In a word, yes.

If you weren’t raised as a Jew, you have no standing to speak on this. As a Jew, I decide what is, and is not, antisemitic, just as POC will decide what is, and is not racism.

If you weren’t raised as a Jew, how dare you think you can be an arbiter of what is antisemitic? Notice that when a black person deems something/someone racist,  he/she is taken seriously, and his/her view is respected…at least by the progressive left.

But Jews everywhere, since October 7, are being gaslighted constantly with indignant cries of I’m not antisemitic, it’s Israel’s government that I can’t tolerant.

As we all should know, Israel is far from being the worst country for human rights.

Moving on to global humanitarian crises, DR Congo is the largest hunger emergency in the world, with over 25 million people struggling daily to simply get enough to eat.

The country hosts one of the largest displaced populations (including refugees) in the world – approximately 5.5 million. One in seven women nationwide experienced sexual violence before the age of 18, and the problem is even more severe in conflict-affected communities. However, in 2022, the number of people in need in DRC was significantly higher than the amount of people in need in Ukraine, yet the amount of funding secured was 74% lower.

Have you heard any demands to stop the violent conflicts there? The country is experiencing outbreaks of monkey pox, cholera, measles, floods and landslides.

And in Sudan? Seven months of conflict there have resulted in 9,000 deaths and 5.6 million forced to flee their homes. Where are progressives wearing the Jalabia in protest?

I bet none of your friends are going around enraged on behalf of the Congolese or Sudanese. Because the only people who matter are Palestinians, and their plight is the only one worth marching for. If Jews aren’t involved, no one cares.

Look at the map above. Note the size of Israel. Note that it’s surrounded by countries with lamentable human rights, countries where women are second class citizens and gays are at risk of prison and death. Teeny tiny Israel is the focus of the worlds dismay and disapproval….why?? Is it “because our taxes prop up their apartheid government”? The taxes argument is absurd. The US gives foreign aid to countries all over the world, some with governments that progressives surely wouldn’t want to support.

(Ukraine was the top recipient of aid in 2022, having received nearly $12 billion from the U.S. that year following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.)

If you want to know the history of Israel, it’s easy to research. Historians and archaeologists agree that a Kingdom of Israel existed by ca. 900 BCE and that a Kingdom of Judah existed by ca. 700 BCE.  The Jews have been deported from their ancestral homeland by various empires, thousands of years before Palestine was invented by the British division of land formerly governed by the Ottoman Empire.

Let’s get back to now. “The Hamas attack resembled a medieval Mongol raid for slaughter and human trophies—except it was recorded in real time and published to social media. Yet since October 7, Western academics, students, artists, and activists have denied, excused, or even celebrated the murders by a terrorist sect that proclaims an anti-Jewish genocidal program. Some of this is happening out in the open, some behind the masks of humanitarianism and justice, and some in code, most famously “from the river to the sea,” a chilling phrase that implicitly endorses the killing or deportation of the 9 million Israelis. The decolonization narrative has dehumanized Israelis to the extent that otherwise rational people excuse, deny, or support barbarity. It holds that Israel is an “imperialist-colonialist” force, that Israelis are “settler-colonialists,” and that Palestinians have a right to eliminate their oppressors.” *

Progressives have fallen to this fiction like they once fell for Stalin and Hitler. But their beloved Palestinians had every chance to build a thriving state instead of voting to be ruled by Hamas. Jews worked hard and created Israel out of a desert. Palestinians could have done the same if they weren’t so focused on killing Jews. (White savior complex much?)

What about the charge that Zionism is racism?

Prior to 1948, Zionism was an aspiration—the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, founded by Theodore Herzl in the late 19th century, to re-establish a Jewish nation as a solution to the antisemitism Jews faced in Europe. After 1948 until today, Zionism became a reality: a homeland not only to persecuted European Jews, but Jews from all over the globe, including Jews fleeing persecution from the Soviet Union, the Arab world, Turkey, Iran, and Ethiopia, amongst others. Israel is one of the most diverse countries in the world with over half of its population being from Africa, India, and other areas of the Middle East. The vast majority of Jews around the world identify as Zionists, meaning they support the existence of Israel as a Jewish State in the historic Land of Israel.

Antisemitism has existed now for millennia, and the prevailing ideas about Jews running everything, about how “good” they have it, is just as stupid as the Elders of Zion.

As the saying goes, “Germany will never forgive the Jews for the Holocaust.” Jews are despised for being weak, and also when they fight back. Jews are somehow responsible for everything bad. Why? The term “Jew” at various times in history has been connected to both materialism and intellectualism, socialism and capitalism, worldly cosmopolitanism and clannish parochialism, eternal chosenness and unending accursedness.

Even the UN is rife with antisemitism. So is the Red Cross.

In closing, you intellectuals arguing about whether Jewish babies were actually beheaded or just burned alive need to get a fucking grip.

Jews are the indigenous people of Israel, their ancestral homeland. Deal with it. War isn’t genocide or ethnic cleansing. And apartheid does not apply to the state of Israel, as much as you love the word.

L’chaim for now.

The New York Times wrote about Karen, the derogatory term of the moment, and defined it for us Karens:

a pseudonym for a middle-aged busybody with a blond choppy bob who asks to speak to the manager. Now, the moniker has most recently morphed into a symbol of racism and white privilege.

A “Karen” now roams restaurants and stores, often without a mask during this coronavirus era, spewing venom and calling the authorities to tattle, usually on people of color and often putting them in dangerous situations.

Obviously, it’s so Karen to complain about this. And I’m not going to, even though I’m still annoyed by Becky. I’m just wondering if someone my age, an old baby boomer, can be a Karen. They seem so millennial. Maybe we can have Karen Sr, which I will answer to if necessary.

While Karen symbolizes white privilege, Becky seemed more specific. She was a white woman who kissed up to Black women, always wanting to voice her support without actually doing anything to be an ally.

If Becky is still operative, that gives us three categories of white women: Karens, Beckys, and allies. Periodt.

When I complained about Becky, I was clearly resentful. Here’s what I wrote:

I have tried to imagine an essay about The 5 types of Keisha or The 5 types of Guadalupe or The 5 Types of Mei-Ling and I just can’t. Not because I am too nice or color-blind but because I’m not used to categorizing people of different ethnicities. Sue me. (WHITE JEWISH PRIVILEGE.) I can’t and I don’t want to. How would that help, you know?

I managed to piss off people I had no wish to piss off. I came back with a more “nuanced” explication of my stance. It was just Becky of me, in no way helpful. Now that I’m Karen Sr., I’m not going to try to squirm out of it, Karenishly, but instead I embrace it.

However, Black women who hate me simply for being white can now be LaQuisha. While I’m out Karening around, LaQuisha is banging out a 5,000 word manifesto about intersectionality. And that’s fine! I probably won’t be reading it, because, duh, Karen.

Women named Karen are feeling victimmy and some are writing defensive shit that is soooo Karen of them. However, here’s the response that Karens who are allies (I know, it’s confusing) are posting on Facebook:

I can’t get bent out of shape. I have no control over it. There are people losing their lives every day. If it’s the only thing I have to be upset about in this world, then good for me.”

and

It [is] very upsetting, but I would sacrifice my name for the[movement].

How gracious, right? How would you react if your name were used to describe all that is loathsome in our society? Luckily, in 2018, Karen ranked as the 635th most popular girl’s name, alongside Elaine and Dallas.Good news but what kind of monster would name her daughter “Dallas??” This makes me want to cry.

Meanwhile, there are some who view Karen as a racist, classist slur.

LaQuisha, if you’re reading this, DON’T BE MAD! I’m just an old lady, don’t come @ me! It’s not easy being Karen Sr. It’s hard to learn the latest memes and insults. I’m doing my best to stay relevant, like Madonna, who strikes me as a total Becky of the worst kind.

More Karenology here.

Having left off with a heartbroken post about Mother’s Day, I am back with more miserable reflections of the state of things, or more specifically the state of me, Sister Wolf.

Remember when I fell and broke my pelvis? Well, I have done it again! Hard to believe, I know, and yet there it is. This time I fell in my own home in a stupid fluke accident and landed on my bad leg with the hardware in it. The hardware was sturdy but my pelvis was not. The part that broke is the pubis ramus, a fucking bummer.

So I had to get an ambulance, and the EMT guys were sorry about taking me to the hospital, acting like they were delivering me to certain death from Coronavirus. I sobbed about dying but since I couldn’t stand up, I had no choice.

The hospital was great! There were no COVID patients there, and the nurses were lovely young women who chatted with me about everything and brought me extra coffee when I begged for it. At night, the ward was full of screaming and moaning, but not from me. One doctor talked to me for more than an hour about his life and aspirations. When I went home after 2 days, I missed all the companionship.

Twelve years ago when I broke my pelvis, some awful Russian cunt made it a project to mock my pain on her stupid blog, which I then parodied on a blog I devoted to mocking her back. Those were the days, eh?

So now I need to use a walker to get around my house, and I’m in nearly constant pain. I guess I could take this opportunity to become addicted to opiates, but nah, why bother? I have a nice physical therapist who keeps calling me ma’am. My poor husband has to help with everything, and I secretly wonder if he can distinguish me from his 103 year old mother. His mother has a better attitude, obviously.

Yesterday, my oxygen saturation was 94 %, not good. It connects me to the cultural inflection points of George Floyd ( I can’t breathe) and the pandemic (low oxygen is a symptom of COVID 19.)

I watched the funeral service in Houston today, and envied the solidarity of black families. My friend Romeo told me that this is because we’ve never allowed black people to have anything else. If this is true, I still envy those families. The love and the loyalty is so absent in my own family, a pill that grows more bitter the older I get. All the feuds and petty squabbles. Even when times are tough, my family is incapable of pulling together.

On top of everything, I found a hairdresser who is making house-calls, so she came over last week and spent four hours ruining my beautiful hair. She left me with some shit in my hair to rinse off in 15 minutes. If she’d stayed for it to dry, she would have heard my shriek of horror when I looked in the mirror to find a platinum fright wig where my beautiful highlights used to be.

Ha ha! Life is full of jokes, if only you have the sense of humor to enjoy them! I do enjoy them, up to a point, you know?

If you have time, pray to the gods of your understanding that my pelvis mends and I don’t die of Coronavirus before I get to have a last laugh at someone else’s expense, hopefully Trump’s.

Thanks in advance! xoxo

Dude, chill the fuck out! I know you’re mad, I’m mad too. We’re all mad. You have problems but you’ve misidentified them. It isn’t black people or Jews or immigrants that caused your problems, it’s the lies you’ve been fed your whole life. It’s the old lies of the patriarchy and the new lies spread by your buddies on the internet.

You’re worried about weakness and that’s understandable. You probably had a mean daddy who ridiculed you or hit you, or maybe your daddy wasn’t around. You had trouble making friends and that made you so angry! You felt helpless and you still feel helpless. You want to be the powerful one. You want to be the mean daddy for a change! You want to show the world who’s boss! Fuck those foreigners and niggers and kikes!

You can’t get laid either. You’ve tried being nice and you’ve tried negging. Women won’t give you what you want. It’s just like Mommy. She wouldn’t either. She made you feel like a baby. A helpless baby. But now you’ll get even. You don’t need women anyway, now that you’ve found your buddies online.

You even belong to a group! When you were little, they didn’t pick you for the team or they picked you last. They wouldn’t let you into their clubhouse or tree-house or their little fort. Now you are respected, a person with ideas and guns and backpacks. You are part of a community, a brotherhood. And if you aren’t afraid to die, you can be a hero! All you need is some ammo.

But here’s the thing: You won’t really be a warrior. Shooting at unarmed civilians makes you a pussy, or a cuck, if you prefer. Real warriors run into battle, not mosques or churches or shopping malls. There have been too many of you guys for us to remember your names any more. I can’t even name the guy in Las Vegas, and you’ll probably never come close to his body count.

What you want so desperately is a purpose, a community, and an identity. Your online group may provide a sense of all three, but it’s a sham. The world you imagine will never come about, and if it did, you wouldn’t know how to survive. You spend too much time at your computer. You don’t know how to grow crops or raise cattle or drive a tractor. You can’t get a date, so you won’t be able to reproduce. You wouldn’t be happy without another group to hate, so then what?

You have not thought this through, have you?

Why don’t you join the US Military if you love your country so much? Aren’t the uniforms scary enough? Are you afraid of being in close quarters with men who are bigger and stronger than you? Are you afraid of guns when you’re not the only one who has one? Are you afraid of a meritocracy? Are you lost in situations where memes don’t bring status?

I feel for you. You thought you were entitled to the whole world, as a free white male. You didn’t know that it only works that way for the wealthy class. You didn’t prepare for a shitty job market when you were spending all that time online instead of studying. You nursed your resentment when you should have been learning how to socialize, how to dance, how to make eye contact, and how to laugh at yourself once in a while.

You could still have a real life if you gather your courage enough to move away from your computer. Your buddies will denounce you but they’ll get over it. Later, much later, you’ll see how pathetic they are. And when you see one on TV, in handcuffs, or in a scowling mugshot, you’ll think, Dude, YOU are the problem, not those Mexicans buying school supplies.

At least, that’s my dream for you, b’ezrat hashem, inshallah.

I was surprised to read a post on Instagram by an African American photographer who said he wasn’t up to watching When They See Us, the new series about the Central Park Five. Even more surprising were the 250+ comments voicing the same feeling. In my simplistic thinking, the series would be a must-see event for black audiences.

Personally, I watched the first episode and could barely get through it. It was crushing. I felt guilty about giving up after one episode. I figured I owed African Americans at least that much, the witnessing of this horrible injustice. But I gave myself a pass, on the grounds that I can only take so much trauma before I break.

Now I see that, duh, it’s a million times more traumatic for African Americans to re-experience this event, even though it’s an important story. The Instagram commenters expressed a literal dread of more trauma. It was simply too painful and not worth it. Their hearts were already broken, many wrote. Parents said that it was too awful to imagine their own children suffering like the wrongly accused teenagers. Many had tried to watch but had found it too harrowing.

So here’s what’s been on my mind. TV is not just entertainment. It’s a powerful agent of communication that can have long-lasting consequences. Like the nightly news or movies on the big screen, TV shows transmit messages into your brain. When you Netflix and Chill for hours and hours, you’re inviting stuff into your brain. And the more well-acted and well-produced the input, the more intense are the effects.

But you never know what will fuck you up! I can watch hours of Charles Manson or Ted Bundy crap without getting upset. I can even watch Jim Jones footage without freaking out. Making I’m just used to those stories or maybe the body count is too high to make an impact. But I’ve seen a couple of true crime documentaries that will haunt me forever, or at least until I achieve full dementia.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been watching an Australian TV series about a chaotic but close-knit family called Offspring. I love it so much! It’s a wonderfully written mix of drama and comedy, with great characters and endless plot twists. But I was shocked when a central character was abruptly killed in a fluke accident. Now, I’m a big baby, everyone knows, but even my husband was speechless. I kept saying, “This can’t happen, maybe he’ll come back.”

I waited for him to open his eyes and be alive again but he was gone. It was “just TV” but in my brain and heart, I experienced a deep shock. It triggered my PTSD and my grief in a way I wasn’t ready for. The next day, still thinking about it, I went back to bed in the middle of the day. I wanted that guy back. Why had they taken him away? I needed him back. It was about that guy and about Max. I couldn’t feel the difference. I still can’t. The character was a gentle young man with a darkness around him like a halo, a sweet face and a wounded boyishness. Max. Not Max but Max.

I skipped the funeral episode. Why would I put myself through it?

That’s how you may regard When They See Us, or Holocaust movies, or even Trump interviews. If you’re dreading it, don’t put yourself through it. You are excused. You are not here to suffer for anyone’s sins except your own.

Beware of your TV. It may know what you want, but only you know what you need.

People who have criticized Beyonce have been subjected to the wrath of her fans and the loss of their jobs. Some have endured death threats. It is clearly not acceptable to dislike Beyonce, lest the Beyhive come after you or your family.

Personally, I would never speak against her. But let’s say there was something you didn’t like about Beyonce. Let’s say you thought her talent was overrated. Let’s say you wished she would sing the damn song instead of riffing on each note for twenty minutes?

Let’s say you were tired of the fans blowing her hair extensions, I mean hair? Or let’s say her entire manner bothered you, her stance of “Can you believe how incredible I am?” Maybe you think she takes divahood to a staggering new level, making Barbra Streisand look humble in comparison? Or let’s say you thought her stage outfits were trashy and ridiculous, and not in a good way?

You’d probably be in big trouble. You would be flying in the face of all that is sacred and most damning, you’d be accused of racism. To criticize Beyonce is to disrespect the Black community. It would be tantamount to waving a Confederate flag. Why? Don’t ask me, I’m just here to pose philosophical questions.

But I skimmed through an essay called Why Beyonce Matters and learned this:

There is little doubt that Beyoncé’s recent work is seismic in terms of its representations of black racial identity and feminism. Here is one of, if not the, highest paid female performers in the world grappling with issues of misogyny, sexuality, infidelity, black feminism and self affirmation in ways that have never been seen in the mainstream music industry.

Beyoncé has opened a discourse that explores the place of famous women as agents of both political and monetary prowess. That in itself is worthy of respect.

Here’s an article on why her performance at Coachella was an Important Cultural Moment. It’s like she’s Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., and Harriet Tubman, all squished into a sparkly leotard!

What if you watched her onstage at the Global Citizen/Nelson Mandela concert last week, and you searched your brain for a word that summed up your reaction to her regal deportment, and you thought, “INSUFFERABLE!”

You’d have to keep it to yourself, I know that much. If you even tried to defend yourself by whining, But I love Rihanna!, you would only dig yourself in deeper. Either give Bey your fealty, or suffer the consequences, you fucking closet neo-Nazi.

How long have you been watching the news and feeling like crying? Last week was the worst but it’s been going on a long time. Of course there’s rage, but as the true horror keeps building and obliterating everything else, there is grief.

I just want to cry when I hear his voice. When he turns everything to shit. When he finds a new way to shock our sense of decency. I want to cry but I suck it up. You can’t go around crying all the time when you’re already exhausted and besides, you’re trying to aim for numb.

But maybe a good cry would be cathartic. The weight you feel when you think about the world might be lightened, just a little. Crying exists for a reason. Tears of despair are supposed to be biologically useful.

We’ve had our days of marching but we need a day to cry. Before the midterms or after the midterms, it doesn’t matter. If we take over the senate, we can add relief to our reasons for crying.

Every community can gather at a Starbucks or the library. We need to make sure it’s a secular event. No praying, just crying. We’ll all bring tissues.

And let me be clear: We won’t “weep.” I hate the contemporary use of that word, like it’s a badge of honor or an accomplishment to “weep.” We will cry, and we will cry hard. We can even sob.

If you don’t want to cry, that’s your problem. Go ahead and get an ulcer or colitis or heart disease.

If you do want to cry, what will you cry for most? Me, I will cry for the stupidity and racism that brought us here. And for hippos.

Are you in or out?

I watched the new documentary about Rachel Dolezal with a mounting sense of disbelief that turned to anger, pity, sadness and revulsion, cycling through all these emotions several times. What a piece of work is Rachel Dolezal. And yet in no way deserving of the seething hatred still aimed at her.

The film may be just a Rorschach test that divides people along color lines. I’m not black, so I can’t access the outrage she evinces in that community. I will be shocked if any black viewers decide to cut her any slack. As a white woman, I feel compassion. Because above all else, she is fucking nuts.

The film details her childhood: Evangelical white parents who adopt a bunch of black kids only to beat them like animals. It’s not hard to see why the blonde, dowdy, emotionally abused Rachel would side with the black children. They are literal innocents, and she strives to save them.

Somewhere along the line, she imagines that she’s one of them. That part is the thing that can’t be explained, or, apparently, forgiven. She continues to insist on her blackness to this day, at the same time acknowledging that she was born white. She views her racial “identity” as similar to gender identity – something one can decide, and expect others to respect, or at least accept.

Part of me wants to think, Well, yeah, if I can tell you I’m really a man inside my female body, why can’t I also tell you that I’m black? If it’s simply a case of I am what I feel I am, why is gender okay but not ethnicity? What is so sacred about ethnicity?

How you answer that question makes all the difference.

Putting that aside, there are Rachel’s children, who are clearly suffering from her notoriety. Your heart breaks for them, especially the sensitive 13 year old, whose father is a black man we never meet. Why doesn’t she put her children first and do what’s best for them? Maybe she’s convinced that she is doing what’s best, by standing her ground and not giving in to societal pressure. Or maybe she’s incapable of putting anyone’s needs before her raging exhibitionism and deep psychological wounds.

Then there’s her fucking hair. Oh my god, the hair. In the course of the film, she changes her hair a million times. The knee-length braided extensions underscore her not-Beyonce-ness. But she doesn’t give a fuck. Her hair is like a whole extra character.

When she brings a new baby into the drama swirling around her, it’s hard not to question her motives. And sanity. It seems like the last things she needs, but then we see how much the older kids adore the baby…whose father, naturally, is black.

The most disturbing aspect of this brutal character study is Rachel’s seeming gluttony for abuse and punishment. She continues to court a high social media profile, despite the barrage of hateful comments that attend her every Facebook post and public appearance. Writing a book about herself only stokes the hatred. But she seems baffled by it and stubbornly refuses to back down or apologize.

What’s wrong with Rachel Dolezal? Never underestimate the consequences of sustained child abuse, but this is more.

In her deludedness, she is more heartbreaking than infuriating. And in the end, to me, she is almost worthy of admiration in her strength of purpose. She will not crack. She will not give in, no matter what.

The very last scene is a spoiler that will blow your mind. Once you’ve seen “The Rachel Divide,” a fascinating but draining experience, get back to me and tell me what you think.

How many people who’ve seen Walk the Line (the movie about Johnny Cash) would be amazed by these pictures of his first wife, Vivian?

I can’t get over how dismayed I am by the choice to portray Vivian Cash as a white Italian woman, given the truth.

I know that at the time, it was illegal to marry a person of another race. In the South, it must have been pretty risky. And if you wanted to be a famous country performer, it would cause way too much controversy. In fact, after the photo above was printed in a newspaper, the couple were threatened by the Klan, and there was a movement to boycott Cash’s records.

So his manager or someone produced records that “proved” Vivian was white. She was described as Italian or Sicilian. Now, everyone was happy.

But not me. Cash had four daughters with his first wife. None of them seem eager to discuss their ethnicity, and it’s nobody’s business anyway. Still, as a fan of Johnny Cash and a gullible moviegoer, I don’t want to be fed some bullshit about his life story. Whether it’s more palatable to the public to forget about Vivian and just think about Johnny and June instead, or because the movie business still can’t stand to portray women of color, it’s dismaying.

2018 is beginning to feel like 1953 in America, before civil rights and before racism was identified as something to be condemned. What the fuck! When can we go back to correcting wrongs instead of perpetuating new ones?

I guess black people are accustomed to being whitewashed by Hollywood. I feel bad about being so ignorant.

People argue about Vivian’s ethnicity and see what they want to see. I’m not a genealogist but I’m not blind either.  I see a cover-up and I’ll never think of Johnny and June without a sense of betrayal. Fuck them.

Thoughts?

*A friend said on fb that she was depressed by my last post. My answer to her may clarify my position, which my tone might have obscured.  Have not yet heard back from her. But here it is.  Feel free to weigh in.

I don’t like to depress you. I’m aware that white women are not welcome to comment on this subject by definition. Here’s something a little different. When I worked for Dear Abby, her office manager was an old redneck lady who had been with the Dear Abby outfit for 100 years or something. They were technophobes who kept everything on paper, in files. One of their popular reprints was a list of Jews Who Have Done Great Things. It included Jonas Salk, Einstein, etc. I found it one day and laughed in amazement. I read it aloud to the office…”Jews Who Have Done Great Things!” Misunderstanding my tone, the redneck lady replied, “No really, some of them are good!”

So, you know, I have no wish to be considered a Good Jew, or a Good White Lady. I will not be defined by another culture’s criteria, or even by my own culture, whatever that’s supposed to be. As an atheist, I was not born with original sin. As an Ashkenazi Jew, I was not born with America’s original sin. My grandma was given a made up name at Ellis Island because they couldn’t pronounce her real one. My dad was beaten up every day on his way to school for being a “kike.”

America is a cesspool of racism and stupidity. I voted for Jesse Jackson and I’m married to a Mexican American. I don’t want to apologize for having light skin but I do want to apologize for a country that celebrates stupidity and bigotry.

Shit like calling out bindi wearers is a waste of energy, in my opinion. I would be happy to see anyone wearing a big Hasidic hat because they are dope.

I have been your friend in cyberspace for all these years because of your brains, your sense of humor, our shared fashion obsessions, your kindness, and our mutual disdain for countless things. I hope we can respect each other’s ideas even when we don’t agree. xo