I kept saying that everyone all through the last election … everyone kept thinking ‘hey let’s elect this person to represent the people because he spent his entire career representing banks, money, wealth and finance’

He never changed … it’s everyone else admitting now to what he always was.

That’s the thing … no matter how much language, documents or statements anyone can make … money, wealth and power will always trump those things. A rich man or a wealthy corporation can spend billions on billions year after year just chiseling away at health services, nursing staff, available doctors, hospital administrations, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, etc, etc and just wearing down all those things to the point where government and society will just give in and allow private health care to first step in … then take full control.

Private health care won’t arrive with a big loud marching band announcing their takeover … it will arrive like a cancer that first infected your skin, then it was left untreated for many years until your left with tumours everywhere and those were also left untreated and eventually the patient is diagnosed with terminal cancer and everyone just sits around wondering how all that happened.

I’m all for public health care for everyone in this country and I do everything I can to support and fight for it.

But we have to stop thinking of it as a ‘right’ … it’s a privilege that can be taken away by those in power and those with money … and given enough time and resources, they could have their way and remove this ‘right’ of ours.

We have to stop believing in this magical thing that can’t be touched called ‘a right’ … sure it sounds like a great idea but those ‘rights’ can be removed, ignored, sidelined or bypassed if enough money is used.

We have to actively keep fighting for these so called ‘right to healthcare’ … because the for-profit private health care supporters and owners are constantly fighting everyone else to break it all down.

If we don’t fight back now … we won’t be able to fight back later

Keep the modem and GPS running … just install it with a lithium battery or wire it directly to a vehicle battery system and place the unit on a school bus or local city transit bus

Or someone could start a small business offering to do this for people … the business would be to just rent out space on a moving van or transport truck and just fill it with GPS and modem units that have been removed from cars … for a nominal fee ($1 a week for example), you keep all these units powered and just have the truck driven around everywhere working as a regular delivery vehicle.

Enjoy and celebrate any time you have together now, for as long as possible and as much as possible, if you get mad at one another, screw it all, apologize and talk and work through it as quickly as possible … because in the end, it feels like no time has passed at all.

Might as well be … you have no idea of the sadness I feel. I am completely normal, I go about my work and I do the things I always did before … on the outside everything is perfectly normal. Unfortunately, my mind, my thoughts and my perception of the world has changed … I no longer feel the same sense of joy and happiness of doing things … I always go back to thinking of the person I lost and how she is not here any more … it’s pervasive and deep. I feel like someone has draped a big heavy wet blanket over me and it hangs on me all the time. And yes … the colors of the world don’t seem to be as bright any more … they don’t fill me with the same awe and happiness they once did. They do cheer me up but it’s like lighting a tiny candle in a deep dark cave.

I’ve lost lots of people in my life … my brother, my aunts and uncles … friends from my age group, friends who were older, friends who were younger … my grandparents … both my parents … and I’ve handled all those with a lot acceptance and understanding … I lived through them with my wife who supported me through all of it … but this … this is like having your soul removed and you feel like you are operating your body like an empty vessel. Life feels very mechanical now … I go about doing things like I always did but everything is without meaning now and I constantly wonder why I am doing anything.

Enjoy every moment with her. There will be times of differences, arguments and disagreements … work your way through them and if there is ever any bad feeling, always go back and apologize … none of it matters. The greatest things that hurt the most right now are the memories of how I wanted to win arguments and got angry and mad over some stupid things. No relationship is ever perfect, you will miss out on things you like or want to do … but the same will be true for her … both of you will lose on certain things because you both want to be together. That is all within reason too … if either one of you is outright abusing or taking advantage of the other and the relationship is completely lopsided, then you got to leave that situation. Otherwise … shrug off any bad feelings, always go back and talk through them, no one is keeping score or racking up points … because in the end, all you will ever miss is being with that person whether in good times or in bad.

Enjoy whatever time you have together because if you think you have years or decades to be together … in the end, no matter how long it lasted, it feels like no time has gone by at all.

My wife of 30 years died a few months ago and I’m having to adjust to life without her.

Life is freakin weird now … I feel like some kind of ghost that doesn’t exist … I feel like a big part of my life died with her and at the same time I feel like I’m alive but not fully … I’m alive but not fully … I feel like part of me disappeared but I didn’t die … quite honestly, sometimes I feel like a ghost that didn’t fully cross over and I’m stuck in this life until I can move on.

I have a ton of supports, family and friends, work and things to do and I keep very busy with stuff … but all of it just doesn’t mean much to me any more.

And family and friends keep telling me I have all the freedom in the world to do whatever I want … but you know what? … life is no longer enjoyable when you don’t have the person you want to share everything with. I had so many plans and things I really, really wanted to do … but now it’s all meaningless and pointless … I have no real enjoyment for many things any more. Even turning on the TV to watch something, anything no longer really thrills me and I watch something for a few minutes, my mind wanders and I have to go do something else. I go online and it’s the same thing, I read part of something and I have to move on to the next thing … I play video games and I can’t concentrate on it for too long.

About the only thing left to me now is riding my motorcycle but I can’t even do that because the weather is still too cold here in northern Ontario … so I can’t even enjoy that.

And in the meantime, I have to watch the world burn … life is just very strange for me at the moment.

No … lack of government oversight, as well as colluding with the trucking industry to deregulate and dumb down the whole trucking industry by taking advantage of cheap foreign labor while also putting the public in danger on the highway … is what is destroying trucking.

I live in northern Ontario and I keep non stop from everyone up here that they want to blame ‘Pakis’, ‘turban heads’ and ‘foreigners’ for making the highways dangerous … they are right in a very small way.

The greatest blame for all this is the provincial and federal governments working with big trucking companies to deregulate the entire system and put us all in danger on the highway. All for what? So that some a-hole billionaire can make even more money they’re never going to use?

We did a little tour on our own into Germany one spring, about 20 years ago. It was only a few days, we didn’t have much money and we absolutely didn’t know what we were doing. We rented a car and just started wandering. It was just at the point of technology where GPS was still new. We didn’t have any so we just started driving with a shitty map and no clue.

We had done some traveling in other countries before and we had met several famously obnoxious German tourists. We had partly expected to meet equally arrogant Germans in their home country.

Instead we met the most open, kind hearted, brilliant people ever. Everywhere we stopped, we’d meet three or four locals who were more than happy to give directions, recommend restaurants, bars, tea shops and sites to see.

At one point we met a truck driver who gave us a ton of information and showed us a driving route on a big format ringed binder map book. When he was done talking, he left the book. We told him he was forgetting his book and he said we could have it as it had detailed updated map info of the entire country. It was an expensive book and I knew it, so I told him not to give it away. He insisted and said he didn’t mind.

I still have that map book on my shelf and whenever I see it, I think of that trip and all those people we met.

Totally loved Germany after that.

Don’t know … I can’t afford internet credits in order to access a connection.

The not so great one

It sounds like you’ll fit right in … great to have you here … have fun!

I was making light of your question … partly to have a bit of fun … and partly to show that the community enjoys sharing these silly little bits of movie quotes that act like memes. The one I was using is from the movie “The Naked Gun” (the original film from 1988 with Leslie Nielson)

A lot of the meme communities enjoy old slapstick movie content as there is a lot of memeable content there … films like ‘The Naked Gun’ series, Hot Shots, any of the Mel Brooks films and Monty Python.

Don’t be afraid to test your boundaries, comment as you like but with an open mind and kind heart … people will let you know if you’ve said or implied anything negative or positive. Don’t be discouraged if you get no response either … it’s not a popularity contest. The longer you stay, the more you comment, the more you get to know people and the more they get to know you and eventually you become a regular part of the community.

Welcome to Lemmy and welcome to the fediverse.

Then tell them they’re part of the gang and to join everyone else as we go wedgie and noogie the next new guy

“I’m sure we can handle this situation maturely, just like the responsible adults that we are. Isn’t that right, Mr. Poopy Pants?”

Take advice from Detective Frank Drebin

“Like a blindman at an orgy, I was going to have to feel my way through”

White Christian Nationalism

The belief that they (white Christian Caucasians) are a privileged ethnic group that should have power and control over everyone and that they should automatically have all the benefits of society because it’s their god given right.

They don’t care about other ethnic or cultural groups because everyone else is a lesser version of them which means it allows them and gives them the authority to have power over everyone else.

It’s the same route, history and belief system of German national socialists… or nazism.

It’s expensive to pay first world workers with modern worker rights and work safety regulations in Canada … and heaven forbid if they are unionized workers.

It’s cheaper to export the raw materials to a country with cheap labor, few or no worker laws and lax safety regulations … and definitely no unionized labor.

The government wants to build the nation … by allowing companies to skirt as many laws as possible to maximize profits and build the nation’s businesses and corporations in the vain hope that these companies will actually share their profits and benefits.