1/Today is a brilliant, sunny day in #yeg.

Summer.

Been a tough week in North America as millions woke up to the realization that corruption and misinformation are winning the battle for control over us.

Too many people didn't take it seriously enough early enough.

#abpoli
2/ Now the challenge is to stave off despair, to continue to find joy in our daily lives while we fight for a better world.

One where the word "freedom" isn't used to enslave people. Where death merchants can't buy from politicians the right to terrorize and kill women, children
3/ whether by violence or neglect, or by forced exposure to life-altering viruses.

Every day look for something good, something beautiful. Hold those things close and share them. Take strength from them.

Look at the people around you. Help the vulnerable in what ways you can.
4/ Speak up for the voiceless, lift the burdens of the poor, the depressed, the neighbour you might not even like that much.

Strengthen your communities, not just so you can fight, but because it will help in practical ways when so many are under siege.
5/ This isn't just about the madness that has overtaken so many in the USA. Anyone watching the leadership races for Canada's @CPC_HQ and Alberta's @Alberta_UCP can see the iron grip of corruption, ignorance, delusion and dishonesty on full display in the candidates. There is no
6/ easy way to stop these parties from electing representatives or sympathizers of the fascist right to the leadership. The poison has taken hold.

While we might say "Who would be stupid enough to vote for a nutbar like Candidate X?" the fact is in both those races it's hard to
7/ find a candidate who hasn't already capitulated to the manufactured and manipulated outrage of the ignorant.

For example, there is no hope for a leader of the UCP who isn't determined to bring their warped dystopia into being. The first candidates forum proved it.

It can't
8/ be stopped. The party was born in corruption and hypocrisy and incompetence and it will continue that way. So don't waste your energy on that race.

Build the resistance.

A word to the wise in that resistance: you won't like everyone you are fighting beside. You might think
9/ they are motivated by self-interest, or driven by a zeal you don't share, or a singular issue that you don't agree on.

Fine. Don't spend a lot of time with those. Big world, big war. Find a place where you can make a difference and leave your allies to make a difference in
10/ their skirmishes. Don't think your way is the only way to fight. Don't undermine each other. All hands are needed on this deck.

And if all you can manage is a kind word for the people in your own life, try to utter that kind word as often as you can. It is your way to fight
11/ the darkness, to make those burdens feel lighter for everyone.

If the fight against the darkness casts us into despair, we have already lost.

When you see someone in that dark place, bring what light and warmth you can. Be with them so they know they're not alone.
12/ Love, intelligence, determination. That's how we win.

So. Whatever battles internal or external you face today, may you find caring allies and may you end the day with more hope and strength than you started with.

/fin

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More from @AndersonBooz

Jun 28
1/ The Conservative media propaganda campaign against the government of 🇨🇦 intensifies as they try to make the white supremacist-led protests seem justified by throwing everything behind a manufactured fake scandal.

With CPC in freefall, who is pulling these strings? Cui bono?
2/ What has the current govt done that makes it so urgent to undermine it even when the Opposition is practically leaderless and fractured?

If I were a conspiracy theorist - and I don't think I am, but I am on the intuitive side - I would have three suspects.

#cdnpoli
3/ • First would be what people are referring to variably as the Dominionists or christofascists, whose influence has been part of the fracturing of Conservatism and has been bubbling under the surface for a century. Emboldened by their success in the USA, they could be making
Read 23 tweets
Jun 26
1/ This evening around 9:30 I was on the phone with a friend in Toronto. I was getting ready to go get a few groceries, and observing the rules: go to the bathroom before you get in the car.
I was interrupted in my task by an odd rustling sound from the
#yegdt #NotAngryAB
2/ livingroom. So, still with ghe phone in one hand and pulling my pants up with the other, I turned the corner into the livingroom...

...where a stranger, wearing my winter coat, was stuffing things into a gym bag. A box of 3 votive candles. A boxed New Testament. A paperback
3/ of Isherwood's Down There on a Visit. A boxed set of Sherlock Holmes books. A fancy programmable power bar. And my gym bag already had the swimsuit, workout gloves, athetic shoes etc.

I bellowed at the man to put my things down and I rushed toward him - my right hand with the
Read 11 tweets
Feb 9
1/ When I started HS, I was in awe of the lanky Tommy Tune-esque kid who was in the musicals. I think we only overlapped that one year.

He became famous, but not as a musical theatre star.

His name was Peter Evans and he was a hero. He caught HIV early and went public, his
2/ dying being captured by a documentary team. He wanted the world to see and understand what AIDS does.

He died.

The first of many in my expanding professional and personal circle.

So I marched, wrote letters, worked with groups to promote safe sex, fought against the bigots.
3/ There was a cost to this. I would hear rumours about me (undiagnosed celiac meant I was always really thin - some folks thought it meant I had HIV), would have my personal life dissected, would be a target for harassment.

I was not alone. There were many of us who understood
Read 11 tweets
Sep 24, 2021
1/ Team O'Toole post-election says people didn't want this election, they don't like PMJT, don't agree with Liberal policies.

Plus we had the full force of the Postmedia misinformation machine working against the Liberals.

If all those things are true yet the Libs still saw
2/ an increase in seats while the Cons were static in seats and lost a fair chunk of popular vote in true-blue Alberta, imagine how massive O'Toole's team is saying the Lib support was BEFORE PMJT called the election. If this result is what Canada voted despite their anger at
3/ the timing, despite the policy areas where Libs have been slow or missing (some of them areas where the Con platform would be worse, like climate change), despite the scandals (some of them manufactured), O'Toole thinks pre-election support for the Liberals was massive. So
Read 9 tweets
Aug 26, 2021
@CPC_HQ 1/ In Alberta, Conservatives don't believe in lifting everyone up. They reduced minimum wage for the young, increased tuition, are wanting rollbacks - retroactive - for HCW and PSE. They overpay their Con racist pals, increase corporate welfare and reduce accountability.
@CPC_HQ 2/ And @jkenney is your pal, and just like you. He made promises too. He broke them. He canceled contracts just because the previous govt made them - politicking, not governing. He gambled and list - billiins of $ and thousands of lives.

#abpoli #ableg #cdnpoli #UCPcorruption
@CPC_HQ @jkenney 3/ Like you, he surrounded himself with incompetent ideologues. People who don't understand ethics and who break the law.

That's what we saw even before he was elected. Like you and your lawbreaking Willy Wonka meme, your defaming Senator, your racist MPs.

@CPC_HQ is like
Read 6 tweets
Aug 24, 2021
1/ Yesterday I tried on some clothes at Winners. The lighting in the fitting rooms was wonderfully unflattering. I looked old and fat.

It's a bit like a funhouse mirror, but more frightening.

I've shrunk an inch or so from my 30s. Now at 6'2"+ and 173 lbs, I'm not

#yegartist
2/ in the overweight ranges of the charts. I feel great.

So I did a quick set of measurements.

Chest is 40", waist 33", hips 39.5".

The clothing was my size and seemed to fit nicely. But there's no denying the light made my body look bulgy and saggy and grey.
3/ I don't usually look at mirrors at home - get out of the shower, which is in a room that has no mirror, run a comb through my hair, use the electric shaver on my face, and throw some clothes on.

But lately I have been going to the gym, so I see myself in mirrors more often.
Read 4 tweets

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