In the light (darkness?) of what just happened in the UK, and of what's happening in America with the whole election circus, and of what's happened a long time ago in Russia beginning with Lenin, hell, even before that, and of what continues to happen now under Putin, whenever I try to understand the global politics charade and voice what I think, my opinion proves highly unpopular. The "dangerous idealist" epithet at least has the word "dangerous" in it. Some other, more primitive names I was called include "seriously dumb" and "naive" and "typical woman," which comes full circle back to dumb, according to how women are viewed in our society, our value in our looks, not our brains, and our emotions dismissed as unnecessary drama.  Not that I presume to understand any of what is going on. I don't have enough information to form a decisive point of view, and the information I do have access to is the news that's been pre-filtered for me by the media, and so hardly any truth remains there. 

Therefore I read books. That's where the truth is. The problem with this approach, however, is that I'm always late to understanding a particular issue. By the time a certain book is noted for it's truth, a decade has marched on. Or more.

I haven't been reading news for years now, since I started going through recovery. I realized news made me sick all over again. But after I started writing and poking my head back up into the world, the news began to dump on top of my head anywhere I turn. There is no escape unless I shut down the Internet and flee to some uninhabited land, hoping nobody owns it. (Good luck with that.)

I recall being called a "dreamer" when I was little, in the negative sense, since I always daydreamed. Today I'm being dismissed simply because I'm not enough of a realist, I continue to say things that should be coming out of a five-year-old's mouth, like "We don't need politicians to govern us" and "Let's ban all weapons" and "Give love to everyone, especially to criminals" and "Share your art for free, it's not about money" and "Sell everything you own to pursue your dream, the universe will provide" and so on. I could write a whole list here. This kind of talk is unpopular. The popular talk is the kind that speaks to those who are firmly rooted in realities of life. In a certain balance that's reasonable.

Get rid of politicians? Impossible. What kind of a fairy-tale world do you live in, girl? 

Love criminals? What?? They're the scum of humanity. They should be squashed without mercy, electrocuted, hung, shot. Choose your execution style. 

Ban all weapons? Ha! This is America. We are all about guns and cars and thrill.

Give your books away for free? Wow, are you crazy? Don't you need to eat like normal people? What do you propose to feed on? Air?? 

The examples are endless.  

I was afraid of my position for a long time. I would keep quiet, then I'd speak up, get beaten upside the head and keep quiet again. But my beliefs haven't changed. In fact, most of them indeed came to me when I was maybe four or five, when I was seriously hurt by an adult family member for the first time. I thought there must be a better way. I clearly remember how I refused to believe that people who hurt you were awful. I absolutely refused. Why? I haven't been yet told by an adult that this is the way of the world, that I better get used to it and learn how to get an upper hand. And that's what saved me from becoming a perpetrator myself.

This, my little-girl dream, is what we all dream about, but as adults we're not supposed to speak like that. We're being dismissed as ignorant, at best, or as total idiots, at worst.

I'm still scared, scared to type this, and yet it's truly me. I truly do believe that we don't need politicians, governments, money, weapons, material goods. (No, I'm not a communist or a socialist, I've lived in the country that has tried this and failed, and I have a permanent adverse reaction to it.) I truly do believe that we can come to a place when we cease fighting one another to gain power, power over other human beings or their possessions. I truly do believe that love can do more than steel or bits of paper. I truly think loving and sharing is the answer, not dominating and destructing. And I truly do believe that this is what patriarchy doesn't like to hear, and we women get silenced. A gun is a big metal penis, after all, and for generations men have been taught to take and win and conquer as opposed to give and yield and be vulnerable. It's not manly, you see. But gender lines are blurring, gender stereotypes are changing. We're slowly climbing out from under the patriarchal oppression, both women and men, as we both suffer. I'm glad of this change, and I will end on a John Lennon's quote: 

"You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."

Whatever names I'll be called in the future won't change what I believe. And I believe we can be children again, we can get back to that time before we got scared, before a well-meaning adult told us not to love and give freely and explained why, and that changed us forever.