Things People are Entitled to in Addition to Their Own Opinions

1. Shitting in their own hand.

2. Putting their dick in a donut.

3. Watching all three Jackass movies and re-enacting every scene in order.

4. Competitive hot dog eating.

5. Calling themselves Carlos Danger and sending the world a picture of their boner.

6. Playing Russian roulette.

7. Fucking each other in Barney the Purple Dinosaur costumes.

8. Playing Pokemon Go until they get hit by a bus.

9. Paying money to listen to Justin Bieber.

10. Thinking this tweet storm from the elected leader of the free world is remotely normal.

So next time someone tries to justify a trash AF opinion with "everyone is entitled to their own opinion," maybe read them this list of what else they're entitled to.

That Juneau Feeling When . . . 10 Awkward Moments Only Juneauites Will Understand

1. Counting the days until the opening of Rainforest Farms and worrying that someone will see you walking into/out of there.

2. Regarding #1 above, knowing everyone is about to find out exactly who in Juneau has seen Friday, Next Friday, AND Friday After Next.

3. Encountering your internet trolls in person and being forced to make pleasant small talk with them.

4. Going to dinner at someone's house, personally knowing several women who smashed that dick, and finding yourself wondering whether it was any good. Then making a mental note to ask all of them individually later.

5. Climbing into the stir-ups at the gynecologist, day-dreaming about how maybe she'll discover a fatal disease in your vagina that will prevent you from having to live through a Trump Presidency, and then remembering that the person who is currently prying apart your undercarriage with a speculum and lubed-up latex while cheerfully narrating every minute of it ("two fingers separating the labia!") is LEGIT another mother from Girl Scouts.  

6. Road raging on someone who cut you off at a red light, making eye contact with them, and then seeing them at your kids' school drop-off and pretending you weren't giving each other the finger ten seconds earlier.

7. Two words: Known Trumpites. (See also: #3).

8. Sitting in first class on the flight to Seattle or Anchorage, watching people walk by, and feeling like you need to clarify to every single one of them that it was a free upgrade.

9. Exchanging compliments on your outfits with another woman, and suddenly realizing you swapped them for each other at a clothes swap last year.

10. Bringing a bottle of $11 wine to someone's house and then remembering they brought the exact same bottle to your house last month and fully know it's a re-gift.

#TJFW

I Feel Like Steve Bannon Would Be More Chill if Someone Took One for the Team and Just Tapped That Ass

I hope no one is offended by the title or premise of this post. Just kidding! I don't give a shit about that.

But I'm seriously wondering: Do you think maybe Steve Bannon would be less of a pestilent, festering, rheumy-eyed boil on the scrotum of humanity if one of us would just take one for the team and tap that ass?

I don't know if the man is straight, bi, or gay (and if so, whether he's a bottom or a top), so I'm just throwing this suggestion out there to basically anyone with genitals. 

I have a close friend who, when she encounters a particularly high-strung person, always says they "could use a cheeseburger and an orgasm." Clearly, the dopamine and serotonin that flows from a big ol' bone sesh and a phatty hand-packed bacon cheddar cheese burger with caramelized onions all over it would take ANY neo-fascist Nazi white supremacist down a few rungs on the burning white cross to some low-key chill, dontcha think?

Well I do. I think it's time that someone pay the ultimate sacrifice for our country: Keep Steve Bannon from using the White House to carry out his nefarious Swastika-stamped agenda by FUCKING THE HATE RIGHT OUT OF HIM!

This is GENIUS, so hear me out.

The rage that flows through the veins of men like Steve Bannon invariably boils down to a fuck-complex of some kind. Either women refuse to fuck them, they fuck women without their consent, they want to fuck men but hate themselves for it, they're fucking men on the DL and are scared of getting caught, they want to fuck kids or animals or some other deviant criminal shit, they got fucked over by their mother, wife, sister, or girlfriend, or they are involuntarily celibate.

Any of these things gets fixed, and I promise you Steve Bannon is one quadrillion percent more chill, and will stop doing shit like equating feminism with cancer, calling people faggots, and telling women to log off the internet forever.

That's why I'm just putting this out there to see what I can do for the world right now. Everyone's all like, "don't normalize," "take action," "speak out." Well, my way of taking action is by proposing that someone, somewhere, go to D.C., seduce Steve Bannon, fuck his brains out, and take him to Shake Shack afterwards.

Who me? Um, no. I'm not volunteering. I'm just saying someone should do this. 

For humanity.

My Open Letter Re: Hate and White Supremacy to the Mayors of Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Juneau

I emailed the following letter to the mayors of Alaska's three major cities today. Feel free to cut and paste this, send it yourself, circulate it, share it, whatever you need to do to get a strong public statement from our biggest cities' mayors that Alaska's largest population centers will NOT stand for hate and/or "mass deportations."

Dear Mayors Koelsch, Berkowitz, and Matherly,

I am writing to you, the mayors of Alaska’s three largest cities, to affirmatively denounce hate and white supremacy in our State and to reaffirm that you will not aid or abet Donald Trump’s threatened “mass deportations” of immigrants and refugees from your cities.

Since the election of Donald Trump to the Presidency last week, there has been a sharp increase in hate crimes and acts of race and ethnic based violence all over the country. All Alaskans, regardless of their political beliefs and regardless of who they voted for, should be appalled at these developments. They threaten not just their targets, but each and every one of us and our entire concept of democracy and equality.

I have lived in Bethel, Palmer, and now Juneau since 2006. Alaska has long been a haven of liberty, individual freedoms, and diversity. Urban Alaska has large immigrant and refugee populations who are surely feeling a great deal of fear and anxiety in the country’s current hostile climate.

I recognize that Alaska voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump, but this is not a political issue. It is a human rights issue.

Therefore, I ask two things of each of you at this time: (1) That you issue a formal and public statement denouncing and condemning any and all verbal and physical attacks on the residents of your cities based on their race, ethnicity, gender, or immigrant status; and (2) That you join the mayors of New York, Chicago, Providence, and Seattle in committing to resist Donald Trump’s promised efforts to separate families, deport children, and otherwise expel from our State hard-working, law-abiding, and essential members of our communities.

I look forward to your prompt and public response on this dire issue.

Sincerely,

Libby Bakalar

Juneau, Alaska

P.S. A reader who wrote a letter separately expressing fear of hate crimes to Mayor Koelsch received this encouraging response: "Please be assured that I vehemently share your views and support that all Alaskans and Juneauites have the right to expect safety in their community. I will continue to be vocal about this and have had meetings with the police department especially in regards to the safety and security of our citizens. Please let any law enforcement personnel know if you witness or encouter any of the situations similar to what you described in the email."

Ethan Berkowitz, Mayor of Anchorage

Ken Koelsch, Mayor of Juneau

Jim Matherly, Mayor of Fairbanks

Welcome to the Pit of Despair (Don't Worry, We're "Only Mostly Dead")

Warning: Stop reading immediately if you: (1) have NOT seen The Princess Bride AND; (2) are NOT in the "Pit of Despair" about 'Murica 2016. If you troll me on this post, I'll know you didn't heed my warning, and I will not engage.

Still with me? Okay.

I've been thinking about that scene in The Princess Bride. The one where the Albino (aptly-named given the white supremacist tenor of the past week and since he looks exactly like Steve Bannon) is holding Prince Westley hostage in the Pit of Despair. 

"Where am I?" Westley asks. "The Pit of Despair! Don't even think about trying to escape," the Albino answers in a raspy voice. But later, Miracle Max (played by Billy Crystal) saves Westley, noting that he is "only mostly dead" because he is sustained by true love, and provides a chocolate-covered potion pill that brings Westley back to life and ready to vanquish his enemies.

I won't lie: I've been in my own little Pit of Despair this entire week, but after much thought, tears, hand-wringing, and conversations with like-minded people, I have made three concrete resolutions on how to move forward in the wake of something that I (along with many others) consider to be UNBELIEVABLE, VERY UNFAIR, and a BIGLY civic DISASTER of unknown scale and consequence for the nation, one which we all must now live with.

1. #PutItDown: I decided I need to manage my intake of news and social media much how I learned to manage food after years of eating disorders. (The hashtag is copyright Geoff) I don't think it's realistic to cut myself off from the world's information sources, nor is it responsible. The fact is our phones are good tools for social justice. We need social media to connect with one another. But there's a fine line between staying informed and poisoning yourself with too much (often erroneous) information from filtered or curated sources. In other words, I'm going to try to subsist on a healthy diet of vetted information, rather than binge and purge on the equivalent of a pan of half-cooked Duncan Hines brownies 25 times a day.

2. Set Boundaries and Forget About "Changing People's Minds": We all have a limited amount of time and energy to devote to the things we care about in this world. To that end, I have decided to stop trying to engage people who directly or indirectly pulled the lever for Donald Trump. My energy is wasted on these people, because I have nothing to say to them (but I take heart in the fact that I'm in the company of more than half the country in rejecting Trump). The fact remains that while each individual Trump voter is not a white supremacist or a misogynist, when given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to answer the question: "are either of those things a deal-breaker for you?" their answer was no. I therefore have nothing in common with these people and nothing to talk about with them. It's a personal boundary. It's not a question of "listening to other people's opinions." I read somewhere that "respecting someone else's opinion" is okay for things like "I don't like hot sauce," not things like "I don't like black people." So there you have it. Goodbye to all that, and I am turning to devoting my limited time and energy to #3.

3. Direct Limited Time and Concrete Energy to Productive Things: An interesting byproduct of my malaise is that I feel like I don't exactly want to live in the world that is coming (or perhaps that I have merely just awakened to). I would never harm myself in any way, but I suddenly feel a big and liberating loss of fear about what happens to me in service of mitigating the consequences of whatever is destined to happen next. So I am going to get more active in my community, and engage more with my elected officials. I am going to join a few more boards, keep writing (both for myself and to help others feel less alone), and keep raising my kids to be conscientious objectors to the inevitable toxicity to follow.

To quote Miracle Max, "there's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive." Democracy as we know it may be "mostly dead," but true love is still the most powerful weapon in our arsenal. 

Have fun storming the castle!

Get Pumped! Here Come's O.H.M.'s Ultimate Neo-Fascism Playlist!

Are you a "white liberal" who woke up on November 10 to the shocking fact that white supremacy is alive and well in America? Are you a "person of color" who knew this all along? Did some of your "family" die in the "Holocaust?" Are you a "survivor" of "sexual assault?" Are you a "conservative" who is troubled by the appointment of an "unrepentant white nationalist" to a major "White House" position? One who ran a "news site" with the below listed headlines? And whose appointment everyone is treating as completely fucking "normal?" And as "politics" as usual instead of MAYBE a tiny bit of a "human rights" problem?

Well you're in "luck," because O.H.M. has the music you NEED to get you through these tough times with the Ultimate Neo-Fascism Playlist! 

While you're wringing your hands trying to figure out what else to do with the imminent and insidious Coming of the Third Reich in America, you might as well bide your time doing what all of us apparently do better than anything else: Fiddle around with electronics while our proverbial Rome burns to the ground!

Here are five great tunes that belong on everyone's Neo-Fascism playlist!

1. Black Boys on Mopeds (Sinead O'Connor): Among other things, this song is about the 1983 death of Colin Roach, a 21 year-old black British man who was shot by police and whose death was allegedly covered up by the State. Here are some choice lyrics from the song that will get you FUCKIN' PUMPED for suppression of the free press, mass-gaslighting, and all of the sleeping sheep who tell you all of this is normal: "I've said this before now/You said I was childish and you'll say it now/Remember what I told you/If they hated me they will hate you/These are dangerous days/To say what you feel is to lay your own grave." YES, BITCHES!!

2. Russians (Sting): Sting wrote this hit song in 1985 about the Cold War, but with Russia and Julian FuckAmericaInTheAssange basically running AmeriKKKa from a Soviet basement internet server now, these lyrics are more prescient than ever: "In Europe and America/There's a growing feeling of hysteria/Conditioned to respond to all the threats/In the rhetorical speeches of the Soviets/There is no monopoly on common sense/On either side of the political fence/We share the same biology, regardless of ideology/Believe me when I say to you/I hope the Russians love their children too/There is no historical precedent/To put the words in the mouth of the President?/There's no such thing as a winnable war/It's a lie we don't believe anymore." I MEAN, HOW ON POINT IS THIS?! GET PSYCHED PEOPLE!

3. Sunday Bloody Sunday (U2): Bono from U2 is the CLASSIC "Let's freak out about fascism" mega star, and no song embodies his philosophy better than Sunday Blood Sunday, detailing Ireland's 1/30/72 Bogside Massacre in which British soldiers shot 26 unarmed civilians during a peaceful protest march against internment of alleged IRA sympathizers: "I can't believe the news today/I can't close my eyes and make it go away/How long, how long must we sing this song, how long/And the battle's just begun/There's many lost, but tell me who has won/The trench is dug within our hearts/And mother's, children, brothers sisters torn apart." TEAR IT UP YOU GUYS!! PUT THIS ONE ON REPEAT!

4. Killing in the Name (Rage Against the Machine): No "get ready for life under a fascist overlord" playlist is complete without this classic by Rage Against the Machine: "Killing in the name of!/Some of those that work forces/are the same that burn crosses/And now you do what they told you/Now you're under control/You justify those that died by wearing the badge/They're the chosen whites/Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!" SWEET! VIVA LA RESISTANCE!

5. Behind the Wall (Tracy Chapman): This one goes out to all you rape and domestic violence survivors and "feminazis" who now have a confessed sexual assailant in charge of her country. Good thing Tracy Chapman has some words about that: "Last night I heard the screaming/Loud voices behind the wall/Another sleepless night for me/Won't do no good to call/The police always come late if they come at all/Last night I heard the screaming/A silence that chilled my soul/I prayed that I was dreaming/When I saw the ambulance in the road." COME ON, IT DOES NOT GET BETTER THAN THIS. DOESN'T THIS SONG GET YOU FUCKING AMPED FOR NORMALIZATION OF SEXUAL ASSAULT AND DV?!

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS PEOPLE. History repeats itself folks, and so does a Playlist on shuffle! 

WOOT!

Fig. 1: Actual Headlines from Stephen Bannon's, New Chief Advisor to President-Elect Trump, Breitbart News Site

We Must All Bear Witness, Because This is Not Normal and This is Not Okay

In the words of Teju Cole, "evil settles into everyday life when people are unable or unwilling to recognize it. It makes its home among us when we are keen to minimize it or describe it as something else." 

Well, I for one am not keen to minimize it or describe it as something else, and I am willing to call it out whenever and wherever I see it, no matter the consequences.

Consider all that has happened in the past few days since Trump was elected President. The hate speech. The Nazi flags. The screaming racial epithets. The Swastikas. The threats among children--white children to brown children--that their parents will be deported. Chants of "build the wall." 

They will gaslight you in epic fashion before they will let you think this is real. They will tell you the news is over-exaggerated and biased. They will tell you it's actually the protesters' fault (and who cares if it is, because it's still happening). It's you, not them. They will blame the victims. They will call you sore losers, cry babies, weak children. They will liken it to a baseball game, get over it, your team didn't win. They will be the ones who think they are immune, who think they will benefit from a Trump presidency, who think they've been wronged and will now be made whole. They will tell you God is on their side.

Well, they are about to find out the hard way how truly wrong things can get, divine intervention notwithstanding. Because sadly, this is no game. Far from it. The analogy is fatally flawed.

They don't see that this is not about winning and losing, unless you're talking about losing democracy as we know it. They don't see that this will make their lives miserable, too, and soon. Trump isn't going to sprinkle the country with new industrial jobs, build a wall on the border, keep factories from going to Mexico, and rid America of brown people. 

All of that's a total con, just like every other con Donald Trump has ever pulled off. None of that will happen. But what will happen is stuff like this: 

The American Academy of Pediatrics will take the shocking (and I am fairly certain unprecedented) step of advising its membership of 64,000 physicians on how to explain this election to their patients. Think about that for a minute. An American medical organization felt compelled to issue a statement on how to help children process the 2016 United States presidency. 

President Trump will continue to hold rallies, which his advisers call "old fashioned" (that's one way of putting it) because he needs to get high off his own narcissism supply simply to "govern." Because he likes the adulation and instant gratification that the cheering crowds provide. 

In short, white hate will be white hot, empowered, emboldened, condoned, and rabidly violent all over America. If this doesn't terrify you, it should. 

Some of my family members died in the Holocaust. Just a few of some six million Jews. But a footnote in history is that Hitler killed 14 million other people, too. NOT just Jews, NOT just ethnic undesirables, but disabled people, gay people, political adversaries and dissidents as well, leaving behind a gutted continent and an Aryan nation that ultimately cannibalized itself; and the few who remained fled to all corners of the globe to escape prosecution for war crimes, mostly unsuccessfully.

"It can happen here, it must never happen here." Every American Jew knows this refrain. Every single one. It's as ingrained as any passage in the bible. We all heard it growing up. 

And how can it happen? 

By staying silent, refusing to bear witness, refusing to say this is not normal, and this is not okay. Deciding to just go on with our lives as though the election of an incompetent autocrat with a strong following of vocal white supremacists (and silent white supremacist enablers) slowly takes root like a cancer in the American body politic. 

And by the time we diagnose ourselves, we are on our death bed.

If you think I'm exaggerating, then you're in the company of many people I know, including my own spouse. And all I can tell you is go read a history book and don't buy into the myth of American exceptionalism. No democracy is immune from individuals hell bent on assaulting its infrastructure. No society is immune from hate.

And if none of this even concerns you, then I'm sorry, but you're asleep at the wheel and we don't have much in common. But if you, like me, oppose hate in all its forms then we must all bear witness. Each and every one of us, today and every day of a Trump presidency. 

For this is not normal, and this is not okay.