Yesterday, this email notification was in my inbox:
![](https://www.7thstep.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/ballot.jpg)
So that is done. Although, as John Pavlovitz points out, on November 9, when we wake up, the world is still going to be there. And many things will still be the same. (And hope will still be there too.) Also, yesterday was World Opera Day, which I had not known existed. There’s always something to learn. As trivial as this is, I also learned (by looking them up) that the Met’s music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, is 5’5″ tall, one inch taller than James Madison, and six inches taller than Robert Reich. What’s that saying, good things come in small packages? (No offense intended to tall people.)
Cartoon –
![](https://www.7thstep.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/1026Cartoon.jpg)
Short Takes –
PolitiZoom – Talent Agency Drops Kanye West For Anti-Semitism, But the Real Story Is Misogyny-to-Fascism Pipeline
Quote – But that’s not the real story. Before all of this blew up, Amanda Maricotte at Salon wrote a piece that got to the roots of what is troubling West and why he’s even worth taking a look at. He’s not just an isolated rich dummy, an over the hill artiste who hasn’t gone on tour since 2016. He’s part of something a lot bigger and a lot scarier, in addition to his particular brand of mental illness.
Click through for article – which looks to an article by Amanda Marcotte for Salon here, which in turn looks back to two earlier articles here and here, and just like that, the light dawns. It isn’t coincidence that these things go together, or, at least, it isn’t any more. It’s the conscious, deliberate use of misogyny to turn people, particularly men, into extreme fascists. And I can’t get into words how dangerous this is.
The Daily Beast – Pelosi Has a New Plan That’s Going to Make Putin Really Pissed
Quote – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is slated to attend the Crimea Platform parliamentary summit in Croatia this week as part of a forum to discuss kicking Russia out of Crimea and returning the peninsula to Ukraine. Her visit is meant to show the United States’ “ironclad solidarity” with Ukraine, the Democrat said in a statement. But while it may seem like just the latest expression of support from the West, the trip could reverberate all the way to the Kremlin.
Click through for details. I don’t think pissing Putin off is necessarily a bad thing. This is not actually an escalation in any way, but a reiteration of what our position has been since at least two years before Trump** moved in.
Food For Thought
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![](https://www.7thstep.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Steal2.jpg)