Matisyahu's Blog

I woke up this morning, still a bit overcast and cold outside but I started the day with chia seed pudding (chia seeds soaked in ‘Up and Go’ protein shake) and 190g of high protein yoghurt on top. I’ve been having that consistently for almost a month and the great thing is with it is the combination of high fibre and protein keeps me full until my next main meal. For dinner I had the vegetarian bolognese with the konjac noodles – the noodles were easy to cook because it just involves boiling some water, soaking the noodles in there for a minute, drain the water off using a colander and the put the vegetarian bolognese mixture on top. Is it as good as the ‘real thing’ when it comes to real pasta? eh, it’s ok and it is easy to put together when working from home since I only have 30 minutes for dinner.

Just a follow up to my recent post regarding Graham Platner – the one thing I didn’t touch on was pointing out the fact that it is important to differentiate between critics who are acting in bad faith vs critics who are acting in good faith and can see something that maybe in your blind spot. Were there some people attacking Gahama Platner early on in his campaign not because of genuine concern but because they disagree with the progressive platform but argued in bad faith? I’m sure some were but it is also important to note that there were critics of Graham Platner early on who agreed with a lot of what was said but they had concerns about whether he was the right person to champion those policies and concerns regard the seriousness of the accusations that also came out.

The problem is that far too many on the left conflated those critics acting in bad faith to those acting in good faith by attacking anyone who was critical of Graham Platner by assuming that every criticism is coming from a position of bad faith. I’m on the other side of the world so I really don’t have any skin in the game nor do I have any influence but having watched it from afar I was hoping that when there were the primaries for the Maine senate seat that cooler heads would prevail, that those who made the biggest lead tend not to hold onto that lead once more candidates enter the race.

When information starting come out regarding Graham Platner’s past, the tattoo, the 5 tours overseas then followed serious accusations coming out I couldn’t help but get the feeling that there was a whole lot of stuff being held back in an attempt to control the narrative. As the old saying goes, where there is smoke there is fire and I couldn’t help but get feeling deep in my gut that something wasn’t quite adding up – something wasn’t exactly quite kosher about the explanations given.

I ran for parliament around 20 years ago and when I ran the party conducted a background check – what I had posted on social media, blog posts, YouTube videos I had uploaded etc. Even for a small party they had to do their due diligence because the last you want is a candidate who is running but has a whole heap of baggage which results in the leader of the party having to front up to the media for everything a candidate has said and done instead of talking about policy.

We also need to stop treating grown adults as if they’re children, that they lack agency and responsibility for the choices they make in their life. We need to stop excusing grown men for their behaviour by brushing it off as ‘youthful indiscretions’ – more specifically cis heterosexual white men. That ‘benefit of the doubt’ is never extended to men from minority groups – that benefit of the doubt seems to be available for only one group. The infantilising men also does a great disservice to men because it also lowers the bar and men overall get the impression that doing the bare minimum is acceptable and anything more than the bare minimum apparently warrants a reward of some sort.