The brilliant Alice Miller on the fallacy of forgiveness:

Some therapists work under the influence of various interpretations culled from both Western and Oriental religions, which preach forgiveness to the once-mistreated child. Thereby, they create a new vicious circle for people who, from their earliest years, have been caught in the vicious circle of pedagogy . This, they refer to as “therapy”. In so doing, they lead them into a trap from which there is no escape, the same trap that once rendered their natural protests impossible, thus causing the illness in the first place. Because such therapists. . . cannot help patients to resolve the consequences of the traumatization they have suffered, they offer them traditional morality instead.

Remember, a therapist who is a professional and not a quack will never ever ever push you to forgive.

The idea that forgiving is somehow morally superior to not forgiving, to holding on to a grudge, to feeling anger is a means of social control. And every time you praise somebody for forgiving or push yourself to forgive you reinforce structures of oppression.

See more of this great article here.

In mixed company, I expressed concern that young people had no interest in political activism.

“No, we are very politically active!” a bright young creature interrupted me. “I literally don’t know a single person my age who doesn’t use hashtags! I have participated in a hashtag campaign last week, for example.”

112 years of movies about space aliens have demonstrated how unimaginative and boring human beings are about this subject.

If somebody is treating you badly, it can never be your fault. There can never be an ounce, an hair-breadth of your fault in your being mistreated by anybody. If somebody is mistreating you, it’s completely, totally, utterly 100% about them. If you never existed on this planet, they’d be doing exactly the same thing to somebody else.

And another reminder: there is no such thing as criticizing a person for their own good. Somebody who nags, criticizes, points out your “defects”, puts you down, reminds you of every obstacle that exists in your path, etc. is doing this for their own good, not yours. And their good consists of hurting people, which tells us a lot about this sort of individual. 

Does anybody understand what Hillary Clinton is doing any longer? The election is hers to win but she seems bent on minimizing her chances. First, there was that very off-putting CNN interview. Then she decided not to show up for Netroots Nation.

And it’s kind of disgraceful that “one-track Bernie” (with all due respect) is drawing crowds that are twice as large. Hillary ‘ s campaign is way too low key compared to what it should be at this point. When was the last time you read an interesting piece that discussed her? In the meanwhile, interesting articles that reference Walker abound. Even though he’s not mentioned positively in them, the crucial part at this point is that he does get mentioned.

Shockingly, Planned Parenthood is still standing by the Nucatola animal. The same animal that said, while chewing noisily and drunkenly and slurping her own snot with delight:

“We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not going to crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact” and “a lot of people want intact hearts these days.”

There is, obviously, no scenario under which it is necessary to utter these sentences. Moreover, there is zero sense in making them part of drunken meal talk with some uncredentialed passersby. If this were an actual professional conversation, as some strange folks keep insisting, there is no context that would make these disquisitions on what “a lot of people want these days” and how “I’m gonna see if I can” necessary. Especially when accompanied with noisy, slurpy chewing.

But hey, I understand why it’s hard to accept that the only champions of reproductive rights these days seem to be dumbasses who pick up this Nucatola trash by the sidewalk and then ply it with food and wine on the dime of the idiot benefactors like me. (And probably you.) We believed that these people were doing good, important work. We gave them money, we pinned our hopes of reproductive justice on them. And the suspicion that the Nucatola animal is not the only piece of roadside trash that enjoys bragging about “a lot of people” over drinks paid with by our money is quite intolerable.

P.S. Here some facile fool comparing the Nucatola animal to. . . Jesus. He hasn’t watched the video, of course, but he doesn’t need to because Nucatola is Jesus. I seriously thought there was nothing that could surprise me any longer.

P. P. S. And here is somebody from a local trailer park who praises the animal for her. . . good table manners.

A billionaire from Kiev decided that the best, most beautiful and comfortable public beach in the coastal Ukrainian city of Odessa had to be his. He built huge cement walls around the beach and had them covered with shards of broken glass.

The billionaire would visit “his” beach about once a month in his helicopter. The rest of the time the beach was empty save for a pack of guard dogs that ensured the absence of the hoi polloi  (aka normal people) on the beach.

This went on for years. Today, however, the cement walls were demolished and regular folks (aka not billionaires) could finally use their beach once again.

This is what Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity fought for. Change is coming slowly to the country at war, yet it is undeniable and inexorable.

In Washington state, a study shows parents are increasingly opting out of the polio vaccine. Two decades years ago, 95.4 percent of kindergarteners in Washington state were vaccinated for polio. This year, only 88.4 percent had the vaccine. That’s a lower rate than in in the African nation of Rwanda.

This is beyond disturbing, people. It’s easy to think that polio is nothing to worry about when you don’t see any victims of the disease around you. But the only reason we don’t see them any longer is precisely because of the vaccine. I know I don’t have to explain this to anybody reading my blog but this is simply too frustrating.

I just read the following statement at Nina Mishkin’s blog:

It’s generally not a good idea to share romantic and sexual history with one’s current partner.

And now I’m wondering if this is a cultural or a generational difference because I can’t even imagine building a relationship without knowing my partner’s past in every sense of the word. You can’t know a person if you don’t know their past, so why deprive oneself of knowledge because of misplaced jealousy towards their existence before you?

Three more people were killed in St Louis last night. This brings the murder tally up to 100 victims in 2015.

The municipal authorities and activists are bending over backwards to make St Louis more attractive to tourists and businesses but every effort they make is dashed by the horrible crime rate.

St Louis is a mess, people. And infusions of cash are not helping because the underlying problem is not solved.