She asked......

Ok, so that craziness and symbolic dance to please the powers that pay for it is over.  The National Parks are open, so that helps me, and others will get their food stamps, Head Start visits, cancer treatments, cosmic research, NSA surveillance, EPA protection, meat inspection, and paid for developing a big stealth jet that will never be finished.

I will be off to Yosemite soon, to visit a place I have always wanted to see.  I did not expect that it would be part of a political statement.  But, as I said in my Listserve post:  Nothing surprises me.  Nothing is too absurd, especially when it is exploitative, when those who have tell those who don't that they should suck it up.

Meanwhile I have been slowly responding to the hundred of questions I received last month.  people seem to care.  When I finally respond, most of them respond to my response, which is nice.  I now have a couple of hundred new email pals from all over the world.

Here is one example, here is only a part of what she wrote:

I am dating a man, actually engaged to him, who has "cheated" on me several times...cheated by engaging with women/old flames via social media twice in two years (suggestive texting)...and once he snuck off to go dancing, where he met a woman, and kept the flirtation going (no sex/only kissing) for a few weeks before he ended it.

All smoke and no flame, I guess you could say.  But I don't like it.  Not one bit.  

I responded:

Good question; sorry for the delay in responding.

My thoughts: (and read every disclaimer possible into these)
If he really, really is only doing these flirtations on-line, or by text, and he really wouldn't act on them if given the chance  (can anyone believe that? even him?)  But if that is true, then you have to remember that he is fifty, and I remember that as a dangerous age for men. It is really a time when we don't want to feel as if we are slipping into irrelevancy.  We are too slow for basketball and have to play "Senior" sports.  It's all about still being attractive.

But, if it really makes you uncomfortable, and you are worth it to him, he should be able to control it.  You can confront him gently.  Tell him how much he means to you and how much this makes you feel queasy and how you think less of him and his insecurities.  And also tell him that if it continues, you will not only leave him, but that your parting shot could make him unable to operate for a couple of months.

Give him that whole " hell hath no fury..." routine.

Forgive me for taking so long to reply, but I received hundreds of questions, and I still have my day job so it is taking me a while to get to them all.

All the Best!

Political, Slipping away

I have been very busy, and when I'm not busy being busy I have been busy answering the literally hundreds of questions I have received from around the world.  They mostly have been about how to get along with a significant other or how to find meaning in life.

I mean, good luck with those.  I will post my answers more often than I have been, I hope, if I'm not busy.

But right now I have to make a brief comment about the obvious: The U.S. government is fucked-up.  But I don't want to spread the blame equally, I think that 94% of it goes to the right-wing wing nuts who feel that spending money to keep middle class and poor people healthy and financially solvent is the worst thing that a government can do. But now they seem to have changed their mind about what they are upset about, and it seems to be that now they are upset because everyone can see they are a bunch of sore-loser blowhards who backed themselves in a corner and the President is pointing this out.

They thought they would be clever and hold the world up for ransom, and they still might.  But hopefully, this is another step in the beginning of the end of those who feel that the purpose of the United States is for white men to make as much money as they can, any way they can.  I know that five members of the  Supreme Court still believe that, so that will cause more trouble, but most of the country is turning away from that.

Obamacare is a huge social program, and it is the beginning of a slide toward government health care. That will prove to be widely accepted and greatly appreciated.  I do believe that everyone should be on Medicare, and then be allowed by buy their own supplemental plan, and that something like that is thirty years away, but maybe sooner.  For in twenty years most of the Tea Party will be in nursing homes trying to vote for Ronald Reagan again. By then the video game generation, who seem to be the kind of folks who care about each other collectively, if they are not blowing each other away and stealing each other's cars, will take for grantedthe benefits of universal health care, and not mind paying more taxes for it.