only a dream and lots of walking

Last night or rather early this morning, I had the weirdest dream and I don't usually remember my dreams and when I do, I don't really pay any attention to them. I used to when I was young and innocent, in a searching kind of way, and for a while even wrote them down in a pretty little dream diary - which eventually made its way into the deep below the bed world.

In today's dream, I was visited by a medical crew, a group of smart looking youngsters in uniforms, who stood around my bed reading out various diagnoses and observations from charts. I knew right away that this was a scam and somehow ended up talking with them and it turned out they were desperate, had been forced into this. Meanwhile R had called the police and in the end, we both helped them to get away safely before the police arrived. Seriously, what?

So last week I did a LOT of walking, in fact every day, including up a very steep hill on a medieval stations-of-the-cross walk through ancient forest across the river, complete with statues and crosses and I seriously suffered along what with the heat and the climb but I made it and on top, joined the lazy tourists who had driven up there. I usually walk alone or with R who doesn't talk much but points out plants and fungi and stuff like that in his best science teacher mode. But on Friday, I went for a longish walk with a friend who had just been through a nasty divorce and in the end we had walked for close to  three hours round and round the large central cemetery until she had most of it off her chest. We also noted how there are less graves and increasingly more (managed) wild flower fields and bee hives and biotopes ponds which I was informed is due to outrageous funeral and burial plot maintenance costs.

It's the time of summer when we hand out courgettes and pears to anybody silly enough to come near us and possibly some neighbours have gone into hiding by now.

A few thoughts on recent events and why there is no time to rest and sit back and laugh about silly social media memes.

. . .  misogyny is one of the most dangerous weapons on Earth. The best friend of authoritarians and oligarchs. The handmaiden of tyrants.

. . .  it’s misogyny – networked misogyny across multiple global platforms that will earn their tech bro owners billions upon billions of dollars – that is going to decide the 2024 election. And it’s misogyny that’s going to dictate the future of Nato, the outcome of the war in Ukraine, whether we have peace in Europe or more war. And because this is going to be a firehose that will be directed at a single woman – Kamala Harris – it will be misogyny multiplied: misogyny plus racism, the most toxic combination of all.

They used to call us witches because we knew shit. We still do. That’s what makes us so powerful. And dangerous. 

So, here’s what I need you to do now: to shut up and sit down and listen. You are at risk. We are all at risk. Because this is what I know: bad things are coming. We are in a code red emergency.

Because misogyny isn’t bad people saying bad things that may hurt your feelings. (Though it might.) And misogyny isn’t about silencing women. (Though it does.)

Misogyny is now one of the deadliest weapons on Earth. Misogyny is a dirty bomb in the heart of our information system. Misogyny is electoral interference. Misogyny is a national security threat so lethal we can’t even see it.

Because misogyny is invisible. It’s never about all women, it’s always just about one particular, disagreeable woman who just happens to not be very likeable. Or competent. Who is loud or “shrill” or annoying or who got the job because she slept with a man. Or because she was a diversity hire. A woman who can’t even run her own house let alone a country. A woman who is “nasty”. A woman who isn’t and cannot be the strong leader a nation needs. Enjoy the sunshine of the Kamala moment. Breathe in the clean fresh air of facts, of evidence, of information. Of hope. Before the toxic social media chimneys crank up the content. Because shortly, the particulates will arrive, will silently and stealthily and invisibly start clogging our bronchial pathways even as the billionaire bros who own the platforms rake in record profits. 

Soon, we won’t even notice. It’ll just be part of the air that we breathe. A choking toxic misogynistic stew that will silently pour over the culture war trenches like mustard gas. Darkness is coming. This is the world social media created. And we’re much further out than we thought.

Carol Cadwalladr