins.

“It would be bad, but not as bad as the movies would have you believe — radiation is scary, but you can survive it. If you’re not directly in range, there are things you can do.”

“Like what? What should I do? I mean I don’t want to get sick, that’s deadly, isn’t it?”

“It depends on how close you are and how much of a dose you get. The first thing to do is get as far away as you can. Find shelter, strip your clothes and ditch them, get inside, jump in the shower. Wash yourself thoroughly all over, in your mouth, ears, flush your eyes. Use shampoo and soap — no conditioner, no lotion, no makeup. Radiation clings to particles like dust, you want to wash it all away.”

I was relaying these reassurances and explanations to my sister-in-law through my spouse, passing on my extremely limited survival know-how in the event of a nuclear bomb falling near her city in the U.S.

She was frightened. I was trying to be comforting.

I didn’t go into too much detail, because she didn’t need that and I didn’t know enough. Sometimes just having some instructions to follow is enough to ease your nerves, and I hoped that would soothe her.

I don’t know enough to give her a full explanation of what to expect and how to protect herself. What I do know about radiation and nuclear weapons is enough to keep me up at night.

Not least of which because, contrary to the calm confidence I was trying to portray for the sake of her anxiety, your survival really depends on how many fall, how far away you are, and various other factors well outside of your control.

How far away would you need to be? I’m no expert. What level of radiation is safe? I have a vague idea, but not enough to give concrete answers. I can make guesses based on the two bombs we’ve seen dropped on civillian populations before, but those were old.

I have no frame of reference for modern nuclear weapons. They’ve never been used in warfare.

Nuclear weapons and energy have always fascinated me. This is one of my ever-shifting special interests, and one that frequently loops back around to snare me in a research spiral at least once or twice a year.

It’s evident in previous subjects I’ve chosen for articles, such as the Hanford Site and the Runit Island Tomb. Series like the Fallout games (and show) Chernobyl, and Jericho are standby favourites of mine, for good reason.

But now, in a time of increasing instability and uncertainty, with a complete maniac at the head of the most powerful nuke-holding nation in the world, my once-hypothetical interests have become alarmingly real.

That conversation with my spouse and sister-in-law happened quite a while ago, well over a year. I don’t even remember what sparked her nerves that day.

But I know what’s sparking mine right now. And I am not alone.

Most frighteningly, these fears are grounded in the actions and rhetoric of people who have influence in the halls of power.

During Trump’s first term, many Canadians were terrified.

We knew we were dealing with a rabid bear to our south, and we didn’t know how volatile he might truly be.

I remember sitting in the metal shop in college, a few minutes before our first class of the day was supposed to start. My friends and I were quietly discussing the possibility of Trump losing his marbles and dropping a bomb — this was shortly after his first attempt at a trade war with Canada began.

Our teacher walked in to see our anxious faces and asked what was wrong. When we told her, she sighed, sat down and quietly told us she had the same worry. We all agreed that Trump was unpredictable, a lunatic who might do the unthinkable in a fit of pique.

For several minutes we just sat there, most of us looking at the floor and refusing to meet anyone’s eyes. You could have heard a pin drop in that room.

Then we got down to business and reached for our tools. There was nothing we could do, so we distracted ourselves with our work. It was outside of our control. All we could do was keep living and hope for the best.

And now, in 2026, we are once again mired in fear. But this time, there’s a lot more than anxious conjecture weighing us down.

Hearing Trump repeatedly talking about ‘destroying civilisation’ in Iran is pretty fucking disturbing.

Now, as I’m writing this, I’m a few hours away from the deadline Trump set for Iran’s surrender on April 7th. I’m waiting to see what he decides to do.

It’s possible this goes live tomorrow and he’s pulled a TACO maneuver as he so often does when he doesn’t get his way. Maybe he’ll have backed off, maybe he’ll have thrown some more typical small-beans assault and hyped it up with propaganda to make himself look tough.

Or, maybe, he’ll have done the unthinkable.

Israel has already been bombing nuclear power stations in Iran, creating the potential for a Chernobyl-like disaster that would render the country — and parts of the wider Middle East — uninhabitable. We know that Israeli state media is openly discussing going further with ‘unconventional weaponry.’

I honestly can’t predict what Trump is going to do.

He’s unhinged. Rabid. Dangerous. A demented, monstrous, pathetic little old man, determined to build his legacy by whatever means necessary — at least, that’s what he is when he’s lucid.

Gods know what he is when he isn’t.

So. Will Trump use nuclear weapons in Iran? I don’t know. But I’m pretty fucking scared to find out. One of my older relatives once told me that she envied my generation because we never had to fear the spectre of nuclear war like she did when she was younger.

Oh, if only she knew. I wonder what she thinks now?

If bombs do fall, what is there for us to do?

Well, a few things. Like I said, I’m no expert, but there are a few resources the average citizen can study for advice. My advice to my sister-in-law about soaps and forgoing conditioner and makeup is something I learned out of a guide provided by the American Red Cross, which I’ll provide a link to here.

My own country’s government likewise has resources for citizens to read, urging people to be prepared in the event of a nuclear catastrophe — although our focus tends to be on power station failures, as we do not have nuclear weapons.

As for how bad a true nuclear war would be, well… it’s difficult to say. Experts are divided.

Maybe a complete MAD-style bombardment would end all life on Earth and trigger a nuclear winter. Or, maybe that’s unscientific nonsense and humanity would handily survive, even if we suffered serious harms and longterm health implications and birth defects.

I’ve seen arguments on both sides. The fact is, unless it happens we just don’t know.

We’re guessing. And that’s terrifying.

What we do know is that the only country in the world that has ever used nuclear weapons against a civilian population — twice — is now led by a man who once suggested using a nuclear bomb to difuse a hurricane, and didn’t understand why it was a bad idea.

Not encouraging. Especially as he talks about Iran ‘living in hell’ and ‘destroying their civilization’ this very night if he doesn’t get his way.

I hope by the time this article goes out on Wednesday morning, nothing will have happened. I hope, with all my heart, that this will look like alarmist nonsense.

We’ll find out in just a few short hours. Until then, I’ll be holding my breath.

Solidarity wins.

Mea culpa. Hopefully this hectic state won’t last forever, and I don’t plan to let things slide too far. Life occasionally mucks up your plans, and alas, I am only as human as anyone e…

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There are a lot of things you can say about women.

But you can’t call us weak.

I know, I know; the Manosphere and the entire right-wing side of politics these days like to pretend that women are the fairer sex, and that going back to the 1950s housewife lifestyle is what we secretly all want.

What women really want is to be locked away in the kitchen slaving over our precious appliances, making food from scratch and scrubbing grout on our hands and knees so Betty down the road doesn’t judge us at the next garden party.

We definitely don’t want the rights, freedoms and autonomy we’ve spent centuries bleeding for.

Some men — not all, but some — only feel good about themselves when they feel superior to somebody else. Women, more often than not, catch the brunt of it.

That’s patriarchy for you. The only person with any value is a ‘real man,’ and if you don’t live up to that you’re worthless. Women are a couple of holes and a baby factory, and our hands exist to serve. That’s what these guys think.

Some of them swear we’re happier that way, and feminism secretly makes us miserable, lonely old spinsters who die sad with a pile of cats.

But let me ask you something. Do you know anything about history?

‘Cause if you do, boy, you know that’s bullshit.

Every little bit of progress we have is earned. Men didn’t ‘give’ us our rights, we fucking fought for them. Literally. Women hit the streets all around the world with bats, knives, our bare fists, and protest signs held like clubs — every right we have was bought with the blood of our mothers and their mothers before them.

Y’all think we’re weak, soft, sweet-hearted girls. But that’s only because you haven’t seen us pissed off.

Do you know when women first got the right to vote in the U.S.? In Canada? Britain?

Do you know when we were given the legal right to have our own bank accounts or open our own credit without the signature of a husband or a male relative?

Do you know when marital rape was first made illegal?

Take a minute and look those things up. Go on down a little historical rabbit hole with me — I promise you, you’ll be shocked at how recent some of those dates actually are.

As a hint, I’ll tell you that my mother — born in 1971 — was 12 years old when marital rape became a crime in Canada where we were both born.

In the United States, it wasn’t a crime country-wide until the year she was pregnant with me, in 1993. I was born in March of 1994.

I am 32 years old. When I was born, my country didn’t even have a committee to ensure fair and equal pay between men and women without having to file official complaints. We didn’t get that basic protection until 2001, when I was just a 7-year-old child.

We still don’t have perfect parity between genders in terms of pay. The pay gap still exists, as does a culture of expecting women to manage and tend to the home.

Even while working a full time job, equal in hours to a male partner — assuming she has one. We still do the majority of the household chores and general upkeep.

And no, mowing the lawn and cleaning the gutters and fixing the car don’t count for this. I’m talking about the thousands of little things you do every single day to keep a home tidy and livable.

Cooking, washing dishes, vacuuming, scrubbing toilets, picking up toys, making grocery lists, getting the mail, checking the to-do list, making school lunches and planning family activities — the shit your average mom does on the daily that Dad seems to ‘forget.’

The fact is, our culture still has gendered expectations for men and women that keep us locked into certain roles. Especially now, as the Christian right-wing and the online Manosphere conspire to construct a fictional, highly romanticized image of the ideal woman from the past.

A past where we served without complaint, where we were happy to be domestic servants and obedient wives. A past where women were perfectly content to be led by our men and never once thought we deserved more.

A past that never existed.

Women fought for our autonomy.

I’m not being hyperbolic; we literally fought. The Suffragettes weren’t just politely requesting that women be given the right to vote, they straight-up publicly stated that violence was the only way to win.

They planted bombs, they lit buildings on fire, they broke windows and vandalized properties.

They killed people.

In return they were tortured. Raped. Beaten in the streets. Murdered. But the thing is, those things were already happening to women every day; it was nothing new. The only thing that changed were the public reasons for the attacks.

Before, it was ‘well she shouldn’t have dressed like that.’

When the Suffragettes hit the scene, it became ‘she needs to know her place.’

The thing is, in the end, they won. Women got the vote, and we write our ballots with red ink to this day.

And that’s just the English Suffragettes. Think about the Stonewall Riot that kicked off our modern-day Pride Month celebrations and LGBTQ+ activism. The protest movement that followed was started by transgender women who were sick and tired of being repeatedly sexually abused by the police and treated as less-than.

Transwomen are our sisters, and we’ve fought side by side in our quest for equal treatment from the beginning. Not all women are straight and cis, but we’re all women. We all face gendered violence and discrimination.

The battle for women’s rights is, like all activism, an intersectional one. We’re queer, we’re straight, we’re white and brown and Black, we’re able-bodied and neurodivergent and disabled. We’re any and all ages, from the smallest little girl to the most wizened matron.

Every time we’ve fought for our rights, we have done so with passion and fury. We haven’t always gotten it right, of course — white women often excluded women of colour in the battle for the vote, for example — but we fought.

And now, we’re angrier than ever.

A rapist and child predator leads the largest, most powerful nation on Earth. Men who controlled a twisted, degrading ring of traffickers who abused women and children for their own sick pleasure are still holding positions of extreme wealth and power all over the world.

We see the impact they’ve had on our culture, the internalized misogyny we grew up with, and how the hateful disparaging views of women that they preach are finding a foothold in young men now.

“Your body my choice” and all that.

We see it, and we’re fucking done.

Our mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers and all of the women who came before us — cis, trans, white and able-bodied or otherwise — have been down this road before.

Now it’s our turn, and we have learned from their example.

We don’t need protecting, boys. You do. Because if there’s one thing we’ve all learned by now it’s that being polite is bullshit.

Polite gets you killed.

Bitch gets you results.

Solidarity wins.

The reality of dystopia is surreal.

There are moments of dramatic upheaval, like when you hear about people being gunned down in the street or bombs falling on another country with minimal warning. Those moments catch you up, put a hitch in your step and send a spear of anxiety through your stomach like a wound.

But the in-between times are only shocking in their utter normalcy. Life goes on.

I wrote about the banality of collapse some time ago, where I described how it felt to visit my now-husband in the States before things got this bad. We enjoyed our time together as much as we could, knowing that dark days were on the horizon.

I wrote about how we were going about our daily life as usual, planning dinner, running errands. Talking about things that happened at work.

That was before I made the decision not to visit the United States anymore. It got too dangerous. It hurts to be apart, but it can’t be helped.

What’s striking about times like these is how for most of us, very little seems to change. We’re aware of awful things happening, and we feel some kind of way about those things, but when we look outside our windows… nothing.

Until it appears on our doorstep. And by then, it’s often too late to prevent calamity.

Now, I’m in Canada. I’m personally removed from the situation. But at the same time I’m in the thick of it, because the people I love are staring down the barrel of their government’s authoritarian takeover.

Most of them see it for what it is, and understand the horror. Some of them don’t.

All of them agree that times as they stand now are not normal. Yet, they still go to work, plan family get-togethers and hang out with friends on the weekend. They still buy groceries, cook dinner, watch comedy specials on Netflix and laugh themselves silly.

Life goes on. Even in a crisis. Even when democracy dies; life still goes on.

Even with my husband and I. We still watch movies, we laugh, we joke, we talk about our day at work. Occasionally we discuss politics and get riled up and scared, but usually, we talk about normal things.

I tell him about a visit from one of our regular’s dogs in the store, and he tells me about a wild turkey puttering around the parking lot at his factory.

You expect dystopia to look like a post-apocalyptic hellscape. You expect roving gangs, leather jackets, bullets smashing windows and the threat of starvation — and sometimes it does look like that.

But more often than not, it looks like what’s going on in North America right now.

It looks like a daily grinding struggle, difficulty making ends meet, a low-grade constant dread that something terrible could happen at any moment even on a bright sunny spring day. It’s hanging out at your neighbourhood cookout, sipping a tasty drink and keeping an eye on the street in case ICE shows up to start checking papers.

Dystopia looks like real life. That’s the scariest thing about it.

And the worst part of that is that there are people who use this as a justification to live in denial. Life looks normal, so they can shrug off anything we try to warn them about. We’re being alarmist and silly when we talk about the horrible things Trump’s regime has done, and what they plan to do.

To them, it’s ridiculous. Because in their minds, it can’t happen here.

They won’t believe it as long as the sun keeps shining. As long as they keep getting their groceries, keep seeing their loved ones, keep going to work. As long as life looks normal on the surface, they’ll keep pretending everything is fine.

We call this Normalcy Bias. And frankly, it’s going to get us all killed.

Solidarity wins.

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Today, we’ve got to talk about yet another horrifying humanitarian crisis caused by Mango Mussolini. It’s a continuation of a long-running blockade on a vulnerable people who depend on international trade for survival.

That’s right; we’re talking about Cuba, and the complete standstill of everyday life.

Cuba is under additional blockades now, …

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Hey, straight people. Can you stop shoving your sexuality down our throats?

You’re out there with your opposite sex partners, holding hands, kissing in public and making a real big show out of it. You’re everywhere. You’ll take any opportunity to mention your spouse or your date, even if nobody asked.

Seriously, keep that in the bedroom! I don’t have a problem with it, but why do you have to shove it in my face like that? I don’t need to know about your sexuality, why do you keep making it your entire personality?

I can’t watch a movie or a show or listen to a song these days without hearing about a love affair between a man and a woman, or watching a romance tailored specifically for heterosexual people.

It’s nobody’s business, why do you need to make sure everybody knows about it?

Can’t you just keep it to yourselves?

Now, obviously all of the above is just a bit of tongue in cheek teasing. But seriously, for those of us who aren’t straight… these are the kinds of things we hear all the time.

If you have a partner of the same sex, whether you be two men or two women, or more if you’re polyamorous, somebody somewhere will accuse you of ‘shoving it down their throats’ even if all you’re doing is daring to hold hands in public.

And that’s just cis people. Being gender-queer on top of it is just the cherry on top of the harassment sundae.

Being LGBTQ+, you might as well be wearing a ‘kick me’ sign on your back.

But heterosexual, cisgender couples? You guys can be full-on making out in public and nobody would say a word about your sexuality, except maybe to be prudish about the display.

Straight and cis is the default.

Simply existing as anything else is considered to be a big deal.

I actually got that comment from a relative at one point.

They said that I was making too big a deal out of being asexual, and they didn’t understand why I considered it to be a part of my identity. They didn’t feel like their sexual orientation was anyone’s business and not part of their core identity at all.

They didn’t understand why LGBTQ+ people feel the need to be so out there and open about our sexuality or lack thereof. When I countered that heterosexuality is shoved in my face literally every day, including within my own family home, they stared at me blankly.

We had this conversation not five minutes after they thoughtlessly walked into the room and kissed their spouse full on the lips as a greeting right in front of me.

They couldn’t grasp the irony of their own statement.

To be clear, it doesn’t bother me. I’m happily married. I’m not shy about showing my husband affection. But it didn’t even occur to them that they were displaying their sexuality, openly and obviously, without thinking twice.

Of course it didn’t occur to them; being in a straight relationship is the default. It’s not outside of the norm. Flirting and being intimate with your lover is not remarkable in any way if you’re straight.

Seriously, think about it. Think about how many commercials have a heterosexual couple front and center.

How many shows and movies center on a relationship between a man and a woman? How many of them have scenes of intimacy, making out, even having sex? How many of those scenes are considered unusual or controversial?

How often is heterosexual sexuality used as a sales tactic?

Just walking through the shopping mall near my house, I’m confronted with posters of lingerie models, carefully posed and lit to be alluring. Mostly naked men and women, set side by side in shop windows.

How many jewellry store advertisements market themselves with a man on one knee, holding a ring box while he looks adoringly up at a blushing lady in a dress?

How many condom commercials have you seen that feature two men giggling in a pharmacy aisle while they look through the options? Viagra commercials with a gay couple?

I can’t think of any.

But I’ve seen plenty where a man and a woman are blushing at the cashier with their purchases, and I’ll bet you don’t even blink when you see them.

As an asexual person, I can’t take two steps outside of my house without a metaphorical megaphone being shoved against my ear, screaming a reminder that straight sexuality is vitally important to everybody.

But LGBTQ+ people are the ones being loud about it?

Gay people kissing while they’re on a date are not shoving their sexuality down your throat. They aren’t putting on a show for you, any more than you kissing your partner is a show for anybody else.

Acknowledging that not all relationships have to be between straight people on the silver screen is not ‘the gay agenda.’

Being in love and showing affection for your partner is just that. Nothing more, and nothing less than that.

There are far more important things to worry about in this life than what other people’s relationships look like. You’re not the Morality Police, it’s not your job to burst in and force couples to stop holding hands.

Of course, for some people, the idea that LGBTQ+ relationships are about romantic love and affection is confusing. Some people think they’re purely about sex, with no true connection.

This is the same attitude that leads to books about LGBTQ+ people being deemed ‘pornographic,’ even when there’s nothing explicit in the content. To some people, a teenage boy and girl in a relationship is romantic, but two boys holding hands is somehow obscene.

It’s a frustrating attitude to try and combat, because it’s so ingrained in a lot of people’s heads. Being straight has been considered the default for so long that some people just can’t wrap their minds around anything else.

LGBTQ+ people exist, and we’re normal human beings just like you. Many of us fall in love, some of us are sexual beings who enjoy the dating scene, and we shouldn’t have to feel shame about that.

We’re not trying to make anyone uncomfortable. We’re trying to make ourselves comfortable, by being open and honest about who we are, and who we love.

We’re just trying to enjoy the same affection, love and authenticity that you get to have with your own relationships. We’re nowhere near as loud about it as the rest of you are, you’re just used to your own noise.

We only catch your attention because we’re singing in a different key.

I’m not hating on straight people, I’m only asking you to try and see things from another perspective. Because for most of my life, the only thing I heard was that I was weird for not being just like you.

I know I’m not the only one who got that message. And it really sucks.

Solidarity wins.

I don’t use AI for my work here. World-Weary’s content is 100% human made.

That’s as much an ethical stand as it is a practical one; the kind of writing I do involves a lot of reading and citing reports and historical documents.

In one article where I discussed the Runit Island Tomb, I went so far as to find a letter from the Marshall Islanders to the United Nations in 1954 and linked a PDF document version for y’all to read.

I dig. I really do. I take it seriously. I try to present as much factual information as possible, although of course, I’m not immune to bias.

I’m only human.

I do my best to fact check — though I do make mistakes, of course — and provide sources when possible. I often wind up realizing that my own beliefs on a particular subject might not be ironclad, and I learn just as much as I teach.

Hell, I don’t even use spellcheckers very often! I used to use Grammarly, but it annoyed the heck out of me and I eventually cut it out of my process. AI spellcheckers and editing software are prone to errors in judgement, too. I’ve published rants about that.

If I’m unsure of my spelling, I flex my old school editing skills and look it up. And yeah, I sometimes miss a typo here and there. I’m not too fussed about it; I’m human.

As an artist, imperfections are nothing to panic about as long as you’re being authentic in what you present. If I can find spelling errors in professionally-edited best-selling novels — and I have — then I figure you can forgive a couple messy sentences here and there.

I do a lot of editing and re-writing as I go. It often involves questioning numbers and statistics I come across and double checking to make sure I’m not getting faulty information from dubious source material.

I do that because I worry about the quality and veracity of the information I provide.

AI doesn’t.

It doesn’t research, it doesn’t fact-check or verify. It only summarizes everything it finds relating to the keywords you request; whether that’s useful information or not is not something it can judge.

If you ask it for information on vaccines, it will be pulling information from anti-vaxxer websites as much as it pulls from peer-reviewed medical journals.

It also can’t really take context into account; AI text-generating and editing software often works by taking each line on its own, rather than ‘reading’ and analysing the whole piece to decide whether it’s looking at a mistake or an intentional bit of wordplay.

It’s especially irritating from the perspective of someone who practices religion, culture and traditions from outside of the default norm of their country. If your language and traditions aren’t taken into account in the programming, you can be treated as if you don’t exist.

It’s discrimination by neglect.

From my rant about Grammarly:

“This software is a tool. It can be very helpful. But you cannot let it do the job without oversight; that’s just not going to work.

Suppose I have identified myself in an essay as a polytheistic pagan, someone who worships multiple deities. In that case, when referencing the multiple deities of my religion, a lowercase plural ‘gods’ is correct.

A human reading that piece would recognize that my choice of plural and lowercase letters is appropriate and sensible given the context.

An uppercase singular ‘God’ is the Christian spelling. It obviously wouldn’t fit, so a human editor would leave it as is and would not change it.

But Grammarly does it almost every single time. Because Grammarly is programmed from the perspective of a culture that is primarily Christian, ‘God’ is the only spelling that it recognizes.

That’s a pretty frustrating thing to go back and fix, and it’s a dead giveaway that Grammarly did the editing rather than a human proofreader.”

Using AI text generation for my work would not only be lazy, it would be a disservice to you, the readers to whom I’m trying to make my points.

That’s my main practical reason for not using AI.

My ethical reasons for not using AI range from environmental issues to worker’s rights.

Writers and artists are on the ropes right now. And the way things are going, in a few short years we’re going to be in serious trouble.

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Mass-produced, cheap, low-quality writing is far more attractive to major corporations than having to interview, vet, and pay actual writers and editors who know what we’re doing.

They don’t care if their copy makes sense. They only care if it fills the space and draws eyes.

Corporations exist to maximize profits and reduce costs as much as they possibly can. That’s the Capitalist’s mindset; more money good, less money bad.

People? Who cares about people?

Since generative AI hit the market, the demand for writers, artists, coders and other creative experts took a nosedive. That’s not a good thing. A lot of us lost work, income, and opportunities for our careers.

The number of established jobs lost has been relatively minor so far, but what about new hires? What about freelancers?

Hah. Funny.

I was making around $2,000 a month off of my freelance writing for a while there. Now I barely scrape a hundred on a very, very good month. Most of the time, not even that. Thank goodness for my full-time job or I’d be in dire straights. People who can’t find work, or can’t work due to disability, are far worse off than I am.

Our output didn’t change, the perceived value of that output did.

My time and effort became worthless. When someone can just type a quick prompt into an AI program and get results in minutes for minimal cost, why pay somebody by word count?

On top of that, the market is now saturated with poorly formatted, poorly plotted, poorly written AI slop that someone spent an hour on and threw at the internet to make a quick buck.

I bought a cookbook not long ago from a major bookseller in my country (I’m withholding the name just to avoid being sued, bear with me) and wound up having to return it because I could tell at a glance it was AI generated from start to finish.

It was bad. From the bizarrely long title to the un-edited recipes which made no sense, to the complete lack of formatting and the lack of pictures — somebody didn’t even try to make it look like it was made by a human being.

They self-published it, wrote a cheery description and sold it to major chain bookstores. Those bookstores stuck it up online for a ridiculous price considering what it was.

You bet your butt I lodged a complaint when I brought it back. I should have known better from the title, but honestly, they shouldn’t have even been selling it to begin with.

There are a lot of problems with this whole mess we’ve created, not least of which the issue of declining literacy and related skills. Critical thinking and analytical skills are losing ground to the ease of asking ChatGPT to tell you what to believe.

The University of Calgary put out a short warning about exactly this problem. It emphasized that AI could be helpful when used as a tool to aid individualized learning, but that over-reliance on AI was massively detrimental to a student’s progress.

It threatened their ability to excell in further education by limiting their engagement with source materials and negating the need to study. If you just tell ChatGPT to write your essay on your chosen topic and submit what it gives you… what have you learned?

Teachers can ban it from the classroom, but you have no control over what the kids do when they get home.

There’s also the impact it has on culture. When generic, AI-generated art of any stripe becomes our main source of creative expression… where’s the soul?

Where’s the thought-provoking statement behind the piece? The themes? The point you’re trying to make beyond publishing something pretty and appealing? What are we supposed to learn from what you’ve created?

There’s a place for art and writing that exists purely for enjoyment, but it shouldn’t be the majority of published work!

And furthermore, where’s the trust? Because half the time now, I see a beautiful piece of work posted online and the entire comment section is just an argument over whether it’s AI or not.

That’s not good. Especially when you factor in the misinformation and propaganda spiel we’re locked in now; public trust is at an all-time low. People can generate videos, pictures and voices so disturbingly realistic that nobody can trust video footage or audio evidence anymore.

When entirely faked soundbites and fake news clips are dominating the digital media ecosystem, how do we know what’s real?

When you publish a book written by AI, you’re not trying to create a commentary or provide reliable, trustworthy information. It’s feeding you generalized points it pulled out of a hat, depending on the prompt you gave it.

Compared to someone who has spent years pouring their heart and soul into improving their craft, refining a message and expressing themselves and their perspectives through their work, do you think you’re making something worthwhile?

Worthwhile enough to make up for the irrevocable damage it’s doing to the rest of us, our culture and our environment?

Is it worth the outrageous cost in vital resources, the career stagnation, the complete restructuring of the economy, the flooding of the markets? Is it worth the loss of education as kids use generative AI to write their essays and cheat their way through school?

Is it worth the culture where people online use ChatGPT and Grok like trusted encyclopedias? Is it worth the loss of trust in our journalistic institutions?

Is it worth the loss of creative self-expression?

I don’t mean to sound elitist, guys, but come the fuck on! We have to draw a line somewhere.

The worst part is that I don’t think we can go back. The cat’s out of the bag, and we’re all getting flogged. We built Jurassic Park and we brought in the customers, and now when we see the raptors eating people we just call it fake news.

I don’t know what to do about this. But I know that I find it fucking depressing.

And that’s why I can promise you, World-Weary’s content is 100% human made, with all of the typos that entails.

Solidarity wins.

So, this week we’re gonna have to talk about the evolution of the Manosphere and how this toxic subculture connects to the rise of fascism in the United States.

I promise I’m not crazy; there really is a connection! And to find it, we’ve got to go all the way back to Nazi Germany.

Yeah, we’re going th…

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The people of the United States elected the person they thought was less likely to get them into a war.

They elected the man who said he was the ‘President of Peace’ and insisted he’d put America first. He was lying. We always knew he was — he’s been threatening other countries constantly for years, but for some reason enough people believed all of his bullshit prosperity promises that they gave him the reins of power again.

And here we are.

How’s it working out, MAGA folks? Are you at peace? Are your grocery prices going down? Has inflation been fixed? Is manufacturing coming back to the U.S.? Are jobs coming back as he brutalizes immigrants and citizens in the streets? Do you feel safer?

Are you winning?

The United States is on the fast lane to complete collapse. Its long-standing alliances are breaking down, its economy is in shambles, and the people are in the middle of a cold civil war that is on the verge of turning hot.

And now their President is forcing an illegal regime-change war, without Congressional approval, to try and hold on to power in the face of potential revolution and a third impeachment and criminal charges.

Not that the first two impeachments or his 34-count felony conviction accomplished anything except make him feel a little butthurt.

That’s the thing about impeachments; they don’t bring any consequences in and of themselves. They just open the door for prosecution and removal from office, which are separate processes. Impeachments only remove Presidential immunity.

Impeachment is a mark of shame, but if that’s where it ends, then there’s no point.

And as for his felony convictions… well, what’s the point of convicting someone if you also refuse to lay a sentence? The judge basically said that Trump was guilty, but he wouldn’t be punished for any of it.

Once again, the rich asshole escaped all accountability for his actions.

But my concern isn’t Trump in and of himself, which is the point I really need to nail home for a lot of people. I’ve been accused of having ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ before, usually by the people who make defending Trump their entire personality and reason for living.

I don’t hate Trump for no reason. Here at World-Weary, we’re concerned with human rights, democracy and social justice.

And from that perspective, everything Trump does is a freakin’ nightmare.

Trump’s actions do not only impact the United States. The blood soaking his hands is imported from all over the world.

That’s his chief export these days; human suffering at a monumental scale.

I don’t need to rehash all of our previous discussions and rants about how his policies impact the global population. We’ve talked about USAID, for example, and his constant threats and warmongering with NATO.

Suffice to say, his bombing raids and the literal kidnapping of a foreign country’s leader haven’t made him — or the U.S. — very popular.

And now he’s creating a war with Iran, alongside Netanyahu, which has already caused the brutal deaths of dozens of children in an elementary school.

They bombed it. In the morning, when kids were just settling in to class.

These girls were dropped off at school, then their parents had to come straight back to collect their corpses from the rubble of the building where they were supposed to be safe.

Every parent’s worst nightmare.

I watched footage of the school in the aftermath of the bombing. Listening to the wails and screams of the families collecting outside was gut-wrenching. Every human being knows what grief sounds like; that tearing, animal sound that almost seems to shred the body on the way out… it chills the blood.

Those little girls didn’t start this war. Trump and Netanyahu did. And they’ve already gotten some of their own soldiers killed in the frantic retaliation from Iran.

How long will it go on? Who knows?

How many deaths will there be? Can’t say.

What I do know is that none of it was necessary. Iran was literally in negotiations with the U.S. and coming to a deal when the Trump administration and Israel’s government decided to bomb them for no good reason.

They can’t even get their story straight as to why they did it. It’s insane.

The so-called President of Peace hasn’t given anybody a moment of peace since he was sworn back into office, and for the life of me I can’t fathom how anyone ever imagined he would.

He’s not fit for the office he holds. He ought to be in prison, both for the crimes he has already been convicted of, and the crimes we all know he’s done. I don’t even know if he’ll ever be held accountable — chances are good he’ll die before they even bother to investigate or indict him for them.

The justice system rarely ever applies to people like him. That’s how you know the United States isn’t a true democracy.

Even if it used to be, it definitely isn’t now.

I once likened Trump to a tornado; the storm tearing the country apart and leaving wreckage in his wake. I said you won’t know how bad he can be until the storm reaches your front door.

Here we are. Now we know. I’m very sad to be proven right.

Solidarity wins.

We here in the North see what’s going on down south. We don’t care for it.

Concentration camps, murder and abuse of civilians at the hands of government thugs, the obliteration of basic social security like medical care access and food aid, to say nothing of the blatant discrimination and sexism on display.

Canadians are not fools. At least most of us aren’t. And we have no interest in inviting that same kind of brutality to step onto our lands and turn its ire onto us — especially not with the U.S. government’s repeated threats to make us the ‘51st State.’

They’re back on that bullshit after the Olympics, by the way. More U.S. lawmakers are sneering at us, talking down to us, and insulting our country and our sovereignty than ever before.

Talk about sore winners. It’s disgusting, childish conduct from elected officials who, frankly, have no business having power over anybody.

Much less people from an entirely different, independent country.

That said, there are some Canadians who are showing their colours, including a little bit of blue with the red and white. There are companies here that are funding and supplying the ICE thugs down south, and profiting off of their evil.

Now, that is clearly immoral, unethical, and twisted. I know I’m repulsed by it, and I’m sure I’m not alone.

In fact, I know I’m not. Because there’s a petition making the rounds right now that’s trying to put a stop to it.

Petition e-7146 is currently active, and includes requests to not only cut contracts by Canadian companies working with ICE, but to ban ICE agents from operating in Canada at all — and yes, they currently are. In a very limited capacity, but they’re here nonetheless.

That needs to stop.

So, please, fellow Canadians; click this link to sign the petition, and share the link to this story so we can get the word out. The more signatures, the stronger our demand, and the more the powers that be have to stop and listen.

Fuck Trump, fuck ICE, elbows up!

Solidarity wins.

Our society is sick.

I know; what a groundbreaking revelation! Nobody has ever discussed this before, I’m truly a revolutionary thinker.

I’m also a sarcastic little brat, as we all know.

But truly, when you get a little free time to stop and reflect on what most of our daily lives look like, it becomes obvious that there are severe and crippling issues impacting us all.

I mean, think about it. Are you happy with your life? Are you content, free from depression or anxiety, feeling completely fulfilled with your career and your living situation and the direction your country and the rest of the world is heading?

It’s true that nobody in history has ever been perfectly happy with the whole world, but… how often have entire generations been associated with sadness and despair?

I mean, we now live in a world where the very concept of empathy for your fellow human being is being actively painted as a bad thing by the people who lead the most powerful country on Earth!

My generation — Millennial — and younger are perpetually depressed, showcasing gallows humour about dying at work, never retiring and never owning a home. Our most common topic of conversation online is about how we’ve never experienced prosperity, and unlike previous generations, we have no hope that we ever will.

Unless you’re born into wealth, but how many of us are? The great game of Capitalism has been rigged against most of us since before we were born.

We’ve never had a chance to dream of more. We work ourselves to death to survive, our culture berates us for a lack of success that simply isn’t within reach, and at this point, working one job isn’t enough to keep you under a roof or put food on the table.

I know people working two, sometimes three jobs just to get by. Desperation is our default position.

And the worst thing of all is that it’s artificial. None of this is an accident. Our society has been designed this way. And with the release of the Epstein files, we’re finding out exactly how bad it is.

We’re the end result of a fundamental betrayal, and now we know it.

Have you ever heard the term ‘wage slavery?’

The idea is that people who are trapped on the edge of poverty by a high cost of living are completely dependent on their job for survival. They live paycheck to paycheck, unable to put away savings over time because they simply don’t make enough money to do that.

After paying their bills, their debts, and buying groceries, there simply isn’t anything left over. And with the hiring market being what it is, their chances of simply getting a better job are virtually nill.

In this situation, you don’t have many options. Especially in the United States, where even your access to healthcare depends on you having a job, workers literally cannot afford to risk rocking the boat and losing their employment.

This creates an atmosphere where workers are unable to advocate for themselves. Even if you’re being abused by your boss, what are you going to do about it? Risk getting fired by fighting back? Will HR help you, or protect the company?

Do you have the money to hire a lawyer to back you up? And with the holes that exist in the social safety net, can you be sure you’ll land safely if you fall?

For most people, the answer is no. So, they keep their mouths shut and deal with whatever’s happening just to keep pulling in the money necessary to stay afloat.

With Artificial Intelligence taking a sledgehammer to the jobs market — particularly creative jobs and analysis jobs that require data-gathering skills — a lot of people are being kicked out of the workforce entirely.

It’s cheaper for companies to use AI rather than pay humans to do the work.

On top of all of this, the job market is insane. The requirements and qualifications are ridiculous, and the pay range is meagre.

The chances of a company ghosting you are high, the chances that job postings are even real are low, and half the time companies are either trying to look like they’re hiring with no intention of actually doing it, or just gathering data for sale by collecting resumes.

If you’re job hunting, expect to apply to hundreds of jobs before you even get a single response. Expect to have to tailor your resume to every single job listing to make sure you can get past the AI hiring bot before a human even sees it, and expect to have to interview three or four times and wait weeks before you find out if you’re in or out.

That’s if they even bother to tell you.

This state of desperation creates conditions that are ripe for exploitation. It creates a breeding ground for predatory behaviour.

The way our society is structured welcomes foxes into the hen house.

People like Jeffrey Epstein.

Most of the world’s wealth is consolidated in the hands of around 10 people.

Read that again. On a planet with over 8.3 billion human beings around the globe, around 10 people hold most of the planet’s money and assets.

There are around 3000-ish billionaires worldwide, out of that 8.3 billion. Around 60 million-ish people are millionaires. These are ballpark numbers because of how the financial world fluctuates and how wealth is actually calculated — it’s hard to get concrete numbers from day to day.

Suffice to say, the majority of the world’s money and assets are in the hands of a very, very small percentage of the global population. The rest of us get by, mostly as wage slaves like we talked about above.

That is a staggering degree of wealth inequality that is completely unprecedented in human history. We have never seen such an extreme division between the haves and the have-nots.

Wealth does something weird to the human brain. It depletes empathy, increases entitlement and creates a bizarre disconnect between the wealthy and the poor. The ultra-rich simply don’t see the poor as fully human.

Extreme wealth quite literally causes mental illness.

It also basically removes the potential for accountability and consequences for heinous behaviour. That is a toxic combination, the fruits of which we are currently witnessing with the Epstein trafficking case.

Epstein was basically a purveyor of depravity for the people who could afford to buy anything they wanted.

His friends and clients included the wealthiest, most powerful people on Earth — and, as has been pointed out by other women, the people who own corporations with the power to shape culture and beauty standards in our society.

As a relatively young woman, I am having to come to terms with the fact that my culture’s standards of beauty basically sexualized me as a literal child. And it wasn’t by accident.

The wealthy felt they could do whatever they wanted with no consequence, so they paid Epstein to provide the experiences they desired. And that included horrific, criminal abuse perpetrated against vulnerable children and young women.

I’m not going to go into detail; what little I’ve looked at was traumatic enough that I don’t have the stomach to dig deeper. If you want detailed accounts, look to other creators.

And as we know, children from impoverished regions and minority groups are more likely to suffer trafficking. So when extreme wealth exists alongside extreme poverty…

You get the picture. The same predatory, exploitative dynamics that exist in a toxic workplace also come into play here; how do you protect yourself against people that literally run the world?

As a child? As the child’s parents, assuming you ever see them again? Assuming you ever know what happened to your child in the first place? Assuming the child even has parents or anyone to report them missing? Assuming the parents aren’t complicit?

This abuse doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

It’s not about one man or the individual monsters who he served. We want them held accountable and we want the victims to get the justice they deserve, absolutely! But we should also want to prevent more children from falling prey to this in the future.

For that, we need to consider the system of wealth and power that we live under today.

Epstein is a symptom of extreme wealth and inequality. What he was and what he did could not exist without the extreme division between wealth and poverty.

We’re not just venting about injustice on the individual level, here. We’re talking about a system that is fundamentally unbalanced at our expense. That is what we need to dismantle, that is where our focus needs to be.

In a healthy world, Epstein couldn’t exist. Wage slavery would be unthinkable.

Disease flourishes when the conditions are right. Mold grows when a space is moist, damp, dark, and the air is still. Washing it up once does nothing; if the conditions are the same, the mold comes back. But when we let the light in, fix the cracks in the windows, turn on a fan and clean everything up, the mold doesn’t come back.

It has no way to grow.

The people who profit off of this system are the people who make the rules about how the system works. They are the cracks in the windows that let the moisture in, the curtains that block out the light, the door that shuts and keeps the air stagnant and still.

They perpetuate the status quo. They let the rot fester.

Our society doesn’t need us to clean up once, wash our hands and walk away. We need to fix the problems that cause the sickness so it never resurfaces again.

The extreme divide between the wealthy and the poor needs to be bridged. A world where the ultra-rich could literally afford to purchase countries and the poor are barely able to feed themselves is a world that deserves to end.

Tax laws that allow for the hoarding of extreme wealth need to be changed. Wages need to be adjusted to allow people to actually live, not just scrape by. Profiteering on the part of major corporations needs to be regulated, and healthcare can’t be tied to your ability to find a job.

The basic requirements of survival must not be locked behind a paywall. As long as they are, then we as a society have decided that the poor don’t deserve to live. That is not a world I want to live in. Do you?

This twisted culture of hustle without rest, income inequality, extreme wealth — those are the problems we need to fix.

And by the way, I’m not just talking about the U.S.; I live in Canada! But we have the same problems, and we require just as drastic a solution. Most countries do.

Our society is sick. It is limping along with a fever that continues to broil higher and higher, and the people at the helm aren’t just uncaring, they’re the bloody virus.

If they’re not going to fix this, then we’re going to have to do it ourselves.

Solidarity wins.

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Bit of a short episode this week; I’m dealing with a sore throat and a toothache at the same time, and talking is a bit of a slog. Still, there’s some juicy news that needs sharing, so I can’t afford to take a breather.

Today, I get to share the news that a British Royal was slapped in handcuffs. On his birthday, no less!

Never thought I’d see…

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I love to travel.

There’s joy in new experiences, in stepping out of your comfort zone and exploring new places and cultures you’ve never been exposed to before. New foods, new languages, new landscapes, new perspectives.

Not everyone can afford to travel in their lifetimes, but if you can, it’s well worth it. Assuming, of course, you can do so safely.

As a woman, taking precautions for the sake of safety is vital. It’s important for men too, of course, but there are added risks for women — I’ve had my share of worrying experiences and potential threats.

There’s always that one stranger that pays a little too close attention to you for a little too long until you’re able to escape his gaze and slip away. There’s always that moment where you’re looking over your shoulder because something doesn’t feel quite right.

Sometimes, there’s even that moment like what happened to a close friend of mine, when you realize a stranger slipped something in your drink. Thankfully, my sister-in-law saw it happen and was able to alert her in time.

Our fun family vacation could easily have ended up being extremely traumatic instead of the relaxing getaway we hoped for. Needless to say, that was a very tense night.

Fearing for your safety certainly puts a damper on an otherwise exceptional trip.

And it is for that reason, that fear for our safety, that so many people like myself are avoiding the United States. I used to travel through New England regularly; my husband and his family are from Connecticut, and I adore the town where they live.

Old stone walls, beautiful autumnal forests, sheer mountains and winding cliffside roads… it’s my favourite vacation spot.

But I haven’t gone there since Trump’s second election win. And I likely never will again. It breaks my heart, but it’s simply not worth the risk.

Like many Canadians and other folks around the world, I have been boycotting the U.S. as much as I possibly can. That includes travel, and that includes buying Canadian or non-U.S. products whenever I can find them.

It is one part protest, and one part distrust. If I were to cross paths with the wrong border agent, I could be in very real danger.

I love travel. And for the most part, I’m brave enough to travel alone.

But bravery and stupidity are not the same thing.

ICE is out of control.

Nobody is safe; citizens with a darker skin tone or foreign accent are being rounded up alongside tourists, green-card holders and people going through the legal system to immigrate to the U.S.

They’re even snatching people out of court houses as they try to ‘do it the right way’ — which is what the administration claims they want.

I had someone recently tell me that because I’m white, I would be safe.

Au contraire.

Canadian visitors are being detained and held by ICE at an unprecedented rate, including minor children. We’re talking about toddlers, guys. Toddlers in ICE detention, held for longer than legally allowed in the case of little kids.

When my husband travelled to Canada to be here for our wedding, he was stopped by U.S. border patrol on the way into Canada. They had a blockade checking traffic out of the country, not just coming in.

They made him get out of his car, they searched it with a dog, and they questioned him on why he was leaving. When he told them he was getting married, they asked him questions about me.

He mentioned I was a writer, and they honed in on my job, wanting to know what publication I write for and what kinds of thing I write about.

He left it vague and didn’t mention that I’m critical of Trump. But if they want that kind of information from a born American citizen about his Canadian wife, what does that say?

It tells me they’re hunting for dissent. It means, if I were to enter the United States, my work here on World-Weary would likely come under scrutiny. What do we assume might happen next?

Might I be accused of trying to stay illegally with my American husband? Might I be labelled a terrorist for stoking ‘Anti-American’ values, per NSPM-7?

I don’t want to put myself in that situation, so I won’t. Millions of people won’t.

And this is devestating to American businesses, both from a lack of tourist revenue, and also from a lack of local business. A lot of people who would otherwise go on shopping sprees in Minneapolis, for example, are in the streets protesting or staying home out of fear of ICE. L.A.’s local economy has sharply suffered, too.

ICE agents have murdered people. Nobody is safe, so nobody is out taking the risks just to spend their money.

In places where ICE agents prowl the streets, money has simply stalled.

As I mentioned, women have other safety concerns while travelling.

In other countries, the people involved in Epstein’s trafficking ring are being investigated, arrested, and held accountable.

In the United States, they still hold positions of power — including the Presidency. Let’s not kid ourselves about how many times Trump is mentioned in the files; he isn’t a passing mention, he is explicitly described as being involved actively in the crimes.

It’s alleged until proven guilty, but the fact that there isn’t going to be an investigation is the entire point here.

It’s very clear how little women are respected, how little our bodily autonomy and wellbeing is valued in the United States. And that’s just cisgender women — transgender people of all stripes are in very serious danger there.

Don’t get me wrong, you get bigots here in Canada too, but they’re decidedly not government-sanctioned.

Women, LGBTQ+ folks of all stripes, people of colour, immigrants, people living in poverty — it is abundantly clear Trump does not care about you. He’s fine with his thugs beating you in the street or throwing you in cells to rot.

They’re building concentration camps, guys. They aren’t doing that to protect you.

The boycott of U.S. travel is an issue of safety, but also of morality.

Even if you do feel safe going to the U.S., why would you? Why would you want your hard-earned money going to support the economy of the country doing this to their own people?

Why would you want to support the country that’s actively threatening to disrupt world peace, end NATO and plunge us all into World War III?

And yes, I know — not all Americans support Trump. I’m not saying y’all do.

But like it or not, he’s running your country, and he represents your nation on the world stage. You can say ‘not my President’ all you like, but he literally is.

We can’t ignore that. And we don’t want our hard-earned money going to support the new Nazi state.

For Canadians especially, the whole ‘51st State’ situation is insulting. Every time American business owners or tourism industry reps talk about how we ‘got our feelings hurt’ and we’ll just come back eventually, we get angrier.

We can be spiteful, and we’re certainly not eager to pay y’all for taking us for granted.

We have been betrayed, brutally, and for the last time. It’s not going to go back to normal once Trump is gone, guys. That ship has well and truly sailed.

So, what does the loss of tourism revenue mean for the U.S.?

Panic. It means panic.

Tourism was a huge industry in the United States, accounting for several trillion dollars of the total economy, as well as tens of millions of jobs.

When tourism takes a hit and businesses have to start laying people off, the whole economy shudders. Tax income is directly tied to tourism, too — less tourists, less revenue, less money for public needs.

Now, that money is drying up faster than Lake Mead. And it is directly due to Trump’s policies that this is happening. There’s no ambiguity as far as causes go; Trump has made it clear foreign visitors are not welcome, so we’re not coming anymore.

So, yes. Tourism was big business. But that business has been axed.

And frankly, I’m glad to see it! For the ethical reasons I stated above, because of the suffering of people trapped under Trump’s regime, because of the Epstein issue, because of the threats to NATO and America’s allies, I’m glad to see the world rejecting the United States.

I’m sorry that it makes life harder for my friends. But frankly, taking Trump down is worth it.

The boycotts are working. Now is not the time to soften our stance, it’s time to ramp it up.

And we need to be public about it. So many people in the tourism industry try to blame the tariffs, or the weather, or the exchange rate and a rising cost of living — anything to avoid coming to terms with what’s really happening.

No. It’s about Trump.

And they need to square with that.

Tourism was a big business in the United States, but now it’s going under.

At this point, I call that a win.

Solidarity wins.

Back in the 1830s, the United States government was conducting an ambitious, horrible project. They were displacing thousands of Indigenous Americans from their ancestral homes and forcing them to relocate to designated regions, well out of the way of settlers who were coming to take over their lands.

Moving people around en masse like that is no easy thing, requiring massive manpower, money, and complex logistical planning.

Getting them from point A to point B wasn’t as simple a matter as getting them to walk in a straight line. Transporting and tracking detainees over long distances is no mean feat.

To help with this task and ensure that all prisoners would be sorted and marched out in good time, the government set up what were called ‘emigration depots.’

These were facilities where the displaced Indigenous peoples would be collected into rigidly controlled camps, under guard, where they could be held until they were moved along to the next camp on the trail.

Trapped in close-knit quarters in poor conditions, many of them became quite ill, and many more perished as a result of their ill treatment and lack of proper nutrition.

These so-called emigration depots were, in effect, the first Concentration Camps built on U.S. soil. Unfortunately, they would not be the last.

During World War II, in the 1940s, the U.S. and Canada constructed multiple internment camps where Japanese, German, and Italian immigrants and their children could be taken into custody and held for the duration of the war.

This was supposedly to maintain security and prevent spying from dissident immigrants from countries the U.S. and Canada were at war with.

It also allowed the government to confiscate all of their belongings and assets, including any lands, money, and businesses they owned. Like with the emigration depots, illness spread easily in the camps, where people lived in tight quarters under guard.

Many committed suicide. Others were shot by the armed guards as they attempted to escape. Lest you think this was a very long time ago, actor, writer and activist spent part of his childhood in one of these camps.

He went on to write about his experiences, both here on Substack and in his book, They Called Us Enemy.

Both the emigration depots and the Japanese Internment Camps represent what we call Concentration Camps, though few people ever talk about them today. When you mention Concentration Camps, people instead picture the Holocaust in Germany and dismiss any such comparison.

To most people, the term Concentration Camp evokes systematic mass murder. To them, anything less than systematic mass murder means that detention facilities cannot be compared to Concentration Camps.

But in fact, that simply isn’t true.

We had Concentration Camps in the past. And unfortunately, to our deep and abiding shame, we’re now seeing them being constructed once again.

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The definition of a Concentration Camp is simple: a location such as a makeshift prison where targeted demographics, political prisoners or dissidents are incarcerated for an extended period of time, usually without proper legal justification or warrant.

A facility where people who are hated by the State are held under guard, for punishment and to exploit them as essentially slave labour. There’s a reason the famous gate above Auschwitz says, “Arbeit Macht Frei.”

“Work makes you free.”

You can find examples of Concentration Camps in the form of the Japanese Internment Camps, and also in China where the government incarcerates the Uyghur people and other Muslim minorities as enemies of the state.

The dictator Augusto Pinochet constructed Concentration Camps in Chile for his political enemies, North Korea boasts many prison labour camps where political dissidents are imprisoned, forced to work and heavily abused.

You can even argue that Canada’s Residential School system could be considered a network of Concentration Camps. They were an instrument of cultural genocide, for certain, and match up with the definition.

And there are many, many other examples to dig through.

We associate Concentration Camps mainly with the horrors of the Holocaust because it’s a very visceral memory for most of us. We therefore assume that all Concentration Camps have to do with the murderous part of a genocide — but not necessarily.

While the Nazis built around a thousand camps, 23 large-scale detention centers and many hundreds of smaller outpost camps, they only built 6 purpose-built extermination camps.

These were Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka.

Extermination camps are for systematic mass murder. They were the places in Nazi-occupied Germany where humans were sent to die.

Don’t misunderstand me; people die in all kinds of Concentration Camps. Neglect, lack of medical care, food or clean water, abuse, disease, all kinds of things can kill you in a camp.

Extermination camps are different beasts. They are the places where you walk into the gas chamber and don’t come back out. It’s where people are sent to be destroyed, rendered to ash and dispersed. It’s where you send entire minority groups to be erased.

When I say that the Nazis ‘only’ built 6 of them, I don’t mean to make it sound less horrific. Quite the contrary.

I say that to explain that the regular Concentration Camps made up the bulk of the Nazi ethnic cleansing measures. Slave labour was an intrinsic and integral part of the regime, and their camps served as dumping grounds for every kind of person they hated.

Political enemies, ethnic and religious minorities, disabled people, queer people of all stripes… they all went into the camps. They were all chattel. Less than human. Allowed to starve and live in squalor, being beaten and refused medical care and even the barest hint of compassion.

There don’t need to be gas chambers to make Concentration Camps into crimes against humanity.

A crime that the United States is now actively carrying out once again.

Lately, ICE has been working on expanding their detention capacity dramatically.

I’ve seen reports of over 20 warehouses under consideration for new detainment centers since January. Enough space to hold hundreds of thousands of people.

Contrary to what the Trump administration likes to say, there aren’t that many criminal immigrants in the U.S. Not nearly enough as to need all of that space — certainly not with the detention centers that already exist.

But we know that they aren’t just after criminals, don’t we? They’re after anyone they dislike.

The Trump regime already has Concentration Camps. They’ve been building them for a while now, and they’ve even been supplying detainees to foreign camps built by dictators around the world.

Remember CECOT in El Salvador? That’s about as clear-cut as an example can get.

And while this is now being widely reported, it’s not getting as much traction as it should. There are still people who, like we talked about earlier, dismiss any notion that these are ‘Concentration Camps’ because they don’t have gas chambers.

Yet.

It’s important to note that the extermination camps didn’t pop up until fairly late in the war, and by then the Concentration Camps had existed for years.

The Nazis turned to extermination after mass deportation had been attempted and failed.

Remember, when we compare Trump’s regime to the Nazis, we’re not comparing them to the end of the Holocaust with 6 million dead.

We’re comparing them to the Nazi rise to power. To the early years, before it got to that point.

Hopefully, if you play your cards right, you can heed the lessons of history and stop it before it gets there.

Solidarity wins.

They’re all gone. I don’t know where I dropped them.

In spite of having no spoons — maybe I have one or two in reserve, but they’re very small — I did want to talk a little bit about something big and very…

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So. Once again, my country is under direct threat from the maniacs running the United States.

This time, they’re actively meeting with seperatists and offering them aid in breaking up our country and sowing discord and chaos within our borders.

Y’all. Do you have any idea how scary this is?

This goes beyond the trade war. This goes beyond Trump’s typical bluster, calling our Prime Minister ‘Governor Carney’ and sneering in his sulky way. This is a direct, actionable threat to our country’s sovereignty and independence.

Now, in light of these revelations, a lot of people are out here throwing the word ‘treason’ around with their whole chests.

And I get it. Personally, that’s definitely how I feel about the whole thing — you want to meet with the officials from a country that has actively threatened us and is actively, purposefully trying to destroy our economy?

A country that calls us its 51st State, talks about the border as an ‘artificial line’ and refers to our elected Prime Minister as a ‘Governor?’ That says we only exist because the U.S. allows us to, that we’re not a ‘serious’ country?

Especially when they’re currently in the midst of a fascist downward spiral, cracking down on immigrants and people of colour, killing protestors and a couple hundred Canadians are in ICE detention?

You want to talk to those people and ask for their financial support in breaking a province off of our country right now, while all of this is going on?

Yeah, I think you’re a traitor. At least in spirit.

Whether it would stand up under treason charges in a court of law, well…that’s trickier.

Per the Canadian criminal code, quote:

46 (1) Every one commits high treason who, in Canada,

(a) kills or attempts to kill Her Majesty, or does her any bodily harm tending to death or destruction, maims or wounds her, or imprisons or restrains her;

(b) levies war against Canada or does any act preparatory thereto; or

(c) assists an enemy at war with Canada, or any armed forces against whom Canadian Forces are engaged in hostilities, whether or not a state of war exists between Canada and the country whose forces they are.

Marginal note: Treason

(2) Every one commits treason who, in Canada,

(a) uses force or violence for the purpose of overthrowing the government of Canada or a province;

(b) without lawful authority, communicates or makes available to an agent of a state other than Canada, military or scientific information or any sketch, plan, model, article, note or document of a military or scientific character that he knows or ought to know may be used by that state for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or defence of Canada;

(c) conspires with any person to commit high treason or to do anything mentioned in paragraph (a);

(d) forms an intention to do anything that is high treason or that is mentioned in paragraph (a) and manifests that intention by an overt act; or

(e) conspires with any person to do anything mentioned in paragraph (b) or forms an intention to do anything mentioned in paragraph (b) and manifests that intention by an overt act.

As of yet, no violent intent has directly been stated — at least not that we know of. But offering aid and having discussions with a hostile neighbour that would absolutely compromise us when our country is facing the threat of annexation?

I’m not sure if it fits the legal definition, but in spirit, it is absolutely treasonous.

Specifically this part:

(b) without lawful authority, communicates or makes available to an agent of a state other than Canada, military or scientific information or any sketch, plan, model, article, note or document of a military or scientific character that he knows or ought to know may be used by that state for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or defence of Canada;

I would think this could be filed under this article of the law. But I’m not a lawyer.

Now, the separatists claim that these meetings were just ‘fact-finding missions’ looking to see if the U.S. would work with them upon becoming an independent state. Meanwhile, they were looking to see if the U.S. would provide funding via a line of credit if they went ahead and split off from our nation.

What do you call that?

I know where I stand on the issue. But I doubt anything would legally be done about it.

That’s a big part of why this is so scary.

We’re angry, we’re scared, and we’re preparing for a fight we know we won’t win if it comes to violence.

Canada is actively planning our defenses in the event of an invasion from the United States. Did you ever imagine we would be here?

Trump is certainly crazy enough to do it. He’s lobbing threats in every direction these days, frantically trying to find an enemy he can use to unite his base. Though, that’s assuming he’s actually thinking critically about the situation.

For all we know, his obvious mental illness and decline is currently running the show.

After Venezuela, multiple bombings of Iran, threats to take Cuba — which he just declared a State of Emergency over, threatening fresh tarrifs over oil sales — and NATO needing to force him into retreating from taking Greenland, you can appreciate why we’re rattled.

If he keeps on like this, we’ll be rapidly approaching a possible World War III before the year is out.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not see bombs flying. Especially nuclear ones.

And you can’t tell me Trump wouldn’t try to hit the big red button on the U.S. nuclear stockpile if he wasn’t barred from doing so. He wanted to nuke a hurricane in his first term, which just goes to show you how his mind has been gone for a very long time.

That’s right up there with injecting bleach and ‘putting light into people’ to kill Covid, which he floated in his first term as well.

And now we Canadians have to deal with a small, but very loud group of separatists who want to make a big political show over the idea of leaving the country. Which would never happen, because the logistics of such a thing are completely insane.

You’re talking about years of campaigning, voting, legal battles and constitution-rewriting, negotiations for trade, currency, law, treaties… it’s just never going to happen.

And yet, they’re still out there making a big political show of it, just to stir shit up.

We don’t need that right now.

Bottom line, Canada is facing down a very angry, very sick monster that’s turning its teeth on its one-time allies. The last thing we need is to be dealing with groups of our own people trying to appease that monster with scraps and promises, offering to cut pieces of us off so it can devour them.

It might not fit the legal definition of treason, but it damn sure feels like it should.

Solidarity wins.

Justice and the legal system don’t always go hand in hand.

Ideally, in a democratic society they would at least aim in the same direction on paper. But throughout history we have been reminded over and over again that when a certain sort of person gets the reins of power, the law can be turned into a weapon.

We’re seeing it again now.

The State Monopoly on Violence — which we have discussed before, if you recall — is being wielded against immigrants and American citizens alike. Federal agents are being allowed to shoot people in the streets, murdering people exercising their Constitutionally-guaranteed rights, and facing no accountability.

Again, as we have discussed before, when there is no peaceful and legal way of obtaining justice, people tend to turn to other options.

I don’t think it’ll be much longer before people start taking a page out of Luigi Mangione’s book. Remember when we talked about that? About how making peaceful revolution impossible makes violent revolution inevitable?

That’s a quote from an American President, by the way. Remember when they used to care about that sort of thing?

“For the victims of UnitedHealthcare, there wasn’t going to be any legal recourse.

For CEO Brian Thompson, there was never going to be any penalty brought down on his head. There were never going to be any handcuffs. No court date. No jury of his peers, no judgment. No prison.

No justice.

The law was on his side, and the people who were hurt by his company were considered nothing more than a statistic. A number typed on a spreadsheet somewhere.

Their humanity was completely ignored.

Is it truly surprising that someone felt that their only hope of justice was to take matters into their own two hands? Peaceful revolution was impossible, so violence was inevitable. Justice delayed was justice denied.”

Is this a state of affairs the Trump administration wants to establish? Because I have news for them about who the CEO is in this allegory.

He can fire Bovino and throw out Noem all day every day, but he still holds the blame.

He’s still the one people will look to when deciding who carries the weight of all their rage and grief.

He’s ultimately responsible for everything that’s going wrong. People aren’t stupid…

But they are furious.

I don’t believe in the death penalty, and I don’t condone violence. But that doesn’t mean I can’t look through the lens of history and recognize what’s coming. And frankly, I’m terrified.

U.S. history books teach about the Boston Massacre, and how it sparked a revolution that changed the world.

What will they say about Renee Good and Alex Pretti?

I stood on the National Mall once. I looked up to the Capitol Building on a visit to D.C., and I remember my husband’s expression darkening as he stood by my side.

We felt the weight of standing there after the January 6 coup attempt, looking at the pristine white steps where so much violence had taken place not that long ago.

I wrote about that feeling a while back. On the same visit, we went to the Smithsonian — a lifelong dream of mine which he insisted we make a reality — and of course, we visited the Holocaust Memorial Museum.

It was a harrowing experience. Especially after what we’d watched livestreamed a couple of years before. Let me give you a quote from my reflection about the visit, just to give you an idea of how it felt:

“I walked on cobblestones taken from the streets of the ghettos. I saw the rubble left behind when the Nazis attempted to destroy a camp. I saw a casting of a road to one of the death camps, where the Nazis desecrated Jewish cemeteries and used their tombstones to pave the trails.

I saw an old sewing machine owned by a Jewish tailor and felt the jolt of surprise when I realized we had the same antique model when I was a kid. I’d used it to sew Halloween costumes as a child.

I saw a replica of a crematorium door and of the infamous gate to Auschwitz-Birkenau. I stood staring at one of the tables where the Nazis forced prisoners to strip the dead of their gold teeth and valuables before they were burned.

I saw videos of emaciated corpses being dragged and tossed into pits. I saw pictures of charred corpses burning in a pile. I saw documentation and videos of horrific medical experiments.

But through it all, what struck me the hardest was those damned train tracks from Treblinka. How many people were trapped in railcars like that one? Rattling down those tracks, with no idea of what was waiting for them at the other end?

How many people that stepped off those tracks were dead within an hour of their arrival?

Standing in that railcar, I took in the darkened interior with a heart of lead inside my chest. It was small. I knew from my research that it would have been packed with people, too many people. Some of them would have died in that car, and left inside with those still living until they disembarked.

It’s hard to imagine. But do it anyway. We have to do it anyway.

Stepping out of the railcar was like being able to breathe again. On the other side was a wall, full of pictures and notes about the people who, once upon a time, were forced to travel on those tracks.

It described the fate that waited for them at the end. Their last hours. I turned around for one last look at the train, and I was confronted with a sight that will stick with me for the rest of my life.

I hadn’t seen them behind me, they must have come up while I was reading. They stepped out of the railcar, arm-in-arm, holding hands with their heads held high but eyes downcast.

The couple clearly felt the weight of where they were, and what they were looking at. The facts of history laid plain. The lady had her hair covered in a scarf.

The gentleman was wearing a yarmulke.

They stepped down out of the railcar, passing by the wall of records and the pictures of waiting lines of concentration camp prisoners, being sorted to determine who would live and who would die.

It must have hurt them to see all of these things. It must have been painful, terrifying to see what happened in the past. It must have been awful to contemplate what might have been, had they been born back then instead of now.

But they went anyway. To remember. To ensure that they would never be able to forget. To ensure that the fact of what happened remains in history and is never allowed to fade.

So should everybody else.” — Never Forget: Looking Back on the Holocaust by Sam W.

Too many people have failed to learn these lessons from history. And so, when the ICE thugs of today are compared with the Gestapo of Hitler’s Germany, they scoff.

They call it hyperbole, or an exaggeration. “They’re just enforcing the law!” they exclaim, shocked that people could malign such distinguished Federal agents.

It’s not hyperbole. It’s not an exaggeration. We’re calling it like we see it.

ICE is acting like state secret police. They’re creating an atmosphere where dissent is treated as terrorism and protesting is a death sentence. They’re creating an atmosphere where fear for your life compells you to be silent.

And it’s not an accident.

I need you to understand something. It’ll sound hysterical, and you might feel the urge to roll your eyes and check out for the rest of this article, but I’m dead serious. I need you to read this, understand it, and internalize what it means.

Hitler did this.

Hitler turned ordinary citizens into thugs for his agenda. He villified an ‘Other’ to give the people an enemy to unite against as a way to consolidate his power. He used the threat of this ‘Other’ to keep people afraid so he could continue stripping away their rights and make them feel like they had to comply — if they gave up their rights, he could keep them safe.

That’s what he promised them, and it was a promise he kept breaking. Like with Renee Good, like with Alex Pretti.

He didn’t keep his people safe, he made their country into a nightmare they could not wake up from, one where they were scared to speak out or risk getting shot and having their names dragged through the mud, to be called a terrorist to justify their murder.

Hitler. Did. This.

‘Comply or die’ was practically the motto of the Nazi SS, at least at first.

Later on, when the train cars were rattling down the cold iron tracks to Treblinka, ‘comply and die’ became the letter of the law.

Remember, the first country that the Nazis invaded was their own. That’s what we’re witnessing right now.

Every government wields the State’s monopoly on violence.

No world leader is flawless, no country exists that doesn’t have skeletons in its closet.

You can praise FDR for saving the U.S. from the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl — two major events that were inextricably linked, by the way — and also remember the horrors of Redlining and the Japanese Internment Camps of World War II.

I love my native Canada, but I can’t forget how we treated our native peoples.

There is a bizarre tendency for some people to try and deflect, to say hey, Trump isn’t unique, other leaders have done similar things and you weren’t up in arms, yadda yadda yadda.

Sure. Bad actions are bad actions regardless of who is doing it.

But Whataboutism isn’t helpful right now, because it does absolutely nothing to change what’s happening in the present. You can rail about Obama’s deportations or drone strikes — and you should. Later.

But right now, we’re talking about Trump, because he is the one holding the reins.

He has the power, and he is abusing it.

We’re talking about how he’s dehumanizing people, how he and his regime are lying to you about what they’re doing, spreading misinformation and dragging murdered American citizens through the mud.

We’re talking about families being torn apart and little five-year-old children being used as bait by masked, unidentifiable Federal thugs who murder people with no accountability or expectation of justice.

We’re talking about how he wants to be a dictator, how he idolizes dictators like Putin and Kim Jong Un, and how he is actively attempting to disengage the U.S. from the world’s most successful and prosperous mutual-defence agreement.

How he’s threatening NATO allies, turning the American economy into a ticking time bomb that will blow up global stability when it goes off.

We’re talking about how we’re on the cusp of another World War, with an egomaniacal demented fiend holding the nuclear football.

We’re talking about people being stripped of their rights, about the end of due process, about systemic hate being normalized and encouraged.

We’re talking about a nightmare that we cannot wake up from.

We are talking about how the law is no longer aligned with justice.

And now we need to talk about what Americans are going to do about that.

I hope peaceful revolution is still possible. Because as we know, the alternative is something nobody wants to see.

Solidarity wins.