International Men's Day: A Day Of Atonement

In case you didn't know, November 19 is International Men's Day (which also happens to be World Toilet Day, interestingly enough).  As if we really needed a day to celebrate ourselves, lol.  What International Men's Day should really be is a day of atonement, a sort of Yom Kippur for men.  And for those guys who arrogantly claim that they have literally nothing to atone for, prepare to eat some humble pie, and apologize to the Divine Feminine.  The following is food for thought:

So what has our gender collectively done for the past 7000 years or so?

We paved paradise and put up a parking lot, we created a desert and called it "peace".  We devoured and suffocated our own empire, the world is on fire, and now we are all paying a heavy price for it.  It's 14:59 of our proverbial 15 minutes of fame, and the clock is ticking.

All because we foolishly decided one day to depose Women from power because we thought we could somehow do better.  Well, we were wrong, dead wrong in fact.  We are sorry, but clearly we can stuff our "sorrys" in a sack at this point.  The agony of regret indeed.

Yes, I know, "not all men".  But the fact remains that the "good guys" among us have clearly and consistently failed to prevent the truly bad guys from subjugating, tyrannizing, raping, abusing, and degrading the better half of humanity (while also doing the very same thing to Mother Earth as well), and overall turning heaven on Earth into hell on Earth.

So how could heaven turn to hell?  You guessed it, it was us all along.  But one day the shadows will surround us, and the days will come to end.  And now we see clearly...

We both knew, it would always end this way...

(Bonus points for anyone who can find the hidden and not-so-hidden pop-culture references and lyrics to various songs contained throughout this apology to the Divine Feminine. Give up?  Scroll down to the bottom for the answer.)

And just like you should never wish someone a "Happy Yom Kippur", as there is really nothing happy about atonement, we should probably avoid doing the same with International Men's Day as well.

The new song "The Feminine Divine" by Dexys Midnight Runners also comes to mind.

But the cultural references above are really from various songs by Joni Mitchell, Shinedown, Sugar Ray, and Five Finger Death Punch, et al.  And also Seinfeld, and a paraphrase of the Ancient Roman historian Tacitus as well.

The ONLY Real Long-term Solution For Peace In The Middle East

With the current Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, and the larger, decades old, Israel-Palestine conflict in general, the idea of lasting peace in the Middle East seems to be increasingly elusive these days.  But there IS actually a solution, one that is extremely unlikely to happen anytime soon.  So what is it?

It's really quite simple.  Men on both sides need to step down yesterday and let Women take over completely.  Period, full stop.  Because practically all of the violence, terrorism, and warmongering are being done by one gender, and it's not Women (while many of the victims are Women and children).

Otherwise, there is no long-term solution.  But until then, a "two-state solution" is still far better than a "Final Solution" on either side, to the victors going the ashes of the spoils.