Because we can't wrest democracy back from only one side. We have to kill all the cancer. Image by Alejandro Lizardo  on Public Domain Pictures Democracy is no longer ‘precarious’ in the Ignited States of Trumpistan, but swirling down a golden toilet. One might argue that rather than critiquing the excesses of liberalism, I should instead turn my attentions to Messolooni, currently heaping up a veritable guerra lampo   of gross abuses of power. But the left’s own excesses are what’s also brought us to this place—we, the other arm of the ambidextrous authoritarian monster. “This is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause,” comments Senator Padmé Amidala in Revenge of the Sith. I’m clearly no MAGA Trumpanzee; I love liberty, and I continue prodding my fellow liberals and my not-so-fellow illiberals on their own lack of commitment to it, to the great annoyance of those who still wish to pretend they had nothing to do with this fine kettle of fish. Those applauding now are the far right. Those applauding until January 20th were the far left. We, and they too, are more like them than we know. And now that our side is out of government power, we have to take inventory of our failings, as they say in AA, and make amends, because we can’t fix them  without restoring our own abandoned moral credibility. Who are ‘them’? Too many progressives, liberals, and social justice junkies don’t understand who ‘they’, the problem Americans, are. They’re neither ‘the left’ nor ‘the right’, neither Democrat nor Republican, neither red nor blue: They are, as I’ve discussed before, liberty lovers vs authoritarians. I criticize not just the woke illiberals, but the ‘nice’ liberals, the ‘good’ liberals, and the true progressives unfortunately clinging to clearly flawed policies and values, ‘buggy whips’ they should have abandoned decades ago. If You Still Hold The Same Beliefs Thirty Or Forty Years Ago—Why? Conservatives are much less united behind the Trumpocalypse than the left realizes; the Republican Party has been bleeding the disenchanted  for years. As I see from The Bulwark  articles I get, written by conservative disenchanteds, their gloomy assessments of Trump almost entirely mirror mine and my fellow liberals. Many moderates and disenchanteds don’t speak up because the guerra lampo of hate and danger from our respective authoritarian masters is brutal, online and off. But we are their heretics, their hidden ticking liberty bombs. We agitate for what they don’t dare, by doing and saying what they dare not. We get to know and befriend moderates of whichever side isn’t ours, and develop a respect for their opinions, and are more inclined to listen to them when they say something we disagree with. It’s what’s been missing from the national conversation for decades. We don’t listen; we don’t share a beer with people who don’t go to our church, raise their kids the same way, own guns, vote for who we voted for, or have a distaste for abortion. I critique my own tribe more than the other, even as I feel like all  of us liberty-lovers need to circle the wagons. I take on liberals because too many won’t listen to anyone they fashcast  as ‘right-wing’. You don’t subscribe to Holy Trans Dogma? You don’t think Israel is pure evil? You dare to criticize the less-than-angelic George Floyd? Defriend. I speak to the liberals who haven’t yet given their brains over to the social justice cult. Thanks for sticking around! If you think our side could never do what Trump is doing now, I offer Exhibit A: Venezuela, headed by the now-late Hugo Chavez, who dismantled democracy, one brick at a time. Going after political enemies? Check. Shutting down oppositional broadcasters? Check. Watching the swiftness with which the guardrails are broken; knowing the motherfucker in power doesn’t give a rat’s patoot about you or your problems; politicizing everything, blurring the lines between state, government and society to make it all about him. Check. Check. Check. Check. Chavez wasn’t a right-winger, as many might assume, but a credentialed left-winger: A socialist, a nationalizer of key industries, proponent of welfare programs to eradicate poverty and inequality. You know who loved him? The working class and the marginalized. Sound familiar, mis amigos liberales? It’s the Authoritarians, silly. We purple liberty lovers unite to fight against the Pol Potbellies and Pinheadchets who now battle for control of America. It’s great to see citizens fighting back against the brutal masked ICE Gestapo, while knowing those same ‘warriors’ may well be the far-left authoritarians who simply want their power back. Who, if they’re taking notes, will bring us Woke Trump one day and perpetuate, rather than end, the current horror. Yes, I DO believe our side is every bit as authoritarian as theirs. It just hasn’t matured and emerged from its chrysalis like Sil in Species . Yet. And the little blockheads shall lead them What I never imagined is that my fellow liberals would turn ‘progressive’ into a dirty word, smelling of bad milk and broccoli in the garbage. My increasingly-estranging compatriots embraced a cancel culture censorship for public statements that were often offensive, ill-considered, or downright stupid, but not illegal. Our Regressive Left is what’s compelled us to lose our minds over opinions, but turn away and whistle in the dark when a black man kills a white woman for no reason or the wrong President brings about a ceasefire we’ve been demanding for two years. Lackadaisical liberalism and true progressivism found itself hijacked by our dumbasses—the Regressive Left, who devolved into the ‘woke’ with too much unchecked, unquestioned ‘tolerance’ and ‘inclusivity’ and a serious distaste for open inquiry. They opened the door to our very worst elements the same way Republican small-tentism  led to Trump’s MAGAtry. Both sides’ regressives are motivated by the same nihilism, all-purpose bigotry, itch to manage, fear of critical thinking, the desire to tear it all down, and to remake society to fit their own twisted utopia, by violence if necessary. Authoritarians must control everything, especially education, because freethinkers and intellectuals wonk it all up by asking too many questions . Regressives possess their own built-in seeds of social destruction, showering the faithful with a wide chrysanthemum of stupidity: Christian fundamentalism on the right, encompassing the most dogmatic and bass-ackwards elements of religiosity, and the left’s fetishization of moral weakness and group identity, leading to much the same sort of hate and bigotry as we see now with Jew hatred parity. Once the left embraced exclusionary diversity, Trumpist authoritarianism, rooted in one man’s own mad desire to seek revenge on anyone who ever crossed him, cracked like a whip against anyone to the left of J.D. Vance, boosted mightily by understandably pissed-off once-reasonable conservatives who’ve been silenced for too long. This was explored and explained beautifully in a recent Free Press article, What Shakespeare Understands About Trump’s Thirst For Revenge . The author observes that while the left watches in horror as Trump turns around their own recent ideological actions and takes them three steps further , Democratic presidents exhibit their own authoritarian streak, on occasion, although less, so far,  than Republican administrations. But. The actions are identical: Jawboning political opponents ; pressuring private companies to suppress free speech (Biden with Google/YouTube  and Facebook ); the bipartisan love affair with book bans  and compelling universities to comply with a political agenda (Obama’s extremist #MeToo-driven dictates ). Just because Democratic administrations haven’t lately been ‘just as bad’ doesn’t mean they’re not ambitious. Remember, the Democrats, formerly the ‘white man’s party’, once fought a civil wa r to preserve  slavery. Truth is, we each have our own little Dr. Evil living within. That itch to rule over others because we know what’s best , it seems, is ingrained into the human soul. Unless we consciously fight our own Little Caesar, we ask not whether authoritarianism sucks, but which we prefer. The devil you know 2025’s censorship handover is a prime example of how badly we need to clean up our own mess. It’s so, so, so hard not to roll my eyes at the liberal multitudes suddenly getting woke to censorship, now that the right is in charge of it. Our Joseph Goebbelsism is that one must be the right  kind of liberal, and most importantly, liberal enough, in order to be taken seriously. Progressives hobbled and crippled themselves by yanking the reins on diversity of opinion. Now they whine while the tables turn on them.   The ‘Peace Protesters’ Who Won’t Give Peace A Chance   - The Free Press If the left, and especially the Democrats, don’t exorcise their own authoritarian demons quickly, when they return to power, as they eventually will, they may be as bad as or worse than the Trumpocalypse. Or they might never return, because voters might decide, fuck it, the devil you know, until there are no more elections. At the moment, hand-wringing born-again democracy mavens, the ‘fat generals’ of The Resistance, can’t rally together to strategically wrest democracy back from the tinputt dictator who is destroying the country. Who will one day subjugate even his own airheaded fanboys and fangirls, cheering for their own liberation from financial security and freedom, and for their own destruction. We truly have met the enemy and he is us Liberal, conservative, and libertarian liberty lovers need each other. We who value the original vision of the Founding Fathers need to unite together to fight bi-divisional reality denial, whether it’s transmania or vaccine phobia, the Intifada or de-gunning the least violent citizens. Trump may babble like a maniac about having ended wars between countries who are at peace or flooding Los Angeles with non-existent water, and almost everything he attempts is done in the worst way imaginable, but he couldn’t have done it without our help. He’s primarily an ambassador for right-wing lunacy with a visceral rejection of all true liberals should hold dear: Reality, truth, skepticism, evidence-based policy-making and common sense . For all the talk about what a malignant psychopath Donald Trump is, it takes one to know one. They voted for him, but we  gave   Trump the power to behave much like ourselves. We can remain in denial and pretend we want to fix America’s problems, or we can just sit back and wait for ICE’s stormtroopers to claim us. We’re no longer red and blue. We’re not Republican or Democrat. We are the liberty lovers, who fight all  authoritarians, regardless of which flags they fly. It’s up to us. Did you like this post? Do you want to see more? I lean left of center, but not so far my brains fall out. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter  Grow Some Labia  so you never miss a damn thing! There are also Substack  and Spotify  podcasts of more recent articles!

You never know what you're made of until the air raids sound. All. Day. Long. April 1942. The residents of Valletta, the capital of Malta, survey the latest bombing damage by the Axis powers. Public domain image Lt. J E Russell , Royal Navy photographer on Wikimedia Commons Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of England, and Erwin Rommel, the ‘Desert Fox’ head of the German Imperial army, didn’t agree on much, except one thing: If the Axis powers couldn’t subdue the tiny tri-island country of Malta, the Axis was, to put it more bluntly than either of them did, fucked. “Without Malta, the Axis will end by losing control of North Africa,” Rommel warned. “Malta is the master key of the Mediterranean: the battlefield on which the fate of the Mediterranean war will be decided,” said Churchill. I’ve visited Churchill’s bunker too. He had much better lodgings than the Maltese, but he had a fair idea of life underground. I recently visited my aunt in Malta, whom I hadn’t seen in over thirty-five years. She kept encouraging me to visit Mellieha, a town on the northern end of ‘Big Island’, the largest and most central of the Maltese triad, the other two islands being Comino and Gozo. My last full day, I visited the World War II bomb shelter just around the corner. Aunt Nancy was born a year before the war ended, and two years before the Axis’s five year Siege of Malta ended. She doesn’t remember the war or the air raids, but her toys as a small child included broken glass and rubble. Malta, as I heard at least eleventy-hundred times from everyone while I was there, was the most bombed country in Europe. This tiny little island that some people have never heard of—I had to enlighten my Indian Uber driver who drove me to the Toronto airport—was one of the most strategically important points of World War II. My aunt, who lives just a few blocks from her old ‘hood, pointed out some caves, natural and man-made, a short walk from her apartment where she and her friends played. The Axis objective was to subdue Malta by starving the populace and destroying their morale with relentless bombing attacks. Because Malta and Italy have intermingled family ties, Italian pilots ‘missed’ a lot. The Germans, however possessed no such sentimental decorum. A newspaper headline in the shelter mentioned ‘15 attacks in 24 hours’; this must have been sheer hell on those below and the Axis actually came very close to achieving their objective. What they didn’t count on was how resilient the Maltese had become. Given how tiny these chunks of land in the middle of the Mediterranean are, it’s hard to imagine what the big conquest jones has historically been, but pretty much everyone has taken a whack at them over the centuries. When you speak of the ‘Siege of Malta’ you have to specify which one. The French, the British, the Ottoman Turks and the Barbary corsairs invaded, blockaded or raided for hundreds of years; so did the Kingdom of Sicily in 1429; the Normans invaded in 1091; and the Arab-Byzantines besieged them in 870. This isn’t even a comprehensive list! In some respects the bomb shelter reminded me of both the current Russian-Ukraine and Israeli-Gazan wars. Like Mussolini’s military, reports are that many Russians are unhappy with going to war with a country with which they have many blood ties; the Russian Air Force knows they may be attacking their families. The history of the scrappy little country with very powerful friends recalls Israel. And, while watching a short video on the course of the war on Malta, the scenes of destroyed buildings and endless piles of rubble from relentless attacks reminded me of the scenes we see today in Gaza. Mellieha’s tunnels—about 2.1 meters high, seemed terribly claustrophobic. At five-foot-three, I felt how close the ceiling was to my head (the Maltese themselves are roughly my height) and for my non-guided tour were lit by dim electric lamps, which were only available to the wartime Maltese when it was working. Otherwise, the shelters were lit by Italian-imported candles until they ran out, and after that by olive oil lamps which were plentiful as Malta has plenty of olive tree plantations. I imagined how horribly depressing it must have been to live like rats undergound. Not everyone was fortunate enough, even, to live like that; at the beginning of the war, when the air raid sirens sounded, there were only a few shelters that could only hold so many. Malta is largely made up of porous limestone, and mining and digging is as natural as breathing. My aunt’s 19th century church sits atop limestone but the square and the museum are carved out of it. Across the street is the beautiful Our Lady of the Grotto shrine, in a carved cave. It’s quite lovely. Photo taken by my aunt Miners continuously carved tunnels and cubicles all throughout Malta, often without shoes or the protective gear we have today. Early in the war, they created them for their families but as the war progressed the Maltese government decreed they must do it for the public, and later, families could dig their own private rooms. Babies were born here; the injured were attended to and operated on in surgical units; others died. How much will does one have to live when you suffer like this? I honestly don’t know. Food supplies got through but it certainly wasn’t easy or always successful. Malta was in no position to defend itself, and the best it could do is survive. They even managed to preserve some of their most precious artworks and valuables in a space little bigger than a Burger King restroom. And of course, they prayed to the Lady who always watched over Malta. In the end, 17,000 tons of bombs were dropped on the country from over 3,300 air raid warnings; 1,500 Maltese citizens died and over 2,000 were injured, which seems remarkable to me as the population was, in 1940, around 250,000-275,000. I would have guessed much higher casualties. Likely many of them came at the beginning of the war. By its end Malta had more than enough underground space for all its remaining citizens and their refugees. Artifacts in Mellieha from the Siege. What would you do? How would I live underground like this? I ask myself, even though, despite the growing hostilities around the world and Canada’s increasingly unstable neighbor to the south, I don’t, at this time, harbor great fears about invasion. But, I can’t rule it out. I wonder how capable any of us are of defending our respective motherlands. Only our refugees have real-world experience with home-made wars. Not to downplay the very real existential threats many of us face now, but it truly puts the price of eggs in perspective when one considers huddling in a tunnel with unwashed neighbors not knowing when you’ll eat again and worrying about your mother who’s developed a concerning nagging cough. Oh, have to go to the bathroom? Push past the elderly and the crying children and use that chamber pot in the alcove over there. The smell. The disease. The infections. The people you know could have been saved if they’d been treated in a proper hospital. The terror of wondering what you did to make the Germans hate you so much. How your Italian neighbors could do this to you. What must it have been like sleeping wherever you could, reminiscing about your old bed now broken in a pile of rubble you used to call home. Wondering what might happen if a land invasion occurred. If the armies found the people huddled in the tunnels, the mothers clutching their pretty daughters and young sons, knowing they might not be able to protect them from becoming some horrid commandant’s mistress or being forced to serve in the Wehrmacht. We have no idea how spoiled we actually are until we’re faced with danger we couldn’t even imagine before. I imagine that if Toronto was bombed or invaded, our Ukrainian refugees could teach us survival tips and best practices. Other subject matter experts are those who escaped the Communists in North Vietnam; or the slaughter of the Tutsis; or the hellholes of Third World Asia and Africa. Today, these Toronto refugees are terrified by the screaming of fighter jets over the city every year for the annual air show, but at least they can be grateful it’s now only once a year. One wonders how would fare the ‘victims’ of elite overproduction Rob Henderson recently wrote about , furious to have been deprived of the good jobs and higher pay they feel entitled to. They need to take a day off when they hear an idea they can’t handle and can’t define what they think when challenged, and these able-bodied kids are our best defense. What would they do when faced with a drone attack? I don’t know I would handle it with any more aplomb, but I would head for my bathtub. Today’s effete elites— all of us, who’ve never experienced a war on our own soil—would have no choice but to take up arms and fight back. Suddenly, a guy who thinks women should marry, submit to a man, and pop out babies, or a woman who claims all men are sexual predators become insanely irrelevant. Europeans in World War II had already lived through another world war preceding this one; perhaps they were used to it all. I think of my aging self crouched in a hole in the ground, my arthritic knees aching to stretch, and wonder just how much fortitude I’d have waiting for the ‘maybe’ of an invading army. What could I do? At 62, I can’t kick anyone’s ass, but I might be able to improve the morale of sobbing teenagers completely unprepared for what’s unquestionably a horrifically challenging future. I’ve been around long enough to see some shit, even if only on the news, so I know how resilient human beings are. So what if we weren’t tempered by a recent world war like the 1940s Europeans? It’s gotta start somewhere, right? I can write. I can fact-check. I can counter mis/disinformation and remind people what they’re really made of. That’s what I like to think I’d do. I hope I never have to find out. Did you like this post? Do you want to see more? I lean left of center, but not so far my brains fall out. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter  Grow Some Labia  so you never miss a damn thing! 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Today's T&D Day requires more than blame. Let's explore what the Indigenous, Canada's perpetual children, can do for themselves Photo from  the 2014 Barrie (ON) Friendship Center Pow-wow. Photo by Antefixus21  on Flickr. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0  license (Since Truth & Reconciliation Day comes one day before this week’s Wednesday publication date, I’m publishing today instead of tomorrow.) One of the best-kept secrets in Canada is that Indigenous bands claim there are 6,000 graves of children in or around former ‘Indian’ residential schools. Yet, so far, and Canadians are surprised to learn this, confirmed by Google, they’ve found Not. One. Single. Body. ‘Deniers’ who snuck onto a former school property  in British Columbia attempting to find some, were stopped by Natives. The incident exemplifies the growing credibility problem for Canada’s First Nations. While we know children died—usually of common diseases in the pre-vaccine era—and are buried near the former schools, band leaders seem strangely incurious about producing some remains, especially in light of some of their more extraordinary claims of savage murders at the schools. You’d think they’d want to possibly prosecute still-living perpetrators, right? Kimberly Murray, an independent special interlocutor for the alleged unmarked graves and burial sites, claimed ‘denialism’ is “the last step in genocide. Denialism is violence. Denialism is calculated. Denialism is harmful. Denialism is hate." Denialism is what happens when you can’t or won’t provide evidence. ‘Genocide’ accusations are nothing more than an attempt to shut down legitimate exploration of these allegations. Hellacious stories of abuse and neglect emerged from the residential schools during the Truth & Reconciliation Commission’s investigations over a decade ago. These horrors were detailed in a massive government report via former student testimony that made it sound like the entire residential school system was the ninth level of hell. For sure, many of these indignities did occur, sometimes and somewhere. Others felt they got a good education from the schools, but the Truth and Reconciliation Commission  weren’t much interested in their stories. The mass graves/residential school hellholes debate defines much of what we think we know about most things Indigenous. In the woke world of progressive politics, one must never challenge anything an Indigenous person claims. Today is Truth and Reconciliation Day in Canada, and we’re going to ask some more uncomfortable questions. Let’s reconcile with some real truths, shall we? Last year for T&R Day , Substack writer Fortissax  at Fortissax Is Typing  wrote a lengthy and well-researched treatis e about how violent pre-European North America was. James Pew , meanwhile, over at Woke Watch Canada , had critiqued the national myth that all the residential schools for ‘Indians’ were abusive hellholes and that no student emerged better, or more educated, than when they went in. (Truth is, many went on to lead successful, happy lives.) And I read two books this year: Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth About Residential Schools ) and Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry: The Deception Behind Indigenous Cultural Preservation . One truth is that many Canadian reserves are in atrocious condition, with many living in squalor—substandard homes, unclean water, insufficient or ridiculously expensive food (which has to be shipped from other parts of Canada to remote reserves without airports), high domestic violence, sexual abuse, drug addiction, alcoholism, and all the other pathologies commonly associated with poverty. If you ask the Indigenous leadership why, they’ll start droning on about white supremacy and racism and stolen land and ‘genocide’ and the ‘horrific’ residential schools and the Indian Act of 1876. If you ask those living in squalor, many will fill your ears with complaints about how the money the Canadian government has given to improve reserve lives doesn’t seem to trickle down into those communities but man, the local leader sure is driving a nice shiny new truck. Canada cares Most Canadians don’t want to see anyone suffering or living in poverty on Canadian soil, and would genuinely love to see First Nations thrive. Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry describes the problems facing Indigenous reserves customarily ignored in what it is still a primarily liberal-leaning country. Those at fault include Indigenous leaders, for whom keeping their people poor results in a rain of federal manna from Ottawa, and their white progressive allies whose job it is to kowtow, bow and scrape, and never, ever, question any Native claim, however outlandish. But the fault at large lies with the mostly non-Indigenous  ‘industry’, primarily lawyers and consultants, who receive obscene amounts of government money defending the Indigenous in court (land claims are THE best way to get rich), with the help of their kind-hearted progressive lapdogs. Conservatives, liberals and moderates who ask whether that money might be better spent improving life quality on the reserves are immediately smacked down as racists, haters and fascists. The reality is most critics, too, want to see Indigenous communities thrive and prosper. A huge obstacle, unfortunately, is the desire of both Indigenous afraid of progress, and Canadians who wish to preserve an antiquated way of life as a sort of living museum rather than help the people adapt and assimilate into our multicultural society. Any suggestion that the Indigenous need to modernize or assimilate is met with hostile accusations of ‘cultural genocide’. But as the Fraser Institute notes , “Extensive research on both sides of the 49th parallel shows that the American tribes and Canadian First Nations who achieve a higher standard of living do so by getting involved in the marketplace and generating income for themselves— ‘own-source revenue’ in the vocabulary of Indigenous affairs.” Because Canada has, at one time or another, attempted to 'rub out the Indian’ in Natives, and engaged in genuine cultural erasure, ‘cultural genocide’ has become the emotional rather than logical response. It’s not true anymore, and it’s detrimental to Indigenous self-determination to not explore how they can do both—preserve their culture while evolving with the new one, just like all of us have done. We  don’t live like we did even twenty, thirty, fifty years ago, and we don’t want to. Disrobing argues that First Nations need modern education and to give up cultural elements which don’t work for them anymore. First Nations, just like us, already don’t live like their ancestors. Very few reserves, if any, bear no  stamp of the White Man’s Modernism. Even their substandard pre-fab housing is an improvement over the homes of their ancestors. The Inuit at the Arctic Circle don’t feed themselves with hunting and fishing the way their ancestors did. They rely on the White Man’s Groceries flown in, which is why their food prices make current American groceries look like bargains. The rest of the world has moved on and modernized. None of us make our own butter or dip our own candles like our ancestors. We embrace childhood vaccines, unless our parents belong to weird religious groups or listen to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Our libraries are in our pockets. And we sure as hell don’t rely only on TV for our news and entertainment anymore. Modernization is how the Indigenous can thrive, which those who’ve embraced it can attest to. Thousands of immigrants from other lands join Canada every year and know they’re expected to assimilate while preserving their cultures however they want. They see the benefits of taking a job in technology, or medicine, or starting their own business, which they might not be able to do back home. They still celebrate Diwali, wear a hijab to work, take the Jewish holidays off, eat what they like. No one is stopping Canada’s Indigenous from doing the same. There’s no sound, rational reason why they can’t live in the modern world, whether by living self-sustainably on reserves without depending on regular government handouts like children , or modernize. No one is stopping them, but they can’t expect Canadians to support them in perpetuity. Disrobing asks the huge question that too many Canadians won’t, at risk of accusations of being a ‘genocidist’. What can Indigenous Canadians do to help themselves? Marginalized groups too often contribute to their own suffering by refusing to release cultural elements that no longer serve them, or question anything they believe about themselves . It’s time to speak freely about what Indigenous Canadians can do: Time to close the museum Disrobing examines this at length. First Nations’ ancestors were still at the level of subsistence living when the European conquerors appeared, more technologically advanced, healthier and stronger. The Natives never stood a chance. Subsistence living has been much romanticized by many generations of freethinkers, hippies, back-to-earthers, and environmentalists. The plain fact is that native North Americans lived shorter and exceedingly violent lives pre-European, exacerbated by ‘kinship’, another ancient tradition they need to bury. It meant higher levels of violence, since if you weren’t related to someone else, a Best Practice was to kill them before they killed you. Today, we live in societies in which we may not even know our neighbors but we don’t suspect them of evil intent, so we  don’t plan murders either. If ‘land acknowledgements’ were honest, every single band and tribe in North America would offer their own, acknowledging whose land theirs belonged to before they stole it. Genuine subsistence living also results in death and suffering from preventable diseases, childhood deaths, and poor dental health. Indigenous leaders must account for government money The First Nations Financial Transparency Act (FNFTA) was passed in 2013 by Parliament to require financial accountability for First Nations band leaders and chiefs after media stories detailed their very nice salaries while their people languished on reserves. Needless to say, this act wasn’t popular with the leaders who argued it was ‘discriminatory’ and ‘unconstitutional’. Justin Trudeau, who never met a special interest group whose asses he wouldn’t kiss, refused to enforce it. Own their non-conquest-related problems The only one of Indigenous problems that originated with the White Man was alcoholism. Already present was the universal culture of patriarchal entitlement to women’s and childrens’ bodies. Unsurprisingly, rape and child rape have always been a part of the universal tradition where men with too much power, to be blunt, fuck women and children without their consent. As detailed by the anthropologist Lawrence Keeley and others, traditional male violence is universal. Rape, sexual abuse of children, women as spoils, spousal abuse—they were as omnipresent in Indigenous communities then as they are today. Disrobing  delves heavily into the sexual abuse and coverups on reserves, identical to off-reserve communities anywhere else. They’re enabled, of course, by their witlessly progressive patriarchal allies who never demand sexual accountability  from any other than white men. Violence and domestic abuse are on the Indigenous, not the White Man. They need to stop blaming us and ‘do the work’. Traditional ‘medicine’ is pseudoscience Not a single one of Native ‘traditional medicines’ will cure cancer or relieve or slow the symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease. Instead of embracing modern medical treatments that work, too many First Nations promote long-outdated ‘medicine’ treatments hoping to receive more monetary compensation (of course) for ‘intellectual property rights’ via the uncritical academic institutional support it gets for ‘ethnobotanical’ research. It’s just one of many traditional values that hold them back. Native ‘medicine’ was all their distant ancestors had; today’s aboriginals have a choice, which is to live long or die young, depending on how badly they want to emulate their ancestors. This is another waste of Native time and taxpayers’ money which does nothing to improve their lives. Restore Western education The biggest truth today’s Canadian Natives must acknowledge is that they are, in essence, Canada’s loser kids stuck perpetually in the basement constantly asking for handouts but frittering it away on land claims and other wastes of money that don’t serve them, along with an unwillingness to modernize. Non-native Canadians acknowledge that many gross injustices have been committed against their ancestors but, like nonsensical ‘slave reparation’ arguments, it was a long time ago and no different from how they treated each other pre-European. Perhaps the first step, now that we’ve got a new Prime Minister, is to start enforcing the FNFTA Act. Forcing financial accountability at the top would be a huge first step in evolving the too-prevalent dependency mindset of Canada’s perpetual children. It’s 2025, not 1625. On Truth & Reconcilation Day, Canada’s Indigenous can commit themselves to becoming self-sustaining adults. It’s time to grow up, and move out of their parents’ house. Did you like this post? Do you want to see more? I lean left of center, but not so far my brains fall out. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter  Grow Some Labia  so you never miss a damn thing! There are also Substack  and Spotify  podcasts of more recent articles!

"GROW A PAIR" That's what we say to men when we think they're acting weak. "Grow some balls!" So what do we say when women are acting weak? We can't very well tell them to grow some balls. Women can't, of course! Women need to 'grow some labia'! They're the parts of the vagina that would have become the scrotum for the balls had she been born a male instead (and since she didn't, what would have been her balls are her ovaries). But I doubt you came here for a female anatomy lesson. It's time for us to grow some labia and woman up, show more strength, challenge ourselves more. Time to take more charge and responsibility for our lives, and spend less time blaming 'The Patriarchy' or systemic sexism. Those things exist, for sure, but at some point we've got to recognize the buck stops with the woman in the mirror and we need to claim our power (or reclaim it if we gave it away somehow!) So it's time for women everywhere to GROW SOME LABIA! I've written a few blog posts about how we can do exactly that and reclaim our power! Feminism The differences between victim feminism, which sees women as chronically aggrieved and victimized by men and 'The Patriarchy', and power feminism, which is more focused on one's self, achieving and claiming personal power and using it for the betterment of others. Dec 21, 2024 The Transfolk Who Really Do Need Our Support The experience of 'The Bearded Lesbian' reminds us some folks really do need to transition; and how LGBTQ can fail them I began following... Dec 5, 2024 American Feminists Don't Need A 4B Movement The South Korean feminism project will be dead in the water. Like it or not, we need men, and they need us. Maybe we just need to reform... Nov 24, 2024 Emma Watson, Emma Watson, Wherefore Art Thou, Emma Watson? The foxy fauxminist has gone missing in recent years. No movies. No fauxminist outbursts. Not even any trans love tweeted. I... Nov 17, 2024 Progressive Democrats Hate Women More Than The Right. Especially Feminists. Right-wing misogyny isn't How The Left Was Lost. It was women's, the primary administrators and executors of patriarchy and misogyny. The... Oct 12, 2024 A Frenchwoman Is Dead Serious About Holding ALL Her Rapists Accountable The Gisele Pelicot case highlights just how frighteningly high is the number of 'normal' men who have a penchant for, and might be... Sep 14, 2024 Let's Have A Grownup Talk About Privilege - With Curiosity Rather Than Outrage It's real. It's worth exploring even for the UnWoke. Its purpose is to open our own eyes rather than beat up others (and ourselves) over... Feminism Substack Subscribe to my FREE SUBSTACK NEWSLETTER for all my latest on power feminism, reclaiming your power, and the ongoing culture wars. Visit Substack >> Subscribe to my FREE SUBSTACK NEWSLETTER

WELCOME TO MY WEBSITE ABOUT POWER Big Girls Don't Blame The Patriarchy Explore The Blog LABIA POWER! About Me Grow Some Labia! is written by a liberal, feminist writer and social justice critic who teaches women and others how to reclaim their power and avoid partner abuse. She also candidly critiques far-left, progressive/woke/ social justice extremism. It's a place for people who lean left or right, but not so far their brains fall out. GSL's work can be found here and on Substack, Quora. And maybe a few other places. About Me The Latest From My Labia Power! Blog 5 days ago Daniel Penny: The Hero That Wasn't "He scared the living daylights out of everybody." The woke left damns Daniel Penny for trying to save others from a clearly disturbed... Jan 4 We Have To Think About Moderating X, Bluesky And Other Social Media The anoymous psychos who call for others' assassinations are a direct threat to democracy and public safety. Threats are NOT free speech.... Jan 1 Here Comes The 'Woke Right' And It Looks A Helluva Lot Like The Woke Left Brand-new management, same as the last! But the bipartisan UnWoke have the recent accumulated observation to help call out the... Dec 25, 2024 Roman Holiday - A Christmas Story Oh no! Not another Messiah! CC0 public domain Just what we need. Another bloody Messiah. The name’s Flatulous. I’m a Roman soldier in... Dec 21, 2024 The Transfolk Who Really Do Need Our Support The experience of 'The Bearded Lesbian' reminds us some folks really do need to transition; and how LGBTQ can fail them I began following... Dec 14, 2024 Is There Any Real Joy In Learning Anymore? Can students even experience learning something intriguing or unexpected? Or are they only told what to think? "Just kill me now!"... Explore The Blog DON'T BE THE VICTIM Take back your power. NOW. It started with abused women who didn't know they could say No to abuse. It morphed into taking back your power from political bullies and haters, including 'social justice warriors'. Don't Be The Victim GROW SOME LABIA "Grow a pair!" That's what we say to men when we think they're acting weak. "Grow some balls!" So what do we say when women are acting weak? We can't very well tell them to grow some balls. Women can't, of course! Women need to 'grow some labia'! Grow Some Labia I also take on the crazies from the right and the left. Subscribe to my FREE SUBSTACK NEWSLETTER

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