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esyra · 7 months

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These days, I have long debated what to write regarding Palestine-Israel, and questioned why I should write anything at all. The idea that celebrities and the loudest chronically online people you've ever met, blessed in their ignorance and indifferent to livehoods different than theirs, feel the need to opinate on social and geopolitical issues is absolutely insane. Most of the time, they do more harm than good—spreading misinformation like wildfire. Such opinions are what convinced me to ultimately talk about it.

Rest assured I'm not particularly qualified to talk about any of this, then again no one seems (or tries) to be. This is not a statement, simply questions about selected nuance. Full disclosure: I am of Palestinian descent. And I tried my hardest to be all-encompassing and empathetic; if I fail at any moment, my sincerest apologies.

All around social media I've seen only two kinds of posts regarding Palestine and Israel; they're either completely favorable to Israel and dehumanize Palestine or they treat Palestines as a footnote, in which it's made to assure its author doesn't endorse murder but also to point out that Palestine "deserve what's coming." There's a certain nuance required to support Palestine that's not asked when supporting Israel.

I've seen Jamie Lee Curtis reposting a picture of Palestinian children watching Israelis air strikes as if they were of Israeli children. There's no doubt it was a malicious-intended post considering she credited the photographer while deleting the original caption which explicitly explained who the ones pictured were. After being severely corrected in the comments, she simply deleted and made no mention of it. Guess children don't matter if they're Palestinian. I've seen way too many celebrities responding to the conflict with worries about how they might be affected by it, as self-centered and selfish as you can imagine.

I've seen a journalist claim that 40 Israeli babies were beheaded and multiple newspapers (many of them British, because what else can you expect from them?) and public figures reposting as a fact, only for the same journalist to later claim she actually "never said that" (she absolutely did). Also the IDF explaining they have no information confirming the allegations that 'Hamas beheaded babies'. I've seen people using statements from Sabra and Shatila massacre survivors and trying to rewrite Palestine, which were the victims of said crime, as the perpetrators. I've seen people using videos of Russian attacks as Palestinian ones. I've seen a British journalist fabricating a harmful statement from a Palestinian Ambassador to help dehumanize Palestine, and being proud of such. I've seen BBC using the nuances of language to their liking, reporting how Israelis were 'killed' while Palestinians 'died'. Always heard journalists avoid adjectives in favor of being unbiased. Again, guess that's unimportant when it comes to Palestine. Most of all, I've seen people equate supporting Palestine to anti-semitism.

If that belief steams that Palestine and Hamas are one-and-the-same, and the latter is a anti-semitism organization, then that's another concern I'd like to add the recently appraised 'nuance'.

Hamas first appeared during the first intifada, a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. The signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 marked the end of the uprising—an agreement between Israel and Palestine meant to lay the groundwork for the formation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Instead, it has erased Palestine's recognition as a State. In its history, Hamas have equate the liberation of Palestinians with the destruction of Israel, likely the reason they're a highly divisive organization that has often been at oddens with more mainstream Palestinian politicians. However, Hamas backtracked on its aims in a 2017 proclamation, making it clear that what it wants is to end a “racist, anti-human and colonial Zionist project.” In its 16th topic, they state "Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine."

The description of the Israeli occupation as fascist most likely comes from the similarities of Palestine to an "open air prison". They have no control of their own borders (IDF controls who and what enters or leaves) and are deemed stateless. "In defiance of international law, Israel considers all Palestinians inhabitants of the occupied Palestinian territory as non-citizens and foreign residents." Meaning if they leave their territory, they won't be allowed back in. Their rights in the Arab World are uncertain, particularly in Lebanon and Egypt where they are denied rights to secure residency, employment, property, communal interaction and family unification. Procedures to allow non-residents to apply for naturalisation in Lebanon, Egypt and Saudi Arabia do not apply to stateless Palestinians. So while those asking for Palestinians to be evacuated for their safety certainly have noble intentions, I ask of you: where they will go? Can you imagine walking away from home knowing you're heading into nothing? What's the difference between living in the rumbles of their homes and being homeless in another country?

The ones who decide to stay (and the ones unable to leave) are likely not making it for much longer. According to the United Nations, roughly 6,400 Palestinians and 300 Israelis have been killed in the ongoing conflict since 2008, not counting the recent fatalities. Is it truly a war if one side is so overpowering in its resources and retaliations? I feel the need to point out these stats to question why the notion that "violence is never the answer" is only used now. When it has been the only response until now.

Then again, Hamas remains a polarizing force in Palestinian society. They're an organization that's slaughtering families and less than a third of Palestinians think the group deserves to represent them. There has not been an opportunity, however, for elections to change their representatives. Palestinians living in Gaza must endure an unstable political reality with an unrepresentative government implementing repressive policies against LGBTQ people and abusive policies against detainees. Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu purposefully propped up Hamas and there has been speculation that Iran has supported them. I've seen many post as if it's a fact, so I'd like to reinforce that it's speculation. In essence, Hamas is a terrorist group with questionable history and even more questionable allies. None of which has the Palestine's best interests at heart.

This has been overly long, and I still haven't touched on all topics I wished to address. Some I probably couldn't express properly since it's such a complex geopolitical issue. Then again, no one seems to try while all seem very comfortable in being as biased as they wish to be. So I thought I add my compassionate two cents in favor of Palestine and all the years of oppresion they've endured. I still hope you'll read this to the end, and extended to Palestine the same sympathetic hand you've rightfully extended to Israeli citizens.

My heart aches for the innocent people murdered, Palestinian and Israeli. Settlers aren’t innocent, but people who were born there didn't really choose to be one. Jewish people following matters of faith don't deserve to die. No one has (or should have) the right to take someone's life away. People at the Gaza Strip that are either just trying to survive or attempting to protect their homes also don't deserve to die, as flawed as their logic and actions might be, and many are missing that nuance. The denial of food, water, and medical aid, violates the Geneva convention. And it's a kind of retaliation that Palestine in its entirety will never be able to match.

Currently, the Israeli government is preparing a ground invasion of Gaza. An anonymous Israeli official said they would turn Gaza into “a city of tents.” A parliamentarian said that Israel should not concern itself with the safety of any Gazans who “chose” to stay in the Gaza Strip, as if every crossing hasn't been blocked.

Soon, the 'war' will end. And when it does, I can assure you Palestine won't be the last one standing. They've never had a real chance. I'd like to remember everyone that, despite Netanyahu's claims that they are "human animals", Palestinians are human beings. People. All of which deserve to live, deserve compassion and deserve protection. They also deserve to be remembered.

#palestine #israel #hamas

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cerastes · 9 months

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The thing that kills me here is... Why have the same information on both sides of the screen? What purpose does this fulfill? Ignore Biden. You’d think this means they’d do away with the right side of the interface so the website finally becomes the sinking ship that people, escaping from the other sinking ship, arrived to.

“Why do this at all?” This is the easy part of the equation: Investor money. You tell investors “well, SEE, with these new changes that we’re rolling out, we’ll be more similar to The Big Website that has everyone in the world in it ranging from politicians to TheCybersmith, this means we’ll likely replicate their success!” which is all you need for investors, because investors don’t know a damn thing about internet social media, they outright do not know nor do they care to learn, you tell the average investor, “hey this is Similar To Successful Product” and they’ll give you unimaginable head and six figures in funding.

“Why the hell did they make a Frankenstein’s of the Twitter interface and the remnants of Tumblr interface?” Man, I don’t have a crystal ball. I think a lot of people would chalk it up to incompetence or just a complete bankruptcy of fucks left in the coffers, but I think it’s something more enigmatic, and likely, sinister (incompetence AND a complete bankruptcy of fucks left in the coffers).

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the1975attheirverybest · 6 months

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Matty’s “speech” in FL

Okay, so someone asked for an explanation of Matty’s speech before IAWD(S). Here it is.

First, I should note that it’s not Matty’s original words. It’s an excerpt from an essay about sincerity and the aesthetization of politics in our current culture, written by art critic Boris Groys. You can read it here (it appears as one among many that he published in a collection as journal entries).

A few things to note about the essay:

It shares a lot of common themes with S/ATVB in that it talks about the conception of mass media, the effect it has on culture and one own self-image, the way we’ve turned politics into a form of media to consume, etc. so that’s the context in which it’s operating.

It discusses “self-design” (i.e. the curating of a specific version of yourself to present to the public) in a similar way that matty thinks about his stage persona.

The essay is trying to address the issue of arts relationship to politics today. Groys argues that, with the proliferation of mass media and social media platforms, these modes have replaced the artists (re)presentation of politics. The vast production of images of news, war, etc take the place of the artist.

even more to the point, the artist is now depicted and presented to us via media as well. So, the artist becomes the artwork instead of being the one who produces it.

this, Groys suggests, causes a certain kind of anxiety for artists because their job is to make stuff, and now, they’re in a position where the world is making them.

In the age of social media, with everyone sort of turning themselves and each other into “artworks” by curating and presenting specific versions of themselves online/ in public, Groys says that making something into art or aesthetizing it has become a way to cause suspicion. Like, we all have this awareness that social media “isn’t real life” that these images are edited and present a skewed and fabricated version of reality.

so, the way we encounter artwork (including public version of each other) is with suspicion. We get this feeling that if something looks aesthetic on social media, then the aesthetizing of it must be to hide the fact that it’s ugly/ bad/ unimpressive in reality. Instead of making something aesthetic being a glamorizing or celebratory act, it’s a doubt-inducing act.

Because everyone is so aware of the artificial-ness all the time, we have, in turn started to try to design our public image to be about sincerity and authenticity. In order to connect with others who view us publicly and establish trust with them.

Because the aesthetic is suspicious to us, we start to equate sincerity with shitty / bad/ugly stuff. We are suspicious of people who seem genuinely kind and sweet and pretty etc. but when we see someone behaving like a dickhead, we believe they’re being sincere.

Now, to the passage that Matty read onstage,

summarized, the passage says:

The only way to show authenticity and sincerity is to reveal nastiness. So, the nastiest celebrities and politicians are often the most famous and the most recognized for their truthfulness. if this is getting confusing, think about Trump for example: where everyone is all about being kind or woke or politically correct, his dickhead gets in front of a camera and says “grab them by the pussy” or “immigrants are bringing us gangs” or “Hilary is ugly and that’s why Bill cheated on her” or whatever. That’s the nastiest shit ever. But people think “well, say whatever you want about the guy, at least he’s honest and doesn’t lie like politicians do.” Does that make sense?

the problem with this is, though, that when you are being sincere by revealing your own ugliness in public you’re not really breaking the cycle. It’s simply a “symbolic sacrifice” that feeds into the idea that good/ pretty/ aesthetic things are fake and nasty/ bad/ ugly things are true. So you’re just sticking to the system and profiting off of it confirming people’s suspicion.

why did Matty read this passage onstage?

this is the part that is my own opinion and not the essay. Obviously, im not inside of Matty’s mind, so I can only guess and speculate. in my opinion, it’s because (as I’ve talked about in my reviews of SAYVB) so much of the show is about his relationship to social media, how the public perceives him, etc. and within the largest context of the ethos of the band, Matty has always been curious about what it means to be sincere in the age of irony (sincerity is scary). he’s thinking about how the world perceived him as a public figure, artist, and celebrity and what, to the public eye, counts as real sincerity.

The other day he commented on how people called his Malaysia protest “performative.” The idea that he’s a shit person doing it because of a white savior complex, or just to perform wokeness and stuff is easier and makes more sense to people than the fact that he genuinely gives a fuck. Even though he’s been consistently speaking up for LGBTQ+ communities since day 1. But it’s cuz our culture is so cynical, the only honesty we believe is bad intention and we equate the bad with the real thinking that any public good is suspicious and designed to cover up the bad.

This is also just true more generally of how people view matty. We’ve all seen the headlines. It’s not JUST about the Mayalsia thing. People are so quick to see all his good attributes as fake and all his bad ones as “real.” Which, as he has pointed out many times before, is basically a symptom of the current state of leftist politics. We think that calling each other out or “exposing” the shit truth behind the aesthetic is what being real and being virtuous is about and we don’t actually do much else.

all of this is to say that this passage is commentary on the themes that SATVB, and the 1975 have always been thinking about.

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hussyknee · 2 years

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If you fucking dare equate protestors who took over the Presidential Secretariat simply by finally outnumbering the cops, without any property damage let alone injury, after weeks and months of being absolutely brutalized by army and police for protesting completely peacefully, I hope you fall into a sewer and have to swim upstream with your mouths open.

The only violence has come from cops and military. They shot two people today, and injured 40 more. One died. Two journalists have just been assaulted on live TV, one of them a 23 year old kid who is in a bad way. There has been no property damage, or assaults on anyone.

Even before, the protests were kept 100% peaceful even when we were attacked repeatedly with tear gas, water canons, rubber bullets and even live rounds, beaten and bashed on the head with batons and dragged off and arrested. Right up until the PM literally sent bus loads of goons into the heart of the country's protest camp and destroyed it. Only then did people finally lose it and burn down all the government MPs homes and offices.

Even then innocents were not harmed and the houses were completely sacked and evacuated first. Not saying it were good or right, but it's was a shatteringly human response to over 18 months of starving, tormenting and bankrupting us, and kidnapping and terrorising anyone who protested. Far, far longer for marginalized communities. But the international media and US social media just grabbed the footage of the riots and fires and made us out to be rabid, violent beasts who had been storming buildings and terrorizing politicians and state forces.

This is the callous, racist, unthinking violence you whites and Westerners do to us. Especially USAmericans. You don't understand how much damage a stray reblog or retweet can do just by virtue of you being USAmerican and sitting on the world's largest information hegemony. Our government steals our rights and lives and you strip us of our dignity and agency and the right to tell our own stories.

We are not you. We are our own people. Let us tell our own stories in our own voices, and stop inferring and assuming shit without knowing jackshit about what's going on on the ground.

Does this look like the Capitol riot to you?

#jan 6 capitol attack #racism #sri lanka politics #sri lanka protests #sri lanka economic crisis #gotagohome2022 #gohomegota2022 #american media #social media #world politics #state violence #attacks on journalists

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jessicalprice · 1 year

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Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity (1. Preface)

I often tell people that there's a book they should read on the subject of a particular discourse, but I doubt they do--after all, I rarely follow through when random people on the internet tell me to read a particular book.

So I'm going to break down and summarize Denise Kimber Buell's Why This New Race?: Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity, because I think it's a really important read in understanding Christian hegemony, Christianity's relationship to whiteness, and antisemitism in Christianity throughout its history.

But before I talk about Buell's book, I have a few prefatory remarks of my own.

Sorry, but the Book of Context is quite a tome.

"Fake" Christianity and the fall from grace

In particular, Buell challenges the narrative lurking behind so many contemporary discussions of Christian hegemony, white nationalism, Christian racism, etc. that there was some sort of original, "pure" Christianity and that modern Christianity's issues are due to corruption from this prelapsarian ideal.

Or put another way, Christianity doesn't just posit a human fall from grace. The meta-narrative offered--when Christians don't deny that Christians are doing horrible things--is that those people are following a distorted form of Christianity that has fallen away from its original benevolent form.

This is the reactive form of a long-standing trope in Christian culture (that is, basically the entire West) that equates Christianity with goodness. If you read American or British books prior to about 1990, they are replete with people saying things like, "it's the Christian thing to do," to reference performing some basic act of human decency.

"More Christian than most Christians"

It was also popular for some time--although thankfully, it seems to be fading (at least on social media, as Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and other members of non-Christian cultures push back) to state that a Jew or other non-Christian who'd performed some sort of exemplary act of compassion or said something wise was "more Christian than most Christians."

This accolade, while almost certainly well-intentioned, is actually deeply insulting. The implication is that this Jew, unlike almost all others of their kind, has managed to catch up to Christians in compassion, that the universal standard of compassion is Christianity, and that it is surprising and unusual that this non-Christian has managed to overcome the moral inferiority of their people to meet or even exceed the Christian standard.

These assertions of Christianity (or at least "true" Christianity) as the moral standard for humankind largely go unquestioned, as do basic antisemitic tropes like the idea that the problem with Christians behaving cruelly is that they're getting too much of their Christianity from the Old Testament and not enough from the New.

Quite to the contrary, people who are purportedly not (or no longer) Christian are usually the first in line to denounce whichever Republican politician is proposing starving children in the name of Jesus as a "fake Christian." Progressive Christians, still more invested in protecting Christianity's brand than actually cleaning their own house, are often just as loud.

This No True Scotsman-ing is preservation of Christian supremacy and hegemony, and deeply intertwined with the idea that there is a single, pure, original Christianity that was unquestionably benevolent.

There is no One True Christianity

But the truth of the matter is that it is impossible to wring any sort of single, consistent moral philosophy from the New Testament without ignoring parts of it.

Christians that most of us might perceive as wielding their Christianity in cruel or unjust ways usually aren't more ignorant of the text or history than Christians (or ex-Christians) who see "real" Christianity as simply "love your neighbor" and understand Jesus as a beatific, gentle pacifist.

Both of those groups have to ignore large swaths of the New Testament to get to their ideology, and interpret the same passages differently (a Christian attempting to use the law to relegate non-Christians to second-class citizen status or refuse aid to non-Christians can interpret passages commanding kindness as applying to people within the Christian community only with as much textual support as one insisting they apply to all humankind).

Christians you don't like aren't "fake." You just disagree with them about what Christianity should be.

But in the west, Christianity generally holds the unique status of demanding that it be judged only on what it states its ideal form is, and not on what it actually is.

No such largesse for non-Christian cultures

Jews generally don't try to claim that other Jews who engage in bad behavior aren't Jewish. Much as we might wish Jared Kushner and Stephen Miller weren't members of the tribe, and much as we might say that they are bad Jews, their bad behavior didn't trigger a flood of opinion pieces about how they're "fake" Jews. (Ivanka is a special case, but that's about anti-convert sentiment within some Jewish communities.)

Neither was there a flood of articles about how the 9/11 attackers were "fake" Muslims. The meta-debate in the US and much of Western Europe after 9/11, in fact, was about whether all Muslims were terrorists or terrorist sympathizers, as Michael Hobbes recently noted on an episode of Cancel Me, Daddy. He went back and did a survey of journalism in the wake of 9/11, and almost all the coverage, on the opinion page and in purportedly objective journalism (where it was generally presented in question form, or as simply "reporting" on a national debate) was about whether only some Muslims were bad, or whether it was the entire culture.

When there was pushback, it was almost always in terms of the views of the terrorists are not representative of what most Muslims think or feel, not they aren't actually Muslim.

The myth of Christian innocence

As my Twitter friend Chrissy Stroop continually hammers home, the "fake Christian" framing upholds "the myth of Christian innocence" and is harmful to everyone except practicing Christians. It gaslights both members of non-Christian cultures who have experienced centuries-long structural and institutional (as well as individual) harm at the hands of Christians, and former Christians who experienced individual abuse in their families and/or communities of origin.

To tell queer people who grew up in authoritarian Christianity, or Jews who are missing entire sections of their family trees due to Christian genocide, or Indigenous people taken from their families as children and abused in the name of Jesus, that they have not been harmed by Christianity, that it was a few bad actors and not the religion itself, that it was all a misunderstanding, is to be more interested in protecting Christianity's reputation than facing real human pain.

As Chrissy Stroop often says, Christianity is what Christians do. It does not deserve special status among human cultures in which it is judged only by its imagined ideal form, and not by its actual effects upon actual living humans.

How does this relate to this book?

All of this is context for what Buell does in her book, which shouldn't be radical, but unfortunately--due to the habit of taking Christianity at its word about what it is and what it was originally--is unusual at best.

Buell decides to investigate how early Christians understood their own identity, and not to simply accept the prevailing Christian understanding that "ethnicity and race were irrelevant to early Christians—an argument that has been used to accomplish important modern antiracist work yet relies on and perpetuates anti-Judaism in the process."

Scholarly work on Christianity, especially early Christianity, is a trip. Most of it, obviously, has been done by Christians, which--when it comes to studying antisemitism and other harms in Christian history and how they might come from Christianity itself--is leaving the fox in charge of the henhouse.

(This is a subject for a different post, but Christian academics often say the most deranged things about how first-century Judaism functioned and the relationship between first-century Jews and Christians. They cite sources, of course, but if you look up those sources, you find that they're citing other sources, and if you trace it back to the original source, it's usually some Victorian preacher just... making up something to fit his parable exegesis.)

If you challenge some of this Accepted Scholarly Consensus, you are often met with spluttering indignation and insistence that any challenge to it is a "fringe viewpoint" and not accepted by any "real" NT scholars. It's always fascinating how often "fringe" usually means "written by people who weren't Christian."

So anyway, Buell decided to do something that, if you're not invested in Christianity, seems pretty basic and non-controversial: she decides to look at how early Christians understood their own identity.

I revisit scholarship and early Christian texts that destabilize the prevailing view that Christian universalism can be understood as mutually exclusive with “particularity”—a split that is often correlated with the nonethnic/ ethnic binary... To understand the elusive but entrenched presence of race in contemporary scholarly models, we need to cultivate a prismatic vision that can reimagine the relevance of race and ethnicity to ancient articulations of Christianness in light of the continued political, social, ideological, and theological challenges posed by modern racism and anti-Judaism.

Prismatic vision

I want to dig into that concept of "prismatic vision" for a moment, because it's a beautiful metaphor.

To aim for diffraction in how one sees—to see prismatically—is to value the production of patterns of difference and to resist the “false choice between realism and relativism.”

One of the things I often struggle to get people from Christian backgrounds to understand about Judaism is that, in having a culture without centralized authority, in having a relationship to the text in which authority lies in the discussion itself and not in any one voice, Jews usually don't privilege the idea of some Objective Truth the way Christians do.

I'd say most of us probably believe there is objective truth out there, but we also understand that we can only perceive and understand it subjectively.

We might all be looking at the same star, but we're all standing in slightly different places on the planet.

"Moral relativism" was a big bogeyman for Christians in political discourse from about 10-20 years ago.

In the most basic sense, they have a point when it comes to constructing rules for a society. We do need some basic, agreed-upon rules to live together. (I don't think we need nearly as many as Christians seem to think we do, but I am absolutely in favor of having systems for addressing harm, for ensuring that people can get their basic needs met and have their personhood acknowledged and respected, etc.) In service of not having to negotiate absolutely everything about every single interaction we have with other humans, both rules and accepted norms are a useful shorthand and safeguard (which is a statement of general principle--obviously individual rules and norms can be bad or misused, entire systems can be corrupt or badly designed in the first place, etc.).

Every moment is infinite

But when it comes to understanding the reality of something as fuzzy-edged and ambient as culture and viewpoint, there is no such thing as one objective truth that any of us can understand.

I was thinking about this as I paused for a moment on a corner during a walk yesterday. The intersection was in a quiet residential area, and I stood there and fell into a soft gaze, looking at the square of sidewalk I was standing on.

The air was chilly and damp, holding the scent of wet leaves, of the grass next to me, of someone smoking pot somewhere, of dog waste on someone's lawn, of a faint chemical sweetness that I think came from the school they were building about a half mile away, of the tar patching cracks in the street, of the laundry soap I use lingering between the fibers of my sweater, of the coffee smell from the coffee shop I'd been at clinging faintly to me, of the pile of fallen cedar needles across the street, of someone cooking onions somewhere, of the silly brave daffodil opening a blossom far too early in the lawn beside me, of the cut grass on that lawn, of the sap in the broken pine branch on the tree next to me and the wet bark of that tree, of... of... of...

And that was only the scents I noticed. That is only about what I could perceive of reality with a single sense.

I don't often fully open any of my senses that way--I have trouble ignoring stimuli as it is, and being overwhelmed by sensory input triggers my migraines. I spend most of my life doing my best to block out things. But every so often, when I'm somewhere relatively quiet, I drop that constant effort and just absorb. Not for long--while I was standing there, passively attentive rather than focused, the plane on the horizon became painfully loud--but just to stretch.

And then I closed all that up and pulled back into myself and thought about the things I couldn't perceive with my senses.

I did not know exactly when the houses that were around me were built, what the social and economic forces that willed them into being were. I don't know what the people inside them were doing at that moment, let alone all the social and personal context shaping their behavior and feelings and thoughts and thought-feelings.

I didn't know the billion-year history of each molecule of water creeping out in a dark aureole from the decaying leaf-litter on the edge of the sidewalk, or what the life of each leaf had been (some trees are functionally immortal, did you know? they call it phoenix regeneration). I didn't know the story of any of the pebbles embedded in the cement, what rock they had come from or where it had formed or through where it had traveled or how long it had been small. I didn't know when or by whom this square of sidewalk had been installed, how it had affected the area and the people who lived in it to have a sidewalk there, if there had been a street there before there was a sidewalk, if this was the original or a replacement.

Even if I narrowed my focus just to the square of sidewalk on which I stood, the truth of it was infinite. Merely what I could perceive with my own senses standing in that one spot and what background knowledge I have of things like the area the corner was in and how cement gets made and what streets do was too much to hold and synthesize. How much bigger, everything I didn't know and couldn't perceive?

We say there are as many Judaisms as there are Jews. But there are as many Christianities as there have been Christians and people who have ever interacted with Christians.

If there is any objective truth about it, it is made up of all the subjective experiences of it, and is beyond anyone's ability to comprehensively understand.

Which is why I find Buell's metaphor of "prismatic vision" so compelling: the idea of looking at a thing and seeing components of it and also knowing that there are parts of the spectrum that you can't see.

resist the “false choice between realism and relativism.”

Realism isn't the opposite of relativism, in these things--it's the sum total of all the relativisms. It's a point that may or may not exist, that we can only, hopefully, use as a direction to head in.

On to the Introduction.

#christian hegemony #christian hegemony library #antisemitism #early christianity #judaism #denise kimber buell #ethnic reasoning in Christianity

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communistkenobi · 1 year

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In a section of The Authoritarian Personality entitled Anti-Semitism For What?, Adorno gives the following thesis statement for why antisemitism seems to exist as the ur-bigotry of reactionaries. This quote is trimmed slightly for clarity:

The objectification of social processes, their obedience to intrinsic supra-individual laws, seems to result in an intellectual alienation of the individual from society. This alienation is experienced by the individual as disorientation, with concomitant fear and uncertainty. As will be seen, political stereotypy and personalisation can be understood as devices for overcoming this uncomfortable state of affairs. Images of the politician and of the bureaucrat can be understood as signposts of orientation and as projections of the fears created by disorientation. Similar functions seem to be performed by the [irrational] imagery of the Jew. He is, for the highly prejudiced subject, extremely stereotyped; at the same time, he is more personalised than any other bogey in so far as he is not defined by a profession or by his role in social life, but by his human existence as such.

For these reasons, as well as for historical ones, he is much better qualified for the psychological function of the “bad man” then the bureaucrat or politicians who, incidentally, are often but handy substitutes for the real object of hatred, the Jew. The latter’s alienness seems to provide the handiest formula for dealing with the alienation of society. Charging the Jews with evil seems to penetrate the darkness of reality like a searchlight and to allow for quick and all-comprising orientation. The less anti-Jewish imagery is related to actual experience and the more it is kept “pure,” as it were, from contamination by reality, the less it seems to be exposed to disturbance by the dialectics of experience, which it keeps away through its own rigidity. It is the Great Panacea, providing at once equilibrium, countercathexis, and a canalisation of wishes for a “change.”

Adorno’s basic argument is that antisemitism, which is used almost like a catchall term for irrational prejudice in this book, is a type of response people have to the anxieties brought on by mass society (Adorno’s own argument is that it is specifically mass capitalist society that does this, though he doesn’t bring it up here). I think an instructive connection to this is from an article (that I cannot recall the name or author of at the moment) that talks about the problem of human beings being subjected to overwhelming amounts of information on social media platforms like twitter; we are incapable of taking in such vast amounts of social information about other people that we begin to skew towards stereotypy simply as a way to better navigate the sea of strangers we interact with online every day. And I use stereotypy here not in a pejorative sense - social media has trained us to very efficiently sort people into different social “bins,” allowing us to quickly learn whether to engage with this person or not before moving onto the next, and the next. This is a deeply alienating way to learn about and interact with other human beings, which is partially why I think social media is so deeply vicious and cruel. You sort of have to navigate all online social interaction as a series of rigid stereotypes, because to accommodate for the complexity of thousands of strangers every day is something that would overwhelm us.

Which is not to say that antisemitism is a similarly rational way of coping with reality - we understand that interacting with society in this way leads people to viewing human beings as rigid abstractions and not, you know, human beings. And being “terminally online” is not something you can equate with a world historic bigotry that has a body count in the millions, but I think it reveals a deep problem with our current social and economic circumstances. There are some people that, for whatever reason, instead of coming to grips with reality as it exists, instead of “constituting the capacity for experiences,” turn towards these stereotypes as a way of dealing with their own alienation. This is why fascists are so deeply anti-intellectual; Adorno argues that this way of understanding the world allows people to abstain from the horrifying responsibility of self-reflection. Their own alienation is the basis for their worldview, which means anything that is external to themselves is at best mystical or, more commonly, viewed as a threat.

#the authoritarian personality #book club #antisemitism mention

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mmoxie · 10 months

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Part 11 - Bumper Sticker

Seebs sat on Craig's kitchen table, pawing lazily at an empty Captain's Wafers wrapper. There was still some "grilled cheese"-flavored dust inside, and by god, it was his.

Dani opened her second pack of crackers and leaned back in the booth seat that wrapped around the folding dinner table. It had been a week since Globe Rock, and she was still reeling. It was enough to make her break into little bouts of miserable laughter, whenever she had an idle moment and realized that despite all that, she still had to go into work.

Something was different about her, now. She wasn't any smarter or suddenly at peace with herself, but the fear of the unknown was gone. She knew the hell out of what was going on. Immersed in Craig's world of "cocaine engineering," she spent her free time listening to him -snif- and report back with his crusty-looking Skype buddies. When they said things like "unconscious equations" and "Fresno compass" and "Erba channel," she could find the edges of those puzzle pieces and stick them together.

These weird old men were using decades-old computing technology to- as she understood it- find pits, warps, and holes in the fabric of three-dimensional space. Soft sites, "liminal spaces," in the parlance of the multi-hour Youtube documentaries she had taken to watching, were as good as it got on Earth for gaining access to the fourth and fifth dimensions.

Those were new- fourth, time, that was easy enough to visualize. You're a cube- three sides, solid object, moving linearly in one direction- forward, same direction as time.

But the fifth- they called it a lot of things, but it seemed to her to be a tensor that acted on the flow of time, some force or shape that agitated it to flow in a certain direction. She heard Craig call it "the wheel," sometimes, and at others "the threading" or "Hoyle pressure."

She tried not to think about whatever project all that jargon was supposed to serve. They were having a "walk" at Turtlebees on Sunday, and the produce section had to be just right. So she thought about that, ways to get ahead of some halfway-up-the-ladder hyperventilator-for-hire who was going to walk through with a clipboard and run a white glove across the artichokes.

Oh, man. Do I really care about that?

She ate another cracker and fished the remote out of the bullshit basket in the middle of the table. No amount of Judge Joe Brown was going to take her mind off of this.

QVC? No, didn't need to buy a commemorative 9/11 coin.

Cartoon Network? Down the tubes ever since they stopped playing an hour of Looney Tunes at noon.

TNN? They called it Spike now. Spike was good when MXC was on, but that was- god, nearly twenty years ago.

I'm so old...

She flipped reflexively past The Weather Channel- they didn't play the jazz anymore- and gave up after landing on one of the thirty or so news channels Craig piped in on his hijacked satellite signal.

"...Out of New Mexico this morning, an update on Mayor Sean, the local politician who went missing a few months ago. Eureka County investigators say that they've identified a tooth belonging to the young social media star, and are zeroing in on a suspect. Based on the condition of the tooth, they say they are expecting to link the evidence to recent cases of arson. When asked for comment, Eureka County Sheriff Bill Kirby said the following-"

Dani slapped at Craig's arm and pointed at the 13" television sitting on the kitchen counter. He looked up from his wheezing laptop at her, frowning under his mustache. She gave him an urgent shake of the head, her mouth full of crackers.

"-We're still optimistic that this was a kidnapping, but given the condition of the evidence, we have reason to suspect that Mr. Knelson may have been harmed. We are advising that, in the event of contact with the victim or his captor, any individual should exercise extreme caution. At this time we are unable to identify a weapon, and-" The sheriff paused to let out a bitter chuckle. He was a thin man, not unlike Craig, but with serious rosacea and a put-on Texan accent. "-The unpredictability alone is reason enough to keep your distance."

Craig and Dani looked at each other for a long time. The old engineer was hard to read behind the glare of his square bifocals, but his mustache twitched, and he drew in a deep, steadying -snif-.

"Alright." He said, and stood. Dani watched as he opened a nearby cabinet and retrieved a sticker-covered suitcase. He popped the little brass latches and retrieved a mass of thick, colorful wool, tightly folded into a square. He tossed it on the table in front of Dani, startling Seebs away from his quest for cheese dust. --For a moment, anyway.

"My wife's aguayo. Don't get it dirty. You wear it around your shoulders, and you can wrap it in such a way that it's -snif- more or less a backpack."

"Craig, we're not going to Peru. Come on."

"You come on. You turned up out of nowhere and put me back to work, at the very least I should get to pick the venue."

"Craig, I've got a walk on Sunday, I can't just disappear from work."

"What the hell is a walk? --People quit their jobs all the time, you should do it more often, it's fun. I'm tempted to quit this one."

Dani groaned and distracted herself by petting Seebs, who automatically rolled onto his back. She buried her fingertips in the fluff of his belly and listened to the old boy purr while weighing her options.

"We flying?" She eventually asked.

"No way. We dump the cars, let 'em go to hock. I've got an old conversion van in Indian Springs. We get that far and swap. Drive to La Libertad, get on a boat. Boat takes us as far as -snif- Chamanga, and then we get another ride and keep driving 'til we hit Ocumal."

"You really have done this before."

"Not this one. Last time I was on the other side of Panama, dropped down from Louisiana and cut through -snif- Honduras and Columbia, then took the Rio Napo southeast into Mazán. Made my way to the coast over the next few months. Had to -snif- keep IBM guessing. This route we're on, that was my Plan B, way back when. But I'm guessing Turtlebees' won't send goons after you."

The urgent, fluent way that Craig Palmer navigated the apparent map in his mind was enough to make Dani really give this whole Peru prospect some thought. And then she thought about her mom, and about Chevette, and about what it would be like to have a little stability in her life.

If I didn't give that up when I barbecued one guy, I definitely did when I barbecued the other.

Well, it's not like I have anything against the place...

But she did have something against leaving, and damn it, Craig needed to hear it. He was elbow-deep in the suitcase and still talking about waterways and boat travel when she got up from the table and set a hand on the vented cabinet door, leaning in close to his face.

"I killed Mark LaGrange."

"Who?"

"Jesus, Craig- the first guy. The one who isn't turning up in the news. All he did was ask me the wrong question at the wrong time, and I scoured him off the face of the Earth."

"Alright, alright. -snif- Sure, I remember. Wilson Titlee. So what about him?"

"I- I don't know. I owe him something. I owe his family, I guess. Before I think about going anywhere, I've got to try and make that right."

"It's manslaughter, Dani, you don't make it right. You can self-flagellate, pay your debt to society, try to make good with his family, but you can't un-kill the sorry bastard."

"Well, I've gotta do something!" She thought she would catch fire from the frustration, but she didn't. She eyed the celestial nametag across the room, pinned to her friendly green apron.

Craig drew himself up and set his hands on his hips. In boat shoes and khaki shorts he wasn't precisely intimidating, but the mustache did a lot of heavy lifting as he barked-

"You've GOTTA get your ass to Peru! I'm not gonna say it again- and your mother would never forgive me if I let it slide- you wanna live? You stay out of jail. You wanna stay out of jail? You go to Peru. You put on your aguayo and you learn some Spanish and a sprinkle of Quechua, and you eat picarones until you're too fat to look like trouble anymore."

His squarish Roosevelt teeth were grit hard, and his eyes were wide with a mixture of urgency and fear. He -snif-fed wetly, and Dani realized that to him, the running had never stopped. This wasn't about how she'd survive. On some level, this was about IBM. She saw herself reflected in his bifocals and realized that if she didn't choose something different, she'd be on the run well into her seventies, just like him.

The houseboat rocked, and they were silent a while, just staring, each waiting for the other, playing psychic chicken and each secretly hoping they'd lose.

But the TV was still on, and it spoke first.

"-We now go to live aerial footage from our Eye-In-The-Sky weather chopper. Handing it over now to our Guy-In-The-Sky, Chief Meteorologist Buddy Chandrasekhar. Buddy!"

"-That's right, Lenora, and I'm here above Yosemite, about four miles north of Paoha Island, you can see Mt. Biedeman passing by just there- but the reason we're reporting in is because of a sudden and unseasonable outbreak of wildfire. As you know we're a few months out from what we'd unfortunately call the 'right season,' but you can actually see the smoke from here- it's actually pouring over the mountain range, we can see it coming east now from Twin Peaks and rolling over Bridgeport, just a wall of smoke. The National Weather Service is issuing an order to evacuate, they'll be sending that to local stations and radio shortly if they haven't already."

"Dani, what the hell is this?" Craig spun away from the cabinet and crossed his arms, frowning at the television.

"Don't look at me! I've been here the whole time!"

They watched as the chopper bore west toward the smoke. Suddenly Craig gripped Dani's shoulder and gave her a shake, pointing at the fuzzy top-right corner of the screen. Something was hovering above the inferno, nearly out of frame. A foo fighter, a Marfa light, fire in the sky- and it suddenly pivoted, throwing itself toward the ground, cutting diagonal across the camera and carving a blaze of angry gray-white light above the low fields of Bridgeport.

Buddy Chandrasekhar wasn't about to let that go. He was the Guy in the Sky. The cockpit pivoted, and the view onscreen with it.

"-Could be a number of things, Lenora. Possibly a micro heat dome from the local bodies of water, agitating particles in the air- might be producing ball lightning, or even a sundog effect on the flames at the core of the outbreak here-"

Craig shook his head and swung himself into the kitchen booth, leaning over the old laptop. His Skype call was still open- but there was a woman onscreen for once, instead of one of his sniffling old colleagues.

"Any ripples, Andi?"

"You're asking me? I'm numb, remember?"

"But you put out the call, right? Anyone get you back?"

"Ugh, everyone's on vacation. There's a SLAPP cell in Tahoe, that's the closest I could get on short notice. And you know Dale sucks."

"Yes, I know Dale sucks. But tell him to put on channel 40."

Dani leaned over Craig's shoulder, looking between the video call and the breaking news. Through several layers of arbitration- first over the phone into this "Andi" person's house, and then out of the speaker, into her microphone, and out of Craig's crackly speakers, came a third voice.

"Private domicile of sovereign citizen Dale Montag, office of diplomatic relations. To whom am I speaking?"

Jesus, thought Dani. And Craig, actually.

"Dale, it's Andi. I'm on the line with Craig. He wants you to put the news on. Channel forty, he says."

"Forty? Ain't that MTV? I don't watch that crap."

Craig loomed over the laptop's pinhole microphone and spoke. "Just put it on Fox or something, Dale. You're looking for a forest fire in Yosemite."

"Already there. You ever buy one of those pillows I told you about?"

The old engineer grit his teeth. "...Not yet, Dale. I need you to go for a walk on my behalf. They reporting on the light in Bridgeport?"

"Something in Bridgeport," Dale replied. He was loud, and tended to put a little extra emphasis on his 'b' sounds. Dani watched Andi onscreen, who regarded her phone with vague displeasure.

"Hoh! Ha, check it out! Look who it is!"

"That's not a good sign," Craig muttered to Dani. "Dale... doesn't exactly root for the underdog. He's a rich get richer type."

"Yeah, I'm between lanes right now. There's- haha, wow, this place has changed since the seventies. Wouldn't expect a square like that kid to turn up here, but..."

Suddenly Dani realized something terrible, and leaned on the table to listen closer.

"It's Mayor Sean! I found him! Oh man, they're gonna give me a medal!"

Whatever Dale was doing, it made Dani's ears tingle. She knew it before he said it.

There was more to Sean Gracie- more to everyone- than the body she had incinerated. She had just made peace with her own rampant shadow, of course she wasn't the single special human being who had one! She might have burned away the physical, three-dimensional body of Mayor Sean, but...

"Holy crap, that's him. I thought he was tripping, but he's just... here. Not a projection, not his consciousness- he left Earth! No wonder the cops are having a hard time finding him, ha!"

"He didn't leave," Dani said, turning away from Craig.

"That's all that's left," he translated for her. "Alright, thanks, Dale, we'll uh- we'll catch up sometime." He rolled his wrist at Andi, encouraging her to go ahead and hang up.

"Yeah, alright, buddy, you know where to find me. Dalesdale has a robust tourism progra-" click.

"This is bad, Craig. I know that little fascist, he's all over my grandkids' youtubes. If he's just sliding along the fourth axle willy-nilly, he can do whatever he wants. Go into dreams, go into places- he's completely unshackled from his body! We've got to put him back!"

"...There is no body," Dani said, holding a bottle of Inca Cola in a shaking hand. She drank before continuing. "I... I made sure of that."

"Well, great talk, Andi! Catch you later, thanks for the help!" Ba-dum.

Craig slammed the laptop shut and set his elbow on it, leaning and looking up at Dani with a deeply exhausted expression.

"So, you haven't been killing people. That's... well, it's not gonna hold up in court, but it's true."

Dani just drank. Her head was spinning. The flaming, vengeful specter of Mayor Sean had followed her across state lines and started a wildfire to flush her out of hiding, that's what it looked like. And that... was bad.

"It slows down our trip, too. We've gotta put this Sean thing to bed before we can hit the road, or he'll set Peru on fire, too." He paused, then gestured for Dani to grab him a drink as well, before continuing.

"America, I could deal with. But not Peru. You killed every part of him that... to be frank, doesn't matter in the long run. All that's left is bad ideas and a bad attitude- and whatever he can find to express himself, in the higher dimensions."

"What do we do?"

Dani looked at her nametag, dangling from her apron beneath that pin she'd claimed from Mark LaGrange's ashes.

Have you Had It lately?

Yeah, Mark. I sure have. And now...

"Oh, you know. Just your typical political assassination. I'll call the CIA, they're great at these," Craig joked, bitterly. He muttered as he reopened the laptop and looked through his contact list. "Would you look at that, nobody from Langley in my rolodex. I guess now that I've bucked them completely, it's the perfect time to get them on my ass again."

Dani pet Seebs and shook her head. "Sorry, Craig. --Look, I made him like this, maybe I can fix it. And- and after it's all said and done, sure, fine, I'll go to Peru with you. For good, if that's what it takes."

It was a long moment before Craig replied, and when he did, he took off his glasses and rubbed his wrinkled forehead.

"I've let you into my home, looked after your cat- he farts, by the way, you didn't mention that- and I really thought that would be the end of it. I thought I'd snuck my way onto easy street thirty years ago."

He picked her cigarettes up off the table and pat the bottom of the pack, then helped himself to one, standing up briefly to light it on the gas stove's pilot light.

"He's gonna be coming for you. What we did at Globe Rock probably put him on your trail. Between now and the next time, we've got to be ready to square off with him. We know we can set up a lure, but once we've got him, we need to know what to do with him."

"Any ideas?"

"You're the one who killed him, Dani. That one's on you. Pack your bags and give it some real, hard thought. Once we get this started, I don't think we're coming back to Fish Camp."

Dani nodded- and then realized she was going to be late for her shift at Turtlebees, catching the time in the corner of the TV screen.

Almost apologetically- though to whom, she was no longer sure- she pulled on her apron and set off for work.

<-Prev Next->

#IPYIHGU #dani from my bullshit

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leftmusing · 2 years

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it exhausts me that communities, especially online communities, are so focused on fighting against each other, because regardless of how much you claim to be left-wing or anti-system or against the government, in engaging with listless online discourse against opposing political ideas, you are directly feeding into the division that is being created and manufactured by the governmental systems you claim to hate.

this is a post specifically for left-wing online communities, from one to another, because you, we, need to hear it the most.

you can't exist online nowadays without unwittingly stumbling upon an argument or discourse online regarding something political or identitarian. and often, the left-wing folk who are engaging in this discourse are the sort of people who will likely subscribe to the following ideological concepts:

prison/police abolition

anti-government

anti-punitive justice

the painfully ironic thing about this, is that again, these left-wing online communities will be engaging in punitive justice on small scale community levels through cancel culture, or falling into the government's plan to create more political division in the country.

i'll start with cancel culture. i've already written about equating cancel culture with punitive justice, which you can read here, so i won't delve too deep into the logistics of that here too. read at your own leisure. but something that is almost comically ironic is that a lot of the time, people who engage in cancel culture also subscribe to the abolitionist mindset. they will lecture and profess that the prison and police systems aren't working, that prisoners should be treated with human decency, and that punitive justice is a failed system. but in the same breath, they will engage in harassment campaigns about people living in their own communities, or about people in mutual circles online, over a "problematic" post, or "receipts", accusations, etc. people fighting against punitive justice will levy it against others in a more digestible, disguised format that is "social justice" (ironically, there is no justice in this behaviour. least of all for society.) these people police their community's language, ideology and mindsets, and when they don't align with their own watered down, instagrammable version of leftism, people are exiled. people are punished.

let's move onto how these attitudes are contributing to and strengthening the systems they claim to be against. this is a bit of a loaded one, but bear with me.

speaking as a UK citizen, the government system in place is there to divide us. it works better when its peoples are divided. corporations with influence over government, politicians using social media as a platform, each post and comment being a money making machine for these interlocked systems; it's all part of the bigger picture. this system isn't broken, it's working exactly as intended. right now, social cohesion is at a devastating low, and the political divide grows as quickly as the wealth divide does. to put it simply, the government wants our attention to be on right wing trolls in comment sections. the government wants us to be blindly attacking each other, they want us to be cancelling each other, they want us to be exiled from our own communities. because when that happens, there's less power in numbers. less people united to fight back against them, the ones who are the root cause of the country's inequalities.

whether you lean left or right, whether you're far or more centre, nobody is content, fully, with how this government is functioning. yet we take it out on each other. we blame it on the neighbour down the street who has a union jack flag hanging out the window, or the neighbourhood who has a progress pride flag. we take it out on each other, when we are all struggling to heat our homes and feed ourselves or our families. we take it out on the trans community to find a tangible place for the british public to displace their anger, and then the trans community take it out on each other, levying transmed and truscum against each other, discourse about dysphoria and gender stereotypes, and call outs about other trans people who don't subscribe to the "woke" train of thought.

this is carefully constructed. all of this is linked. from prison systems, to social media corporation income, to unions and strikers, to cancel culture, to social cohesion, to right vs left, to trans issues being politicised, to poverty. these links aren't stabs in the dark or coincidental — they are carefully interlocked. a delicate system of oppression and division that is working in beautiful, disgusting harmony.

the most left-wing thing to do right now, is to stop levying your anger at fellow citizens who don't subscribe to your school of thought. the most left-wing thing to do is to stop fucking cancelling people, or getting enraged that somebody said the wrong or "problematic" thing. the most left-wing thing to do right now is stop deluding yourself that you can change a far-right trolls mind in the comment section on a post to give yourself a sense of recreational debate and ego.

the best thing to do is to turn your attentions to the ones causing those problems. not those who are a product of it.

#monad.txt #sociology #politics #leftism #anti cancel culture #cancel culture #healing #social media #left vs right #social cohesion #communities #lgbt #trans community #identitarian #chronically online

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sacrilegiious · 1 year

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hi, my loves ! 4am but we're finally here, intro almost posted. i'm daisy ( she/her ) and this is my bby dawn. i've been playing her for a while now and i'm so excited to get to it again and see how she will interact with all of your lovely muses. dawn is my headstrong, always down to fight, antisocial girl - genuinely an all round asshole but with her heart in the right place i think ? i guess that judgment is yours to make. def looking forward to plotting w all of u okay byyyee ! <;33

꒰⠀⠀⠀⠀shin ryujin. twenty-one. cis woman. she/her.⠀⠀⠀⠀꒱ hold your f*** horses ! ’dawn' soojin jeong has just been spotted walking into revolution headquarters. they are best known for being the drummer in rad and have been signed with the label for six months. they share a lot of interesting things about life in the music industry on their social media, so make sure you don’t forget to follow them at @fuckoffjake. fans know them for being ruthless but i swear they’ve got a protective side as well. maybe that explains why they’re always associated with sleepless nights spent under neon lights, fingers impatiently drumming on a desk, dark eyes that refuse to look away first. stan twitter even voted them most likely to overthrow the government. we’ll see how they live up to that reputation.

basics.

name: soojin “dawn” jeong.

nicknames: u can try i guess.

gender: cis woman

pronouns: she/her.

age: 21.

date of birth: march 23rd 2001.

astrological sign: aries

place of birth: seoul, sk

nationality: korean-american

ethnicity: korean

occupation: drummer at rad / architecture student.

sexual & romantic orientation: bisexual, biromatic.

longest relationship: like a month probs.

appearance.

height: 1.64m / 5′4″ (as i’m being told)

weight: 50kg / 110lbs.

hair colour: naturally black (does like dying it though).

hair style: rn short-ish, almost reaching her shoulders.

eye colour: brown.

clothing style: tomboy meets goth witch. almost exclusively black.

tattoos: has several. a little D and a moon on her left hand, a rythmic score on her right ribs, a little black cat on her hip.

piercings: ear lobes & left ear helix.

defining features: whisker dimples, mole under left eyebrow.

character.

positive traits: ambitious, charismatic, intelligent, self-reliant, daring, witty.

negative traits: controlling, haughty, choleric, abrasive, impatient, judgy.

likes: rock music, cats, the city at dawn, cool architecture, hot chocolate, asmr.

dislikes: people (especially cis men), planes, haunted houses, brussels sprouts.

skills & languages.

notable skills: drumming, drawing, good memory, pen / drum stick spinning.

secret talents: lock picking, horseback riding.

languages spoken: Korean, English, Japanese & a bit of French.

biography.

tw: v minor mention of violence

born as jeong soojin in seoul, her life has always been predetermined by her last name, her family. she was the first child of her rather prominent parents, alongside her twin brother and both of them grew up surrounded by wealth, learning a second language by the age they were four and a third one from age nine. generally, their parents tried their best to give them everything you were supposed to give a child in order for it to develop promisingly. if raising a child were similar to a math equation that is. the only thing that they were missing, that no money or good intentions could afford them, was privacy. being one of the children of the ceo of a successful real estate company and a prominent politician meant they were always somewhat in the eye of the public. not enough to constantly be of relevance to the media but enough for any missteps to find an audience.

making mistakes was never an option. failure not in her vocabulary as she grew up and became the over-achiever her parents had always hoped for. she was on top of her class ever since starting school and later on became not only student body president in her high school but also picked up all the right hobbies. playing the violin, horseback riding, fencing - excelling in apparently everything she touched. all the success came with a price though, the rigorous self-discipline, the complete disregard of her actual nature. inside all she felt was emptiness and that emptiness was only replaced by burning, raging anger. when she was thirteen, her blood absolutely boiling with unbridled rage, she became violent towards a classmate of hers. an incident that didn’t cause a big scandal solely because once she got home, bloody fists and all, her parents immediately paid off both the parents of said classmate as well as the members of the press who had heard of the story. everything was kept under tight wraps but it was clear there was an issue, a problem, with the golden child. therefore, she was brought to therapy, diagnosed with anger management issues and recommended to pick up a hobby that might help her with her situation. among the provided examples was drumming, something soojin would have never been allowed previously but that soon became her favorite thing to do.

in the end, graduating with stellar results was no issue, if one thing came relatively easy to her it was academic success. still, however, she felt empty inside. felt caged in this life she had never picked yet never really tried to fight either. that was until now, when she could finally convince her parents to let her study abroad. embellishing her arguments with how impressive it would look on her CV and how it would help both her cultural and language education, she was allowed to leave the country and therefore also her parents’ and the press’ watchful eyes. she started her bachelors in architecture at ucla, actually quite passionate about the subject but she also didn’t lose sight of another thing she felt passionate about: drumming. ever since she got to the us, she changed her name to dawn, affording herself further anonymity and has finally become her own person. style, chaotic flatshare, political views and all. together with, what would soon become her two closest friends, she created the band r.a.d. about three years ago.

for a long time they were a small underground group, playing feminist punk rock was after all not truly what would catapult you into a life of stardom, or at least that is what they thought. however, after over two years of playing a lot of dingey bars, one of their songs gained some notoriety on tik tok, becoming what you might call a feminine rage hymn. with that hit song under their belt, they were approached by several record labels. dawn never felt inclined to sign, for her life was easier this way. nobody to tell them what direction to take with their music, absolute freedom. she would simply bankroll them herself. but when revolution records approached them and considering her existence of living in between the two worlds might come with an expiry date, rad agreed to sign. it gave them a sense of financial security, while also preserving their artistic freedom. for revolution, they moved across the country where now dawn is finishing up her bachelors degree mostly online.

headcanons.

character wise she quite controlling and reckless, which can be difficult for social interactions, especially since she is absolutely unwilling to compromise in her ideals or to admit defeat. has absolutely no issue with telling people just how wrong she thinks they are. on the other hand, she has quite the dry sense of humor, can be incredibly charming if she wishes so.

is having the time of her life ever since she joined rad, she is now dressing completely different than she used to at home. she has also started expressing her own thoughts and opinions a lot... most would say too much.

very much a destroy the patriarchy, anti-capitalistic, eat the rich, acab kind of babe.

AH YES R.A.D. dawn is the youngest member of the band and their drummer. just like at uni, she’s known exclusively as dawn in this context bc she’s still kinda trying to avoid people back at home finding out eek (hello ms hannah montana lol) - esp since r.a.d.’s specialty is angry feminist punk rock.

studies architecture and actually rlly loves it? like she will def geek out about architecture if you give her the chance.

dawn of justice was funnily enough the name of her first horse back home, so do with that info as you will.

she has the kind of personality that makes her a natural leader even though? she is an introvert? so yeah, she does prefer her solitude most of the time but don’t expect her to keep her mouth shut in social situations.

she sleeps very very little, which only adds to her high-strung personality. most of those sleepless nights are either spent performing with the band or studying.

when speaking she does have a slight korean accent.

wanted connections (wip).

i do have this sort of fun ideak that idek what to call but basically your muse and dawn got into a loud argument outside the building and somebody took pictures or videos and posted them to twitter saying they were having a lover spat. actually, they probably don’t get along great and have been trying to vehemently deny it on their social media, both losing some not so nice words about the other but it was simply interpreted by the netizens as them lovingly teasing each other soo.... that’s where we’re at basically.

enemies / antagonists — basically, dawn does tend to be a rude lil dickish so she’d def have quite some people who dislike her. for example that could be somebody she made fun off bc she didn’t like their music (probably called it something like mushy fluff or whatever skdfjsdf).

former hook up — this was definitely just casual, especially on her part. clean, no strings attached fun. well, unless maybe it wasn’t for your muse ?! that could be a fun option as well. open for all genders.

the rare friends — this is the exclusive group of people she likes to be friends with asdfahd. it just be like that but ya def hmu and give my antisocial gal some friendss. maybe somebody who she actually connected with through music, or perhaps architecture.

#revolution.intro #◌ ⋰ 𝒅𝒂𝒘𝒏 𝒋𝒆𝒐𝒏𝒈 ↠ ⌜ about. ⌟#WE MADE IT FOLKS !!#pls lie to me and tell me that it's pretty and good okay thx <33

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team-council-two · 2 years

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question for alpha:

what do you make of the stereotype that the french are cowards?

do you believe that people are straying away from this stereotype?

ive been getting into fandoms where french people are written like this and i would like to hear some perspective.

thanks

oh boy, *cracks knuckles*

so. i will be honest with you. i do not know where this stereotype comes from. or well i have a very vague guess but im not sure. i asked people around and they too just went big shrug. my only source of confirmation has been wikipedia.

see my closest guess here is that americans consider our surrender against the nazis in WWII to have been a cowardly thing or something, i dunno. weird takes on europe going on here and they seem to think we didn't fight before said surrender just cos only 46 days or sth bc apparently, blizkrieg who ? never heard of her or the absolute devastation they laid on my people. it also strikes me as a not particularly international take bc i genuinely never had heard it before being on socmedias used by americans. hell, the wikipedia page on french stereotypes lists it as exclusively american. this would match up with americans' tendency to equate cowardice and bravery as something the domain of war, which they care a lot about, whereas we just simply have other concerns, no offense.

anyways, see the stereotype we french people have about ourselves (and that actually is kinda relevant about reality), and a lot of people too, including americans, is closer to this-

thats french for we yell all the fuckin time and make a ruckus about everything ever. les gueuleurs quoi.

although support of unions is lessening due to the current political crisis we have been stuck in for god only knows how long, the french has a large culture about revolution, unionizing, human rights, left wings politics and shit like this. it may or may not be war every fuckin day at my home actually because of the union stuff (not shitting on unions shitting on my dad's terrible work homelife separation and his tendency to yell at the TV every night, bc apparently the TV is a conversation partner but your kid asking you to stop screaming isnt).

we just are known to protest a lot and backtalk to politicians and shit like that. and it seems that the cowardly stereotype is lessening because people on social medias are starting to point out, hey ! this isnt being lazy actually. the french is actively fuckin. blocking roads and burning shit and all that and being cunts to their politicians, and they have universal healthcare and a decent retirement system which we are realizing we fuckin wish we had in this dystopia of a life. maybe theyre doing sth right. (and well theyre right unfortunately the french itself is slowly forgetting that.) this aside yeah recognizing that making a fuss about your rights is a good thing the french do is kind of incompatible with the idea that the french are cowards, especially with the recent crisis of the gilets jaunes where people protested tirelessly despite actively getting wounded and arrested and disabled for life and killed by cops. and it really has been like this for a good while too, since industrialization or so, when capitalism became widespread.

so in other words. subjectively ? i do think the stereotype is unbased/pretty darn recent and mostly a cultural difference, and nor can i really explain it besides blaming Capitalist Propaganda. i also do not know if objectively such stereotype is getting less support, but subjectively, from what ive read around and so on, people seem to be a bit catching up, and seem to be accepting that unionizing and strikes are NOT a laziness thing but genuine bravery when facing a system that is strikingly inegalitarian and running well oiled with the blood of the people.

take this as you want. i have to admit this is a bit personal because americans' agressiveness towards the french have genuinely made me feel like i was unwelcome online, ive seen people wish that france would sink under the sea or specifically would get nuked, with no single hint of irony whatsoever. and among the animosity found here, ive always keenly felt the difference between what was considered hardworking and invested for the french, and what was considered lazy and cowardly for americans and the faint smell of capitalist propaganda hiding behind it all

Addendum: So yeah that stereotype about the french being cowards who surrender immediately, of course it exists in Germany too. And it's also most likely due to WW2 and propaganda related to that.

- Aschen

True to the post-Soviet world as well.

- Ray.

#langage language #pardon my french; i am verbose #i could write an entire book on how unfamiliar french people in medias seem to actual french people #spy is an odd case; ask me about him #one day ill also rant about fake french accents; including spys #anyways hatred of the french online is weird and strikingly frequent and i basically dread going online every time sth big happens #i wont mention anything bc if i do people might go Actually You Deserved It #and i dont wanna get that #hope i somewhat. answered sth satisfying to you #not tf2 #The Council has spoken

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everything-is-crab · 1 year

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Your reblog of malewifebeater's post would have been way easier and faster if you had just said "I hate black people" instead. If you get accused of being anti-black maybe there's a reason. The fact that you typed out all those paragraphs and never once thought "hmm this might be deeply offensive and racist toward black Americans that are literally killed for existing, jailed more and for longer periods of time, etc" is WILD. And equating black Americans to white Americans as if they hold the same amount of power is unbelievably intellectually dishonest and ridiculous. And holy shit having ONE black president and ONE black female vice president equates to the hundreds of white presidents that committed horrible acts? Of course both are wrong but you're gross for acting like omg black people are on the same level as power and social standing as white Americans. Maybe black people in the United States are too busy focusing on racism in our own country where there are still sundown towns and black people being shot and killed for jogging down the street to worry about other countries and you want to act like we should be concerned about Mexico? Mexicans and every other race on this Earth HATES black people, so we're focusing on ourselves right now and trying to stay alive in a country that hates us. So instead of typing out paragraphs of racist shit telling black people they don't care about people in other countries, you might want to use your critical thinking skills first holy shit. You really should be ashamed of yourself for that racist ass reblog.

Instead of typing this whole essay that I just skimmed through because I have seen this argument a dozen times maybe you should have just said "I am American which by default makes me very ignorant to the world outside and therefore here are 10 of my ridiculous claims about the person I'm arguing with :"

No one has forced black people in the US to talk about imperialism. No one has forced any Americans to talk about imperialism (and we don't expect you to anyways).

I will never force people from any marginalized demographic to focus on the activism of any other group that isn't them. You could be a white lesbian advocating only for lesbians and I will be cool with it.

Where did I equate black Americans to white Americans in terms of power? 🤨Did I ever say it was easy for you all or that there are no obstacles in your course to attain the same power as white people? Point out where and how I implied that.

No but how did you get from "Pointing out American imperialism isn't racist" to "You must hate black people"? (Because I depicted how being black doesn't automatically exempt you from falling for imperialist misinformation and propaganda?)

"Only 1 black president and one black female president"

This is what I am talking about. You think there's been just those two? Do you think it's just been politicians as well? You might want to hear the accusations levied against Rihanna from the NGOs in my country and maybe that will allow you to learn more about how neocolonialism works. And if you think the deaths of thousands of people and ruined lives of billions is something less tragic than what white people have done then it's your problem that you don't consider it an issue big enough to be taken seriously or at least not be dismissed the way you're currently doing.

Does me talking about the deaths of third worlders and their hazardous living conditions really offend you that much that from now I am not allowed to call it "American" imperialism anymore? Because I have been accused as a racist simply for calling it American imperialism because it's racist to assume America is more imperialist than Europe (??). Which is why I made that reply because it has been a long time when even though no one even mentioned black people, simply talking about US imperialism and poc from third world countries has gotten us accusations of racism and demands to stop acting like America is the worst imperialist country when the truth is it IS the worst imperialist country and the Internet is free to enlighten you about that.

Your whole anon is full of misinterpretation and you don't even know the full context. I don't want you to talk about other countries ignoring you own issues and I am not implying you don't experience the things you listed or that you have anywhere the same privilege as white people.

My reblog wasn't made to show any of that but you have purposefully twisted what I said so you could make it seem like I hate black people because I implied living in an imperialist country and culture can affect your own views on those topics regardless of your race. I specifically mentioned in that reblog how it's not accusing all Americans to be war criminals so how could I imply you have committed the same atrocities as white people when I didn't accuse the average white American either for the same?

Insane how you're pulling Mexicans being racist to black people as an excuse to ignore the effects of US imperialism even though black people in the global south have been horribly affected by it too-

https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/what-u-s-imperialism-is-up-to-in-africa-while-no-ones-watching/

https://www.leftvoice.org/u-s-military-in-africa-fuels-political-violence-across-the-continent/

Every point of criticism against Americans but specifically white Americans is accused to be racist but do you think those people on the positivity post aren't all white Americans and aren't racist? Do you think there was no racist intention behind that post that you felt the need to talk over us and defend those white Americans and then turn around and call us racist?

You didn't address any of the other points I made. When all leftists had been crying about how shitty their country is and mocking Southerners now there's suddenly pride in being American and especially Southern American?

Saying shit like how the American culture makes America "the greatest country" isn't racist or imperialist in any way when this culture is shoved down our throats all the time?

I come from a nation that has a dominant nationalist movement growing every day and they talk about their religion the same way these Americans do.

Yk damn well that post came up because people who are not American and primarily from the global south have talked about US ignorance online.

What has anti blackness got to do with that? Do you really think those white Americans had anti blackness of Mexicans in mind when they mocked Latina radfems after the latter talked about US imperialism and how the average American can choose to not contribute to it by simply not doing illegal drugs like marijuana?

Funny thing is I made an entire post (which wasn't even a response to any accusation of racism the way this was) about only Indian Americans partaking in similar behavior and ig that must make me racist against my own race now too huh?

I think you're the same anon and I think you should feel ashamed defending white people from your own country and letting them get away with their racism solely because they're American.

What made you call us racist? Because we think it's cringe to play the victim as white Americans after third worldists started speaking up for themselves?

Anyways, America has no positive cultural values. Hope that helps 👍

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kmp78 · 1 year

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“his lack of etiquette doesn't equate him not caring about his country…” You mean having good ethics, personal values and being free of prejudice and misogyny isn’t necessary to be a trustworthy and fair bipartisan leader and a role model for leaders of the rest of the world?. DT absolutely cares nothing about his country but what the country can do for his wallet and media ratings.

“I witnessed all the good he did….” What “good” did you see exactly? Please specify based on reality, not Trump sponsored news outlets.

…”the media lied about him cause there are dozens other things they accused him of that he didn't do.”AND DOZENS OF HORRENDOUS, ILLEGAL, FOUL or UNETHICAL THINGS HE DID DO!

“how he went against the deep state”WTF “deep state” are you referencing here ? He did nothing but make shit up and keep repeating it so ignorant fools, blatant gun-toting blowhard rednecks and the meek and unthinking followers would believe his baseless propaganda. His accusations have never been proven to be true and there was certainly no election conspiracy which has been proven over and over again. He has lied and stolen from his own country by devaluing his income and properties, cheating on and withholding his taxes. (proven fact for which he will face legal charges)

“and the big heads and exposed many many shady stuff. “ Like who would that be and specifically what “shady stuff “ did he uncover? The people he fired, and that was many, were people HE hired and surrounded himself with to do his bidding.

And of course, don’t even mention how many thousands of lives could have been saved if DT had acted swiftly and responsibly in the face of a world health crisis. Instead of causing the loss of thousands upon thousands of lives, “ Trump suppressed scientific data, delayed testing, (arrogantly) mocked and blocked mask-wearing, and convened mass (political) gatherings where social distancing was impossible. Despite the mounting threats of COVID-19 and global warming, he pulled the U.S. out of the World Health Organization and the Paris climate accord. He installed industry insiders in regulatory posts tasked with protecting Americans from environmental and occupational hazards; their regulatory rollbacks resulted in 22,000 excess deaths from such hazards in 2019 alone. He pushed through a $1.9 trillion tax cut for the wealthy, creating a budget hole that he then used to justify cutting food and housing assistance for the needy. He tried, but failed, to repeal the ACA, then bent every effort to undermine it, pushing up the number of uninsured Americans by 2.3 million.”- Source: Scientific American (An apolitical long-standing well known scientific journal based on facts not propaganda and political rhetoric).

And the man cannot put together a full sentence in his native language! Smfh; but he doesn’t even know to be embarrassed. Great “presidential” material.

So Trump loving Anon, if you really do aspire to be any sort of politician, learn to gather brilliant minds to fill in what you do not know and not yes you to death, not bumbling fools and assorted ill qualified relatives to cow tow to your manipulative strategies for personal gain. Vet your news sources and advisors throughly, check your facts, learn behavioral cues to spot liars and fakes, think before you speak and make sure you surround yourselves with those successfully experienced in leading and governing, not in failed business or reality TV.

Trump used the extremely strong retard gene among the Republicans and the rest is infamous history. 💯

The level of brainwashing was not far off from what went on in Germany 100 years ago - and as we saw during the Congress debacle, the end results might have easily led to a similar outcome. 👀

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striving-artist · 1 year

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we’ve been in the “find out” portion of century the whole century since the invention of the personal automobile, and now the entire world’s being redesigned for the automobile as more countries have emerging middle classes able to afford what was once only a convenient luxury or a necessary part of rural transportation in countries with public transport. If someone were to throw soup at an oil executive, they’d invite the collective malice of people towards executives, and lead to people considering doing worse to executives. By vandalizing works of real meaningful art that does not advertise any mass market product and is housed in a museum available to those of all walks of life (rather than a billionaire’s private manor or vault) , the vandals paint the environmentalist movement as nothing more than an excuse for petty vandals; equating their cause with no radical action beyond throwing paint, and no targets beyond something that is a public good available to all who come to the museum. If they had vandalized a one-of-kind multimillion dollar Ferrari, they would have made a point against conspicuous waste of polluting oil in a society seeking to waste more and more, if they had so much as lobbed blood-red paint on an executive outside his office, they would invite others to share their hatred of the exploitative executive class; but if, as they did, simply vandalized a piece of public art, they have done nothing more than attack a work that holds deep meaning to people, making them look like simple vandals seeking an excuse

Hi, thanks for the opportunity to say more about this. I have lots of words on the subject.

We'll start with a lighting round before I get wordy.

Your ask is painfully naive.

Art has no meaning except what we give it, and cameras exist.

Plenty of execs have been paint splattered. It did nothing.

Plenty of directed protests have happened. They get swept under the rug.

And.

Progressives and Environmental activists aren't losing because we're making the middle class mad. We're losing because we're so busy fighting each other about the "proper" way to protest, that we defang ourselves long before the other side has to acknowledge our existence.

More words after the break.

Progressive activists are eating themselves.

If one activist soups an executive as they're walking down the street, they're arrested, the exec changes his suit, and it doesn't make the cover page of the news. Maybe page nine. It's not trending on social media. It's a blip. The net result is nothing except a protester in jail. That doesn't motivate more people to rise. It's another reminder that the executive is going to win, and you are going to lose, and your action will be lost under a thousand click bait articles.

(well he should have known to get a permit. why did he throw it at his face now we look bad. why didnt he do it on a stage. why did he have a friend film it now it doesn't seem like anything by a performance.)

We've seen this with politicians. Guy got milkshaked, it got talked about for a while, some more people got milkshaked, but it traveled the internet as a joke rather than a question of why people were mad.

(how wasteful. milkshakes are expensive. he didn't have a written list of demands. was it a soy milkshake. this trend is only supporting the exploitation of animals and the employees who make milkshakes)

If me and ten activist friends soup the bejeesus out of a billionaire's house, we get arrested, they live in the third of 19 homes while it's cleaned, and that night they do an interview about how hard it is for a self made man to see people turn against them like this. Give it ten minutes on Social Media and the Exec's allies will make the conversation so toxic no politician can't touch it.

Give it ten more and the activists' supposed allies will eat each other apart in a contest to wear the moral superiority crown.

(why did they throw the soup when kids are starving. didnt they consider the carbon footprint of driving so much soup. They should have taken horses. oh wait thats cruel to the animals. plus two of them aren't vegans so do they really care about the environment at all. and did you know that one of them sometimes drives a car.)

This ask is representative of the way Progressives can't manage to get out of their own way.

They aren't protesting the "Right Way" huh?

You know that's a quote from white 'allies' during the civil rights movement in the states, right? Protest, but not in a way that we don't like. Protest, but make sure you don't break the law. Protest, but don't make anyone uncomfortable. Protest, but only in a way so small we can ignore you.

You want them to raise hell, but only in the way you personally approve of. You want them to change the world, but only if it doesn't cause a negative effect on those not directly responsible. I can respect the sentiment, really. It's kindhearted of you.

But we are well past the point where climate change is already directly, negatively effecting the poor and the middle classes. Fight for them and their immediate crisis, don't bow in deference to a potential chance to see some paint on canvas. Van Gogh doesn't matter if they can never go in the first place.

One of the reasons Far Right extremist groups grow so fast and get so much done is because when they're winning, they don't stop to bicker about which fabric they should all wear on their way to storm the capitol. And they don't complain after that the choice may have been a bit gauche. They don't throw paint, they shoot people. I'm not being hyperbolic. BLM protested peacefully and a teenager crossed state lines to murder people. When it was done, the majority of the Right closed ranks and defended him. He was found not guilty. They used the momentum to push farther.

Meanwhile our side can unravel a protest because there won't be any oatmilk at the coffee bar during the planning session.

Will it suck if the middle class and the People can't go see a beautiful painting one day? sure. I don't care. I don't care if a painting that is only given value because of arbitrary social opinions is destroyed. Given the choice between the full works of the Louvre, and the safety of Billions of people who are suffering for changes to the climate they had no part in; hand me a blowtorch.

I simply, truly, do not give a damn if a protest upsets someone. Anyone. I care if it works.

The point of protest isn't to play by the rules, its to be so viciously, angrily loud, to scream and rant and burn the things they value until the only way to make you stop is to actually listen.

Nice isn't working. Polite isn't working. Considerate, mild, accommodating protest isn't working. They own the rule book, they enforce us by their rule book, and you're here to say I should follow their rule book?

Kindly fuck off.

#politics #climate change

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stephenjaymorrisblog · 2 years

Text

Dark Brandon Lights Up Voters

Stephen Jay Morris

9-10-2022

All this hype about VR—virtual reality. Those headsets look like blindfolds on space aliens from Planet Oy Vey, just before they administer the death penalty by firing squad, using Jewish laser beams.

You want reality? Just turn your head and look around! But, no—not here in America! Nope. We live in a culture of escapism. My generation used hallucinogenic drugs, like LSD 25, or “Magic Mushrooms,” to escape the dystopian reality of capitalism and protestant Christianity. Timothy Leary predicted, in the 70’s, that people would cease using chemicals and, instead, get high by Cyber means. Well—just look at all those fools with the goofy headsets!

A lot of Americans have their own methodology of escapism. Like religion, for example, or movies. For you Millennial's, it’s been video games. Whatever. This all equates to what I call magic thinking.

Where does magic thinking come from? One’s childhood. Your parents recount or read fairy tales about magic as you sit upon their knee. Your prepubescent imagination fires up and a seed is planted in your subconscious! Soon, religion takes over and you are ready to accept whatever the pastor shouts at you from behind his pulpit. He rants about some omniscient God that will protect his followers—you—by doing magic against evil. A question: Why must he protect you from the evil that he created? Good question! But I digress.

When I was a young kid, my escapist entertainment was comic books. They cost 12 cents each and they were worth every penny! I could gaze at great art work and read imaginative stories. The stories’ subjects were primarily super heroes of various sizes, shapes, and powers. Using their special powers, they’d solve problems and fight against evil.

So, why am I telling you this?

I’m telling you this because a majority of Americans believe in magical thinking, by way of glorifying a dynamic individual. They believe there is one being who can stand up to an army of evil androids, 20 feet tall! I hate to break it to you, but no such thing exists.

Some Americans believe that, with a lot of money, this individual knows the secrets of life and success, and will free you from debt and your fear of evil. This was the crux of the whole Trump appeal. In his followers’ minds, he was going to deliver them from their miserable lives and provide a powerful and prosperous country of which they all could be proud. Fortunately, a lot of us saw through that facade with the realization that we were actually witnessing the great “son” of P.T. Barnum. To Trump, every White Protestant was not a patriotic American, but a stupid sucker that was born just a minute ago.

You see, there is a certain, childish naivete to the White American male. They believe that when their father beats them, it makes them a better person; that authority is always right. If Trump lies or cheats, he has a very good reason. This comes from authority dependency. I use critical thinking, so I know that when Trump does these things, it is because he is an evil asshole! To his followers, however, he is infallible.

Now, in walks President Joe Biden. He is an old fashioned politician. He leads by reading popularity polls. His politics remind me of Hubert Humphrey, a pragmatic centrist. Joe ain’t going to risk his career by saying something reckless or stupid. As Trump’s popularity started to shrink, then Biden donned his superhero outfit. He became more aggressive toward the Alt-Right, which is an easy task to do. It’s like condemning a child molester: everybody agrees with you. Try criticizing the Pope, or the President of Israel—see what it will get you! Now, that is daring!

Oh, don’t get me wrong! I get sadistic joy in Joe Biden’s verbal abuse of Trump. But this “Dark Bradon” shit? This was conceived by a meme artist on social media. It’s very entertaining, but politically useless.

One more point: FDR rules the roost. He went after the Conservatives and welcomed their hatred. He showed the Right-wingers who was boss! History would vindicate Roosevelt of being a “creeping Socialist.” If not for his government programs, America would be a Communist regime by now! He pulled the carpet out from under the Communist movement. The Conservatives, however, are too dumb to realize that. You don’t stop communism with a gun! You stop communism by Democratic Capitalism.

As an Anarchist, I am no friend of Liberals and Progressives, but they are the lesser of two evils: the Conservatives and MAGA jerks. Once we eliminate the Conservatives, then we go after the Libs.

Have a great day! No... Have a nice day!

#american politics #stephenjaymorris #poets of tumblr #anarchism #satire #joe biden #Dark Biden

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