#would be the solution to the ills plaguing the society in which they live“

[macro-microcosm]

Look, I'm sorry, but you cannot say "there is no antisemitism in the Free Palestine movement" and also say that you think Israeli youth should be put into Viet Cong-style reeducation camps.

And no, it's not a more vindicated or less bigoted opinion just because nobody comes to you with a better single-sentence solution to hate crimes.

[rametarin]

And the evil red horse to the whole equation: As the Weimar Republic was experiencing its own problems, the grating problems caused by economic starvation due to Imperial Germany's WW1 reparations and losses as the losers, they also had to deal with the communists conspiring to take over land, institutions and engage in mafioso behavior.

The communists were under a radical set of values that involved a singular society, "The People," and casting off all previous cultural ties (or so they said. The reality was it was Russo-Supremacism using the language of communist radical revolution.) The Russo-Supremacist Red Faction was sweeping westward and nipping at the heels of every left leaning population and educational institution as they started taking and converting businesses by force.

Germans had just got done being shit on and cursed for being German and made economic peasants and debtors as a people for the last few years to decades (depending on when we're taking our sample) and what communism promised was absorbing them into yet another borglike extension of communism plagued by infighting and deficit of resources, which also would curse their German origins as vile bourgoise and demand they start learning Russian. They knew this. Because it was happening elsewhere.

The Nazis came to power out of fear of the imminent Soviet creep, which WAS in fact working to do to them what they eventually did to Poland, East Germany and other now post-Soviet parts of East and Central Europe. If the Nazis didn't come to power, the Communists WOULD have taken the rest of Germany, too. The Nazis were the resistance to the communists, which were vying for power both legitimately in the civic side, and illegitimately as guerilla gangs beating up non-communists in the streets.

When a communist sneers at a Nazi, it's not because of their horrible inhumane views about non-whites (though that is a good reason a NORMAL person despises the Nazis.) It's because they dared to rebuke communism. And that carries on today with how Russia is speaking of Ukraine. Tankies and Soviet Sympathizers and covert Russosupremacists have always said this shit. And they haven't stopped saying it since the Nazis became a thing.

Turning the short lived, ineffectual, histrionic and deadly Nazi regime into this larger than life spectacle has only been so successfully mainstream and universal because it fit the propaganda needs of three specific parties.

1.) The western warhawks, which have been more right-wing historially but engaged with by the leftists because what the Nazis stood for was wrong. The Western Warhawks will put a moral stance to it and often cite it being ungodly and evil as a reason it was opposed, with religious implications. The western leftists will emphasize the evils, specifically, of white supremacism and racism.

2.) Tankies, Russo-Supremacists and Socialist Sympathizers, who emphasize that the Nazis were right-ring (they weren't exactly, unless you define any militarism as right-wing) and cite capitalism as the reason everthing went to shit, and then it's to be inferred that socialism and communism (in that order) are a solution to these social ills, rather than what accelerated and acerbated them.

3.) The Jews, who hold a place under both the religious right and the leftist social scientists propaganda, and for themselves. The religious right cite the importance of the Jewish people in Christianity and have often tied the tragedy of the holocaust to bible prophecy, scavenging off the event to argue biblical prophecy is on the horizon and real. The more leftist socialist use for the Jews as propaganda is to beat the drums about the evils of white supremacism, European colonialism, xenophobia and antisemitism as a specific and grevious teller that you're an unforgivable monster that must be routed out, socially ostracized or reputationally destroyed and given a free pass to be "punch first, ask questions later" about. And the Jews, who cite the holocaust as evidence of persecution above and beyond what should rationally be directed at them.

So you have the right wing, left wing and an influential, objectively wronged and traumatized minority (one of many) telling their stories about how horrible the Nazis are for their own specific reasons, all seeming to be in agreement and corroborating eachothers stories and reasons, even if they seem slightly out of sync and discordant in tone if you get to the granular emotional spectrum surrounding the facts, and what each side emphasizes on.

And also why despite Ukraine suffering catastrophic losses at the hands of the Soviets, or other places losing more of their population, you barely hear about those groups. And why the Jewish story gets so much press in comparison to the losses the Nazis inflicted on other groups.

So because of it, the overarching hatred for the worst of white supremacism, the Nazis as a concept and culture being the worst of what white supremacism has to offer, the objectively factual reality of the harm the Nazis inflicted, you wind up at a place where it seems every flesh and blood human being in Germany preceding and flowing into Nazi Germany, seems like an utter monster of a person from an irredeemable monster of a culture. None of these parties that have an agenda to wag a finger at white supremacism or white supremacists have any inclination to use a scalpel instead of a broad brush and every reason to imply there's virtually no difference between the Nazis of the 1930s and 40s and any given group of white people, today, but the supposed powder keg of their hatred being lit and showing their, "real face."

When in reality, the German people on the whole were victims of post-imperialism, suffering under an ineffectual republic and economy, and then being parasited on from the inside by communist guerillas that promised to unmake everything they were from behind curtains and slowly change them inside out.

How could they NOT reach for the hands of whatever tyrannical, delusional bullshit artist promised them a way to retain the image of their culture, language and ethnic identity (two things which modern people concede are important for people, today, so long as they aren't white) when faced with a rapidly closing window before violence fell upon them?

You can learn a lot about people by studying the German situation pre-WW2, during and post-WW2. But unfortunately, few go beyond the few truths of "racial supremacism bad" (most stop at 'white supremacism bad') and "fascism bad." But some people want the lessons to begin and end there.

Those people are usually communists. So, y'know.

Thank you for defending Nazis. They're just little guys. Just misunderstood, with genuine grievances. I noticed you accidentally forgot to defend child rapists. Dumb commies like you are all the same 🙄

Piss on the poor! Also I'm not a commie and never claimed to be one.

[citrineghost]

On ADHD, Being Dramatic, and Being Lazy

Gather round everyone. It’s time for our every-few-monthsly post on ADHD by your local ADHD ghost. In this episode, we’re talking about ADHD and how it relates to “being dramatic” and “being lazy.”

On Being Dramatic

No doubt a lot of you have been told you’re being dramatic over the years. I know I have. There are a lot of reasons one might be dramatic, but they’re rarely about the drama.

If I’m to guess the origin of the word dramatic, I’d guess it probably has something to do with over exaggerating your response for the drama. I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of people being dramatic - on tiktok and vine, on youtube... drama calls for dramaticism.

Do you want to know what isn’t dramatic? Genuine reactions. That’s right - genuine reactions, inherently, cannot be categorized as dramatic or hyperbolic. There is nothing about them that is being overdone with the intention of getting attention or entertaining other people. So, let’s talk a bit about how this conflation has hurt us as a community.

Growing up, everything I did was “dramatic.” Crying because I didn’t want to do more chores was dramatic. Having a panic attack because there was a spider in the room was dramatic. Freaking out because I needed people to stop touching me was dramatic. Getting angry when my mother made jokes about my sex life as a teen was dramatic (and apparently abusive, but that’s neither here nor there). Nothing I did that involved a noteworthy amount of emotion was anything, if not dramatic.

On Being Lazy

I know a lot of you have also been labeled as lazy over the years. “Lazy” is the diagnosis everyone loves to give to those who don’t do enough, in their eyes. If you “could have” done something and then “chose not to,” you’re lazy... right?

Growing up, I was lazy too. I was lazy for avoiding housework. I was lazy for not wanting to brush my teeth. I was lazy because I didn’t turn in my homework. I was lazy for staying in bed, on my computer, most of the day.

If I’d only just “applied myself,” or if I would just “put in the work,” then I would be respectable to the people around me. But, because I wasn’t “willing” to put in the time and effort, I was lazy.

Why Is Emotion Dramatic?

The short answer is: it’s not. The real question is, why do people seem to perceive emotion as being dramatic? These are real emotions, after all - real and genuine feelings that are being dismissed as playacting. There are a number of reasons.

Why Are We Lazy?

Again, the short answer is: most people aren’t. The question here is, why do people see others not doing something and assume it’s because they simply don’t want to put in the work? Why do they not seek out an explanation or consider other alternatives? There are a number of reasons for that too.

The Answer...

Editing to put a Read More here because it’s very long

(TW for each of these sections in their name)

1. Sexism

At its core, seeing emotional outbursts or responses as dramatic is inherently rooted in sexism. Whether you’re a boy or a girl, man or woman, if your emotions are being mocked, it’s almost definitely because of our world’s history of sexism and relating emotion to women, who are “illogical” and “just want attention.”

And “real men” work! They work hard! They work long hours! They put themselves into an early grave, with pride, by never sitting down to rest! For this very reason, women, housewives of decades past, were expected, after a long day of doing housework and caring for the children - things that are just as exhausting as a full time job - to dote on their husbands who had just returned from work expecting a hot meal and a beer to be ready for them. Her work is devalued. It wasn’t grueling or tiring or important. It was just “women’s work.” A wife who does all of the housework and child rearing and fails to provide a hot meal and a warm body to her husband is “lazy.”

This is further shown to affect men as well. We can see, as early as non-manual labor-based jobs existed, the men who took them were lesser. Men who work at computers are seen as nerds and geeks - weak. Men who work in universities, coming up with new solutions to our medical needs and discovering the mathematics we need for space travel and advanced technology - they’re weak too. They’re unimportant to society because they’re not willing to get their hands dirty. Those men who prefer artistry are called gay and seen as disposable. It is irrelevant to the conservative man that his artistic counterpart designs everything that fills his home and office - that without artists we would have nothing.

2. Racism and classism

You might be surprised, but racism and classism both have their hands in this as well. I’m talking full on systemic oppression. The ability for people in power to look down on those they see as beneath them for being emotional or passionate about a topic or incident is all about power. You can see a million examples of this today. POC are called dramatic or are implied to be blowing things out of proportion by conservative white people because they want equal rights and feel they’re being treated unfairly. Their emotions are dismissed as irrational and dramatic. 

The cries of the poor, whether white or of color, are mocked. They have no reason to be having the emotions they’re having because they wouldn’t be in the position they’re in if they weren’t “lazy.” After all, only lazy people don’t have money. Only lazy people can’t get work. If they had just “applied themselves,” they would have an income, a home, and ample food on the table.

3. Ableism

And, last but not least, we have ableism. The neurotypical and abled people of the world, at large, cannot understand the experiences of the disabled, both emotionally(those with mental illnesses, disorders, and so on(whether or not certain disorders can be categorized as a disability in a just society is another topic entirely, but they are regarded that way, generally)) and physically.

If you have sensory overload, you are being irrational. It doesn’t matter to a NT if this is caused by an actually chemically different response in your brain. It doesn’t matter if it’s Real To You. To them, it doesn’t make sense, and so you deserve no compassion for your experience. Your emotional response is dramatic.

If you have executive dysfunction, you are simply choosing not to do your work. It doesn’t matter that there is an actual reason, buried in you somewhere, for why you have become Stuck. It doesn’t matter if you feel crippled by this aspect of your life. They see that you have neglected to do something they deem easy. Therefore, you are “lazy.”

ADHD and Being Dramatic

For those of us with ADHD, being called dramatic is a very familiar experience. After a while, we begin to internalize it. We must be dramatic, right? After all, so many different people have told us we are - and for good reason. We do tend to get overly emotional.

So the question is, why? Why do we get overly emotional? Why are our emotions so much different than those of our NT peers?

1. Lack of Emotional Regulation

A big part of ADHD, which is not yet a diagnostic criteria, is our emotional disregulation. ADHD, inherently, comes with some amount of disregulation in our emotions. We have a hard time controlling the emotions that we feel and managing the intensity of them. They may come across as overly intense, or they may seem subdued, both for reasons we can’t possibly figure out as individuals. This disregulation is entirely out of our control, happening at a neurological level. Our brain chemicals don’t work as they should. But, no matter how unregulated our emotions are, they are still real. We do still feel them, exactly as intensely as we think we do. Disregulated does not mean made up.

2. RSD

If you knew about RSD before, or you’ve read my last post on ADHD (under my tag adhdghost), which has gained some popularity, you already know what this means. For those who don’t, RSD is short for Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria. This condition plagues something like 99.9% of people with ADHD (while not being ADHD exclusive.) It comes with the lack of emotional regulation and means we have a reaction, that seems out of proportion (or “dramatic”), relative to the thing that caused it.

In short, RSD episodes can look like an entire breakdown, a very sudden loss of any self esteem or confidence, the feeling that you are certain someone now hates you or has secretly always hated you, and/or an immediate need to get rid of the thing that caused it. These episodes are caused by any kind of perceived failure or disappointment. They can be caused by someone whose opinion or relationship we value who gives us a slightly judgmental look, someone saying they don’t understand why we like the thing we’re interested in, or even not living up to our own expectations. These episodes frequently lead to emotional outburts, episodes, breakdowns, and tears. Naturally, all of this is “dramatic,” despite it being very real and painful for those experiencing it.

3. Combination with Other Things

Emotional disregulation can interact with other parts of our lives as well. For instance, I have a lot of phobias. My reactions to seeing or being around the things that terrify me can be even more intense than how most people react to their phobias. They can cause anxiety attacks, emotional breakdowns, and lasting fear for hours or days after. My recovery from these instances is hindered by my inability to regulate the feelings they caused.

Emotional disregulation can also interact with triggers, trauma, sensory problems, etc.

ADHD and Being Lazy

And of course, if you struggle with ADHD, you want to know, “Why am I so lazy?” The answer is: you’re not! Laziness is a made up word. Laziness was created to pass blame onto people who struggle to do things that more typical people can accomplish with ease.

So, what is the reason we struggle to do these seemingly simple tasks?

1. Executive Dysfunction

This is The Big One. Of all the things that can cause an inability to do things, executive dysfunction is the Achilles heel of ADHD. Because ADHD causes a difficulty with prioritizing, rewarding actions with no immediate reward, and creating a list of steps for us to take (something that comes naturally to NT people), we sometimes get “Stuck.”

This feeling of being stuck may look like us just having fun and avoiding our responsibilities. You may be Stuck right now, scrolling through tumblr mechanically even though you’ve been needing to pee for three hours. Naturally, you’ve been wanting to go to the bathroom... you just don’t know how.

To a NT, this sounds ridiculous. “Just get up and go?!” I’m sure you can imagine your parents saying, when they simply don’t understand. The truth is, tumblr can be a nightmare for executive function. It endlessly scrolls, giving you post after post. There’s no natural stopping point. You keep an eye out for a natural end to this activity, but it’s hard to find the right post to stop on. If you find those, “This is your sign to go to bed,” posts helpful - otherwise locked into the activity of scrolling regardless of whether you want to - you might be struggling with executive dysfunction.

This inability to “queue” our actions or prioritize what we need to do, and in what order, can wreak all kinds of havoc in our lives. You remember you didn’t really understand that equation the math teacher explained earlier. You know today’s homework is related to its use. Therefore, you cannot start your homework. There are a number of possible solutions floating around your head. Maybe the book will explain it better. Maybe your parents know how to do this and you could ask them. Maybe you could Google it. It’s possible the homework is about something else. But, if it is, what if you don’t understand that? Maybe you should ask your teacher before class?

Even though you have all of these solutions in your head, because you don’t know which solution is the best solution, you find yourself unable to do any of them. You show up to class with no homework and your teacher gives you a disappointed look. “I don’t understand why you don’t just apply yourself more. You’re a very smart student.” The remark brings you to holding back tears, because you want, with every fiber of your being, to apply yourself and make your teacher proud, but you simply don’t know how.

This is the destructive nature of executive dysfunction, and it is not something to be taken lightly.

2. Distraction

For those with ADHD, the inability to regulate external stimuli makes focusing incredibly hard. You wake up one morning and plan to start that English paper after breakfast. You go to get yourself some cereal. You’re out of milk. You decide to make toast instead. You burn your toast because you lost track of time for just 30 seconds. You go to throw it away, feeling an overwhelming amount of guilt over the two pieces of bread you wasted. The trash is overflowing. You decide to take it outside. It’s a really nice day out. Maybe you should take your dog for a walk. You haven’t taken her on a walk in a while and you’re just now feeling motivated to, so you should take advantage of that. You go to retrieve your dog and take her for a walk. When you bring her back in, you go to get her treats from the shelf in the laundry room. Oh yeah, you’d been meaning to do laundry. You go to get your laundry hamper from your room and notice there’s a bunch of laundry on the floor. You begin picking up the laundry from the floor. You may as well tidy up the other things on the floor as well. You finally get around to taking your laundry to the washer. You’re out of soap. Maybe you ought to make a run to the grocery store. You take ten minutes to find your keys and wallet and then head out to the grocery store. When you get there, you’ve forgotten what it was you needed. “Oh, right! I’m out of milk!” You go and retrieve milk. When you get to the checkout and the cashier rings you up, you suddenly remember you need laundry soap. Well, it’s too late now. You’ll have to do laundry tomorrow. You can’t risk the cashier giving you a tired look by asking them to wait. You go home and make some cereal. You can’t really write while you eat, so you open tumblr. you scroll through tumblr for a while. Your cereal gets soggy, you notice, disappointed. You see a tumblr post reminding you that you forgot to order something important online that you need to get here as soon as possible. The day continues in this way until you finally realize at 5pm that you never started your paper. “It’s so late now... I’ll just start it tomorrow morning,” you tell yourself. Rinse and repeat.

If you relate to this, you might want to consider researching ADHD a bit, because this is a very typical ADHD experience.

3. Hyperfixation and Hyperfocus

The last prominent reason why people with ADHD are seen as lazy has to do with a cycle in hyperfixation and hyperfocus.

If you don’t already know, hyperfixations are those interests you have that fill you with an overwhelming love and which take up an incredible amount of your time, energy, and brain space. These could be fandoms, hobbies, characters, games, or otherwise.

Hyperfocus, on the other hand, can be related to hyperfixations or things that aren’t hyperfixations. Hyperfocus is when you get “locked in” on a task and can’t seem to put it down. If you started this post not knowing how long it was and find yourself still raptly reading, completely ignoring the world around you, you may have hyperfocused on it. If you ever start cleaning and just can’t stop until the whole house is clean, despite your lack of regularly cleaning for over a month, you are hyperfocusing on cleaning. If you write a 20k word fic in one night, you are hyperfocusing.

Hyperfocusing can leave you completely unaware of the world around you, causing you to neglect your own basic needs, such as food, bathroom breaks, water, and social interaction. 

Because people with ADHD are able to occasionally apply themselves to such an extreme degree, NT people don’t understand why ADHD people are unable to apply themselves to other things as well. The reason we can’t is because we do not regulate our hyperfocus. Hyperfocus comes from tasks that are giving us serotonin, to make up for our brains inability to give serotonin in the way it should - in the way NT brains do. Emptying the dishwasher just felt really good. The next thing you know, you’re filling it with more dishes and wiping off counters and sweeping the floor and, “oh god, it looks so nice what if I just-” and then you move on to the laundry and the living room and the bedroom and then somehow 6 hours have passed. You don’t know how it happened, but now your house is clean and you feel amazing... but also tired and hungry. So you go make some food and then pass out on the couch.

So, when NT people see this kind of laser focus, they demand to know why you couldn’t do that simple math assignment, or why you haven’t been returning their texts, or why you couldn’t apply the same level of energy and enthusiasm on that really boring geography project. They demand to know why you’re so “lazy” the rest of the time.

There’s also the element of hyperfixation. It is the ultimate distraction. Your parents tell you to do the dishes and you say you will. Suddenly, you’ve found a fanfiction about your hyperfixation and you can’t stop reading it. It’s 60k words long and it will take you all day, but you’ll find a break to do your chores somewhere in there, right?

Your mom is suddenly knocking on your door what feels like 5 minutes later, but it’s been an hour. She wants to know why you didn’t do the dishes yet. You’re upset at yourself, but you lash out at her, because you’re unable to regulate your emotions. “I’ll do it in a minute!” you say loudly from behind your door. She walks off, irritated. You ask yourself why you can’t just do it now. Why does it feel impossible to tear yourself away? Your hyperfixation is the ultimate creator of hyperfocus. It rules you.

Before you know it, it’s midnight. You’ve finished the fic. It was amazing. You realize with dread that you still haven’t done the dishes, so you sneak out to the kitchen, hoping your parents have gone to bed. They have, but you find the dishes have already been done by someone else. Suddenly, you’re holding back tears from the RSD episode this has triggered. You ruined everything. You disappointed your parents. You’re a lazy and terrible child and they deserve better.

The truth is, you’re none of those things. In fact, you’re struggling with one of the most difficult mental blocks someone can have. But to others, you’re just making excuses. To others, you should have been able to just do the dishes and then go back to reading. But you know it’s not that easy. But why?

It’s ADHD, Babey!

If this post is hitting hard in a way that feels like your life is being splayed out before you, you might just have ADHD.

The fact is you are not dramatic and you are not lazy. You are struggling with a lot of ADHD symptoms that are making functioning in a neurotypical world incredibly difficult. This world was designed by and for NT people. Your worth is not based in how you live up to their expectations.

If you think you might have ADHD, it might be time to ask your doctor about getting an ADHD evaluation. Please check out my last post (the one i mentioned is under my tag adhdghost) to get more information on RSD and on getting evaluated.

An Important Note

Many experiences and struggles caused by ADHD are also present in other disorders. For example, RSD can be seen frequently in autism as well as in anxiety, depression, and PTSD. Sensory overload, emotional disregulation, executive dysfunction, and so on, can all be present in things other than ADHD. If you want to know if you fit the criteria for ADHD, go check out the criteria on the ADDitude website, which is a great source for ADHD related information.

[dandeliononthespectrum]

The good old imposter syndrome… Am I really disabled? Or am I only pretending because I want attention? Maybe I really am just as lazy as people tell me.

Thoughts such as these plague me on the regular, and that even though I consider myself disabled. At least on my good days, when I’m not being afflicted by self-doubt.

But what does disabled even mean? There are quite a few ways and models that try to answer that very question.

The Medical Model

The Medical Model does pretty much what it says on the tin: it looks at disability through the lens of medical diagnoses, rehabilitation, and concentrates on biological factors. It focusses on the impairment a person experiences and tries to find cures and fixes for that impairment.

So, having a bunch of medical diagnoses from a bunch of doctors, I am quite certainly disabled in terms of the medical model.

The Social Model

The Social Model sees disability as something that is created by society. It basically means that a disability is disabling not as much due to biological and medical but because of social barriers, such as ignorance or stigmatization, or a lack of accessibility. Discrimination counts into this category as well as missing ramps.

Through the social lens, I would consider myself as disabled as well. I have been on the receiving end of plenty of ignorance, and the world is most certainly not always accessible for me.

The Economic Model

In our capitalistic society, is it really a surprise that there is an economical viewpoint when talking about disability? At its core, the Economic Model sees disability as a person’s inability to work and contribute to society. On the one hand, it emphasizes that disabled people need economic support and accommodations. On the other hand, it often views disabled people as needy or lazy, furthering the stigmatization.

Yes, viewed economically, I, once again, count as disabled.

The Model of Functional Solutions

This perspective recognizes disability as a problem that needs to be solved. This is the branch of disability studies that gifted us wheelchairs, prosthetics, and insulin pumps. Unfortunately, this is also the branch that sometimes gets lost in its goals and in doing so gives us eugenics.

I do count as disabled from this viewpoint. In my case I profit from inventions such as noise cancelling headphones, stim toys and communication apps, when I am mute again, amongst others.

Also, anti-vaxxers and Autism Speaks (neither of which I would ever support) are unfortunately making ongoing efforts to “cure” autism, so there’s that…

The Social Identity or Cultural Affiliation Model

Disability is a community for some people and groups more than others, but disability enables the chance for cultural and social affiliation. The Deaf Community is one example for that. Within such a community the disability is nothing less than part of one’s identity and a source of pride. The interaction with other members of that community helps self-confidence, acceptance and can even pave the way for change.

I am so proud to be part of the Autism community. Becoming part of that helped me learn so much about myself. It’s always so helpful to have people in your corner, who know exactly what you’re going through, so yes. I am disabled and proud member of the group #actuallyautistic.

The Charity or Tragedy Model

As can be imagined from the name, this particular model sees disability as an undeserved ill stroke of faith, and therefore recognizes the disabled person as a tragic figure that is in need of charity and pity. This can lead to the disabled person being recognized as an inspiration for able-bodied and neurotypical people, since “even though they are impaired, they are living their life! This just goes to show that the only disability in life is a bad attitude.” Isn’t this wonderfully ignorant? Be it with pity, inspiration, or charity in mind, when disabled people are viewed through the lens of tragedy, it creates a hierarchy that is condescending and dehumanizing towards disabled people.

I am reminded that I am tragically disabled every time my parents praise me for something they would never even think of praising my sisters for, every time the people close to me regard me with that sorrowful and pitying look in their eyes, every time somebody is so incredibly sorry that I am autistic and mentally ill.

These are the six most common models used, when talking about disability. There are quite a few more, but those cover the basics. Through all six of these perspectives I count as disabled. And still… That imposter syndrome is one hard-ass s.o.b. and will continuously get me brooding over my state. And all I can do about that, is to remember this blog entry, reminding my inner imposter that whatever it is trying to tell me is most probably wrong.

[casualkoalafart]

Life These Days.

Disabilities are associated with weakness. The biggest disability is living in an unhealthy mindset, and getting trapped in it. Perspective(s), and the ability to control your perspective, is strength. It gives you power, rather than feed your deterioration.  Strength and success are different for everyone and do not have and specific unit of measurement, despite what society depicts. Everyone is different, and is seen different. The idea that you have to look and act a certain way that is unreachable to 99% of us is mental abuse. No matter your race or religion, we are all equal in the eyes of the natural world, although it is a sad, unnecessary, and certainly outdated fight that too many still face today within our human world. The only things that truly matter come from within, and often require some searching through trial and error. I am certainly not perfect, I have made more mistakes and bad choices in my life than I can count, and I want to learn from them. I cannot change the past, but I can change the future. My past does not define me. The person you are within your family, your friends, your workplace, your neighbourhood, and your society are all strangers to each other in one way or another. They are aware that each of them exists, but a different thought process prepares you for the presented environments.

One person’s strength is someone else’s weakness. Winning the lottery could save so many lives if put into the right places, however it could also be the death of you if you are overcome by addiction, greed, or any other toxicities. The ability to put yourself into someone else’s shoes is a mindset that many of us as humans lack, whether we like it or not. After all, how are we supposed to relate to someone who is starving if we don’t know what it is like to be truly hungry? How do we understand what an abused child sees in the world if our brains were developed in a safe and healthy environment? These are uncomfortable thoughts that often lead to the sad path of “ignorance is bliss.” For others, it may have a lasting impact of giving them their purpose in life. Like becoming a detective, a therapist, or a positive role model to whatever cause speaks to them.  

Everyone has the right to speak, but not to be heard. Some people are heard by too many and get overwhelmed, and begin a filtering process that should not exist toward their feelings and emotions. Some people are getting heard by too many and are abusing their power through brainwashing impressionable people too scared to think for themselves. Some people are getting heard by the wrong people, inevitably feeling judged and out of place in the world. Humans have great instincts, but often do not have the confidence to follow them.  Finding someone like-minded is refreshing, just as finding someone that believes in something that you do not can feel offensive and cause you to become defensive. These lessons that present themselves to us in the form of challenges make us who we are. Everyone expresses themselves differently, and that is what makes the world so beautiful. Art, music, literature, traditions, food, drink, and each unique personality makes life worth living. For those who have yet to find a way to express themselves, the opportunities to deal with their thoughts while also feeling safe and understood (despite whether the view or perspective is the same as the listener), are everything. The right to speak gives you the right to be judged, something that many find out the hard way. It can be discouraging, and that feeling of failure sticks with you more prominently than any win, especially to yourself.

Every mind is its own universe, and the energy that comes from it we feel is seen by who (or what) we call god. We strive to be heard and felt, because after all we can only truly feel our own feelings, and we want to share those feelings with others. Listening and hearing others in the way they express themselves through whichever outlet best suits them brings power, empathy, and unity. The sense of being alone in the world is a feeling that has unfortunately impacted everyone. As unique and different that we all are, we are the same in that sense. I feel my energy is felt through the earth, and I find comfort in and with those who share my perspective. I feel I am most understood and heard by animals, my family, and my best friends. I am really attracted to the energy from animals because I have yet to find my way in the world, my true outlet for my feelings and expressions, or something that I feel is my purpose. With animals not being able to communicate with language, and since I cannot always seem to put things into words for others to understand me, I feel a true connection through the brainwaves, the loving and healing energy we make and willingly give to one another, specially made for each being. I do not want my energy that I create to come from animals, because I do not want to take from them. They already willingly give so much, but we continue to take and take and take until there is ultimately nothing left.

Right now, the world is speaking to us with the undeniable statistics through every outlet and source possible. Unfortunately, we do not listen, and the next warning I fear will be fatal. Global warming,  fires, floods, plagues, are begging for us to acknowledge that we are killing our Mother Earth, and we are not listening. Hatred, inequality, and the sensation that we cannot make a difference in these challenging times is going to undoubtedly be our last fight, and we must keep fighting. With lockdown forcing all of us to reflect in this time, our biggest strength would be to come together while we are apart. Many of us feel our weakest, and as strange as it sounds, we could use that to our advantage. Turning weakness into strength is not only achievable, it is necessary. Humans are so incredible, we are inventors and have made a way to connect all of us, in the idea that by doing so, no one is alone. This creates a broader sense of loneliness, being surrounded by the internet world but still not being seen for who you are. So, we are back at the beginning again it seems. Some people go to extreme lengths to be heard or remembered. The idea of being alone is a powerful feeling that can lead to either good or evil, or in tragic (but not rare) cases, suicide. We need to understand that the rising of mental sickness is another form in which our planet is letting us know that we are literally killing ourselves. Too many are unable to deal with stress, guilt, pressure, loss, and so on. Drug addictions, accidental or purposeful overdoses, and self-harm are all fatal hand-me-down outlets to deal with man-made problems that we should never have had to deal with in the first place. These man-made problems are not made up or any less real than a hurricane. They create new emotions, ones that we are not equip to handle,  forcing our bodies to call for any response to these ever-evolving threats, and are often fatal solutions. Depression and anxiety should not be a mental illness, they are simply emotions that come with the good of life. Nobody is happy all the time, and the idea that life should always be happy is sad in itself. When there is life, there is death. Where there is good, there is bad. Where there is love, there is hate. Instead of teaching each other how to handle the yin and the yang, we prescribe drugs like opioids, while also trying to convey the image that drugs are bad and drug addicts are failures. So many poor people are brainwashed into thinking that marijuana is bad, but for some reason popping pills to manipulate your body to function is normal. Writing this makes my heart race, and I cannot describe the feeling because it is a cocktail that is mixed with emotions that do not belong together. We do not know how to deal with so many things because to put it bluntly, they are not natural and they evolve every day and are designed to break us.  

Our relationships with each other is everything, and our compassion and ability to hear others is power. Emotions, and being able to talk about and express them, is a gift and a privilege. We have been given the false connotation that feelings are weakness, that the idea of healthy options and outlets of expression for them are also weakening. Someone who takes anti-depressants to cope with feelings, drinks excessively to not have to feel, and take drugs may have the sensation that they are being stronger than someone who goes to therapy. This is backwards, and we as a society need to understand this together. Our strength of our ability to exchange knowledge is getting the best of us with the media not passing on the right messages. The government favouring the majority and purposefully challenging the minority is poisoning all of us, because we are all the same. It can give a person too much power, the corrupt idea that you are somehow better than a person who is not on social media, planting trees for a living. It will give people who do not have a platform a feeling that they cannot make a change to the world, since they are just one person. Evilness derives from this false and discouraging perspective. It will not give the right people anything, it will eventually take from them everything that matters.

There is strength in getting up in the morning, brushing your teeth, creating a healthy routine. Don’t cut yourself short. You’re doing great. It’s not supposed to be easy.

I did not filter myself writing this, and I hope I did not offend anyone who took the time to read my thoughts. We are all just trying to find our place in the world. In the perspective from our planet, no person is above or below another. Society, a man-made revolution, needs to help spread the right messages. We are all part of society. You are society.

The idea of posting this to the world gives me anxiety, however I am doing it because I know I am not the only one who feels this way, and I want anyone who can relate to this message at all to know that they are not alone. I am also posting this to let ANYONE know that if they want to talk about something, I am happy to listen and to hear them. I hope this message can inspire you to feel comfortable in your mind, your body, and to not be embarrassed or feel shame to share yourself with the world through your personally suited outlet. I would love to see your art, hear your music, read your words, or learn other forms of expression from you.

In writing this, I have escaped in a sense. I have allowed so many overwhelming thoughts and emotions to form words, and with this vulnerability comes a sense of relief that I hope everyone feels they have access to.

I am so overwhelmed and overcome with emotions all of a sudden, and then they go away as if they were just thoughts passing by in a train, just making a quick stop to drop off some passengers and pick up others on their way to an unknown destination. I wish that I could control the waves in which I feel so helpless, heavy, weak, and overcome. I wish I could pace myself. I know a quick way out would be to inebriate myself, a desire of what seems like freedom is powerful and can become uncontrollable in seconds.

I really hope I am confident enough to share this one day. My goal is to organize my thoughts and feelings into words that I can be proud to own, unapologetically.

Thank goodness for computers. I love the idea of having a beautiful mind and expressing words through pen and paper. Making my words beautiful through calligraphy and ink created with my own specific muscle movements. I have a strange admiration for penmanship. However that is not the case, as my mind is a mess with thoughts that come and go at what seems like the speed of light. I am grateful for the ability to edit my words efficiently through text. But, with the sense that I am feeding into the “everything is instant” perspective/generation of society, I am also disappointed in myself for not being able to slow down my mind enough to hand write most of what I choose to put into words to remind my future self. Or my present self.

I feel like after starting this page, I have opened a vault. One that should never have been a vault to begin with, but a welcoming and open-minded space. Instead of numbing and silencing my mind, I would like to have the strength to escape my escape, get my bearings back in a healthy way by reading other people’s escapes, appreciating their art, or listening to stories. Grounding myself back into reality. That I am actually okay. That I am just another person. A somebody, or a nobody, depending on my perspective.

I feel like I have experienced so many emotions today, that my body was overtaken by my mind because it was trapped. I can’t even remember writing some of it, which is curious. Hopefully that is where dying comes in, to release your trapped mind. Not now of course, but that is a nice and comforting thought for me, to think that in facing your worst fear you achieve real freedom.

I am glad I wrote it down, to reflect on later.

Everything written above was written on February 5th, 2021. It was snowy today. I had a lot of butterflies feeling my mind race so fast on so many deep levels. It is now 21:22, and although I still don’t quite know how I’m feeling, I feel like I have said what I needed to for the day. I also did not drink any alcohol today, which I am proud of after doing so much self-reflection. I am going to cuddle with Sammy, play games, and try to feel at peace with where I am in the world and in my mind.

Goodnight.  

[theopaquemind]

Grief in all its Glory

Written: 10/08/2020

Posted 5/01/2021 - 4 years since Brandon’s passing.

Content warning: death, suicide, grief, drugs, addiction, swearing.

I recently came across a website for Australians to speak openly about grief. It was startling. Not what was said on it. But the fact that a website like that now existed. I’d never seen anything so open and frank before. What should be startling is that humans still live in this discomfort of talking about certain sadness's, bereavements, pains and anguish. The most inevitable experience is still faux pas - we all die, but talking about it is not altogether acceptable. Along the journey of life, there are other sadness’s and struggles which, once brewed in scalding waters of unsavoury conversation, now seep in tepid tolerance. For the most part, I refer to this broadly as ‘mental illness’, and while its garnered greater awareness, it is still riddled with stigma and misunderstanding. Similarly, discussions around addiction are typically soaked in the self-aggrandising dogma that this only happens to the lower echelons of society; those plagued by weaknesses that led to their inevitable misfortune. And then the doozy of ‘grief’ – talking about it makes many people uneasy; people hold an expectation that you transcend these melancholy confines in a swift enough fashion that you don’t leave them feeling uncomfortable. Yet, grief is unfortunately something every adult will likely experience at some point. Another scandalous topic is that of suicide, despite it sadly becoming an increasingly more and more common way of dying. Then there is the matter of suicide survivors – the one’s who must continue their life with a chasm formed by the absence and loss. Grief with the awareness that someone chose to die is something very staggering.

One of the things that I find most difficult when talking about mental health is that I am in part supporting a system that I do not have faith in. You can tell people that help is out there, but when it comes down to it, the mental health care system in Australia is wildly ineffective (globally, I daresay, and infinitely worse in many locations; however my experience is significantly with Australia so I’ll refrain from speaking too broadly). Worse, it can be even more detrimental than the ills that plague the human mind.

It is hard trying to get help when you need it. It is harder getting the right help. It is a battle. It is a challenge and sometimes it feels like the world is working against you. That's probably because it is, albeit not always intentionally. This is what happened to my brother, to my family, to me.

I should note that he was a very private person, with a strong distaste for the narcissistic realms of social media. I wholeheartedly acknowledge that I am possibly doing something so deeply against his wishes by speaking openly about him and the situation, but to be blunt, he lost the privilege of secrecy. Others too, may not agree with how I elect to narrate this, but from my perspective, you can’t grow awareness and fuel prevention without the discourse.

I understand that this is in part a unique occurrence that I will expand on, but because of this experience I was exposed to a great deal more stories of a similar nature where the health care system let people down. However, this isn’t an ‘all hope is lost’ memoir. To the contrary.

I have…had an older brother. His name was Brandon. He took his life at the age that I am while writing this - 29. Brandon saw mental health specialists. He did try to get better, although arguably not nearly hard enough. In fact, when I cleared out his room after his passing, I dug through the referrals and prescriptions. There was a blister pack of antidepressants. Without the other appropriate tools to recover, or at least to find a semblance of stability, anti-depressants can only do so much. By this point he had very evidently given up on these little dosages of ‘here-this-will-help-but-may-also-increase-your-risk-of-suicidal-ideation.’ Only one pill was missing. The anti-depressant was not in his toxicology report, although the post-mortem showed many, many other drugs. In clearing his room, I later read his journaling scrawls that he had found drugs that numbed his pain more effectively than anti-depressants. Some of these are ones that Brandon got hooked on due to an overzealous general practitioner. And then another general practitioner. His addiction began with prescription opioids and graduated with drugs acquired from the dark web including heroin and fentanyl, amongst other things. My family and I only found out about this after his passing. 

TOXICOLOGY:

Codeine (free)

Codeine-6-glucuronide

Diazepam

Fentanyl

Mirtazapine

Morphine (free)

Morphine-3-glucuronide

Morphine-6-glucuronide

Nordiazepam

Oxazepam

Paracetamol

Pholcodine

Quetiapine

Temazepam

Tramadol

This part isn't altogether unique. We take suppressants to deal with pain…to deal with life. A hard day at work - have a drink. Can't sleep - have a vali. Can't survive the never-ending and all-encompassing pain - take it all.

The opioid problem in the US is significant and garners a fair amount of attention. It exists here in Australia, too. That is why legislation came into effect to further regulate practitioners from prescribing them. This took place about a year after Brandon’s death. This blanket restriction isn’t an entirely curative solution. There are those that genuinely need these medications for chronic pain who now must jump through hoops to get their treatment. There are those who still have the wherewithal to find a source, even if through illegal means (queue Brandon). This form of paternalistic legislation does not solve the problem at its root – why there is a mental health epidemic; where is society failing that the individual solution appears to be a sturdy dose of numbing or a leap of faith into the dark abyss. Opioids work in a manner of escalation. A dosage that was once satisfying does less and less. So, you need more and more. Price can also become a factor, so you salvage heavier shit for a lower cost.

Brandon wound up in hospital only a few days prior to taking his life. He had collapsed in my father’s kitchen. My dad thought he was losing him right then and there. An ambulance came and he was rushed to hospital. He had 'accidentally' taken too much tramadol. During this incident, the ambulance respondents commented in front of my younger brother on the visible track marks on Brandon's arms. Brandon was released from hospital the following day. Simple as that. My father didn't know that the foreboding premonition of losing Brandon would be the stark reality a few short days later as he tried to perform CPR on his eldest son.

The ambulance workers that saw Brandon's track marks would not have consciously made the choice to neglect a person who clearly needed help. But somehow, he fell through the cracks of a less than fastidious system. In some ways, learning about Brandon's history with prescription drugs was more difficult than his actual suicide. Learning how he had been failed was, and is, harder to come to terms with than the fact that he recognised he had been let down. The thing that came as a shock to Brandon's friends (and subsequently me) was that he did not die of an overdose. He did not take his life in that way. That is something I have battled with. He made a very different sort of deliberate effort in how he left us which I may never understand. That’s suicide though – you often don’t understand and are left wondering so many things.

We won't ever know if the tramadol overdose was intentional or not, but it was explained to me by my older brother as an 'oopsy-daisy' in an email. I was overseas at that time. Ironically, I took one tramadol tablet for my flight back and found the experience horrible and was sluggish for days after. The same day that I had recovered from my singular adventure with tramadol my brother made that irreversible choice.

I was at the pub with friends when Brandon made that fateful choice to dive into that dark void. I had missed calls on my phone from my mother. I called back and didn’t receive an answer. I later found out my younger brother and mother were debating just driving straight to me in order to not have to tell me over the phone. It was my younger brother's birthday that day and I had presumed they were contacting about that. I texted back that I was currently out and tried calling again. ‘Brandon hung himself’, my mum said. I dropped to my knees on the outskirts of the bar and wailed, ‘no’. In a daze I went back to my friends, grabbed my bag mumbling that my brother had killed himself. A friend walked me home. My mother and brother arrived some period of time after. I still don't understand how my mother was capable of driving. She drove us to my dad's house where the suicide had occurred. We weren't permitted near that section of the house and the police referred to it as a 'crime scene'. We sat outside the house as a family, coming in and out of tears and shock.

At one point I had to go to the bathroom and went up around the other side of the house – the side that wasn’t deemed part of the crime scene. Through the glass I saw my brother lying on the cold stone floor with a neck brace on and a sheet pulled midway up his chest. I went to the bathroom and vomited. I stared at my face with mascara smeared everywhere and recognised that while I looked so distraught, that was possibly the most peaceful I'd seen my brother in a long, long time. I took some breaths and went back to my family. I have never really been able to leave my family since that point. I will have panic attacks if I can't reach one of them, thinking that something bad has happened. That is part of the PTSD of losing a loved one in a shocking way.

On my family's healing journey, we attended suicide survivor groups. At these I heard other tales of the health care system having failed them and/or their loved ones. One that stuck with me the most was a suicide in the middle of a hospital ward while under 24/7 suicide watch. On my personal healing journey, I've had several problematic run-ins with the health care system. To name a few:

I had a psychologist tell me that Brandon's choice to take his life in the family home was a sign that he blamed the family. Guilt is such a huge thing that follows a suicide. Psych 101 is alleviating that form of mental anguish for suicide survivors. That mental health practitioner failed at the first hurdle. Despite me having the knowledge that you cannot blame yourself, having someone - who is meant to understand the human mind, with all the complexities of grief and guilt – tell you that you are blamed is a pretty heavy cross to bear. I had found Brandon's parting note. It was on stained paper, written a long while ago. On it he said that he was sorry, but the pain was too much. A psychologist I had sat in a room with for all of 15 minutes told me that he blamed us. A sister riddled with guilt that she didn't save her brother. Brandon said a lot of things, but Brandon did not outright blame us. Still, in most ways, he did not say enough.

Sitting in anger about Brandon's introduction to prescription opioids, I had a different psychologist tell me that I shouldn't make noise because it would cause me more distress, that people can't change and the system won't change so it's best I change my view on things. That was her response to most things. No inclination to think that holding someone accountable for some of Brandon's struggles would have offered me enormous relief. One of his original GPs died two weeks prior to writing this. I honestly felt a sense of liberation but also a sense of loss, primarily because I never got to lambast them. Only last week did I learn that the best avenue would have been to make a complaint via the Health Care Complaints Commission so that this GP would not make the same grave errors. That would have potentially changed a person and a segment of the system, as well as maybe saving others from addiction. But in a system where health care providers would prefer you don't 'rock the boat' it's better you just sit quietly in your grief.

I have struggled with this loss. I wasn't close with Brandon anymore. We had a dysfunctional relationship and I had honestly largely tried ridding my life of him. Subsequently, as mentioned, I felt overwhelmed with guilt. I myself turned to ways to numb this feeling. I drank too much and partied more. I made reckless choices, acted rashly, behaved erratically. A psychiatrist put me onto medication to help me deal with these stages of grief. This is now a medication that I have been unable to get off because of the withdrawal side-effects. The mental health industry prefers a quick-fix solution such as medication. It appears as though they are making effective progress. Brandon's pain was 'effectively' dulled by opioids. My grief was 'effectively' subdued with medication rather than giving me the tools to process the grief and miss my brother in whatever way I needed to. I’ve learned the hard way, but the greatest remedy for some of the most common forms of mental illness doesn’t come in the form of a pill. It is habitually changing the way you think, how you perceive yourself, how you see the world. There are tools and techniques you can learn to make these changes, and these are not measured in milligrams or dosage frequencies. They do not have side effects. Tell a depressed person that one of the potential side effects of their anti-depressant is to experience depression and see how much hope you give that down-trodden soul.

Grief is a peculiar thing. It can come in waves. It can come in so many ways. But something I can definitively say is that you can be stronger than the grief and you can be strong enough to survive, whether the system lapses or not. I am testimony to that.

To mental health generally, in the end, only you can make the best decisions for yourself. That choice is yours. Yes, addiction can make that a whole lot harder, and the crutch can create a cyclic pattern in a self-fulfilling prophecy of defeat. A lot of external factors can impact your choices and make it more challenging to make the right decisions. But you’ve been through harder things. To climb out of those dark places is entirely within you. Sometimes you don’t have great footing to help get you out, be it the health care system, employment strife, financial burden, or friends letting you down. But it doesn’t mean that the required strength isn’t still inside of you. YOU have that strength. YOU have all that within you. You need to see that power in all its glory and grace, and you will see that your situation can, and will change. The first step to that change is what you decide to do.

Yes, I am placing blame on the shoulders of some others besides Brandon, while in a contradictory fashion saying you make your own choices. That’s another thing about grief – you want to assign blame somewhere. So, for clarity, Brandon made his choice and might have made it irrespective of the system. But our broken system sure as hell got him there prematurely, not even seeing 30.

I have shared this because I absolutely know that it is hard. That it is not always easy to get help. That the system is fucked. But that is not enough reason to give up. I sit here in my anger and sadness that the system let both my brother and me down countless times. But it is still not enough reason to give up. You can always be stronger and will get back up. Each. And. Every. Fucking. Time. Some people have said to me that it’s impossible to get better, that they can’t be fixed, that they can’t find help that works. There are many different ways of getting help, and if the ‘traditional’ mechanisms of speaking to a shrink doesn’t float your boat then it doesn’t mean all hope is lost. On the contrary – you’ve found one approach that doesn’t aid you and the process of elimination on your mental health journey should be valued. Knowing what doesn’t help can sincerely lead you to learning what does help.

I have also shared this because this is just a small portion of what losing someone to suicide does. This is the honest truth of what grief looks like. I recognise and admit that I have struggled so much with it. As I said, Brandon and I weren’t even close anymore. This is the pain that I feel from losing a dysfunctional sibling relationship. Do not think that you won’t leave people in agonising pain, no matter your relationship with them.

A further reason why I’ve written this is what I alluded to at the start – these are topics that people don’t like to talk about or hear about. But this is reality. These conversations are fucking triggering and upsetting. Hell, it’s taken a god damn lot of strength for me to write this. However, the more we elect to not talk about what’s wrong with the world, these social maladies will continue under the cloak of secrecy, the guise of accepting the status quo, and within the nonchalant notion that we can’t change things.

The final reason for why I’ve shared this is for my own personal growth and to voice some anger and dissatisfaction. I am so tired of the way the world operates. The abuse of power. The legitimisation of harmful actions in the name of greed. You don’t need to spend $490 (not an exaggeration, this is an actual amount) for 45 minutes at a psychiatrist’ office to ‘get better’. Being told that costly drugs are your only cure isn’t the singular answer. Not banking your hope for a tranquil mind on external sources should be a part of psych 101. It’s a hard fucking slog, and I get to say this from my ivory tower of white privilege. Likewise, my older brother won’t fit the stereotyped bullshit of a lowly sort destined for failure who succumbed to addiction. He wasn’t deprived of finances and destitute; he was extremely intelligent and had potential beyond belief. The ineptitude of the mental health system might fail us privileged ones, but the collateral damage is far greater than just us. Quite often those who are struggling the most do not have the financial stability to even contemplate these forms of ‘solutions’. It is a mental health system supported by greed and the foundations of neoliberalism. If we are forced to adhere to this approach – that the onus is always on the individual to better their personal situation – then use this to your advantage. Say fuck the system, I’ve got this with or without you. I am a strong human and I will carry myself through.

There are some ugly things being put on full display because of Covid19. But there are also some good things that you can't lose sight of. We might feel alone, either physically or mentally, but I promise you that you are not. Please get in touch if you need to talk and I will be there. Sometimes even a stranger can extend a kindness to you that you so desperately needed. This is a huge part of why I always say to be there for the people in your life. There is something so significant that loved ones can provide. Although, this is just the icing on the cake of what a gift your life is. You don’t need this affirmation and support from others because you’ve bloody well got this on your own. Albeit, it sure does help having someone care, so don’t forget that part when you’re given the opportunity to be kind to someone else. We are all part of a thriving organism called society that breathes and glistens on the basis of human connection and the human experience. It reaffirms that we are not alone. You are not alone, even when you feel as though you are.

That voice calling for calm or a cessation to the pain isn’t asking for the dark abyss; it’s asking you to stand up and fight the battle worth fighting. Your life is worth fighting for, even against an invisible enemy.

[allezyshirt]

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ont Xem thêm Marilyn Folz Mr President we know the dems Most of America loves you Rural America loves you because you have brought back jobs We can rebuild our small towns with some more help We need you We have your back TRUMP 2020 Doug Milliken We know you will provide the best possible protection for our great country Thank you Your doing the right thing and a great job of it Gina Mac Yes and the 15 in the US are reported to be concerned about lost luggage aka they are doing well and the hype surrounding this is being blown out of proportion Doing a great job Mr president Gregg W Jones I know you cannot read every comment but I still want to say that you and your Administration are doing a great job period Thank you for your leadership and for your service You sacrificed so much to be our President and you and your family has been in the target view of the Dems since your one Keep up the excellent work Sir This DAV is proud and thankful Shawn Stroh Bernie said you can’t predict when the virus will end but they have predicted when the world would end due to climate change 1000 times and were wrong every time TRUMP 2020 Firras Garada So are we going to ignore the CDC s warning today I m a doctor here in Michigan and believe the coronavirus is coming to wreak havoc in America Both for businesses and an overall health crisis Great job Mr President keep making this Country great The fact is just like the hurricanes and all the other emergencies we have had you have done your very best to take care of it and keep things at a minimal Through your Presidency you have absolutely done the best job possible in taking care of Americans And look at all the trolls on here Heather Lynn DeAnna President Trump you and your administration are excellent Nobody believes the liars on the other side This is a horrible disease that may cause harm but you have done your job Thank you Beth Jenks Thank you Mr President I don’t care what party what color young or old people we need to just believe Trump the CDC and let him make the decisions You better here me the Dems could have let that crap in here So don’t panic Trumps proved everything hes done on this Damn Dems wanted to let them all in Trump 2020 When you came to India we liked it very much But now after you leave there seems to be something deserted here Because my sister also lived there Good luck on reaching your country Rajkumar sahiba Raja Bhaiya State Genral Secretary LJP Uttar Pradesh INDIA Rem Rem Keep on doing what you do best running the country The dem debates tonight are a laughing stock A complete clown show LMAO They will always blame you It’s all they have but we know better they’re the do nothing dems just like you’ve said all along Kristin Valencia Aguiar Keep up the great work president Trump The Chinese government isn t being forthcoming and honest with this virus Put our best doctors and scientist on this to formulate a vaccine This looks like an orchestrated attack to bring our booming and prosperous economy to a halt Let s not let it happen Kimberley Reasor I trust you 2 do what you need 2 do You are doing a wonderful job in trying 2 keep this country which is should be your number one concern in both keeping us safe healthy Keep up the good work Trump2020 Travis Spada Not one death in the US What are the dems talking about Beat Trump that is their platform even if he made the right decision they are going to do the opposite Looks like an old folks home up there Tamara Stolzenthaler You are not communicating the truth You only care about stocks staying high so you can win the election Plus you need to be in quartentine after your travels David Brown I generally don t mind political gamesmanship but honestly this is the time to just come together and shut the borders till we get a handle on this before we end up like Italy Allen Stewart CV is a joke Spoke to a doctor who said it does not even compare to the Flu 30 000 affected in China So what There are 1 386 Billion people in China 20 30 cases in US 315 Million people in US Pure sensationalism Carol Hartford Howard You said it President Trump The DemoRATS complain criticize no matter what you do but I don’t see them coming up w any plan at all much less a better one IIn fact this is the party that supports open borders and sanctuary cities Hey Dems if you’re not part of the solution shut your pie hole stop the criticism Carol Hartford Howard You said it President Trump The DemoRATS complain criticize no matter what you do but I don’t see them coming up w any plan at all much less a better one IIn fact this is the party that supports open borders and sanctuary cities Hey Dems if you’re not part of the solution shut your pie hole stop the criticism Lauren Smith Nothing you do will please some of these people Just do the best you can most of us appreciate you and the efforts you make By what we have seen we have an idea of what you have to deal with to get anything done No one knows the shoes you walk in except you Trump2020 Judith Lacari I do not care about parties now my concern is the health and safety of US Citizens I trust you will add funding to the CDC and put additional medical staff to come up with a vaccine or preventive measures just in case the Corona virus spreads into the US Closing boarders is one measure we need medical prevention Kristie Newby Please consider an address to the nation to calm everyone down Everybody is panicking and the stock market shows their irrational fears A public address on what you are doing to protect us will reassure them Thank you for all that you do President Trump Donna Fell 8 200 people in the US died from the flu last year and millions fell ill The CDC told us to wash our hands stay away from those who are ill and that the flu is deadly and spreading Cody Buck So the CDC it’s basically saying that there is no solution for this coronavirus but to wash your hands several times a day and do not touch your face or nose And if you’re sick stay at home Period Damn all these new news updates give me anxiety I think I’m just going to stay away from people and enjoy my animals company Constance Williams The minute they announced Chelsea Clinton was on the board of WHO The World Health Organization Then Chuck Schumer said this administration wasn’t doing enough about the virus Joey Scott My daughter is a nurse and it’s not even a fear at their hospital 14 000 people have died in the United States from the flu this year is that a pandemic Is everyone running scared We’re all still working still living our daily lives and society I Xem thêm Paul Cochran Thank you President Trump but I see the Socialist Democrats and Biased Socialist Media turning this situation into another very UGLY ATTACK ON YOU I say stay strong and keep the heat on because scare tactics by the left will not work Stephanie Coleman People please This is just a cold on steroids Lysol has a list of pathogens it kills on the can Coronavirus is one of them This is not new Get a freaking grip If Trump cured cancer y’all would find something to complain about Steve Boyd Mr President I know you’re doing everything thing that can be done to protect the United States of America because you love the country The Dems lie I wish everyone had ears to hear them حسين عماد شنان I find it ironic that we have a drug pandemic in this country from drugs flooding this country through open borders yet the DEMS ARE DOING NOTHING TO HELP THIS I also find it interesting how they are pushing this flu causing panic They did this with the bird flu swine flu ebola virus etc and here we are during an election they must be running out of crap to blame you for Bonnie Kennington We have third world conditions in our Democratic run cities causing disease we have thousands of people dying from drugs we have thousands dying for lack of health care and we lose thousands to the flu every year even with vaccines think this new vi Xem thêm Wendy Clayton Hall You made great decisions closing the border and keeping Americans safe Keep on making good decisions and use your power of ignore with people who don’t agree with the good decisions you make for our country Trump2020 cant wait to vote Lauren Hartnett Thank you for cutting their budget funds last year and this year It should put us in a great position to beat this horrible virus Great job Vivian Warner The Dems will never like you their whole platform is based on hate Trump And they say conservatives are haters You can’t change the mind of someone running on passion and not facts David Rodriguez This country has a huge infrastructure of researchers physicians and professionals whose sole purpose is to protect Americans from situations like this There is little any one person even the president can do about it other than speak to the people Those who criticize the president are either ignorant or terribly misinformed or maybe both Carrie Crawford CDC needs to be held accountable for all the unsafe vaccines Please let Robert Kennedy Jr Start up the safety program to actually test vaccines Since 1986 they have not tested them 1out of 35 kids has Autism It’s not a coincidence vaccines sho Xem thêm Eutana Evans No matter what you say or do will never be acknowledged as being good for our country according to the Democrats They have their own agenda which is all about getting rid of you Period Keep up with what you are doing for us By the way I AM AN EX DEMOCRAT Jennifer Hastings So I have a family member currently in china and from what we ve been told everyone there is quarantined in their homes they are only allowed to leave to buy food and home supplies children are doing school from home online and they cost of flying in a Xem thêm Salam Raed You cut the funds on CDC to pay for the wall and now you blame the Dems Instead of stupid tweets try to find why medical face masks are out of stock almost everywhere Linda Sears The schizophrenia of the Dems First they say the President’s plan is DOA THEN they say he has no plan What it really is is the DEMS have no plan and no plan to have a plan except they don’t like Trump’s plan Bill Roudabush President Trump you’re first priority is to the safety of the American people You’re doing great Democrats and their Democrat activist journalists will condemn you know matter what you do Ignore them you have the majority of Americans behind you Cynthia Besson Fergusson We trust your doing an awesome job and protecting us We know you have our best interest at heart The Dems are just ruining it by whinning about everything and then we will believe nothing As Bill O Reilly noticed Biden just said 150 million people have been killed by gun violence Nobody says a word Insane Or did I hear it wrong My thoughts as a professional nurse He makes so many gAfs I really get worried for his mental well being Like him saying recently he was running for the US Senate or not identifying the correct name of a state he was in And many others My concern is does he have eArly dementia Voncile Stone The dems would much rather the virus take over the country if that made Trump look bad People dyeing means nithing to Schumer or Pelosi Trashing Trump is much more important they are truly mentially Ill Marilyn Demby Caulder You are doing a great job we don’t believe one word that comes out of the mouth of those lying Democrats the debate tonight was more like a circus They are scared of you that’s for sure and they better be afraid very afraid Trump 2020 Mike Perry The Democratic party actually loves the prospect of a pandemic that effectively destroys the economic prosperity of every country in the WORLD these people have NO limitations of who ever needs to Die for their agenda to be put into place and fo Xem thêm Michael Stovall On the Democrat Debate Stage tonight all the Circus Clowns said you President are not doing enough to protect the United States from the Coronavirus I am sure the Fake News Media will be repeating what the Debate Clowns said Jeremy Church It just occurred to me The fact that we don t live in a third world communist country where we are forced to work relentlessly for little to no pay That we have access to healthcare The fact that our government doesn t view us as subjects Kathy Doering Leyba LOVE YOU BIG D Dems need to stop using the COVID 19 to further their political gains Shameful Real Americans know how to help themselves Stop whining and get your house straight for a bumpy ride thru this potentially difficult journey Snowflakes Kay Chaney America Thanks You Mr President and the majority of it is very pleased with You as our Commander Chief We all are very aware of the Dems their fake media every one of their crooked schemes Where by they are nailing their own feet to the floor Laura Murphy Taylor Americans always know when you do the right thing by the level of outrage the Democrats have So if their faces are melting and their hair is in fire We know you did it right Janice Smith You can do no right in the Dems eyes but who cares Your Patriots have your back Jennifer Bishop And I don’t care if a DEMOCRAT’S post negative crap on my post Anyone that thinks the way Sander’s Boomer Obama Clinton and all them think is ok then there is definitely some screws missing BobDebra Lee Thank you Sir Thank you for the continued success off the wall and thank you for closing the gates to those coming in that could possibly be exposed Democrats are just really unhappy people They would crucify Jesus again if he were here Amazingly sad Frances Willden got to be 5 steps ahead the dems must be all on crack or your hitting to close to home or their pockets what both I do why ahead where does it hurt your ready to face it on meaning a storm comes flash lights generators if it dont work propane and m Xem thêm Matthew Perry Thank you President Trump for protecting our boarders and health The Dems will never give you a fair evaluation You do what is right for the American people and we all know it Richard Griswold By the way Mr President Rod Rosenstein’s sister Nancy Messonnier is trying to instill fear chaos with press releases to the public Scott Kimrey Unfortunately it only takes one self actualized individual who gets the chance to skirt quarantine and start infecting what is now a national and global community Odds are in favor of the virus spreading here and again unfortunately the Dems are sit Xem thêm Richard Shallenberg all americans know we at CDC have a handle on what we have been allowed too handle but just like WHO was a weel late on knowing nothing we were already ahead of them and china but the dems don’t care about world health they are a bunch of abortionists’ the more deaths the better they just want there money Rhonda Schneider Thank u Mr president if the dems had it their way we the american people would b suffering greatly they don’t care about us the lower hard working class like me needs someone to help us we can’t continue living with such low wages high price of living n expensive health care Lindy Frady The Dems keep fighting among themselves So much BS going on had to turn it off It s ok the more they talk the more votes we get People are coming to the light side daily They have lost there minds and it keeps getting worse No the lead candidate is a socialist Winning Trump 2020 Claire Fish Yes it is a boo hoo for Democrats because they didnt take the virus seriously They only care about trying to ruin Trump more than the people of this Country Congress voted against closing a part of the border It was the smart thing to do Allicyn Raymond Your the biggest reason I have faith this planet wont capsize into a big ball of fire into space Thank you for never letting the nay sayers break you down The dems and any other politician could learn a thing or two from your administration Thank you for your selfless service You got my vote for the rest of history please save our vaping industry as well please Kristofor Gullickson The Dems are just tryin’ to get the last bit of their investments from just before Obamacare It is likely any Republicans are not in Government anymore or sold their shares long ago Mary Schmidt Kern Steyer wants reparations for slavery for those who never experienced It Wtf the Republican Party was started to end slavery and somehow the dems are twisting it because red voters believe in making your own living and not depending on the government for handouts unless you really need it Uhhhg Carole Tewell what about the man you just appointed who knows absolutely nothing you can really pick them and the wonderful betsy devoss who also know nothing about education were her donations worth childrens education as long as you can fill a spot with one of your wealthy friends it doesnt matter you have to pay them back for their support Jerry Aggson Keep it up Mr President you’re doing a great job There’s only one thing more ignorant than a democrat poo pooing a good thing Someone voting for that democrat Never the less we love the job you are doing and couldn’t be more proud of the man that Xem thêm Eliz Ann Maybe you should reasure the American people that you are working with CDC because as usual the Dems are saying you are doing nothing about the corona virus William M LeBleu It doesn t matter what you do Mr President the media and the Democrats will try to twist it to try to make a negative out of it Just remember Sir when it comes to these clowns that is all they have to offer America a big NEGATIVE They have run Xem thêm Jill Lanpher Those who vote for Bernie Sanders are voting for socialism leading to communism think money grows on trees that student debt should be paid by tax payers support open borders and sanctuary cities free Medicare for all feel nothing is wrong with Xem thêm Curt Green Most of us know your level of commitment and appreciate it Wouldn’t even be surprised at all if the Dems manufactured yet another crisis simply to affect an election Wouldn’t be the first time they sacrificed American lives for their cause Desperate times call for desperate measures Go ahead shoot holes in it if you can but it doesn’t matter because even if it were true it will never be reported Vincent Anthony One sign that the Dems were serious about this is that they would not politicize the situation As it is they have positioned themselves for victory only as American bodies pile up DISGUSTING Kathy Ream Just saw the demo debate None of them would shut up when their time was done Birney wouldn’t shut up even when it was some one else turn It was a mess up there on stage I can’t imagine ANY of them as President They all have a plan but never say what it is Trump2020 Adam Lindley Dems just throw money at something to fix it Still not working Throw more money at it That s their way Trump doesn t give enough money and they throw him under the bus The democrat way Sandra Bates The dems are trying to use this now as a political tool We know you have a handle on this situation Please keep us informed Some of the media are trying to put fear into America Fake News Really Fake News and definitely biased news to say the least They don’t know how to report real news anymore Your administration is doing a great job Deslor Emberga Vanhees Why will American vote for Democratic they all ready show how they are in 3 years nothing they ve done but to Harass their own President it should be nothing but President Trump 2020 GoD Bless America in Jesus name we trust not the Democrat Atlas Holduup Just registered to vote for trump didnt like the iran situation but other then that hes proven himself worthy of presidency and I swore id never vote until a candidate presented himself worthy of my vote Michael Davis Every Demoncrat is a sore loser Most are clueless to the fact that the globalists want to control their very lives by tyrannical rule Trump is our last hope I for one have confidence in you and your Administration Mr President Also I am fed up with the Dems who would not be happy with any thing you do Thank goodness we the people know them well And if anyone out there is not sure just go look at the behavior of Nancy Pelosi and her dressed in white clan s behavior during our President s SOTU address That behavior Is the worst that I have EVER seen from elected leaders I felt terrible discomfort knowing that that behavior was being seen all over the world Just think about that Let that sink in people please God help this country if THOSE people ever make up the majority of our Leaders Carmelo Consiglio Trumps been cutting funding for the CDC since taking office If there’s not an outbreak in the USA it will be a miracle Hell today he’s trying to put a bunch of patients in a condemned building in the OC instead of a FEMA facility Maxx Alexander It’s ok nobody with a decent brain and a clue has missed the media being completely negative and dishonestly so No better President we could ever ask for than you Especially when times are challenging Christine Ward Roe I think the media isn’t helping by blowing this up in the news remember China delayed by 6 weeks and let the virus spread but the US has acted very quickly to contain it especially by Trump imposing travel restrictions and quarantines otherwise we would look like Italy but the dumbard Dems are upset with the his travel ban what the heck Trash Animal Wtf Wine Tasting Friends Vintage T Shirt

[historytaker]

King Versus King

Within the first quarter of the 14th century, it would be forgivable to let the king of England seem profoundly on top of the world. The setbacks of his father, Edward II, were crudely mended by his mother, Isabella.  England was swelling with military, political, and thereby economic success; So much so that the population had inflated to 4 million. Equally important to the crown, Edward II had a legitimate claim to the French crown. The Capetian dynasty was a long standing rival in European politics with the Plantagenets. The Plantagenets  out-bred and out-wed the Capetians, ultimately.  What’s more, the long time enemy of the English, the Scottish, had little affinity for their king, David II. To add to the seemingly charmed hand of state, when David II was struck in the head with an arrow and duly kidnapped by the English, the Scottish refused to pay a king’s ransom and had all but formally announced fealty to Edward II. This Plantagenet wore the crown of three kingdoms and ushered in an era of chivalry, fantasy, success, opulence and unrequited love for the dynasty overseeing an economic power that had heretofore been unprecedented in Christendom, save only for the early successes of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II. The king was experiencing the apogee of an age in which the old order was in solid control of the comings and goings of the world. Bishops preached in Latin. Indulgences could be paid. Wealth buffered concerns on Earth and evidently in Heaven. For, one could compel a monastery to pray for your soul with such fervency and continuity that one’s stay in purgatory would be short, and Heaven’s bliss obtained in short order. Wealth could be and was hoarded. The lord of the manor had no reason to ever assume a change in the order.

               So sustained was the monarchy in England, Edward II felt it not at all unreasonable to fashion himself a modern Arthur at Camelot. His was a kingdom of gentlemen, of knights, of righteous conviction and marshal prowess. He started the Order of the Garter and created a round table to emulate the notion that the king was first among equals. Indeed, the top of the mountain granted a glorious view. Surprisingly, the view did not grant observation of a great encroacher, indeed a devastator of many kingdoms.  In fact, this was a king in a hurry; one that intended on conquering more than England, but the world. His march may have started in the steppes of central Asia, but by 1348, some 20 years after taking the throne, Edward II England was besieged by a rival king, King Death.

               The army deployed by King Death was, of course, the plague. It is generally believed that it was transmitted by rodents carrying bubonic infested fleas.  The Mongols took their dead infested and lunged them into the city walls of the Black Sea city Caffa. From Caffa and the Genoese merchants who ported there, the disease spread. The contagion was swift. At first, and with devastating swiftness, the cities were eviscerated. The fecal matter of the fleas could be inhaled or the bites from the bugs were death sentences. If the diseases spread to the lungs, the death would take 4 agonizing days of fitful coughs. The blood-laced sputum surely spread to those near, and in its turn spread to whomever inhaled it.

               What could Edward III do in the face of such rumors of malady in his realm? At first, not much. There were murmurs of a pestilence in the world by sea-fairing traders. Their contacts in Italy described the condition, its velocity of transmission, and naturally assumptions on what devil-worshiping cult had summoned it.  There were even numbers suggesting the dead of Venice reached 100,000. Even so, it would not be until the king’s daughter succumbed to the illness in her turn.  The Infante Pedro of Castile was to marry Edward’s daughter, Joan. But by September 2, news had reached him that she was dead from the plague. And in keeping with the stoic nature of the king, he is reported to take the news by first saying, “It is as it is.” Naturally, in a rare moment of looking behind the curtain, we can prize from his correspondence with Alfonso XI a father in morning. He laments with a piety mixed with a familiar grief that Joan had “been sent ahead to heaven to reign among the choirs of virgins where she can intercede for our own offences before God himself.” He is quick to remark that Joan had been his dearest daughter and whom “we loved best of all for all her virtues demanded.”  To underscore the pang sorrow the king was enduring and to put a point to how bereft he was of a solution he states “No fellow human being could be surprised if we were inwardly desolated by the sting of this bitter grief for are human too.” Among kings, it is incredibly rare to hear such claims to human emotions.

               So what does a king do when wrecked from the inside over a new foe as this? He reaches out to the only people who can have answers for pestilence. Naturally this meant the Archbishop of Canterbury. He needed prayers especially in the southern regions of the kingdom where this seem to be emanating from.  Alas, the plague caught him too. There was no Archbishop of Canterbury to pray for the people of Kent.  And what a perturbation it must have been when men on horseback would come into the city or village speaking of apocalyptic devastations only to then find themselves one of the dozens, or hundreds, or thousands destined for the mass graves.

               Perhaps most jarring to the people, rich and poor, man and woman, young and old, was the remarkable speed at which it worked. People pieced together the transmission method soon enough that heart wrenching moments of furtive relationships occurred. Parents abandoning children, husbands abandoning wives, all watching from a distance the quick death but slow agony of those they loved.  A welsh poet Jeuan Gerthin explained what we would have noticed among those struck down with the disease, “ Woe is me of the shilling in the armpit; seething terrible wherever it may come, a head that gives pain and causes a loud cry, a burden carried beneath the arms, a painful angry knob, a white lump. It is of the form of an apple, like the head of an onion; a small boil which spares no one. Great is its seething like a burning cinder, a grievous thing of ashy colour…an ugly eruption. They are similar to the seeds of the black peas, broken fragments of brittle sea coal…a grievous ornament…the peelings of the cockle-weed, a black plague like halfpence, like berries.”

               All told, by the end of the plague, nearly half of England would be dead and buried hastily in graves. Recent excavations from the 1990’s shown just how fast and chaotic the scene must have been. Traditionally the buried were oriented toward Jerusalem to rise from their graves upon the return of Christ triumphant. The graves revealed a final statement among the buried, jaws slacked open, limbs pointed jaggedly, a frozen protestation of the inhumanity.  As the plague meandered through the realm, it upended more than health of very much alive people from just 4 days prior, it upended the conventions and structures of society.  A Franciscan monk in Ireland, John Clynn noted with a sobering view to his own reality: “ Seeing these many ills and that the whole world is encompassed by evil, waiting among the dead for death to come, I have committed to writing what I have truly heard …and so that the writing does not perish with the writer or the work fail with the workman I leave parchment for continuing it in case anyone should be alive in the future.” With the all too familiar tone of understatement in British writing, it followed with a new hand, “Here, it seems, the author died.”

Who do the people go to if the king cannot save them? Who do they direct their frustration and hate to if the benevolent God in heaven is not manifesting through the sermons of the priest? How do people receive Christ for that matter now that there are no more priest to speak on their behalf to God? There were no bakers to bake bread, no physics to make med, no priest to receive the dead. Out of the uncertainty of the moment, truly inspired homespun remedies made the rounds. Whether by trial and error or willing a remedy, one potion is passed down to us by a herbalist; giving us a glimpse at the heavy ask but thoughtful response to what was by then considered a disease due to miasma or noxious air. It logically implies then that good smelling things were a kind of remedy. “If it be a man take five cups of rue, and if it be a woman leave out the rue, five little blades of columbine, a great quantity of marigold flowers, an egg, fresh laid, and make a hole in one end and blow out all that is within, and lay it to the fire and roast it till ground to powder but do not burn it, and take a good quantity of treacle and brew all these herbs with good ale but do not strain them – and make the sick drink it for three evenings and mornings. If they hold it in their stomach, they shall have life.”

               The booming 4 million population at the outset of the plague were still 90% agrarian. Among those who worked the land, few actually owned their parcel. And increasingly the population was fighting for a smaller and smaller share of land to fashion subsistence for themselves and their families. The plague, in some respects served as a pressure valve. But the correction was too sudden to accommodate the economic structure of England.

               The homes of the people, largely field laborers, lived in modest lime-washed structures made of wood felled from the local forest, with dirt floors. To add to the ambiance of the abode, the owners would have strewn loose straw on the ground mostly to collect the refuse of the fields and manure on their feet. The toiling masses did not have much to begin with. The world around them was hard enough before the plague, but with the plague came a psychological and physical damage that could scarcely be comprehended. Whole villages died. Naturally, the economy collapsed. Out of this collapse came the evolution of manorial economics to cash economics.  It would no longer due for the workers to simply work for a subsistence and get whatever graces the lord granted. Work needed to be done, the obligations of the lord still needed to be met, but he now had a shortage in labor. His laborers were demanding, with a level of self awareness scarcely granted to them, that the new economic reality was on the worker’s side now.

               Out of the plague did spur an opportunity for toiling folk to rise out of poverties oblivion. It was not fast, nor necessarily in one life-time. Sometimes it took generations, but generations as opposed to never at all, the working poor did have a chance. And it was this seeming conspiracy of the cosmos to upend all the structures that held the people together, their faith in the government, their financial inability to resist the rules or rulers, the unquestioning certainty on matters of God, death, hell and heaven by the priesthood, all went out the window. From the necessity of laypeople having to fill roles that were utterly foreign to their station came a new sense of capability to people who never otherwise would have ventured to change. Unwritten rules governing the village went to the wayside as power was exercised often by those who were in a position to exploit it. Meanwhile, Edward III was aging and his son and heir apparent, Edward the Black Prince, died leaving the succession in untenable uncertainty.

               Inevitably the old king died and that left government in the hands of a 10 year old, Richard II. Grant it, everyone that was anyone knew that power ultimately laid in the hands of John of Gaunt, Richard’s uncle and protector.  In fact, you might compare John of Gaunt to any of our modern day monopolist or business giants like Jeff Bezos. His wealth and holdings and influence could rival a king’s and in many cases did. Even so, the Lancaster stayed behind the scenes and guided the young Plantagenet through his early years.  Richard took to the role of king rather quickly, it seemed. His vows and all the mystique surrounding the trappings of monarchy went to his head. In the early years of his boyhood, perhaps with the structure of fixers behind the scenes, it proved useful and life saving. In time it would be his undoing. Nonetheless, the boy regent was pitted against one of the biggest moments in his career when, at last, a popular uprising threatened to upend government.

               If, as John Wycliffe supposed, people could find Christ in their own way free from the needs of the priesthood, this supposition unfettered the people from strict forms of social control or engineering. For as it was, finding Christ and following him meant a steady hand towards an egalitarian model. What concessions were made in the in-between years of the start of the plague and Richard’s reign were in-part at risk by the policies enacted by John of Gaunt. The toiling folk had definitively climbed the social ladder into the ranks of yeomen. They were solidly middle class, to borrow a later colloquialism.  By their estimation the government was keeping them suppressed and squeezing them for revenues they earned no thanks to the laxed reactions of government.  So it was no surprise that what began first as tax dodging by the villagers by shrinking into the forest soon bloomed into open hostility at the tax collectors or strongmen the king or lord would send. The usual deferential English country yokels were becoming intransigent. Dodging taxes soon became the least of it. The village leaders started violent reactions in the form of collecting the heads of those attempting to collect dues. The so-called Peasants revolt began this way. Not with a written manifesto, but with the gumption of survivors, social climbers, and increasingly self-indoctrinated Christians who took for themselves what bits they could of the point of Christ.

               The leaders, in part self ascribed and in others acclaimed to, were primarily Watt Tyler and John Ball. Who was Watt Tyler? Tyler was a charismatic man who was imprisoned for not having the money to buy his manumission. In the New Jerusalem being created in real-time, who could be a better general for this lot of revolters in the service of God and King Richard? The imprisoned Watt Tyler. John Ball for his part understood the egalitarian nature of Christ message. Our riches were not for this world but for our home in heaven. It followed then that the ostentatious life of the bishops was something to disdain and use as proof that these were not shepherds of men for Christ, but shepherds of evil and wickedness for earthly possessions. John Ball was the only bishop the people would need. He was one of them and would remain so. The movement was not to overthrow the king. Instead, with a fatal sense of deference for power and monarchy, the movement sought to save the king from his uncle and all bad advisors surrounding him. They, naturally, would save the king and advise him.

               The conflagration congregation indeed set fire to Gaunt’s holdings.  Richard beheld a terrible site. The skyline of London was ember red in the evening the group made it to the city gates. The leverage was on the side of the “peasants,” but they fully went the whole way. To his credit, Richard agrees at the age of 14 to ride out to meet them. Tyler asks and evidently receives in word the concessions of ostensibly a new kingdom with a Magna Carta written and affirmed for the common people. The overreaching by such low born and the ability to get a king to capitulate was evidently enough to drive one of the king’s retainers mad. Watt Tyler was sliced down and murdered on the spot.

               In a glorious sense of theatrics and prudent wherewithal, to allay the fears and ire of the crowd Richard rides out to them in a life-saving vague claim, “You shall have no captain but me.” It did the trick and bought the king and the other frightened aristocrats time to cut down the people one by one. The devastation was total. Upon retrieving the upperhand, when asked again by impertinent lowborn to be received as a king for them, Richard remarks with Plantagenet fury “You wretches, detestable on land and sea; you who seek equality with lords are unworthy to live. Give this message to your colleagues. Rustics you were and rustics you are still: you will remain in bondage not as before but incomparably harsher. For as long as we live we will strive to suppress you, and your misery will be an example in the eyes of posterity. However we will spare your lives in you remain faithful. Choose now which course you want to follow.”

               Evidently it worked. Richard was able to stymie the ferocity of a new social order ready to explode. Regardless if the upstarts were successful or unsuccessful, things had changed. While the plague took a century to run its course, and the slow death rattles of a dying dynasty took 100 years to finalize, and while it took 100 years for a modern sense of Englishness to take hold geographically as well as politically, the plague did bookend an epoch in the organization of labor, ideas, currency, and governance. And as with all moments of crisis and collapse, a germ of creativity can sprout into the first tree within a mighty forest of new possibilities. King Death then was the equalizer. Ultimately, it was that equality and need for it that had been festering for years before Edward’s reign even. It just took a different king to make the way and speed up the process, in this case, by necessity.

[misswilma]

internet questions. | 029

28.05.2020 | 0.7k words

— why was victorian society obsessed with death?

The Victorians are known for their prudish and repressed behavior. But few are aware of their almost fanatical obsession with death. And no one was ... Modern society has a tendency to deal with death in more medical terms. [UC Berkeley] 

     IN 1859, Prince Albert fell ill with stomach cramps. Two years later, on 14 December 1861, he died (Wikipedia). Queen Victoria of England, his wife, was overwhelmed with grief, and for obvious reasons. They had been married for forty years and by all accounts, the marriage was happy. After her husband’s death, she went into a state of mourning and wore black until her own death in 1901 (Psychology Today, 2018). Every morning, the servants laid out Albert’s clothes, brought out hot water for his shaving cup, and the glass from which he took his last dose of medicine stayed by his bedside. Everything was laid out as if Prince Albert was still alive, about to use it all (UC Berkeley, 2000).

This behaviour would probably be seen as weird or odd in today’s society but mourning during the Victorian era was extremely important in order to honour the deceased. In fact, death was important to the Victorians, to the point that it might be an obsession (UC Berkeley, 2000) (Psychology Today, 2018).

surrounded by death In Victorian England, death was constantly part of people’s lives. The average age of death for a middle-class man was forty-five, for a workman and labourer cut that age by half. Children were lucky if they survived to their fifth birthday (The British Library, 2009). Because of the high mortality rate, people began to plan their own funeral from a young age, so for when their time comes, there is “no ambiguity as to what the person wanted or what was expected of the family.” (Psychology Today, 2018).

At the same time as the Victorian people were planning their funeral, they had a fear of being buried alive. And for good reason as this was common at the time. However, they had a solution to that (Psychology Today, 2018). The “safety coffin” or “security coffin” was invented to alert the funeral-goers that the person buried was still alive, using a bell with a wire attached to the buried’s hand (Smithsonian Magazine, 2018).

Even though there was a fear of being buried alive, businesses like coffin-makers, embalmers and gravediggers, were blooming (Psychology Today, 2018).

victorian mourning There was etiquette for how a person should behave and dress after the death of a relative, and they were many and complicated (Psychology Today, 2018).

Queen Victoria, as already stated, went into “deep mourning” after the death of her husband. In an article on Psychology Today, Marilyn A. Mendoza explains that there are three mourning periods: deep mourning (also known as full mourning), second mourning, and half-mourning.

Alison Petch, a researcher for The Other Within, explains in her article “English Funeral and mourning clothing”, “deep mourning” is shown through a person wearing black clothing. After a certain period of time, the person would introduce other dark colours (purple, dark green, etc.). This state is called “half-mourning”. 

Depending on the relationship between the person alive and the deceased, the length of time one should mourn could vary. After the death of her husband, a wife was expected to mourn for two yours (Psychology Today, 2018).

memento mori: “remember that you must die” Memento mori is Latin for “remember that you must die”. Although it did not originate during the Victorian era, the Victorians fascination with death seems to reflect this phrase. Jewellery with a lock of the deceased’s hair was a popular way to immortalise the family member, as well as death masks, and, most notably, the practise of post-mortem photography (Digital Commons, North Georgia, 2016).

In the mid-1800s photography increased in popularity, and as well, in affordability. The first a successful form of photography, daguerreotype, was, in the beginning, a small, highly detailed picture on polished silver and was seen as a luxury. But has more photographers established themselves and cheaper material, like thin metal or glass, were used instead, the price for a photograph fell (BBC News, 2016).

This is where photographing dead family members come in. In combination with the Victorians fascination with death and the increased popularity of photography, post-mortem photography was born. The photographs were often taken with the family surrounding the dead, giving the appearance of the person still being alive or deep slumber. This type of photography became popular for infants and children due to nurseries being plagued by fatal diseases like measles, diphtheria, scarlet fever, rubella. As Bethan Bell writes, “it was the last chance to have a permanent likeness of a beloved child.” (BBC News, 2016).

[transhumanitynet]

Trends in Regenerative Medicine

This is just a taste of what is out there.  A quick snippet of a few of the myriad trends that are coalescing toward a regenerative medicine movement that will transform the world.  Hopefully they provide some useful insight into where we are headed and how we are getting there.  I concocted this article recently as a writing sample for a job.  We will see whether or not I get it but no reason not to let everyone else enjoy the efforts as well.

BioMedical Advances – The future of keeping you healthy.

  By – Matthew Lehmitz

  Imagine regrowing an entire limb or organ using nothing but a handful of your own existing cells.  Consider the possibility of increasing muscle mass simply by injection.  

  We live in an age where machines and living things are ever more closely connected and where bioengineering is looking ever more like classical engineering.

  In march 2020 more than 112,000 people in the United States alone were waiting for organ transplants.  This far outstrips organ donations rates which for all of 2019 stood at 19,267. 

  What if we could cut that number to zero and reduce the wait time from years to months to days or even hours?

  This and more is the promise of modern and future bioengineering technology.  Let us explore more of what life might bring us and what we can bring to life.

  The famous quote from the six million dollar man goes “We can rebuild him, we have the technology”.  This has never been more true.  

  Not only can we now treat damage and slow the progression of time and illness but we have the capability to begin to rebuild and even improve the human body.  

  We can produce new organs or regrow limbs.  We can make new skin or alter the very DNA sequences that underlie our basic functioning.  

  In the future we can end aging and make our bodies even more resistant to disease and damage preventing harm in the first place.    

  3d bioprinting:

  One of the most interesting areas at this time is a field called 3D bioprinting.  

  We’ve all heard or read about 3d printing and the amazing things it can produce in plastic.  Whether you want a model of the USS Enterprise or a new steering wheel for your car it can save a lot of potential time and money.

  This technology is expanding rapidly.  By the year 2022 spending on 3D printers alone is expected to exceed 5.3 Billion USD annually.  

  So what if we converted the printer to create things not of plastic but of cells?  

  This is the question that is answered by the 3D bioprinting revolution.  

  Rather than rely on human donors for transplant organs we can simply turn on a machine primed with cells from the person needing a transplant and let it print away.  

  Of course not all organs are flat and so a biocompatible gel or soft material is used to form a scaffold on which to print.  

These prints can be finished in a matter of days or even less with some bone printing systems able to complete their tasks in as little as two hours.  

  Rejection has long been a problem with transplants.  Acute rejection, where the body rejects the new organ and attacks it as a foreign body,  occurs in up to 30 percent of cases for liver and as high as 20 percent for kidney transplants.

  A huge advantage of using organ printing is that it avoids the issue of rejection by using the patients’ own cells.  Since they are already accepted by the patients’ immune system they are very unlikely to be targeted as foreign bodies.

  Costs for medical procedures are quite high in the United States with Medicare spending exceeding 3.4 Billion annually for Kidney Transplants.  

  3D printing will bring these costs down significantly.  Not only will it be cheaper and easier to find and safely transplant the organs but the technology is cheap as well.

  Many quality 3D printers have fallen below the 300 USD price point.  We can expect to see the 170,000 USD price point of professional bioprinters fall quickly as we have seen with its sibling technology.

  Limb Regeneration:

  How hard would it be to live without a finger?  Without a hand?  Even an entire arm?  Life would certainly be very difficult.  Living with the loss of a limb is a challenge that faces more than 2.1 million Americans every day.  Approximately 400 amputations are performed nationwide on an average day.

  Most people currently use some kind of mechanical prosthesis to provide a limited replacement for the lost limb.  This may soon be changing however, as regrowing limbs becomes more feasible.  

  There are many creatures in nature that regrow lost parts.  It turns out that humans are not substantially different.  

  Studies have shown that babies can regenerate fingertips when they are young and prenatal humans can regrow entire limbs in the womb.  

  This fits with our own evolutionary history as we see a variety of reptiles do this as do some amphibians.  

  We can trace specific gene activation in mammals called lin28a.  This specific gene was found by George Daley and his team at Harvard Medical to result in significant tissue regeneration in mice.

  This only occurred however, when the gene was prevented from switching off and only when the mice were young.   

  So humans have this ability to regenerate and it can be found in other mammals.  It is simply one of the many genes that gets switched off as we age.  What can we do to reactivate it or keep it from leaving us in the first place?

  One amazing solution may be the development of a powder which can be rubbed onto damaged limbs which help them regrow.  While the studies on this have been limited some individuals have seen healthier and more complete limb repair than was otherwise expected.

  Stem cells seem like a strong approach.  They already are pluripotent which means that these cells can be induced to grow into any cell that is needed.  With the right inducement stem cells could be made to grow any organ or tissue in the body.  

  Future stem cell applications could enable the regrowth of an entire arm or leg.  

  Ending Aging:

  No health concern is as serious or omnipresent as aging.  It is the disease that every human is born with and which will eventually claim every person if nothing else does first.

  The plague of aging has followed humanity throughout its entire existence but that is beginning to change.  

Imagine a situation where humans live not just much longer lives but also much healthier ones where aging is a controlled condition or overcome entirely.  

  Many current research trends in gerontology, the study of aging, present a tantalizing perspective suggesting this isn’t just possible but that we can make great strides in this area.

  Genetic modification has become ever more achievable.  Since the development of CRISPr Cas-9 protocols the ability to accurately and reliably alter genomes has been greatly improved.  

  Genes are spectacular things that play such a key role in every facet of our lives that any ability to alter them can have amazing effects.

  A few genes have already been identified as having strong connections with aging.  

  One of them called AAV9-TERT is a gene tied to the production of telomerase.  

  Telomerase is a chemical that is responsible for managing the length of telomeres.  ‘Caps’ of a sort on the end of genetic sequences.  

  As we age our telomeres become shorter and can lead to genetic damage and decrease cellular functioning.  Increasing the length and safety of these coverings can help reduce effective biological age.

  This approach has been reported to improve the lifespan of mice by as much as thirty percent.  

  Work in the area of senolytics is very exciting.  Senolytics is the study of ways we can remove senescent cells from the body.  

  Senescent cells are those that are working poorly or not at all.  They take up resources and can be detrimental to nearby cells. 

  Senolytic therapies endeavor to remove these cells while leaving healthy tissue undamaged and free of their negative influence.

  Adding senolytic approaches to gene therapies has seen lifespans of mice increased by as much as 36 percent.

  Conclusion:

  Through constant effort and improvement of our experience and techniques we will continue to live longer and healthier lives.

  We will grow and harvest new and healthy organs, edit our genes to better serve our needs, live long and healthy lives.

  These will all have powerful impacts on society and one of the most significant adjustments that will have to be made across all sectors is how to deal with this.

  The health care sector will see huge shifts and disruption in its market as demand for these new treatments increases while more traditional treatments and approaches fall away.

  There is a massive business opportunity in this as a result and many new startups are moving into the anti-aging sector.  They will be at the forefront of next phase developments and will not only profit from the changing markets but provide great profit to humankind.

  Society will also see innovation racing ahead as we learn to deal with a whole new paradigm for generations, education, experience, sports and all other facets of human striving.  It may be difficult but will ultimately see us become stronger as friends and as people for the effort.  

Trends in Regenerative Medicine was originally published on transhumanity.net

[cannabisrefugee-esq]

(via A "Rational Suicide" Note. Ft. Anne Örtegren.)

November 9, 2019

This is a “suicide” note left by a ME/CFS sufferer who sought and found relief from her suffering via legal, medically assisted suicide.  She says this manifesto took her months to write, which I do not doubt a bit: it is long, detailed and polished and was written when she was feeling terrible.  She wrote it with the intent to describe her almost indescribable pain and experience, and to convince others to take action on behalf of ME/CFS sufferers, both of which are lofty communication goals when anyone is seriously ill.

Describing and convincing have been my most impossible endeavors since I’ve been seriously ill myself and I think I have mostly failed, judging by others’ reactions to everything I’ve managed to gather the physical and emotional grit to attempt to communicate: that I am seriously, hopelessly ill with an incurable, progressive disease, that there is no bottom to how bad this can get, and it matters not what anyone thinks about it.  Some things are just true regardless of whether anyone believes it.

In this note, ME/CFS patient Anne Örtegren describes symptoms and dilemmas I have experienced myself and she foresees logical outcomes to her predicament, something sick people and especially sick women are never allowed to do because catastrophization. For example, she knows that her heightened sensitivity to light and sound will make treatment or recovery in a hospital setting impossible where the standard of care in that environment requires constant activity and interruptions, and provides no privacy and no escape from the harsh industrial lighting, interrogations by (allegedly) well meaning staff and the general hustle and bustle of capitalistic money making on the backs and bodies of sick and dying people.

That is but one example of a sick person making informed prognostications regarding likely outcomes of the things other people want to do to us, and as someone who shares these sensitivities to light and sound (and therefore an aversion to hospital settings) as but one example of our shared experience of being seriously ill, I appreciated her spelling it out.  I also feel extremely sad that she had to, and furious that no one who allegedly cared about her wellbeing including medical professionals who should be fucking sensitive to the actual needs of real patients could make the leap themselves.  There are many such examples in this letter.

See for yourselves, and understand that as illuminating and raw as this letter is, it’s also been edited by the publisher and a so-called suicide prevention expert because the bottom line everywhere appears to be that there is no such thing as rational suicide or euthanasia because well people and people who make money off of the long-term sick and dying say so.  And because living in this capitalistic, patriarchal nightmare is so hideous for so many people that “suicide contagion” exists, where just knowing that someone, somewhere had whatever it took to end themselves is likely to cause untold numbers of happy, healthy consumers with bright futures to do the same damn thing.  Yeah that’s it, let’s keep telling ourselves that.

The letter as published is reprinted below.  The unedited letter supposedly exists online somewhere if anyone cares to look and has the energy to figure out how and where the edited version differs from the original.  Comments are open below.

Farewell – A Last Post from Anne Örtegren

Nobody can say that I didn’t put up enough of a fight.

For 16 years I have battled increasingly severe ME/CFS. My condition has steadily deteriorated and new additional medical problems have regularly appeared, making it ever more difficult to endure and make it through the day (and night).

Throughout this time, I have invested almost every bit of my tiny energy in the fight for treatment for us ME/CFS patients. Severely ill, I have advocated from my bedroom for research and establishment of biomedical ME/CFS clinics to get us proper health care. All the while, I have worked hard to find something which would improve my own health. I have researched all possible treatment options, got in contact with international experts and methodically tried out every medication, supplement and regimen suggested.

Sadly, for all the work done, we still don’t have adequately sized specialized biomedical care for ME/CFS patients here in Stockholm, Sweden – or hardly anywhere on the planet. We still don’t have in-patient hospital units adapted to the needs of the severely ill ME/CFS patients. Funding levels for biomedical ME/CFS research remain ridiculously low in all countries and the erroneous psychosocial model which has caused me and others so much harm is still making headway.

And sadly, for me personally things have gone from bad to worse to unbearable. I am now mostly bedbound and constantly tortured by ME/CFS symptoms. I also suffer greatly from a number of additional medical problems, the most severe being a systematic hyper-reactivity in the form of burning skin combined with an immunological/allergic reaction. This is triggered by so many things that it has become impossible to create an adapted environment. Some of you have followed my struggle to find clothes and bed linen I can tolerate. Lately, I am simply running out. I no longer have clothes I can wear without my skin “burning up” and my body going into an allergic state.

This means I no longer see a way out from this solitary ME/CFS prison and its constant torture. I can no longer even do damage control, and my body is at the end of its rope. Therefore, I have gone through a long and thorough process involving several medical assessments to be able to choose a peaceful way out: I have received a preliminary green light for accompanied suicide through a clinic in Switzerland.

When you read this I am at rest, free from suffering at last. I have written this post to explain why I had to take this drastic step. Many ME/CFS patients have found it necessary to make the same decision, and I want to speak up for us, as I think my reasons may be similar to those of many others with the same sad destiny.

These reasons can be summed up in three headers: unbearable suffering; no realistic way out of the suffering; and the lack of a safety net, meaning potential colossal increase in suffering when the next setback or medical incident occurs.

Important note Before I write more about these reasons, I want to stress something important. Depression is not the cause of my choice. Though I have been suffering massively for many years, I am not depressed. I still have all my will and my motivation. I still laugh and see the funny side of things, I still enjoy doing whatever small activities I can manage. I am still hugely interested in the world around me – my loved ones and all that goes on in their lives, the society, the world (what is happening in human rights issues? how can we solve the climate change crisis?) During these 16 years, I have never felt any lack of motivation.

On the contrary, I have consistently fought for solutions with the goal to get myself better and help all ME/CFS patients get better. There are so many things I want to do, I have a lot to live for. If I could only regain some functioning, quieten down the torture a bit and be able to tolerate clothes and a normal environment, I have such a long list of things I would love to do with my life!

Three main reasons So depression is not the reason for my decision to terminate my life. The reasons are the following:

1. Unbearable suffering Many severely ill ME/CFS patients are hovering at the border of unbearable suffering. We are constantly plagued by intense symptoms, we endure high-impact every-minute physical suffering 24 hours a day, year after year. I see it as a prison sentence with torture. I am homebound and mostly bedbound – there is the prison. I constantly suffer from excruciating symptoms: The worst flu you ever had. Sore throat, bronchi hurting with every breath. Complete exhaustion, almost zero energy, a body that weighs a tonne and sometimes won’t even move. Muscle weakness, dizziness, great difficulties standing up. Sensory overload causing severe suffering from the brain and nervous system. Massive pain in muscles, painful inflammations in muscle attachments. Intensely burning skin. A feeling of having been run over by a bus, twice, with every cell screaming. This has got to be called torture.

It would be easier to handle if there were breaks, breathing spaces. But with severe ME/CFS there is no minute during the day when one is comfortable. My body is a war zone with constant firing attacks. There is no rest, no respite. Every move of every day is a mountain-climb. Every night is a challenge, since there is no easy sleep to rescue me from the torture. I always just have to try to get through the night. And then get through the next day.

It would also be easier if there were distractions. Like many patients with severe ME/CFS I am unable to listen to music, radio, podcasts or audio books, or to watch TV. I can only read for short bouts of time, and use the computer for even shorter moments. I am too ill to manage more than rare visits or phone calls from my family and friends, and sadly unable to live with someone. This solitary confinement aspect of ME/CFS is devastating and it is understandable that ME/CFS has been described as the “living death disease”.

For me personally, the situation has turned into an emergency not least due to my horrific symptom of burning skin linked to immunological/allergic reactions. This appeared six years into my ME/CFS, when I was struck by what seemed like a complete collapse of the bodily systems controlling immune system, allergic pathways, temperature control, skin and peripheral nerves. I had long had trouble with urticaria, hyperreactive skin and allergies, but at this point a violent reaction occurred and my skin completely lost tolerance. I started having massively burning skin, severe urticaria and constant cold sweats and shivers (these reactions reminded me of the first stages of the anaphylactic shock I once had, then due to heat allergy).

Since then, for ten long years, my skin has been burning. It is an intense pain. I have been unable to tolerate almost all kinds of clothes and bed linen as well as heat, sun, chemicals and other everyday things. These all trigger the burning skin and the freezing/shivering reaction into a state of extreme pain and suffering. Imagine being badly sunburnt and then being forced to live under a constant scalding sun – no relief in sight.

At first I managed to find a certain textile fabric which I could tolerate, but then this went out of production, and in spite of years of negotiations with the textile industry it has, strangely, proven impossible to recreate that specific weave. This has meant that as my clothes have been wearing out, I have been approaching the point where I will no longer have clothes and bed linen that are tolerable to my skin. It has also become increasingly difficult to adapt the rest of my living environment so as to not trigger the reaction and worsen the symptoms. Now that I am running out of clothes and sheets, ahead of me has lain a situation with constant burning skin and an allergic state of shivering/cold sweats and massive suffering. This would have been absolutely unbearable.

For 16 years I have had to manage an ever-increasing load of suffering and problems. They now add up to a situation which is simply no longer sustainable.

2. No realistic way out of the suffering A very important factor is the lack of realistic hope for relief in the future. It is possible for a person to bear a lot of suffering, as long as it is time-limited. But the combination of massive suffering and a lack of rational hope for remission or recovery is devastating.

Think about the temporary agony of a violent case of gastric flu. Picture how you are feeling those horrible days when you are lying on the bathroom floor between attacks of diarrhoea and vomiting. This is something we all have to live through at times, but we know it will be over in a few days. If someone told you at that point: “you will have to live with this for the rest of your life”, I am sure you would agree that it wouldn’t feel feasible. It is unimaginable to cope with a whole life with the body in that insufferable state every day, year after year. The level of unbearableness in severe ME/CFS is the same.

If I knew there was relief on the horizon, it would be possible to endure severe ME/CFS and all the additional medical problems, even for a long time, I think. The point is that there has to be a limit, the suffering must not feel endless.

One vital aspect here is of course that patients need to feel that the ME/CFS field is being taken forward. Sadly, we haven’t been granted this feeling – see my previous blogs relating to this here and here.

Another imperative issue is the drug intolerance that I and many others with ME/CFS suffer from. I have tried every possible treatment, but most of them have just given me side-effects, many of which have been irreversible. My stomach has become increasingly dysfunctional, so for the past few years any new drugs have caused immediate diarrhoea. One supplement triggered massive inflammation in my entire urinary tract, which has since persisted. The list of such occurrences of major deterioration caused by different drugs/treatments is long, and with time my reactions have become increasingly violent. I now have to conclude that my sensitivity to medication is so severe that realistically it is very hard for me to tolerate drugs or supplements.

This has two crucial meanings for many of us severely ill ME/CFS patients: There is no way of relieving our symptoms. And even if treatments appear in the future, with our sensitivity of medication any drug will carry a great risk of irreversible side-effects producing even more suffering. This means that even in the case of a real effort finally being made to bring biomedical research into ME/CFS up to levels on par with that of other diseases, and possible treatments being made accessible, for some of us it is unlikely that we would be able to benefit. Considering our extreme sensitivity to medication, one could say it’s hard to have realistic hope of recovery or relief for us.

In the past couple of years I, being desperate, have challenged the massive side-effect risk and tried one of the treatments being researched in regards to ME/CFS. But I received it late in the disease process, and it was a gamble. I needed it to have an almost miraculous effect: a quick positive response which eliminated many symptoms – most of all I needed it to stop my skin from burning and reacting, so I could tolerate the clothes and bed linen produced today. I have been quickly running out of clothes and sheets, so I was gambling with high odds for a quick and extensive response. Sadly, I wasn’t a responder. I have also tried medication for Mast Cell Activation Disorder and a low-histamine diet, but my burning skin hasn’t abated. Since I am now running out of clothes and sheets, all that was before me was constant burning hell.

3. The lack of a safety net, meaning potential colossal increase in suffering when the next setback or medical incident occurs The third factor is the insight that the risk for further deterioration and increased suffering is high.

On top of the nearly unbearable symptoms it is very likely that in the future things will get even worse. An example in my case could be my back and neck pain. I would need to strengthen muscles to prevent them from getting worse. But the characteristic symptom of Post-Exertional Malaise (PEM) when I attempt even small activities, is hugely problematic.

Whenever we try to ignore the PEM issue and push through, we immediately crash and become much sicker. We might go from being able to at least get up and eat, to being completely bedbound, until the PEM has subsided. Sometimes, it doesn’t subside, and we find ourselves irreversibly deteriorated, at a new, even lower baseline level, with no way of improving.

PEM is not something that you can work around.

For me, new medical complications also continue to arise, and I have no way of amending them. I already need surgery for one existing problem, and it is likely that it will be needed for other issues in the future, but surgery or hospital care is not feasible for several reasons:

One is that my body seems to lack repairing mechanisms. Previous biopsies have not healed properly, so my doctor is doubtful about my ability to recover after surgery.

Another, more general and hugely critical, is that with severe ME/CFS it is impossible to tolerate normal hospital care. For ME/CFS patients the sensory overload problem and the extremely low energy levels mean that a normal hospital environment causes major deterioration. The sensory input that comes with shared rooms, people coming and going, bright lights, noise, etc, escalates our disease. We are already in such fragile states that a push in the wrong direction is catastrophic. For me, with my burning skin issue, there is also the issue of not tolerating the mattresses, pillows, textile fabrics, etc used in a hospital.

Just imagine the effects of a hospital stay for me: It would trigger my already severe ME/CFS into new depths – likely I would become completely bedbound and unable to tolerate any light or noise. The skin hyperreactivity would, within a few hours, trigger my body into an insufferable state of burning skin and agonizing immune-allergic reactions, which would then be impossible to reverse. My family, my doctor and I agree: I must never be admitted to a hospital, since there is no end to how much worse that would make me.

Many ME/CFS patients have experienced irreversible deterioration due to hospitalization. We also know that the understanding of ME/CFS is extremely low or non-existent in most hospitals, and we hear about ME/CFS patients being forced into environments or activities which make them much worse. I am aware of only two places in the world with specially adjusted hospital units for severe ME/CFS, Oslo, Norway, and Gold Coast, Australia. We would need such units in every city around the globe.

It is extreme to be this severely ill, have so many medical complications arise continually and know this: There is no feasible access to hospital care for me. There are no tolerable medications to use when things get worse or other medical problems set in. As a severely ill ME/CFS patient I have no safety net at all. There is simply no end to how bad things can get with severe ME/CFS.

Coping skills – important but not enough I realize that when people hear about my decision to terminate my life, they will wonder about my coping skills. I have written about this before and I want to mention the issue here too:

While it was extremely hard at the beginning to accept chronic illness, I have over the years developed a large degree of acceptance and pretty good coping skills. I have learnt to accept tight limits and appreciate small qualities of life. I have learnt to cope with massive amounts of pain and suffering and still find bright spots. With the level of acceptance I have come to now, I would have been content even with relatively small improvements and a very limited life. If, hypothetically, the physical suffering could be taken out of the equation, I would have been able to live contentedly even though my life continued to be restricted to my small apartment and include very little activity. Unlike most people I could find such a tiny life bearable and even happy. But I am not able to cope with these high levels of constant physical suffering.

In short, to sum up my level of acceptance as well as my limit: I can take the prison and the extreme limitations – but I can no longer take the torture. And I cannot live with clothes that constantly trigger my burning skin.

Not alone – and not a rash decision In spite of being unable to see friends or family for more than rare and brief visits, and in spite of having limited capacity for phone conversations, I still have a circle of loved ones. My friends and family all understand my current situation and they accept and support my choice. While they do not want me to leave, they also do not want me to suffer anymore.

This is not a rash decision. It has been processed for many years, in my head, in conversations with family and friends, in discussion with one of my doctors, and a few years ago in the long procedure of requesting accompanied suicide. The clinic in Switzerland requires an extensive process to ensure that the patient is chronically ill, lives with unendurable pain or suffering, and has no realistic hope of relief. They require a number of medical records as well as consultations with specialized doctors.

For me this end is obviously not what I wanted, but it was the best solution to an extremely difficult situation and preferable to even more suffering. It was not hasty choice, but one that matured over a long period of time.

A plea to decision makers – Give ME/CFS patients a future! As you understand, this blog post has taken me many months to put together. It is a long text to read too, I know. But I felt it was important to write it and have it published to explain why I personally had to take this step, and hopefully illuminate why so many ME/CFS patients consider or commit suicide.

And most importantly: to elucidate that this circumstance can be changed! But that will take devoted, resolute, real action from all of those responsible for the state of ME/CFS care, ME/CFS research and dissemination of information about the disease. Sadly, this responsibility has been mishandled for decades. To allow ME/CFS patients some hope on the horizon, key people in all countries must step up and act.

If you are a decision maker, here is what you urgently need to do: You need to bring funding for biomedical ME/CFS research up so it’s on par with comparable diseases (as an example, in the US that would mean $188 million per year). You need to make sure there are dedicated hospital care units for ME/CFS inpatients in every city around the world. You need to establish specialist biomedical care available to all ME/CFS patients; it should be as natural as RA patients having access to a rheumatologist or cancer patients to an oncologist. You need to give ME/CFS patients a future.

Please listen to these words of Jen Brea, which sum up the situation in the US, but are applicable to almost every country:

“The NIH says it won’t fund ME research because no one wants to study it. Yet they reject the applications of the world class scientists who are committed to advancing the field. Meanwhile, HHS has an advisory committee whose sole purpose seems to be making recommendations that are rarely adopted. There are no drugs in the pipeline at the FDA yet the FDA won’t approve the one drug, Ampligen, that can have Lazarus-like effects in some patients. Meanwhile, the CDC continues to educate doctors using information that we (patients) all know is inaccurate or incomplete.”

Like Jen Brea, I want a number of people from these agencies, and equivalent agencies in Sweden and all other countries, to stand up and take responsibility. To say: “ME! I am going to change things because that is my job.”

And lastly Lastly, I would like to end this by linking to this public comment from a US agency meeting (CFSAC). It seems to have been taken off the HHS site, but I found it in the Google Read version of the book “Lighting Up a Hidden World: CFS and ME” by Valerie Free. It includes testimony from two very eloquent ME patients and it says it all. I thank these ME patients for expressing so well what we are experiencing.

My previous blog posts:

From International Traveler to 43 Square Meters: An ME/CFS Story From Sweden

Coping With ME/CFS Will Always Be Hard – But There are Ways of Making It A Little Easier

The Underfinanced ME/CFS Research Field Pt I: The Facts – Plus “What Can We Do?

The Underfinanced ME/CFS Research Field Pt II: Why it Takes 20 Years to Get 1 Year’s Research Done

Take care of each other.

Love, Anne

Comments Open.

[covid10-blog]

coronavirus

coronavirus

Possesses Globalization Helped Corona Trojan to Spread Rapidly? You will find a myth going on within many portions of the globe, that because of the positive effect, the Covid-19 virus might spread easily and influence many around the planet. Although it can be real, that because of rapid distance coverage by surroundings, water and other solutions, the sickness spread, laying typically the entire responsibility on syndication is incorrect. There tend to be many instances in record, exactly where epidemics have distributed to result in loss of human being lives in thousands ahead of air transportation possibly endured. In this article upon possesses globalization helped halo trojan to spread speedily, i want to look at often the details.

coronavirus

Restrict Internationalization rapid What is the Plan?

The actual supports of deglobalization desire to build walls this sort of as the Wonderful Wall membrane of China, limit trips and travel, reduce the stock trading between countries. Sure, inside these times of Reino anxiety, it is required to put a brief enclosure, but long time significance of isolation among international locations can trigger a economical crease. In short, the actual most required component in the present time is actually co-operation of countries as well as definitely, not seclusion.

Record and Epidemics

Epidemics for example plague and small pox have destroyed many cultures around the globe. Right now there were times, when folks utilized to leave the whole area and villages, transfer to the latest place for you to start a new lifestyle. From the ancient ages, right now there were zero proper signifies of transport like cruises and airplanes. However the particular epidemics happened. Like only notice the Black Loss of life epidemic of 14th hundred years. The death toll relates to millions from countries from the Western Europe to Far east Asia. Nearly more compared to 20 million people missing their own lives.

It had been in 1520, the little pox started in Key America and wiped close to a fourth of the native population.

A fatal flu started in 1918, and also spread to numerous corners of driving. The entire population lost has been hundred million. When compared to help life lost in Initial Entire world War, the tarif is far more.

How Our Forebears Encountered An Epidemic

For you to be honest, that they experimented with every measure along with process to control the outbreak. Many methods were dirty and did not take an improvement. Some cultures observed in superstition and assumed typically the epidemic was the curse or even punishment through the Gods. In most places, the healthy individuals applied to shift to some other spots leaving behind often the dead, sick and tired and undeserving livestock. Another highlight is proof involving human sacrifice in order to conciliate the Gods as an approach connected with warding off the high incidence.

What are the procedures followed over the last to fight any crisis?

Although epidemics did carry on and rear their particular head every so often, the course of action of sanitation and cleanness did help to lower the actual casualties. The principal reason for a lot of fatalities in the old age groups was due to the particular fact, our forebears does not understand the illness plus the reasons for it is spreading and so fast.

Within recent times, a disease can spread within any that same day to all areas of the globe, complimentary air travel. But just about any pandemic will not trigger deaths throughout millions, typically the reason, exchange of knowledge. The particular best defense humanity features against any disease recently time is information by means of scientific analysis and prophylactic medicine prepared at often the original.

It was with the 1900s, which medication professionals of every nation came together and changed info on diseases in each country. Subsequently, the vaccination programme started off on some sort of global scale. Due to the actual sincere efforts of the remedies professionals, some remarkably infectious diseases such as tiny pox were completely taken away as early as 79.

In the earlier nights, it was difficult to be able to collect selections from impacted people while not being infected. At this point, with current medical tools in the form associated with safety gloves and face markers, the golf pros can easily accumulate samples, examine, identify in addition to then suggest the particular probable cure in the application form of anti-bacterials. People within the old age range, can not determine the result in of disorders such while Black Death as well as passed on in millions. Whenever typically the Corona outbreak occured, health care professionals took less as compared to two weeks to identify often the virus, its genetic makeup and also the possible ways for you to discover affected people, place them inside isolation along with prevent the distributing regarding this disease on mass.

What Did You Find out In the History of Epidemics?

The actual fact, globalisation has triggered several deaths is turned out completely wrong once again. With out proper transportation, a lot of epidemics caused millions of demise in the earlier instances.

The real prevention of almost any epidemic is as soon as the region first affected need to talk about the information regarding the actual condition to its adjoining nations as soon seeing that possible. In this condition, its trust and communal which matters a good deal in preventing the particular pass on of disease. All the nations around the world should also extend a new helping hand to typically the afflicted country. Today, using Culminación virus making madness across the world, China has to help teach international locations lessons with regards to the virus.

Co-operation will be also mandatory when places try their best in order to minimize travel from individuals involving other nations through a epidemic. If nations never trust each additional, then the information concerning disorder becomes useless.

Over the previous centuries, the war towards smaller pox was earned, since every country enjoyed throughout the vaccination programme. In the event that one country had never fall in line, subsequently the modest pox would likely have remained in addition to patiently lay for the right time to strike. But the idea would not happen.

Please be aware, the entire teens from recent times needs to be able to begin a clear border range. It's not between countries as well as locations. But the brand needs to be set clearly between humans and also viruses. Viruses which get induced deaths in latest times have come coming from animals to humans. For instance , Ebola virus. So, residential areas all over the entire world have to be defined about the safety measures along with precautions. If not, every at this point and then, the national boundaries collection between virus in addition to male will be shattered because of a indication. Then the entire individual race can become sitting quail for a brand-new finder virus.

With the written content in the earlier sentences, some specifics also include to be taken with thought. There exist a number of societies in the universe, where the people are usually not just knowledgeable about standard healthcare companies. These folks may become the objectives of transmission.

Since often the very last half a millennium, medical scientific research has meant itself in order to meet the issues of epidemics. There is out there an entire army as medical professionals, nurses as well as other staff members to patrol the world and also secure from any outbreak.

Precisely what Are The Major Variables To help An Epidemic Distributed More rapidly?

True, we possess all the health features, but countries taking believe in in one another. Inside some nations around the world, corrupt political figures do not present awards to medical companies along with hamper their expansion in addition to research. There is the part of society which can not rely on scientific healthcare expert tips and hold on their lifestyles because per their will. Every one of these factors can contribute for you to dispersing of a sickness among quite a few countries.

Realization

Let us desire that will the Corona Scare can promote trust between international locations. Let us not target on the niche - offers globalization really helped corona pathogen to distribute rapidly. The idea is a painful tutorial, but let us switch this kind of unfortunate event to help an probability to make the actual bonds between places better. The brotherhood involving nations can make the complete people stand strong in opposition to any kind of catastrophe (natural or perhaps health-related). Let us help make a resolve in order to get across the planet, if necessary, any time to overcome any threat that could threaten your entire human ethnic background.

[girl4music]

Part 1 - Addressing themes of violence, weaponry, fear and survival. (Click here for Part 2)

‘Dreamworker' is the episode of which starts Gabrielle off on her individual storyline and journey of her evolving from a farm girl, who just tags along with Xena, into a warrior of her own making and in her own right. Throughout the entirety of ‘Xena: Warrior Princess', she deals with situations and circumstances involving violence, weaponry, fear and survival. Her struggles with it make me question very deeply, when is it the right time and place to act in violence and to kill? When is it right at all? Is it, ever right?

They say that "violence is never the answer". I don't agree with that. I never have, really, and it's got a lot to do with growing up watching Xena, I'd say, as the show instilled these moral groundings of right and wrong in me. The reason why I don't agree with "violence is never the answer" is because acting in violence may be the only option you've got left for defence and protection of either yourself or another. When faced with a dire situation like that, as Gabrielle is several times in the show, using violence to get out of it is the answer because doing nothing may just make it worse. What is worse than evil itself? Doing nothing about it. Being a bystander of it. Being somebody who won't fight for their rights, or the rights of others, and the life and health of themselves or others. So, it begs the question of when is using violence ever right? Well, from a morality standpoint, the truth is, it isn't. But you cannot pick and choose between right and wrong when you or someone you love is in danger. The downside is, violence against violence creates even more violence. The upside is, violence may eradicate the evil against good and save someone's life. But the problem is that everybody thinks they are good and thinks they're doing good. Thinks they're upholding God's law or protecting their country from harm. There are exceptions, but those exceptions are the last resort. You don't ever choose violence if it is not imperative for you to. You will find that, when it is imperative, it will be a gut instinct. You will act without thinking. Your body will move before your mind does. It's what they call adrenaline. In a survivor's instinct, in the right situation, it is possible to lift a car off you or someone else, when that adrenaline rush runs through you. But it is also possible to kill someone if you're not careful. So, it has positives and negatives that you must be aware of. Protecting and defending yourself or any other person has nothing to do with keeping and using weapons. If you think this is the answer to keeping yourself safe, it means you have the problem, and no one else. No one is a threat or danger to you unless you make them one. It's you that is your own worst enemy by blaming others for your own problems. If this is the case, seek help, not a weapons dealer. Weapons will only make you a target and would only give easy access to the person intending to cause harm. It would give them more opportunity of attacking and even killing you.

If you want my opinion as to why you would have this mindset on weapons and violence, and why you feel you need to arm yourself 24/7. It is because you feel threatened and your natural gut instinct is to defend and protect yourself and others. See, you're taught in your society to fear your surroundings, rather than just remain aware of them. This is what induces anxiety. Psychology only has half the answer when it comes to understanding anxiety. Anxiety is not the same as fear. It's not an emotion. It is the ability to sense threat or danger. It's a warning signal we've manifested in our human evolution. By adapting to the changes in our environments throughout history, we've developed the ability to be aware of when danger is approaching. Anxiety is the warning signal our mind sends us, that tells us to run before the danger can reach us and cause us harm. Animals are very good at using anxiety in the wild to keep themselves and their species alive. For our species, however, anxiety is not really needed as much, as we don't live in the wild. Thus, our fears are irrational instead because many of us feel anxiety constantly. This is when it becomes a mental illness rather than just a natural ability we possess. We don't call anxiety a survivor's instinct or a natural ability when it affects our psyche every waking moment of every day. We barely understand anything to do with the human anatomy as far as neurological disorders go. How reality affects the behaviour of the human mind and body. We don't think of it as if they're the same principle and process, and that the experience one is having is directly related to the vibrational frequencies of their immediate environment. We have a long way to go here, on the Western side of the world, with understanding how biology and consciousness are connected to the nature of physics and thermodynamics. It is my personal belief that when we do come to understand it, problems such as; school shootings, police brutality and terrorism can be tackled with effectively. That is what I believe is the solution to all the issues plaguing our society. We need to understand our nature and how it is relative to the nature of the Universe because we have very little knowledge on it, therefore, misunderstand the mind and its patterns when interacting with its subjective experience of what it believes is its external reality.

[southeastasianists]

This is no country for old gods. The once-popular Thaksin Shinawatra and his sister-successor Yingluck remain in exile, their names tarred with questionable corruption charges. Four years of junta rule have left their networks of Redshirt supporters shattered, their leaders scattered. The new King Maha Vajiralongkorn still skulks in the shadow of his late father, unable or unwilling to reach out to his wary subjects, his shabby reputation shielded only by the Kingdom’s authoritarian lèse-majesté laws.

It was in this twilight of the gods that the young billionaire Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit unfurled his bright orange banner in Bangkok’s trendy Chinatown and promised to lead the Thai people out of the endless samsara of coup and counter-coup that has churned the nation for decades.

Geared towards Thailand’s young urban middle class and boasting an inner circle of academics, activists and entrepreneurs, Thanathorn’s Future Forward Party – co-founded with Thammasat University law professor Piyabutr Saengkanokkul – is making a desperate bid for an electorate long fed up with the country’s starkly polarised political class.

Thai academic Pavin Chachavalpongpun, who remains in exile in Kyoto on lèse-majesté charges for criticising the ruling junta and its royal backers following the 2014 coup, said the young businessman was a breath of fresh air in an increasingly suffocating political climate.

“Thanathorn represents a new breed of Thai politician and wants to change Thailand by ridding the power of the military from politics,” he said. “The major hurdle will be how to build power bases in the countryside. Thaksin has occupied the north and northeast. So it will be difficult for Thanathorn to compete with the bigger party of Thaksin. Yet Thanathorn could serve as an alternative should Thaksin’s party lack significant votes to form the next government.”

As the executive vice-president and director of major automotive parts maker Thai Summit Group, the 39-year-old scion seems an unlikely adversary of a military that rose to power with the full-throated backing of the Bangkok business elite. Jakrapob Penkair, a prominent Redshirt leader and former spokesman for the Thaksin government driven into exile more than a decade ago, described Thanathorn as a man who saw himself as every inch an idealist.

“I think what characterises Thanathorn are two elements,” he said. “The first is that he has always been a [rebel] in his tycoon family. He doesn’t take pride in it, he wants to change it, he wants to deepen it in a way that people can benefit from. The second characterisation is his long-term sponsorship of the Fa Diaw Kan – or ‘Same Sky’ – publishing firm, which has published, I would say, some of the most challenging literature on the monarchy – let’s say on the unspeakable issues of Thailand, not just the monarchy.”

Since launching his party, though, Thanathorn has grown more circumspect. Despite his stridently pro-democratic rhetoric, the young mogul has repeatedly denied that he has any intention of amending the nation’s widely condemned lèse-majesté laws, which forbid any criticism of the monarch. And despite campaigning heavily to change the draconian law as part of the Nitirat group of academics and activists, his co-founder Piyabutr appears largely to have fallen in line. In fact, with the junta’s post-coup ban on political activity still stifling any real political debate – at least until the prospective parties meet with the junta in June – it’s unclear to many what the Future Forward Party stands for at all.

Thai-British academic and political activist Giles Ji Ungpakorn, who fled to the United Kingdom after publicly criticising the palace’s role in the 2006 coup that thrust Thaksin from power, told Southeast Asia Globe that he is wary of Thanathorn’s repeated attempts to distance himself from any discussion of the widening gap between the nation’s rich and poor.

“I haven’t seen any evidence that the people behind this new party are interested in building a mass base, especially among the small farmers, rural poor or the working class,” he said. “There seems to be an attempt to gloss over class issues, which usually means that they want to take a neoliberal conservative position. The good thing about the initiative, however, the first thing that should be said, is that they’ve actually stimulated a discussion on social media and, I think, in wider society, about what kind of politics we want to see. And that’s a good thing. They’ve encouraged younger people to take part in this discussion.”

According to Thitinan Pongsudhirak, associate professor at Chulalongkorn University’s faculty of political science, the Future Forward Party’s strong appeal to the young urban middle class has left the party ill-equipped to build a strong relationship with the rural population who still make up the bulk of Thai voters.

“Thanathorn’s party is new and will take time to set up and mobilise,” he said. “But its most daunting challenge is that this is an urban-based party that appeals to intellectuals and progressives, whereas Thai politics is dominated by local patronage networks in the countryside.”

Ungpakorn said that if Thanathorn wanted to emulate Thaksin’s success, he could not afford to ignore the urban and rural poor that had flocked to the former prime minister in droves.

“If you want to win an election, you need to be offering policies which are in the interests of the vast majority of the electorate – so you need to be talking about living standards of ordinary working people and small farmers, not looking to win over the middle-class vote,” he said. “You should be pitching your policies to ordinary working people – which is exactly what Thaksin did when he first won his election, and that was unprecedented in terms of Thai politics before that.”

Nor is it clear whether the young tycoon has the killer instinct to thrive in a political landscape that rewards the ability to mobilise force more than it does coffee-shop sermons on the importance of democracy.

“To me personally, [Thanathorn] is taking quite a great leap forward – something’s missing,” said Redshirt leader Jakrapob. “I’m not saying that he wouldn’t be a success, but what is missing here is what I would call the political process, of blending yourself into the realities of politics, good or bad, with the real passion to get power, to change things the way you want. I’m not sure that they have enough right now, but I sure hope and pray that they will have enough stamina and perseverance to pass the tests which lie ahead.”

Much has changed since the military seized power four years ago. A new military-drafted constitution, approved by a disaffected public in a farcical referendum that allowed no campaigning from the opposing side, has set in place a system that allows the armed forces to appoint the entirety of the 250-strong upper house to oversee whatever parliament the eventual elections bring forth, giving the military the final word on major policy decisions. More worrying for the once-mighty, Shinawatra-led Pheu Thai Party is a military-mandated electoral shift to a new system that would make it difficult for any one party to form a government on its own.

Ungpakorn said that the electoral process is now heavily stacked in favour of a military clique that knows only too well that political power flows from the barrel of a gun – a poor battleground for the fate of the nation.

“The military has designed the electoral process now so that it will be impossible for a political party who wants to reduce the power of the military to actually win a majority in parliament,” he said. “So the constitution needs to be changed. The problem is that were a political party to win a majority in parliament, just because they raise their hands, the power of the military doesn’t just disappear – because the power of the military is extra-parliamentary. And therefore you need to challenge it by extra-parliamentary movements in a democratic fashion – social movements are part of the democratic process.”

With neither the Pheu Thai Party nor the Democrat Party likely to secure a majority under the new model, and Democrat leader Abhisit Vejjajiva slamming the door on any chance of a coalition with his former rivals, both parties will have to fight hard to cobble together a motley mix of minor parties to inch them into a tenuous government.

For political science professor Thitinan, though, the position of the military in the eyes of the Thai public is not as secure as it seems. After years of watching well-placed generals such as the now-infamous defence minister Prawit Wongsuwan enrich themselves at the expense of the people, a clean candidate such as Thanathorn may just be able to fill the credibility gap left by the Shinawatra dynasty, whose very name has become tarnished by repeated corruption charges.

“To reduce military influence in politics, elected politicians and political parties have to perform better on policy and on anti-graft,” Thitinan said. “People were fed up with politicians in the past, but now they are also tired of the generals who have overstayed their welcome…Ultimately, this military-conspired constitution will have to be revamped or rewritten to come up with more balanced rules to underpin any lasting democratic system that can emerge in Thailand.”

With the military still quite literally calling the shots, though, a wary partnership between an elected government and an entrenched military such as the situation plaguing Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi may be closer to the mark.

“The next elections are not to provide Thailand with the solution – they are to provide Thailand with a board of directors to supervise Thailand’s transition to [adapt to] global changes,” Jakrapob said. “The elections are not going to solve the issues or have people cared for in the way that they should have been. But they will select a few lucky ones who will be the so-called board of directors of the new Thailand, and they would have to fight it out over what the future of Thailand will be.”

With handpicked Pheu Thai heavyweight Khunying Sudarat Keyuraphan apparently set on reaching an accommodation with the entrenched armed forces, the chance that the party that once mobilised tens of thousands of Thais to protest the military’s might will take the fight for Thailand’s future back to the streets seems remote.

“Thaksin knows that with the Pheu Thai Party contesting in this election, no matter how euphoric it seemed at the opening of the party, they’re not going to run Thailand,” Jakrapob said. “We are going to just be there as a bargaining power in the hopes that we would present something substantial, that we believed in. But it wouldn’t be just one goal, it would be stepping stones.”

It is becoming increasingly clear that the Thai political class lacks both the means and, more worryingly, the motivation to wrest the reins of power from the military. But with Bangkok once again witnessing a smattering of student protests crying out for the long-promised elections in the lead-up to this month’s four-year anniversary of the coup, the possibility that the mass protests that have broken the power of past dictators will return to the streets of the capital no longer seems as distant as it once did. But as Thanathorn may find in his bid for the hearts and minds of the Thai people, it is not a struggle that can be won without reaching out to the working men and women who for years have seen little worth fighting for in their leaders.

“The Thai mass population has been politically passive, partly due to the existence of a culture of impunity,” said the exiled Pavin. “The state has the licence to kill protesters, and nobody has been brought to justice. In the past few months, we have seen sporadic protests led by students and intellectuals. But this is not enough. The Thai populace will have to express more courage in coming out to support those people.”

[gduncan969]

Climate Change: the Christian’s Responsibility

Nehemiah 9:6

“You alone are the Lord; You have made heaven, The heaven of heavens, with all their host, The earth and everything on it, The seas and all that is in them, And You preserve them all. The host of heaven worships You.”

A week from now the City of my birth and upbringing—Glasgow, Scotland—will host the world conference on climate change.  It will be attended by scientists, politicians and world leaders including Presidents Biden and Obama, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and a host of attendees along with hordes of media who will all drive home the message that unless we change our ways—and quickly, humanity’s days are numbered.  My guess is that their message will be well received by a world already terrorized by a pandemic that has sucked the joy of out living and destroyed the lives, relationships and hopes of so many.  We are living in the age of “Magormissabib”, a strange Hebrew word found in Jeremiah 20:3 and used by the prophet to describe the name God gave to the priest that men had named “Pashur”.  

“And it came to pass on the morrow, that Pashur brought forth Jeremiah out of the stocks. Then said Jeremiah unto him, The Lord hath not called thy name Pashur, but Magormissabib” (KJV)

Pashur had thrown Jeremiah into the stocks because he didn’t like Jeremiah’s prophecies telling the people God was calling them to repentance. Pashur’s name in Hebrew means “liberation” but it’s the kind of liberation achieved by tearing down constraints, just like a bird trapped in a cage that is set free not by opening the door but by tearing the cage apart.  This is a message for humanity today that true liberation will never be achieved by tearing down and destroying the Judeo-Christian structures and biblical principles that western society is built upon and replacing these with liberal policies meant to liberate us from all those old, outdated moral principles in the bible.  Yet, that is exactly what is happening right now in Canada and so many other western nations.  The result, of course, has not been the freedom promised but an increasing pandemic of fear about everything that’s happening around us—magormissabib, a gut-wrenching fear on every side!  This will always be the result when God is taken out of the picture.  God told Adam and Eve in Genesis 1:28 to “fill the earth and subdue it” and the meaning here is to tread it down and bring it into subjection.  Remember the story of the old gardener out tending his garden when a young man came along and commented: “Isn’t it wonderful what man can do in a garden with a little help from God?” to which the wise old man replied: “Yes indeed, but you should have seen this place when God had it all to Himself!”

The environmental movement is a classic example of the fear-mongering that is endemic within our society and this, along with fears over the current pandemic continues to feed us with a steady stream of negative news about our imminent demise in a virus-plagued world of toxic-laden land, sea and air.  I suspect those in authority have already decided the “final solution” to all of this is to bring under total control the single greatest cause of all these ills—people, people like you and me!  Think about it, if it wasn’t for people, there would be no environmental catastrophes.  We consume too much and we pollute too much so how can we solve such an “existential threat to our existence”—surely we must get rid of people, or at least get rid of a lot of them through population controls like forced sterilization, abortion, euthanasia and so on.  In the woke world that has been thrust upon us we are no longer seen as individuals created in the image of God but as groups of consumers greedy for more stuff who need to smarten up, pay attention and get with the climate change program or else—even if it costs trillions of dollars to “build back better” because a new environmental utopia awaits us where every bird and bug is protected, every animal has rights and every plant a place to grow—except, of course, for human babies in the womb.  

As they gather next week in my home city of Glasgow, I pray that they take note of the City’s Motto festooned on every city bus and in every public place: “Let Glasgow Flourish”.  I pray that someone will tell them these three words are but the first part of a City motto better than any other I’ve ever seen and which reads: “Let Glasgow Flourish by the Preaching of the Word and the Praising of His Name”.  As they visit its ancient university and my alma mater, may they see its motto: “Via, Veritas, Vitae”, the Way, the Truth and the Life because it’s on these principles the City was founded and it’s on these principles it has flourished.  Nehemiah 9:6 above clearly tells us to whom this world and all that is in it belongs and he reassures us God will preserve it, not man with all his clever schemes.  How arrogant we are to assume that God will allow man to destroy the world and that we are capable of saving it.  We neither created it nor control it and the Owner still holds the title deed to it and knows how to deal with His wayward tenants bent on destroying it.  Of course there are serious environmental issues that need to be addressed and of course we must be good stewards of what God has given to us but the answers lie not in the fear of impending disaster but in trust of the Master who well knows how to keep it safe.