Category: political correctness

Have you ever wondered what you’d have done if…

Gluplock

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That’s right. You’re doing it. Now.

Sorry, I can’t stay neutral any more. I can’t just write fun fan fiction about coffee loving aliens and remain silent about what’s happening. Because what’s going on is so extreme, so mind-boggling awful, that neutrality and lukewarmness is betrayal and cowardice.

This is not the time to be neutral or lukewarm.

Trump is threatening my country Canada, and attack other friendly allies like Denmark and Panama. And he’s attacking our NATO friends while cozying up to Russia who’s naked aggression against Ukraine is utterly disgusting and inhumane.

Many Germans in the 1930’s weren’t necessarily fanatical Nazi’s, they were just lukewarm and opted for a ‘neutral’ position on the political events of the day. They didn’t want to “get involved.”

It didn’t end so well for them either …

From time to time I come across someone in my circle of friends, family, neighbours or church folk who are still sitting on the fence, or just otherwise lukewarm when it comes to politics, who haven’t yet grasped the gravity of the moment we are in.

So in this blog I’m offering a list of people who are doing a fantastic job of keeping us updated on the news of the day with informative and helpful insights on the day’s events. If you’re not sure what to make of today’s craziness, the best thing you can do is get informed.

I offer this list of recommendations to give those still on the fence, or who aren’t sure, a gentle nudge in the right direction. I’ve found these contributors to be extremely knowledgeable, informative, and well researched. They offer solid, useful information on today’s news and events, backed up with facts.

In the future I will be making updates to this list on substack here, rather than maintain this same list in two different places.

Recommendations & Links – Independent News Media

The Atlantic is excellent: https://www.theatlantic.com/

The Guardian is an independent paper, not owned by a billionaire: https://www.theguardian.com/world

The Kyiv Independent: https://bsky.app/profile/kyivindependent.com

Ground News: https://ground.news/ Based in Ontario Canada. Very balanced look at all the news around the world, reporting on what different news sources are saying about the same story to get a balanced looked between right, left, centre, liberal, conservative, etc.

MeidasTouch on BlueSky and YouTube is extremely good. Informative, fact-based coverage of the news, and they bring the receipts.

https://bsky.app/profile/meidastouch.com

https://www.youtube.com/@MeidasTouch

On Substack:

The Contrarian https://contrarian.substack.com/

Charlie Angus / The Resistance https://charlieangus.substack.com/

Du Mez CONNECTIONS https://kristindumez.substack.com/, By Kristen Kobe Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne

Robert Reich https://robertreich.substack.com/

Letters from an American https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/, She does a daily roundup of the days news that is excellent and informative.

Juno News – Canadian politics: https://www.junonews.com/

Tim Snyder, author of On Tyranny, an excellent summary of fascism: https://snyder.substack.com/

BlueSky:

I find the following extremely informative, helpful and well researched on BlueSky:

You can also find most of these folks on YouTube as well.

The Kyiv Independent: https://bsky.app/profile/kyivindependent.com

Kristen Du Mez: https://bsky.app/profile/kkdumez.bsky.social

Rachel Maddow: https://bsky.app/profile/maddow.msnbc.com

Russell Moore, senior editor of Christianity Today: https://bsky.app/profile/drmoore.bsky.social

Charlie Angus, NDP MP: https://bsky.app/profile/charlieangus104.bsky.social

CAN – senior editor at MeidasTouch. https://bsky.app/profile/acyn.bsky.social

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: https://bsky.app/profile/aoc.bsky.social

Anne Applebaum, author of several books on autocracy:  https://bsky.app/profile/anneapplebaum.bsky.social

Get her books: Autocracy Inc. and The Twilight of Democracy https://www.indigo.ca/en-ca/search?q=anne+applebaum&search-button=&lang=null

You can find me on BlueSky https://bsky.app/profile/mikemanto.bsky.social and Substack https://michaelmanto.substack.com/.

I’ve also got a list of substack recommendations on my Substack blog: https://michaelmanto.substack.com/recommendations

Moral courage in the face of censorship

Mike

The novel that George Orwell wrote, 1984, gave rise to now familiar terms like ‘thoughtcrime’, ‘big brother’ and ‘Orwellian’. In his novel government agencies are hard at work to cleanse society of wrong thinking, and has defined what ‘correct’ thinking is. Saying (or writing) the wrong thing gets you arrested for “thoughtcrime”. People arrested for thoughtcrime get disappeared into a gulag of prison camps.

Intellectual courage in the face of official censorship.

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It was supposed to be fiction

I’ve always been interested in Orwellian themes of individual courage in the face of oppressive autocracy. When I first started working on Heretic a few years ago, I had in mind autocratic regimes in distant, far off countries such as Russia, China and North Korea – and increasingly countries like Hungary and Belarus – in which freedom of thought and expression is actively repressed. People who don’t tow the party line are arrested – especially in Russia where it’s a criminal offense to question the war against Ukraine.

It was supposed to be fiction. I didn’t think I’d see it coming to America. But watching the insanity now sweeping the US, it’s only a matter of time before Trump and Elon go after the free press and start shutting down dissenters.

What’s happening in the US is fascism 101, right out of Hitler and Mussolini’s playbook.

It will soon be a thoughtcrime to question Trumpism

Heretic follows the story of Jack, who is raised by his mother to be a loyal citizen of the New Order. The Order has strictly defined what is acceptable to believe and think, and has banned all books and social media platforms that it does not approve of. Dissenters are arrested as intellectual terrorists.

Jack’s father was a famous scientist who went missing shortly after being branded a criminal for intellectual dissent. Later, his father is presumed dead in a suspicious car crash.

But Jack’s life is turned upside down when he finds evidence that his father is still alive – and on the run from the Tolerance Bureau, the federal police force assigned to track down dissenters. Jack risks everything to look for his father, and soon finds himself in a deadly race against shadowy agents of the New Order who also want to find the missing scientist.

Heretic is about intellectual courage in the face of fascist censorship. It’s a future that is starting to look all too plausible now.

Available on Amazon!

See book page here

What is a Hippo? A politically incorrect satire

Gluplock Leave a comment

Since Matt Walsh has so thoughtfully answered the question What is a Woman?, the question now on every thinking persons mind is, quite naturally, What is a hippo?

I know you must have been struggling with this question as much as I have. Fortunately I’ve got all the answers right here in my recent humour satire The Hippo.

It follows the story of Wally, who has courageously rejected the species identity arbitrarily assigned to him at birth by his bigoted, narrow-minded, reactionary parents. Despite what his birth certificate says, he now knows he’s really a hippo, and he wants his parents to cough up the cash so he can get the species affirmation surgery he desperately needs.

The other hippos, however (the real ones), turn out to be problematic, as Wally discovers they are not so open-minded about accepting a trans-hippo into their herd.

They won’t even let him use the same washroom, for heaven’s sake!

The good news is that Wally doesn’t have to undertake his journey alone. He has a whole group of transspecies friends at his side: there’s Kitty the tabby-cat, Rover the rottweiler, and Erica the transsexual kangaroo who aren’t about to let any biological facts stand in the way as they shake off the shackles of oppressive species bigotry to forge their own identity.

What happens next is enough to make even the LGBTQ+ look transphobic…

To find out more, you can go to the book page here on my website, or check out the Amazon book page, or better yet buy your own copy today!

Available now on Amazon for Kindle, and in print.

Coming soon for Kobo and Apple… stay tuned!

Other important questions we’ve been able to answer…

Questions? Thoughts? Concerns? Objections? A recipe for chicken noodle soup you’d like to share? You can contact me here…