trying to radicalize my father but he’s been white man pilled by his father since birth

who is steven crowder i don't get these references

Buckle down lol this is gonna need a primer:

Steven Crowder is one of the biggest youtube right-wing voices to make the unfortunate habit of reaching people's ears.

He's a failed comedian debate bro who's spewed out every form of bigotry known to man. Several people who are close to him have advised that he doesn't believe a word that comes out of his mouth and just repeats talking points for money. He got famous from his claim that he'll "debate anyone" and that he "just wants to have an exchange of ideas". He then demonstrates this divine debate ability, like all the greats do, by debating unprepared 18 year olds while he has a full book of references and false stats sitting in his lap.

He's the "change my mind" asshole. If you see people mentioning it, they're referencing him, whether out of reverence or abhorrence is up to context lol.

Enter Sam Seder, host of the left-leaning news show Majority Report. Sam Seder has had some of legitimately the best debates I've ever heard against right libertarians, and while I'm biased as I enjoy political debate, I'm not lying when I say it's a joy to listen to these bootstrap bozos get a taste of the logic they're trying to force on everyone else. Sam is a talented rhetorician, and it's obvious to anyone who watches him.

Sam Seder and Crowder were scheduled to have a debate years ago at Politicon, but at some point (presumably Crowder had the courtesy to google Sam), Crowder's crew ghosted the people attempting to set up the debate. The only explanation that the scheduler was able to give Seder for Crowder's disappearance was "he had cold feet" and "his booker (his dad lol) wouldn't let him".

You can probably imagine, Anon, but Crowder has been considered a joke in left wing spaces ever since, though unfortunately it hasn't really spread outside of lefty political knowledge.

Fast forward to now, and Crowder made an unfortunate mistake. He got into a fight with Ethan Klein of H3H3 because Ethan made the unforgivable blunder of advising that people wear masks and get vaccinated during a pandemic.

Crowder offers to debate Ethan to settle the drama, because of course he does. Ethan Klein is not a debater. He's not a politically active channel and isn't up to date on current events. It's an unfair fight and that's why Crowder offered in the first place.

I'm not saying Ethan hasn't had some terrible takes in the past. I'm not saying he's the best person ever. I'm not saying he didn't play a major role in the anti-sjw years of 2016. I'm not even saying that I personally like him. What I AM saying is that Klein's personal politics lean center to progressive, and he Does Not Enjoy Steven's grifting bullshit.

So Ethan Klein and his editor, Dan, let his large, centrist audience in on a little secret. The Legend of Cold Feet Crowder. Klein accepts the offer to debate, and then at the last minute they loop Sam Seder into the call. The result is Crowder losing his shit, looking like a tool on live broadcast, and running away at the speed of light, but not without dropping the little tidbit in the heat of the moment that he thinks that all of his fellow right-wingers are complete morons.

Crowder has harassed practically every minority under the guise of "it's just jokes!!! i thought the left was in favor of freedom of speech!!! sO mUcH fOr ThE tOlErAnT lEfT".

The troll finally got trolled and it's the most satisfying thing I've seen in a really long time. Plus, any opportunity for people outside of leftist spaces to see what a complete joke this dude is is a hard win in my book because he spreads some really hateful shit.

tagline master post:

- dumb yet mildly chuckleworthy - shockingly flamboyant celery - Purveyor of impious and immoral libels. - approximately reasonable person with bad jokes - professional moderatrix - acceptable tier - certain playful irregularities begin to become evident - overdismissively flip - I was half correct - unwarranted confidence, unwarranted optimism, no outstanding warrants - a sinful (counter-counter-)signaler - insufferable superfluity of naughtiness - Imperfect Owling Weather - sometimes insightful but really dropped the ball on this one - welcome to my boring mind - fascinating, yes, my comment was facetious/hyperbolic - I think you have a decent point in there somewhere though. But keep it real. - I don't know how to use this website so apologies if I make mistakes! - we’re all garbage star children - gollum can get it, you know he can - but you came here for my bad take, so here it is. - a flawed pancake demiurge, unsure and unworthy of the massive power they wield - the fact that we haven’t bullied you off the site for being a centrist dweeb is another reason why we can’t have nice things - scrawling out brain noise and hurling it into the howling vortex of the internet, day in and day out, stopping only to sleep - an absolute cretin talking complete bullshit - taking a giant crap to general acclaim - this is a pretty facile dunk - yeah that’s right bitches this is a castration blog again for some reason - An elegant tagline for a more civilized blog - you’re Not Wrong but I hate everything I just read - false but surprisingly compelling - You wouldn’t still be reading if you were afraid of a little repetition - Incrementalism: It’s Better Than Nothing™ - blog bimbo - op has a lot of dumb opinions and i don’t support them but this is a good point - Canonically and also Historically Inaccurate - stable to the point of monotony - people yelling at each other, arguing about things that are outside the pale of conventional conversation, etc. - The Blog Who Knew Too Much (And Yet Nowhere Near Enough) - suspiciously capitalist, be wary - an idolatry of reason - merely insufferable - I’m now less confident in my opinion having heard this - I’m now less confident in my opinion having - our new tagline - blasé liberal humanism - the birds are torn apart by envy and the owl doesn’t care - tribute to the mad owl king - a Rorschach blot in the vague shape of an owl. - under some kind of faerie curse to never decline an invitation to an argument - I don’t like this but I recognize it is objectively good - the downside of petty internet fame - not -wrong- just a little shallow - A generous social safety net would solve this - It's fucked up to make public statements - unflappable terrible bastard owl - i’m just a slut for obscure & nerdy snowclones - it’s an issue that people have very strong feelings about (not me though!) - just some liberal - from the wack timber of humanity, no legit thing was ever made - how can someone be so massively wrong - the humanist with no self control - our resident ultra-relatable Aussie feminist Tumblr teen - this shit is not half as clever as you think it is - another goddamn Harry Potter reference for which I apologise profusely - come to the vault and check out my extensive collection of easily disprovable opinions - a stupidly misguided form of blogging - there is a certain level of dope that you fundamentally cannot reach without also being proportionally cheesy - you’re allowed to dislike argumate! tons of people dislike argumate! - nobody spends more time going through my posts than I do! - regular reminder that I'm a fucking cretin - euphoric diarrhea - most egregiously wrong - free to opine about anything - I’m sorry but you just had to see it. - an atheist with imperfect social graces - A glib and mildly smug saint - new tagline? no! - it’s no fun if you do it on purpose >:( - it may not be good, but it is very much the right kind of bad. - this is REALLY close to being funny - unflappable, funny, confident, systematic, unattainable, smart, and a certain je ne sais quoi - that certified argumate brand of cursed - Mr. Stupid Hippie Owl

Thoughts on Swtor: KoTFE and KoTET Upon My Second Playthrough As An Imperial Agent

This will be in-depth and contain spoilers for both a full darkside, sith inquisitor run and a “lightside” imperial agent run.

The first time I completed the KoTFE and KoTET Expansions I was a sith assassin tank class. My SQ has no sense, no morality, and basically is just a harbinger of chaos and destruction. All dude wants is his dark council seat—basically.

However, my main—and all time favorite—class will always be the Imperial Agent. I love the class. I love dude’s voice. I love the story. I love not having to worry about light and dark and just playing as a normal (in comparison) person.

No magic. No lightsabers. No cosmic morality bullshit. It’s way more grounded and that means it’s flexible.

It’s nice and to me is more fun to play than both the Sith and Jedi classes. There’s far more room for grey—even in comparison to the Trooper, imo.

Gameplay wise, being a DPS Concealment Operative made combat encounters way less of a slog than being a Tank Darkness Sith Assassin. So yeah all I can say is that I breezed through encounters that took me way longer as a defense, close range class. Even some of the bosses took me half the time as an Agent (granted, I made wildly different story decisions)

But the way the story is handled is more important.

I’ll be honest, if KoTFE and KoTET weren’t so nearly essential expansions to the story, I would recommend that non-force user classes just skip them.

Keep in mind, that everything you do in these two expansions become useless anyways because they’re like “fuck, our bad for forcing you to be emperor of this random civilization you don’t care about. We’ll bring you back to your respective side in the galactic war. Oops.”

These two expansion packs are absolutely not made for anyone who isn’t a Jedi. They’re barely made for Sith—in certain areas.

Shit becomes painfully obvious when you get to the Visions in the Dark chapter.

When I was playing as Sith, it made me aggravated because literally the game had been “hell yeah, be sith. You choose this class to pretend to be one, have fun” but you get to that chapter and suddenly, the writers are like “oh damn well what about being a force radical centrist? Here’s a weapon you’ll never use”.

Meanwhile, when I played as an Imp Agent it was hilarious because they’re talking to me about the Force and my character don’t even know what the fuck that is. They’re like “sith code this. Jedi code that.” Dawg, the character don’t even know what that it.

It’s even more hilarious when Darth Marr shows up trying to be friendly with me as if I wasn’t some subordinate intelligence agent he would have killed in a heartbeat. Dawg, you my boss. Not my friend or colleague

It’s so out of place and tacked on that it’s funny.

They should have either made something that accommodated for the other four classes in the game, or just let us skip.

Luckily, you don’t have to be a force fence sitter but I don’t know why—outside of it being the easiest to write—that they tried to push this.

They also give you a weak ass, one-battle only ass weapon that you get so late in the game you don’t even wanna invest the resources in to make better.

On both runs, I never once used them. I put them in storage and forgot about them. It didn’t even hinder me in my fight with the final boss.

As a SQ, I just ended up fist fighting dude then realizing after that it was because I didn’t use the weak ass lightsaber.

As a Imp Agent, I never clicked the force-side prompt so I never got disarmed. Dawg, I’m playing against super human level force users as a regular ass man I can’t afford to be disarmed lmao

The real issue I had was the wasted potential with the entire plot of KoTET that occurs when you play as a Imp Agent.

If you don’t know, the Imp Agent has an entire arc in the main storyline where you’re brainwashed by SIS agents.

It’s one of the best arcs I’ve played in SWToR and—imo—one of the reasons why the Imp Agent is the best class.

This would have been a perfect chance for us to be given some Imp Agent-centric dialogue choices with Vaylin.

Maybe an opportunity to choose not to use her programming word in certain scenes.

Like you can literally tell Valkorion straight up “no I don’t want to do that because I wouldn’t wish that fate on my worst enemy.”

All Valkorion says is: “oh well what happened to you was barbaric but it’s cool when it happens to Vaylin because she’s dangerous”.

It’s an extreme lack of awareness that’s never able to be called out because that’s literally why the Imp Agent was given a reprogramming word in the first place. Like did none of the writers for this actually play the storyline for this character?

Dawg, after you defeat Darth Jadus, the Dark Council feels youre a threat and gives/activates the reprogramming word that gets leaked.

But the game don’t acknowledge this and just runs with it.

The game makes my character do something that I was literally given the dialogue choice to be adamantly against. It’s jarring.

So now, I’m here, being told “Vaylin is bad. Vaylin is dangerous” as if I wasn’t on a mad, bloodthirsty rampage to kill every SIS Agent involved.

Like, dawg, I was literally Vaylin for a good 25% of the Imp Agent base story.

This made me really sympathize with her character and near the end I ain’t even wanna kill her, I wanted her to get free of the mind control and be able to live some kind of happy existence.

I sadly wasn’t able to do that and I wish that I was.

Like I can understand for any other class not understanding/having an issue with mind control but the Imp Agent should have had some tangible and concrete choices to be against using it.

Every time I used it, it was the game forcing my character to in non-interactive cutscenes.

The bag was fumbled so hard it’s sad

Outside of that, it was no different than my SQ playthrough except I couldn’t tell people to shut the fuck up when they dissed my companions.

Fr though seriously, Kaliyo and Scorpio are treated like punching bags by the companions and you can’t say shit to them. Like in the baseline game, I choose to marry Kaliyo (which I choose to get back with her after)

It’s like “why can’t I tell people to know they place when they disrespect my baseline companions? Like all I can do is be evenhanded or say I trust my companion.” I couldn’t g check no one.

Other than that, there was no real differences.

Imo, both these expansions are a waste of time and I’ll never play them for any other class but my two main classes.

Thanks for reading lmao

Omg OK so there’s yet another gay 90210 storyline that I feel compelled to offer commentary on, and this one’s perhaps the most frustrating one of all (which is saying something because none of the gay representation on this show has been what I’d call good, and in fact most of it has only served to make me hate these self-involved heteros even more). 
So here we are. It’s season 9, and all the drama is extremely contrived at this point, and you can tell that the writers are basically just pulling ideas out of a hat. What if Val murdered her dad? What if Dylan came back? What if Donna had a heretofore unmentioned cousin who was a pro figure skater and also a pro schemer? It’s from this context that we get “hey, what if Steve’s mom was gay?” 
Personally, I’ve always appreciated the continuity with Steve’s family life. His parents are pretty well-rounded characters with full, consistently plausible(ish) backstories, which is more than I can say for half of the regular characters on this show (*cough cough* Noah). Given that, is it random and contrived for Samantha to come out as a lesbian? Yeah, probably. I don’t think this was some grand plan that the writers had been sitting on for nine years, just waiting to reveal. But I don’t really care because it’s also true to life. A lot of people come out in middle age if not later, and this was a post-Ellen world after all. Being a gay celebrity (Steve’s mom is a sitcom star) was no longer unheard of. However, it was still considered a huge risk to come out as gay and still expect to find work (especially if your work was expected to be “family friendly”). So the conflict here is timely, and fairly realistically written. The actress who plays Samantha, Christine Belford, sells it, and there’s a nice sense of empowerment that comes through in her character, who is clearly not willing to tolerate the bullshit box that society wants to put her in. There’s the makings of a truly compelling story here. But of course that’s not what we get, because man, does Steve piss me off in these episodes, and as per fucking usual, the writers completely let him off the hook. 
When Samantha first comes out to Steve, he’s shocked. Fair enough. But it’s not long before he begins to place lots of unfair judgment on his mother (despite David trying to talk him down by saying lesbians are valid because two girls making out is a turn on…thanks for that David). Eventually he goes so far as to remind the reporter from a gossip magazine who contacts Steve for comment regarding rumours of his mom’s sexuality that’s he’s adopted. Naturally, Samantha takes this as tacit admission that he’s ashamed of her, as she sees this as being Steve’s way of distancing himself from her and her sordid Lifestyle.™ Which it absolutely is. This is where we get the exchange pictured above in which Samantha justifiably questions Steve’s selfish expectations of her and he comes back with this WAY HARSH slap in the face. He immediately regrets it, but the damage is done. His true feelings are crystal clear. 
And to be clear, my issue is not with Steve’s homophobic feelings. I actually think that, especially for the late 90s, Steve’s reaction isn’t that unusual (sad though that may be), and I think there’s lots to be gained from digging into the ways in which latent homophobia can manifest itself in unexpected ways, and how that can cause massive problems within otherwise close families. No, my issue with this episode is with how Steve’s homophobic feelings are resolved. The storyline culminates in Samantha getting fired from her much-hyped comeback sitcom once she’s outed. And it’s not until this happens that Steve finally starts to come around. But this is what pisses me off the most, because right up until then, Steve is only thinking of himself, and how his mother’s sexuality impacts his life. He even goes so far as to question why she adopted him in the first place, asking if it was part of her heterosexual cover up. My good God, this is some hetero nonsense that I simply CAN. NOT. Anyway, when she drops the bomb that she got fired, suddenly Steve becomes protective of her and is furious that she has to suffer such injustice. But…like…BRO. You were literally JUST treating her the same way. The whole thing reads as “you’re my mom, and I can be homophobic and treat you like a pariah, but the rest of the world? HELL NO!” 
And honestly, like so many Very Special Episodes of 90210, it’s not the fact that the characters are flawed that’s the issue. The problem is that no one ever learns from their flaws or has the opportunity to grow in a realistic way. The characters are often depicted as having latent (and sometimes straight up blatant) prejudices, and that is okay, because we literally all do. But almost every time, these prejudices only function to give the main characters an opportunity to simply change their mind and get a pat on the back for doing the bare minimum. Steve’s relationship with his mother changes exclusively as a result of external factors completely outside of his control. He doesn’t have to do anything. He barely even apologizes! It totally feels like the show is condoning Steve’s earlier behaviour, which feels pretty retrograde by today’s standards, and I’m sure was not particularly progressive even by 90s standards. It pussyfoots around the complexities of the questions it raises, and to be honest, that always leaves a bit of an icky taste in my mouth, because it seems clear that the issue isn’t being raised out of interest in exploring it - it’s being raised to pose as a problem for the straight characters. 
Still, I don’t want to speak for all queer audiences, but I for one am very used to accepting scraps. I mean fuck, this blog literally exists because I projected a non-existent romance between Dylan and Brandon on to the show because queer audiences are so used to having to do the work that most shows won’t in terms of creating queer characters. So to see a show like 90210 actually attempting to address queer issues on TV in the 90s (however shallow and frustrating the end result may be), is still satisfying. It was a worthwhile endeavour, and many similar shows did it well. And as much as I’m tearing into this episode, I’m still glad it exists because even though it provides no answers or legitimate commentary (90210 is weirdly centrist when it comes to political and social issues), it at least acknowledges that gay people exist, and that they can be middle-aged mothers, which is a demographic that doesn’t even get a ton of representation now, let alone in the 90s. Most coming out narratives follow teens or twentysomethings, which is fine, but coming out can happen at any age, especially in the 90s when the stigma was only just starting to lift, and many people who had been closeted for decades felt like they could finally come out. And for all my issues with the way Steve is portrayed, Samantha’s portrayal feels surprisingly tender and sympathetic. But, like so many queer characters, she ultimately shows up only to offer complications for the straight people around her before vanishing into thin air, because this was the last episode Samantha appeared in. 
At least this way I can imagine her living her best gay life somewhere.

recent media consumption summary

it’s been a while huh. sorry this one is all text but finding images takes up way more of my brain

listening: for some unknown reason I’ve had Girlfriend by Avril Lavigne stuck in my head nonstop for the past several days. sometimes you need to listen to ‘not like other girls’ pop punk from the 00s as a treat I guess

reading: making slow progress through Harrow the Ninth, I don’t understand what’s happening but I enjoy the vibes. this series sure can fit so many terrible woman

reread Six of Crows (and part of Crooked Kingdom) because after watching Shadow & Bone I missed my terrible children. forgot that Kaz is so much more of an asshole in the book that you get to see in the show and I do love that and think it’s fun when he does terrible crimes

also working my way through Lord Seventh because sometimes what you need is a BL novel about political intrigue. also because it’s A Lot easier for me to read things that are on my computer instead of in a physical book because reading a physical book is a commitment to closing my computer and only thinking about one thing for an extended period of time which is difficult because my brain doesn’t work

watching: Word of Honor, as everyone can probably tell from, y’know, my entire blog. I would say I’m sorry but I’m not, it’s not My fault that it’s the only thing I can think about or that most of my conversations with my roommate are just us saying “oh my god they’re in love” back and forth

Nirvana in Fire, because once again, love a political intrigue/court drama. I’ve decided that the reason I love that kind of story so much is because it hits the same part of my brain as a heist movie except slower, because it’s still all about watching a plan come together, except instead of lots of fast-paced heist sequences most of the action is people sitting in rooms talking to each other, and I am a very dialogue-driven writer and consumer of media

Shadow and Bone, like almost everyone else on the internet apparently. my roommates were like “Eliot you need to watch this show it has so many things that you like” and I was like “yes I’m already watching it and I read the books so I’ve been Waiting for this for so long.” anyway it was fun and extremely pretty, and it was interesting to see them adapt various parts of the source material at the same time, even if I think they sometimes did so in ways that will weaken later character arcs (if the Six of Crows character are Already this cool and badass and able to take jobs overseas, how are they going to have any growth left during the events of the books that are presumably gonna be next season’s plot? who knows!). my main Actual Serious Critique is that some of the treatment of race was. kinda weird? there’s a lengthier discussion of that in this article but Imo it was. kind of a weird choice on the part of the showrunners to depict racism as the two light-skinned biracial leads having people be mean about their looks, meanwhile there are plenty of other characters of color for whom that just. doesn’t seem to be an issue? especially when some of the racism towards the main character comes from other people of color? and that’s just kinda not addressed

had a Godzilla movie marathon with my roommates, we watched Shin Godzilla (2016, the only one we watched that was actually good, focused the most on 1) showing me the cool monster 2) the bureaucracy and corruption in the government response and 3) the actual human cost of that kind of disaster, I’m sure there are plenty of thinkpieces on American vs. Japanese disaster movies and how national traumas and tragedies play into that), part of Godzilla (2014, bad and boring and barely shows you the monster so we skimmed it), Godzilla: King of Monsters (2019, fun for a stupid loud action movie, they showed me plenty of cool monsters, the final boss battle showed my former workplace being destroyed by a giant monster), Godzilla vs. Kong (2021, slightly less fun and made less sense but there was a Godzilla mech powered by the brain of one of the monsters from King of Monsters and I think they should’ve done more with that)

I think the SamBucky show had one more episode since last time I did this? anyway the finale was bad. Sam’s speech about how the rich politicians suck was good but it came after they killed the people who were actually trying to help so it kinda didn’t mean as much as it should’ve. anyway here are two articles talking about how much the politics suck because wow what an incoherent centrist mess. also super fucked up to have a white guy who represents American imperialism invoke BLM as a gotcha against a Black woman who’s trying to help marginalized people

playing: entirely TTRPGs this time, sorry Daud. played more Beam Saber as usual, and also Breakup on Re-Entry and Tidepools, two-person games about the dramatic irony of having a mech fight with your partner without knowing their identity and about mermaid-human romance, respectively

making: Zan made bread from scratch and I turned it into garlic bread, I didn’t take any pictures because I forgot but trust me it was tasty

writing: nothing posted but Zan and I are co-writing a vampire AU because we are nothing if not on our bullshit at all times. we finished the outline yesterday and it’s 22 pages so uh. that’s sure happening. most of my writing recently has been for zines which I’m not allowed to share yet but when I can I will be insufferable about so. you have been warned

Biden is going to win, I’m sure of it, but the Senate seems to have slipped through our fingers.  So long as McConnell is majority leader, he will continue to hold it hostage; Biden won’t be getting any judicial appointments unless he makes recess appointments.  The problem with that is recess appointments only last for a single congressional session (max 2 years), and McConnell isn’t going to let the Senate go int recess, so Biden would need to prorogue Congress, which would take approval from Pelosi (the president can only force a recess if the House and Senate disagree on a date), and would be political suicide because the American people are really on edge about authoritarianism right now, and nothing screams dictator like disbanding Congress to pack the courts.  People expect Republicans to be ratfucking bastards, they get a free pass to cheat the system, but Democrats are expected to follow the old rules, to stay in line, to uphold tradition and precedent and whatever the hell else will let Republicans walk all over them.  If a Democrat tried to skirt the rules the way Republicans do,their approval ratings would tank, and the Republicans would ride a red wave into the midterms.

I feel like Biden will be a doormat as president.  He has run on a platform of being palatable, inoffensive, milquetoast, he’s not going to make any waves, he’s not going to try and out maneuver the Republicans, because doing so would sacrifice his veneer of bipartisanship.  He has already said he doesn’t want to use executive orders to sidestep Congress the way Trump has, so he’s going to end up accomplishing very little, all the while completely misunderstanding why young people are becoming increasingly mad at him.  He’s not assertive enough.  I don’t think he has a clearly defined Biden Doctrine.  What will his presidency be about?  Healthcare will be a major issue when the Supreme Court gets rid of Obamacare next week, but he doesn’t stand a chance of getting a new plan passed while McConnell controls the Senate.  And Republicans across the country will blame him instead of trump for gutting their healthcare, saying that Obamacare was his fault when he was terrible and his fault when he was Vice President, but also that its absence is terrible and his fault when he is President.  It’s a lose-lose situation.

Republicans are scheming, Democrats are most definitely not.  Republicans know how to game the system, Democrats don’t.  Biden needs to hit the ground running.  He needs to hire young advisors who can help him play the game in the 21st century, but that’s almost certainly not what he’s going to do.  He’s going to surround himself with old white moderates and a few token moderates of color, and slog his way through the first half of his term before floundering at the midterms because the Republicans will have organized a powerful opposition by then.  He’s not particularly inspiring, he’s just a calming presence compared to Trump, and even THAT wasn’t enough for a blowout; a good 45 - 50% of the country is batshit fucking crazy, and will not hesitate to blow him and his presidency out of the water.  He needs to go big or go home, he needs to add some new songs to his repertoire.  Trump lost because all he knew how to play was Free Bird.  Biden needs to do some experimental shit, throw anything at the wall, see what sticks, make himself more exciting, not just boring, safe, old Grampa Joe.

I do not think Joe Biden is an evil man, I just think he is unambitious and unwilling to take risks because he is stuck in the past.  The country will be better off under him than under Trump, but I just don’t think he’s going to make as many big sweeping changes as we had hoped.  He needs to close the camps, he needs to reunite families (that is if Trump doesn’t actively sabotage this by erasing data to fuck him and the rest of the country over between now and January 20th), he needs to raise taxes and close loopholes so that big corporations don’t just move overseas to avoid paying said taxes.  Economic inequality should be a major platform issue for him, but I don’t know if he’s committed to it as much as we need him to be.  He is not a progressive, we won’t be seeing anything like a President Bernie Sanders, I just hope he has plans for the future; 2024 is going to be HELL ON EARTH if he stays the course.  America doesn’t need any more third-way, neoliberal, moderate centrist bullshit.  I would say we want major progressive reform, but I guess the majority actually doesn’t, because half of them still voted for the worst human alive today.  When Republicans are in power, they don’t give a shit about Democrats, so why should Democrats bother about them?  Why should Biden keep trying to placate them when they’re never going to vote for him; they didn’t this time, they won’t next time, especially if Trump runs for a non-consecutive term or one of his brood runs in his place to establish a dynasty.  Biden needs to play hardball and push through an agenda, regardless of what Republicans do.  We can’t always take the high ground, we need to stop playing fair when the other side plays dirty!

Imagine being so upset over people not liking Amber Heard that you tell them to kill themselves. Did your parents not love you enough? IDC what people did or do, you never tell people to kill themselves. Not to mention if they did and they have proof it was because of you; manslaughter charge :/

i was gonna make a jokey response here like “i’m not telling people to kill themselves, i’m talking about johnny depp fans. you know they are at best a sub-species of earthworm at this point”, but i want to be a little more serious here for a moment

this is not about liking or not liking amber heard. fact of the matter is all i know of her are the movies and shows she’s been on. this is not a stan war.

this is about the fact that johnny depp fans (and i mean his fans, not your 60 year old aunt who only knows him as funney jack sparrow man) have spent the last few years doing everything in their power to ruin a young woman’s life. they have belittled, mocked and shamed her; spread lies and made up stories, digging through her past to find any reasons to question her word; harassed and threatened her, her friends, her family and anyone who worked on the case against johnny depp, to the point where she had to get police escort to the courthouse because she was getting death threats. and all of this because she dared to be a woman speaking out against a powerful man in hollywood

some of you (i wouldn’t call the most rational ones, but nonetheless) have tried to come up with all sorts of centrist bullshit for the issue. ‘maybe they were BOTH abusive; we don’t know the whole story!; they were toxic to each other’, etc., but fact of the matter is the majority of johnny depp fans rooted their feet on the ground, stuck their fingers in their ears and went ‘SHE IS A LYING LIAR LALALALALA’ and have refused to see any reason ever since. they have done this since the moment the news broke out, when suddenly it stopped being “believe women” to “believe SOME women” or “believe women...up to a point”

all of this because they refuse to believe their favorite white man could ever possibly be abusive.... never mind the fact that we have 20+ years of documentation of him being violent in clubs and movie sets. despite the fact that his drunken behavior is what got him kicked out of pirates of the caribbean to begin with. despite the fact that there are signed documents BY HIM stating that amber didn’t lie when she said he abused her (on the same trial from where the audios that people use as evidence that she was actually the abusive one came from). despite the fact that the judge found TWELVE instances where her word could be proven as true in this last trial. despite the fact that she had video, audio, photographic and oral evidence. despite the fact that ALL, every single penny, she got from this entire ordeal she donated to charities in favor of women who suffer abuse (even though he refused to pay the money for the longest time). despite the fact that being revealed as an abusive man didn’t affect his career in the slightest - he still got TWO contracts in high profile franchises immediately after the news broke out. despite the fact that he is STILL dragging this out simply because he spent his entire fortune on coke and wine and now he is going broke and trying to make money out of suing people, instead of working in whatever left of his career his still has.

despite the fact that no woman has EVER benefited from coming forward about being the abused one in a relationship.

you people STILL discredit her. you still mock her. you still drag her name through the mud. all because you are incapable of accepting that the men you put on pedestals aren’t fucking saints, and just because you consume the media they put out doesn’t mean you know who they are or what they do behind closed doors. this isn’t an “amber vs johnny”, this is a “do you have morals, or do you still support johnny depp?” and if the answer is the latter, you need to quit. full stop. and if you went into the amber heard tag and saw half of the disgusting things johnny depp fans are still saying about her, you would absolutely, rightfully tell them to kill themselves too; these people don’t deserve to consume oxygen

It’s pretty arrogant to think one can smoke their own dope and not end up turning into a fiend like ones customers, yet Bernie is an ego driven character. Christopher Wallace, aka Notorious B.I.G. was most emphatic about not getting high on your own shit, but here we are, staring into the abyss, super close to having a hype monster in control of our party. Some people love the hell out of Bernie Sanders, some people are indifferent, and some people cannot stand him or his bullshit movement. I fall into category three. So, take my words with a grain of salt if it makes you feel any better. But, let me tell you something before you tune me out. Bernie has zero plans to try to win anyone over who is not already with him, and that’s a big deal.

When asked if he would make overtures to moderate Democrats should he win the nomination, Sanders said the party would have to adjust to his movement rather than the other way around.

Did he just basically say, “Bend the knee?” Um? At first, I assumed that Bernie was talking about the DNC or elected officials, I mean, he couldn’t really be saying he had no plans to reassure reluctant Moderate and Centrist Democratic VOTERS over to his side. Right? He has to know we depend on votes from people in the middle, moderate Independents, and even Conservative Dems in order to win the electoral college, doesn’t he?

“People in the Democratic Party are going to take a look at reality and in a millisecond, they’re going to make a decision: The choice is between Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. They may say, ‘Oh, God, I don’t like Bernie Sanders. . . . He doesn’t comb his hair nicely enough. But you know what? There is no choice. We’re going to support Bernie Sanders.’ ”

That’s what Hillary thought, are you using her playbook minus the outreach part? Sure, we may say that thing about having no choice. (I won’t.) Or, maybe we’ll say, “We already know what tragic shit Trump will do, but we have no idea what the fuck this crazy guy I never liked who combs his hair with a balloon, will try to do. Maybe we should sit this one out.”

That’s one possibility out of millions of possibilities. Voters may even say, “Wow, this guy is arrogant as fuck! He refuses to even try to reach out to us, let’s focus our energy down ballot.” The fact of the matter is, Bernie isn’t anymore owed votes than Hillary Clinton was. And after four years of the leftists decrying her campaign for not trying hard enough to win votes, this plan of “Take me or leave me, I don’t give a fuck about your vote enough to earn it,” does NOT bode well for a Sanders victory if he is the eventual nominee.

Steve Schmidt, who worked on the McCain campaign in 2008, says,

“They’d run against him as a radical who once traveled to the Soviet Union and ask, ‘Do you want to give up one of the greatest economies ever for that?’ ”

Oh, you mean his love of Breadline might actually turn voters off?

Yes, it sounds stupid. I won’t bother to show you the whole “Honeymoon in Russia in my Underpants” video right now, it’s just grosses me out. But I brought it up just so you can imagine the ads running day and night of Bernie and some sweaty, stinky, half naked men singing, and looking Filthy McNasty on every TV in America.

But, for some reason, Bernie doesn’t believe his radical past, you know, praising murderous dictators, trashing America, and asking kids how much dope they’ve done will be problematic AT ALL.

Sanders fiercely rejected that view and says Democrats must rally around his movement in order to beat Trump, rather than assume that Biden might have a better chance of winning.

Oh, really? We need to dump Biden, and rally around the guy who has zero plans to try to include us, eh? Sounds DELIGHTFUL. Sike.

“The way you defeat Donald Trump is by having the largest voter turnout in the modern history of this country* — that’s how you beat him,” Sanders said. “We think we can get 5, 10, 15 percent of the vote Trump got because an increasing number of people who voted for Trump understand now that he’s a liar and fraud” who backed conservative policies.

*Obama did that.

Who the fuck told you that voters who backed Trump don’t like Conservative policies? WTF? Oh. Yeah. I keep forgetting that Bernie is a hype fiend who gets high off of a steady supply of his own churlish, delusional, and ever-present hype. I keep thinking that Bernie must really believe he is the new Obama. Maybe it’s the crowds chanting his name, the loyalty of his movement, and the very largeness of his crowds that misinforms him.

Bernie Sanders is no Barack Obama, not even close.

Members of the media sat in the back in the dark, ignored by the Sanders crowd amid the revelry. Attendees toasted “the Bern” and spoke excitedly about the prospect of victory in February. The bitter disappointments of four years ago seemed distant.

They are going to go batshit when he loses, huh? Oh, fuck me.

Hours before midnight, Sanders took the stage and told them to believe.

Bitch, are you Tinkerbell? What the fuck?

Okay, okay, maybe it’s just me, but I think this shit is getting to him, and he has hit the point where he’s about to start crowd surfing, while his adoring fans scream, “Mysha Mysha!” like he’s Daenerys Targaryen. I’m only half joking.

This is what happens when you give free passes to some old, angry, self important and repetitive jerk.

He turns into a fucking DIVA.

Just something to think about.

We’re at a Boiling Frog Moment. Y’all understand that, right? You remember the old saw that if you put a frog in boiling water, he’ll hope right out. However, if you put him in cold water and gradually increase the heat, he’ll sit there and get boiled as sure as the day’s long.

 Now, there’s been some question if this is so and, frankly, people need to leave the poor frogs alone. Nevertheless, there is power and wisdom in the metaphor. We’re at a Boiling Frog Moment, or “BFM” if you will, because what we let Trump get away with and what he’s gotten away with already we’ll be considered just standard practice for presidents from now on, regardless of party or, indeed, political ideology. This - everything he’s done, everything he’s going to do and what he’s allowed to get away with - will become the new normal.

 Jimmy Carter closed the Pearly Gates on himself due to continued if unnecessary meddling in the Middle East. Reagan and Bush Senior got mostly a slap on the wrist for Iran-Contra, and Bill Clinton carried on the bombing that had been hitting Iraq since the early ‘90s. From there, it was just a hop, skip and an illegal war for Bush Junior to erode rights, continue never-ending war and basically remind everyone that we, as a nation, are like an 800-pound gorilla with diarrhea that shits all over the place and savages you if you try to give it health care. That’s not mine, but I don’t remember where I got it. Anyway.

 When my fellow left-wing lunatics want to get snooty about the awful shit that went on under Obama’s foreign policy - the drones, the beginnings of horrors at the border, etc. - or even letting the banks skate, they all forget how badly we fumbled the ball in 2004. And sure, Kerry was... well, Kerry and no great shakes at that, but the idea that there isn’t a thin dime’s worth of difference between the Democrats and a party that campaigned on making gay marriage unconstitutional during an illegal war obviously don’t have to worry about their right to choose.

 Don’t get it twisted. I’m not trying to judge, I’m just laying out reality. I voted for Nader in 2000, thinking that even though I wasn’t sold on the guy - since I never am - we at least needed another party in national elections that deserved attention, even if I wasn’t sold on the Greens. And, no, I’m never sold on parties. Anyhow, I lived in Georgia so it didn’t matter and Bush Junior won through some obvious shenanigans that we knew were a mess, just like we knew the voting machines for 2004 were hinky. And now we wonder why the Iowa Caucus went tits up or why an outright thief is the governor of that very state.

 That’s where we find ourselves now. We’ve got a president who was caught balls deep in the cookie jar, and not only did the GOP-run Senate let him skate, they told the world they were fixing the trial to benefit him. He’s gone on a purging rampage when those senators assured us he wouldn’t, but they’re all either lying party hacks or goddamn idiots. He’s making the horrors at the border worse and our bullying in the Middle East more insane and senseless. Plus, he’s letting absolute kooks set policy that foul the water and spoil the land so some already rich bastards can get richer.

 “But Matt,” I hear you say, “you claim to be sympathetic to anarchism. Isn’t this the destruction of state that’s desired? I mean it might be messy, but the long-term goal might happen, right?” No, dumbass, and if that’s your view of anarchism, we ain’t got nothing to discuss. Reducing or eliminating the power and control of unearned hierarchical authority is one thing. Letting a goddamn moron play king while poor people starve, frightened people hide and sick people die is quite another. It is absolutely not worth the “sacrifice” and I will brook no argument.

 See, what people don’t get, I think, about anarchism is that isn’t an abandonment of politics so much as a different way to approach those political problems. You read your Goodman and Kropotkin, and they’ll tell you that voting is indeed an part of making the world a better place. Furthermore, it’s the one thing we still can do to nudge things, even if nudging is all we can do. We’ve already seen that any sort disruption of the Status Quo will be met with violence. And if voting really didn’t do no good, conservatives wouldn’t be trying so hard to keep you from doing it.

 One has to understand that despite who gets nominated and manages to toss Trump out on his ass, things won’t be fixed overnight. And one has to realize that even our furthermost Left choice would be, in a reasonable world, a solid centrist, maybe even a bit conservative. Billionaires and their lickspittles wail and cry, but if Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren were an actual danger to the Powers That Be, they’d be dead in a ditch somewhere.

 Regardless of all that, what Trump has done since his election has become the New Normal. That’s a fact and as constant as the North Star. That’s how American politics works, and if you can survive ignoring that little bit of wisdom, well good for you. A lot of folks can’t. However, if anyone - anyone - thinks he’ll be restrained after Congress basically told him, next time, try a bit more subtlety, is far too naive for me to do anything with. The next four years will turn your shit white if you think this is bad. And we will let it happen because we couldn’t see past our own noses and let go of our own bullshit.

 Let’s eject this clown before he’s allowed to do more damage. We’ll deal with what we have to deal with after the Oval Office has been fumigated. This is a Boiling Frog Moment. Y’all understand that, right?

 Right?

Obama has been demonized by conservative media for a decade as a communist, a neo-liberal globalist, Kenyan, and a secret Muslim who attends a radical black church and wanted to put grandmothers in front of death panels, while fixing the election to so Trump couldn't win. All it did was energize the base, ensuring that Trump easily won the nomination. Why weren't conservative voters fatigued by constant outrage over eight years, however liberals are supposedly fatigued after not quite two years?

Your memory of the Republican primaries is notably deficient - there was far from overwhelming support for Trump even in the limited sphere of conservative media. Trump gained ground mainly in his slam-dunk debate performances and the fact that most other candidates going against him were so out of step with the zeitgeist it was fucking palpable. Consider what it means when the only real viable challenger to trump turned out to be the guy with so little personal charisma and warmth that they’ve called him the fucking Zodiac Killer. Why him? Because he was elected by the Tea Party movement; the nascent version of the general revolution by the GOP electorate against a party structure mostly consisting of people who had been actively ignoring and blowing off their electorate’s wishes for decades. 

Also, fatigue works in cycles. Think of it as rest and recovery. You need X amount of downtime between Y periods of hyper-intense giveadamn. Eight years gives you a lot of time to get used to the situation at hand, and given Congressional deadlock, Obama’s potential ability to fuck things up was quite limited for large parts of his administration’s tenure (which is why he resorted to grandstanding executive orders and bullet-point memos which amounted to fuck-all so often. See his gun control one for a prime example.) The better part of a decade also makes it very easy to think “time for a change,” because we tend to remember the bad more than the good, making it very easy to blame whoever’s in office for all the bad shit. This is why it’s very rare for one party to take the White House three times in a row. 

Two years? That’s about enough time to conclusively say all the hysterically overblown claims of Trump ending the world were total horseshit, and also enough time for Trump to have delivered a booming economy that all his critics - Obama included - were so smug about saying just couldn’t be done, even with a “magic wand.” However, it also would’ve been enough time for people to recover emotionally a bit, except the left-wing media’s vastly superior coverage and volume, combined with their complete and utter inability to back off for even one second, did far too good a job of keeping the left-wing base tense, scared and paranoid. 

And the left wing base - to a much, much wider degree than the right wing base - is tense, scared and paranoid. “Secret Kenyan Muslim Death Panelist” wasn’t a majority view among the GOP’s base, no matter how often the mainstream media fantasized otherwise. (Compare this and this.) Was “Secret Kenyan Muslim Death Panelists” a big fucking issue in the 2016 election, compared to immigration reform, economic reform and long-simmering centrist anger over the failure of both parties to reverse the steady descent of the Rust Belt into hopelessness, poverty, and drugs? Trump fucking started with the birtherism shit - if there was real, widespread belief in it amongst the base, don’t you think he would’ve stuck with it? 

Now compare that to the left, which managed to sustain massive public tantrums in the streets of several major cities for a solid fucking week after Trump won the election. Compare that to leftists who routinely characterize any Republican initiative as “literally trying to kill them.” Healthcare? “Literally trying to kill us.” Some bureaucratic UN bullshit about gender definitions? “LITERALLY ERASING TRANSGENDER’S RIGHT TO EXIST.” I have, in fact, lost track of how many Republican policy positions have been characterized by the left as attempted murder. Which makes it entirely unsurprising that James Hodgkinson was trying to murder Republican Congressmen, he was shouting “This is for healthcare!” 

It’s not the fringe or minority who live in fear of these doomsday predictions, as evidenced by the many, many articles detailing Trump-induced insomnia and nightmares, op-ed writers voicing their own Trump-centric emotional shellshock, “how to handle Trump Fatigue Syndrome” guides from left-wing outlets, etc. Or for a more scientific approach, consider “Trump’s win left clinically significant trauma in 1 in for college students, study says,” therapists reporting a notable uptick in patients suffering from election/Trump related anxiety, [1],[2] (which therapists are absolutely eager to blame on Trump,) or this psychology industry publication about a psychotherapist who had a teenage patient tell her “You’re nice and smart and you helped me a lot. But right now you are a White person. I can’t trust you, the world you came from, because that world is equal to the death of me.” But anecdote is not the plural of data - is there anything showing the anxiety uptick is mostly prevalent among anti-Trumpers and not just general anxiety from the whole imbroglio? Consider this study, which found that:

People who felt “ashamed of America” doubled after the election (16% to 32%, with 75% breaking along partisan lines), 

93% of non-supporters blaming Trump for “dividing America” compared to only 27% of supporters,

39% of Americans feeling scared for their and their family’s safety (21% Trump supporters and 57% of non-supporters,)

35% of Americans spending less money due to fearing an uncertain future (22% supporters, 47% non-supporters) 

15% of Americans sleeping less (6% among supporters, 25% among non-supporters,) 

And 31% reporting increased anxiety - with 9% being supporters and a staggering 54% being non-Trump supporters. 

On the balance I’d say the totality of the evidence points pretty fucking squarely at a significant chunk of the Democratic electorate being actually, tangibly fearful of Trump. In fact, the data suggest 35-40% or so. 

Can you show me any data showing that 35% - 40% of Republicans were fearful of Obama? And I mean fearful, not “doubted his birth certificate.” I know the birther thing makes some people’s brains lock up in foaming-mouth snarling outrage, but their feelz do not equate realz, (as we say in the vernacular) and doubting Obama’s place of birth does not, in any way, equate fearing him. Last I checked, Kenyans are known for being track stars, not tyrants or dictators. Especially when you consider that much of the doubt centered on Obama’s oddly long delay in producing the relevant documentation, as evidenced by the rather sharp drop in doubt when said documents finally appeared. For all the snarling outrage of the left over it, they can’t even show that doubting his birth certificate correlated with a belief that Obama’s presidency was illegitimate - after all, this is the same party that tried to revoke the natural-born citizen clause of the constitution to allow The Guvernator to run. It was formally proposed by Orrin fucking Hatch, even!

No. No, you’ve got to find me the fearful ones, the ones muttering about B-Rock “The Islamic Shock” Hussein Superallah Obama, born in the Beating Hart of Kenya, and his dastardly plans to build mosques in every kindergarten playground or whatever the fuck. Show me, with data, that there’s any fucking number of Republicans who actually feared for their fucking lives because of Obama that comes anywhere close to the fucking widespread hysteria of the left right now, and then, maybe, you’ll have a point. 

Until you can do that, fuck off. 

CVS is buying Aetna, one of the largest health insurance companies in the country, for $69 billion. 

No company should have $69 billion in assets. No merger this large should be allowed to occur. No merger that violates every antitrust principle there is should be allowed to occur.

And Trump and the Republicans will get the blame for part of this, but really the Democrats are to blame as well. Bill Clinton continued the deregulation of financial markets begun by Reagan. Obama oversaw Comcast buying NBC. Democrats at every turn have been fine feeding this monster, their only concern has been that it works form. 

Democrats and liberals are STILL crying foul that Hillary lost, mourning what could have been as if she would’ve been some savior. This merger is EXACTLY the sort of thing she supports, and has supported. Pelosi, Schumer - they love this bullshit. Oh sure they might complain about it when they think the right people are listening, but they’ve been all too eager to pave the way for laissez fair capitalism to become the order of the day.

For decades leftists and progressives have said this is where we’ve been heading. All through the Bush years, all through the Obama years, there were plenty of loud, articulate voices explaining in measured tones that Republicans have no principles or values, that Republican voters will always vote along party lines, that there is no such thing as a bridge too far for a party that regularly advocates the most atrocious violence and policy without compunction. 

And at each turn, liberals and Democrats have made excuses for their friends, family members, and colleagues who vote Republican. At each turn the Democratic Party has prided itself on holding procedure and tradition to be sacred. “Ram through progressive legislation when we have the power to? No thank you! We believe in working together and reaching across the aisle. The American people won’t tolerate a ruling party who ignores basic decorum”.

Republicans and their base have consistently been this craven, this selfish, this petty, tribalistic, and fear-driven over the last twenty years. And yet we were all supposed to pretend that there “moderate Republicans”, that there were reasonable, intelligent, thoughtful people who just happened to ally with the death cult that Republican party has been since Reagan took office. That you can be a reasonable politically astute person who felt no cognitive dissonance supporting policies that openly destroyed the lives of millions for the gains for a select few, policies that demolished the basic functions of government in service of corporate interests, policies that sold off the planet wholesale so that CEOs could post higher quarterly earnings.

Again and again, radicals and leftists have said that this is utter nonsense. When Obama took office he had a ruling majority in the House and Senate and a definitive victory over McCain to justify radical action. Yet he pushed for NO progressive policy. He didn’t even put universal healthcare on the table. When the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf became the largest oil spill in history, Obama and the Democrats did nothing. Gun massacre after gun massacre - nothing. 

They could’ve. They could’ve ignored decorum and procedure and done what Republicans are doing now. They could’ve strong armed every piece of legislation they wanted and proudly championed themselves as fighting for the well being of the American people after 8 years of a venal, self-serving, warmonger. They could’ve called Republican’s bluff on the filibuster and made Republicans work for, and own, every single obstructionist action they took.

All the while, Democrats and liberals insisted this was necessary. They insisted that this was unfortunate situation that Republicans had forced. That Obama’s hands were tied. That the Democrats in Congress were powerless - they couldn’t push for too much too quickly and they’d look unreasonable if they fought back too hard.

And all the while, AT EVERY PIVOTAL MOMENT, the progressive left said this was untrue. Said that Democrats and Obama needed to fight harder because Republicans would come back with a vengeance as soon as given a chance. That a strong progressive vision was the only way to combat the nihilism and corruption of Republicans. That the Republican party could go lower, get meaner, and be far more cruel than anything they’d done before and that we couldn’t let them have a chance.

And still, Democrats insisted they were being pragmatic. They insisted choosing Hillary as their candidate was the right move. They insisted that her record unpopularity and unfavorables as a candidate were irrelevant because they were unjust. They insisted that centrism was how you beat extremism. And Democrats lost. And STILL they are beating that drum. They’re justifying the loss, explaining that Hillary was in fact the right candidate, that it was so close in the midwest.

All the most progressive demographics of the Democratic party - young people, people of color, the LGBTQ community - voted overwhelmingly for Hillary. They turned out in huge numbers. Even though these demographics all also far prefer progressive policies and candidates, they rallied around Hillary for the sake of avoiding Trump. But you know who didn’t? Middle class white people, women and men. The centrist block went for Trump, the stupidest, most incompetent candidate in modern history. 

As if to justify this, Democrats paint these wild pictures of Trump as a savvy media mogul who knows his audience. Trump, the idiot savant who may not be a political wonk, but who is a master media manipulator. Trump, the deft messaging whiz who was a difficult mercurial candidate to run against.

Trump was, and is, a moron, with no discernible skill of any kind. His success can entirely be attributed to luck and the incompetence of his opponents. He is in the right place at the right time for his idiocy to propel him forward. That his messages and personality resonate in his favor says nothing of his abilities and everything of the present zeitgeist his constituents inhabit. He is the bird who keeps returning to the pond each day because the human arrives to give him food - the bird isn’t orchestrating anything, it simply knows that if it repeats it’s behavior it gets rewarded.

But this notion that Trump is somehow better, more skilled, more competent than he is is necessary for Democrats to justify why Hillary lost. It’s necessary because the truth is any decent candidate should not only have beat Trump, they should have demolished him. He should have lost in record numbers. Any half-way competent campaign team and candidate could have picked out the threads in Trump’s campaign that were resonating and developed an effective counter narrative. 

But Hillary had no narrative. She had no vision. She had no invigorating slogan or exciting imagery or quotable speeches. She ran a technocratic campaign that hinged on demeaning Trump voters, slandering progressive Democrats, and painting herself as a blank canvass every woman who could represent the struggles of all women. This, despite the fact that she is one of the top 0.1% of wealthiest most powerful individuals on Earth, has thrown women of color under the bus at every turn, proactively helped her husband slander the names of the women he raped and sexually assaulted, underpaid the women that worked for her as a Senator, and actively supported anti-humanitarian causes and polices namely standing with Israel against Palestine, opposing universal healthcare, supporting mass deportations, supporting fracking and fossil fuel interests, and supporting continued US military engagement in the Middle East.

Republicans are actively waging a policy war against the survival of humanity - they are supporting a president who taunts nuclear war and are working tirelessly to accelerate global warming, the most tangible existential threat humanity has ever faced. And they’re doing all of this by building off the foundation Democrats helped build and continue to defend.

It is necessary to recognize the brazen callousness of the Republican Party and to face it clear-eyed as so entrenched as to be entirely synonymous with the party itself. We cannot expect to turn things around if we continue to be naive about the prospect of ever working with the Republican Party to build a better world. But equally, we cannot expect to turn things around by remaining naive that the Democrats have done their best on our behalf or that the party’s sacred idols know something we don’t and that that is why they have failed to fight for a progressive vision. 

Neither of the major two US political parties wants to build a world that genuinely supports and serves the people - they each, in their own ways, want to preserve a world where those on top can remain on top, where wealth and power are guarded with the utmost sanctity, where the well being of humanity plays second fiddle to “growth” and “innovation”. 

CVS is buying Aetna because neither of the two major parties gives a shit if humanity survives another 200 years. We cannot count on them to save us and we cannot expect that to ever change. If we make it out of this it will be because we took back power for ourselves and held uncompromisingly to our own values and vision for a just world, not because we petitioned our current leaders to do better.

cortana, find “how to remove STD”

So yeah here’s my thoughts on Star Trek Discovery as of the ninth episode:

its ugly, sounds like trash, is terribly badly written and probably smells weird if in a physical format

but allow me to elaborate a bit a lot

the sound and visuals are the smaller problem admittedly; I like plenty of things that looked arse when they were first made and look like double arse now, so if the writing wasn’t so bad I would be willing to accept this as a flaw of the series and concentrate on the rest of it. as it stands...

the music just kind of being “there” is nothing new (see: large chunks of the other series), but it’s still disappointing. the sound design being terrible on top of that? that’s trash. nearly every time a ship opens fire we get minor variations on generic and ill-fitting turbolaser sounds... I mean come the fuck on. you don’t want to be restricted by tradition, go nuts, but if that’s the best you’ve got to offer you shouldn’t have 

(I realise that choice is likely a result of a directive from on high and not entirely the sound team’s doing, but it’s still executed poorly)

as for art direction... well, John Eaves is a very poor choice for how much they’re giving to him (most of starfleet it looks like? not sure who’s doing the klingons but what little I can see of them isn’t impressing me either). I don’t hate his stuff outright like some people do, but he’s very “safe” and has exactly one aesthetic that has worn out for me and compares badly to what they’re making it contemporary to here

the art direction in general is quite bad though - there’s so much nebulous shit that glows blue in the same kind of way that it legitimately confuses as to whether or not it is the same thing - and the way it’s all shot is boring and unremarkable at best. 

(and oh look, it’s another trek villain who has a colour scheme of mostly metals and neon green. get the fuck out of here)

the... space fight choreography (not sure what else to call it?) is absolutely the worst part though, it’s almost claustrophobic, everything’s jammed together like it happening in a bloody fish tank. the camera has no great desire to give us a clear view of what’s happening, or of any object other than the discovery and the ship of the dead. they almost appear to be going out of their way to avoid giving a clear look at anything else, which makes me think they’re not being given the time or budget to make models that will withstand close examination... which would be expected, but still laughable as ever

the spore drive and all the effects associated with it are ugly as sin and conceptually terrible also; I will accept no dissent on this point

sets and props are kinda “eh”, but i’ve not seen anything overtly wobble, and that’s apparently the only metric that matters so uh, good job there

so! the writing. the horrible, horrible writing.

I’m going to mostly ignore the actual dialog here, because while it is deserving of flak, it’s mostly stock phrases and interactions you’ve seen significantly better or worse versions of. so not a lot to actually say about it. I don’t like much of it and the attempts at humour are pretty lame.

what I take issue with is the overall construction of it... like they’re doing a “maybe the federation isn’t right about how it does things?” kind of thing and im onboard with that, asking questions on if the federation is really what it presents itself as has potential. but they’re not actually asking any specific questions.

and this kind of attitude pervades the whole show; there’s vague noises about stuff - maybe both sides are wrong - or whatever and the odd “aren’t we explorers?” but ultimately the show has little to no opinion on any of it (or doesn’t yet anyway), just making enough of an effort to try and get you to think it does, and then let you fill in the answer you agree with most... 

if it sounds like im leading in to a “intellectually hollow centrist liberal” kind of comparison, you fucking bet I am, because that’s pretty much what it feels like to me

I mean I expect someone’s going to try and claim they’re just going for moral ambiguity, but I struggle to think of many actual examples of that in anything, and it DEFINITELY looses any claim to such when you have characters being told that actually no, Their War Crimes Were Entirely Justified and then nobody says any different

(star trek has no substantive claim on moral consistency, but that’s just fucking indefensible, and it shouldn’t be left even slightly ambiguous if Lorca was in the right for saying that. which is kind of a recurring problem with that character, contradictory as that may appear for me to say that right after my previous comment...)

then you’ve got the portrayal of the klingons as man-eating space orks... who are doing a holy war... even if that didn’t conflict horribly with the (for star trek) more complex portrayals of klingons in the past, on it’s own it feels like it’s undermining the claims to progressiveness  just a little bit 

(well it’s part holy war and part MQGA [Make Qo'noS Great Again] but you know what I mean)

and plotwise now we’re doing... voyager? maybe in the mirror universe? I don’t know. I guess they won’t stick with it for long enough to redo voyager’s worst mistakes but why am I having SG:U flashbacks all of a sudden

funnily enough I actually like SG:U more than discovery, though that may be partly not having watched it since it aired

lost my train of thought here, uh, characters bad?

or some characters bad anyway. I like maybe half of them to some degree actually, despite the dialog and how inconsistent the portrayal of nearly everyone is in between - or within - any episode (another old problem for trek, but it’s really grating with the format here)

there’s plenty to criticise though; i’m really unsure the writers have any clear idea of what Tilly’s “deal” is (only socially awkward? on a spectrum? just “weird”? who can say!) or if Stamets is an asshole or a just good-hearted grump... there’s other things like that. maybe they’ve detailed stuff in interviews, but the show itself is terrible at communicating any clear intent

but Michael and Voq’s fake personality Ash are definitely the worst characters, so i’ll focus on them

I will maintain that Michael’s backstory is rubbish, making her Spock’s secret sister is amazingly unnecessary rubbish. on top of that, we’re told she’s a top of the line member of starfleet which is then immediately undercut by her doing something stupid and reckless that almost gets her killed (after which she then presumably irradiates everything between sickbay and the bridge...) followed by doing something stupid and reckless that gets a lot of people killed and starts a war! this is arguably the most prominent trait of the character

she kind of comes off as a suicidal maniac, is my point.  Captain Georgiou is quick to jump to a suicidal option too (and im just gonna say... most prominent asian person in the series to date... suggests a suicide attack...) 

does this version of starfleet just not do psych tests until you hit admiral? of the two that have actually done things we’ve had two walk into obvious traps, but one of them seems comparatively well adjusted

anyway, so we’ve got Michael, a pet character of some writer who changes personality every other scene and totally not Voq, we swear and Ash. who is about the most blandly likeable love interest possible, and definitely Voq infiltrating starfleet, how long are they gonna drag this secret cylon constructed memories bullshit out just bloody kill me already and also a survivor of sexual abuse (and torture) with PTSD. 

they heavily implied this was the case when they introduced the character, and then in episode 9 it was confirmed explicitly by the character in question... that’s all fine, feels like a bit of a cheap grab so they can be a “mature“ story but let’s see how it plays out... and oh.

they went and showed (what was framed as but aren’t necessarily) the events in question. this is, at best, tasteless and inappropriate

now, i’m not going to say they’re going to handle this in the worst way possible, but what they’ve done so far is making me really fucking uncomfortable! I do not have faith that this will resolve even remotely well

and then there’s the whole thing where his memories are likely 100% manufactured as cover, which has a good chance of giving this whole situation an unpleasant taste all on it’s own

I also really had no need to see these new klingons naked anyway, or any naked klingon really, and in context cable drama nudity is absolutely the worst thing they could’ve copied from game of thrones without thinking about it

anyway, that’s [however many, I don’t want to check] badly formatted and often grammatically incorrect words to say: 

The show is bad. You disagree? Ok. I disagree with you. Now nobody is happy. I would prefer to be happy. I am not.

Goodnight.

Could you please give more details about current situation in Poland? What's making you so disappointed in it?

Where do I start…..(chuckles ironically)

TLDR version:

1)The whole country is ruled by a small, xenophobic, traumatized old man, who has no touch with reality, the current state of affairs in Europe as well as the world.

2)The government has no respect for the democratic institutions. (They blocked the Constitutional Tribunal, they pass their bills using illegal and shifty ways)

3)The are highly incompetent and have no respect for the former government and they want to turn everything upside down out of spite instead of building on the structure that we already have.

4)They took over some media and spread their populist bullshit through them.

5) Half of the people eligible to vote do not think that it is a great privilege of a functioning democratic system to actually go and cast their ballot. Instead, they are very “MEH” about it. The current government justifies their actions by saying that the people elected them, while actually they won only with around 5,7 mln votes, which is very little, knowing that there is around 30 mln of people eligible to vote in Poland.

ps. The Ruling party’s name is ‘PiS’, Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (Law and Justice) which is very ironic, because as you might have noticed, they respect neither while pissing all over us with a stupid smirk on their faces.

You’ll find a more detailed answer under the cut: 

Basically, the whole country is run from the backseat by a regular MP, Kaczyński, who does not occupy any official position in the government, apart from being the leader of the ruling party. He just issues orders to his minions (let me tell you that our PM is a spineless piece of a woman, she is basically our own Paul Ryan), making him not responsible for any of the shit that is going down right now. Even the president is his puppet as he privately consults everything with him and signs every parliamentary project that lands on his desk. Sounds familiar? 

Now, the thing with Kaczyński - he is the source of the whole evil.  To understand what’s going on, we need to look at him holistically. So first, he lost his twin brother in a plane crash in 2010, along with his sister in law. Most probably, because he himself pressured to some extent his brother, who at the time was the president, to land despite the bad weather conditions - why did the president had any say in whether the plane should land or not, is beyond me. So, due to the huge amount of incompetence of the people on board, they crashed and Kaczyński lost his close family, which must have been a very traumatic experience. Now, to his great success, he built his political potential around the idea that it was the government’s fault that the plane crashed (he was in the opposition back then). I don’t know if it was because he was in denial about the whole thing, but it looked as though he was on his personal vendetta to avenge his brother’s death. People listened to him, because he is the same xenophobic, intolerant short-sighted little old man, the same kind as his electorate - people from poor regions, who feel neglected and not taken care of, who are xenophobic and  homophobic and “patriotic” but in the stupidest way possible, by blindly believing that Poland’s history is great and we were screwed over by so many countries that we should not trust anyone anymore and we have only enemies. So Kaczynski fed right into that with his narrative and his party won the parliamentary elections two years ago. And thus, the shitshow of “screw the democratic values” began. 

Right now: 

The Constitutional Tribunal - the organ in the government that checks whether the bill passed are constitutional is blocked. They do not analyze the submitted bills and documents regarding to their importance, for example a bill that is potentially unconstitutional has no priority over other matters. Right now, bills and documents are examined as they were submitted chronologically, and there are already many cases covered in dust waiting for their turn in the Constitutional Tribunal whose constitutionality is to be examined, so by the time the budget bill gets looked into (which was illegally pushed under the table and then approved last year in December) Poland may cease to exists…Nah kidding. Or am I? 

This government is ridden with incompetent people who have no fucking idea what they are doing. Take our Foreign Affairs Minister, going around making up the names of the countries that don’t exist. He was fired from every diplomatic position he occupied under the former government, that is very telling, don’t you think? And he is not the only  incompetent one. 

Our Education Minister changed the educational system and right now we are going back to what was before, and hold on to something this is gonna be good, IN THE COMMUNIST TIMES. There used to be 8 grades primary school and then 4 year high school. Right now, we have (still) 6 grades primary schools, 3 years middle schools, and 4 years high schools, which is a good solution, as it allows very small children with different educational needs not to be  thrown in into the same building with adolescents with skyrocketing hormones. Now, we adapted this system like a 18 years ago, and since then a lot of school buildings, with a certain student age group in mind have been built. For example, Idk, things like classroom equipment or smaller toilet bowls, so that a 6 year old girl could go to the toilet herself and not fall into the toilet bowl because it’s too big for her, you know? Not to mention the teachers who are going to lose their jobs or… the costs or adapting the classrooms or.. gah. They are turning everything upside down, but not in a good faith and after long and lucrative consultations with parents and teachers. No. They are turning everything upside down out of spite. Because Polish educational system sucks and it is a disaster. 

It is not. Our teachers are among the most qualified teachers in the world, we have well equipped schools and classrooms (thanks the EU for your money) and it would be better, and saner, to ameliorate what we’ve already have. But no. You see the extent of this myopic approach? 

They took over the media (some part of it is state owned so they grabbed at it and they won’t let go), and spread their populist propaganda, but they are already going down. Only 52 percent of the respondents, according to the latest poll, trust the state owned media. Other than that, we have private media, too, and thanks god, because they are the only source of reliable information and the bedrock of some kind of journalistic integrity. Let me just say, that most of the journalists that worked in the state owned media under the former centrist government, but were not in line with the current ruling party’s agenda were fired.

The ruling party is a populist shit of a party. They basically bought their voters by giving them an extra monthly allowance, on the condition that you have more than one kid and do not reach a certain level of revenue for a household. And let me just mention, that those people from poor regions have a lot of kids, so there you go. See how a simple tool can get you votes. Now, why it was so easy? There are a few reasons for that. And here they are: 

1) The transformation, in 1989, panned out in so many different ways. There were some people who were able to deal with the changes, and adapt to the new reality, but they were plenty of people who weren’t. In the communist times, almost everybody had a job - people with qualifications, people without qualifications. EVERYBODY got paid and had a sufficient amount of money to make a living. Then, the communist system collapsed, rightly so, and the free market economy overtook Poland. So suddenly, your qualifications and job formation mattered, but more importantly, suddenly it mattered even more, who you knew and what were your connections, as people were scrambling to gather their bearings in the new system that was not truly set in stone yet. Some people, due to their connections with the government, gained a lot on the privatization that was due to happen under the new economic conditions, which was a common occurrence in the communist times too.   People without the connections, or not previously involved with the politics during the communist times and later, and there were many people like these, just tiring to survive from day to day, without any second thought about the system that oppressed them, because they actually lived quite well, were left to their own devices and ended up being left out. (I think Vaclav Havel describes it very well in his book ‘To the castle and back’. Unfortunately, I left it at home, but if you are interested, read it, it’s very good and gives you an insight into the mechanisms ruling a postcomunist country). Suddenly, people were poor and the new government who was still under transition was not able to take care of everything at once as we were left in a huge debt created by the communist government. Now all that created the motion that people in the government are thieves and that motion still perpetuates to this day.  And the ruling party, picked it up and made it a part of their narrative during the elections. They wanted to reach that certain group of people, those who feel neglected and are distrustful,  and they were very successful with that.

2) The previous government started to get sloppy during their second term.  They didn’t want to look to the matters that actually mattered to people, like domestic social policy, ie. subsidies for parents who are trying to get pregnant through the in-vitro method, or subsidies for single mothers or coming up with a financial solution that would allow raising retirement pensions. Only later in their second term, they started to panic and took care of some of the elements of social policy to ameliorate the lives of people, but it was already too late. People were already convinced that the government again, did not do anything for them, and they should get other guys a chance. 

3) People actually don’t go and vote. The voters turnout for the parliamentary elections is around 50%, for presidential elections around 60%, which is really ironic, because what matters more is what the ruling party is, not who is the president, as in our “democracy” the president has a figurative role. Here is what happened in the latest parliamentary elections: around 19 mln people voted, the ruling party gained around 37 % of all the votes, which transfers into 5.7 mln people. Yes. 5.7 mln people decided about the future of the 38 mln country, because the other half eligible to vote could not get their asses off the couch on a Sunday afternoon and go cast a ballot, because “There is nobody I would vote for” or “They’re all thieves anyway”. That is all to say that we are still a very young democracy, whose people have yet to built a strong sense of responsibility for this country, because for so many years, they simply didn’t have to take any. That is a real problem still, and it keeps screwing us over. The government now justifies their actions by saying that “people voted for us, we won, people trusted us so we do what people want us to do” what a bucket of bullshit. But they know it, and yet, they are lying into everybody’s faces. 

I could go on and on about the current political situation. I haven’t even mentioned the role of the Catholic Church in all of this, or our current relations with the EU, or the Ministry of Justice… The list of their sins is long. 

But here is my version of what is making me so disappointed in the current political situation in my country. And please bear in mind, that I probably have a very limited knowledge about the full state of affairs in the government. After all, I am just an ordinary citizen.

What I believe in.

I’m a centrist. I struggle to choose what I am really. On some days I I’d say I would be a right winged liberal or on other days I would say I’d just be a conservative. But now I’ve decided to stay as a centrist. However my views change over years. Seeing how things have been going lately I’ve really hate to say it but…these SJW’s are really tearing this country apart. It’s gone to a point where we are looking at the 1960s but worse. I have never seen a nation so divided thanks to this social justice bull crap. It’s he main reason why trump won. People are sick of seeing this constant flow of riots and protests all over the United States. Not only that people are tired that this ‘snowflake’ mentality it shoved down our throats. I don’t speak on behave of anyone but myself and here’s what I want. To bring us together. Whites, blacks, asians, Latino, etc. the 80s was a great example. Hands across America, live aid, etc. it was an era of peace. We saw the Cold War end in 1985 and a few 6-7 years later the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union spilt apart. So what went wrong in our time? Social justice. The main reason why we can’t get along. The snowflake mindset plays in where we are forced to use these made up pronouns, make up new genders, have white people the enemy, and the ‘holy wars’. What’s the holy wars? Basically where religion plays in to cause wars. Islam being the main cause. Megadeth actually predicted this back in the 90s. ‘Brother will kill brother Spilling blood across the land Killing for religion Something I don’t understand Fools like me, who cross the sea And come to foreign lands Ask the sheep, for their beliefs Do you kill on God’s command? A country that’s divided Surely will not stand My past erased, no more disgrace No foolish naive stand’ It’s the hard truth that we live in. People struggle to trust muslims because of what’s going on in the Middle East. I don’t blame them. Honestly what’s going on in Europe is bad with the refugees. It’s also causing the rise of nationalism in Europe. A strong following because of how open minded their country has become that the country losses focus on itself. Anyways besides all of that I have a huge hatred for modern day feminism. Not Early first wave or second wave feminism. Modern day feminism. Why? Look at how much has been accomplished by feminism in its early stages. Woman are able to vote, woman are out of the house and have the ability to do what they want without a mans consent, and they can have equal pay (if they pick the right jobs). Now what’s the issue with modern day feminism? It’s caused division. It hasn’t accomplished anything but cause more and more division. Men are now this figure of oppression in which a simple glance or stare at a woman can make you a rapist. In fact it’s one of the more sensitive bullshit I have seen. Feminist have gone and tried to ban the word bossy. Why? Because apparently it hurts their feelings. Well tough luck. Men get their feelings hurt half the time and I don’t see them out naked in their underwear protesting about 'rape culture’. I just absolutely hate what feminism has become. Dear feminists, stop complaining about what’s happening in this country and focus on the outside world. Look at the Middle East! Woman are killed for disobeying a man. Look at South America. Mostly Mexico. Men are still seen as a dominant figure where the woman must trust their lives with men. My mother who is from Mexico actually doesn’t know what feminism is. It’s not because they don’t care about woman’s rights, it’s because they don’t press their focus on woman’s Rights at the moment. They look more towards focusing on family, work, staying alive, etc. in fact Mexico is pretty damn dangerous if you’re a young woman. You’re more likely to get raped, killed, and kidnapped in that country. I’m still confused how that country isn’t campaigning about woman’s rights as much as the US. Maybe because they’re focused on fixing their country or something. Then again that brings me back to my other topic. Immigration. More Importantly, illegal immigration. What’s my stance? Illegals don’t belong here. Why? Because the main issue is how problematic the drug war has become. It’s gotten so bad that’s its irreparable. The drug war cannot be won, but it can be 'cooled down’. Hell if I ran for president I would create an easier method for immigrants from foreign nations to come in quicker and easier. However we need to increase our border security tenfold. Why? Because sure some illegals want a better life, but it’s impossible doing it like that. Why? Because my parents are illegals. But I understand why they did it. We came for a better life. My grandfather came here legally because back then Ronald Reagan made every illegal in this country legal. My parents missed out on that chance because they were young. However my grandfather was a piece of shit. He could’ve gotten my mom and dad their US citizenship. How? My grandfather was a citizen and my dad was his son. But he refused. Sadly my parents came here illegally and later my older siblings came. We have been living here for years now. I was the only legal son thanks to the 14th amendment. Even though my parents are illegal I feel shame for the route we took. Sure we didn’t have money but if we waited longer we could’ve gotten here with us citizenships. Then again I wouldn’t of been born. Or probably earlier. Who knows. My parents are not criminals. We never broke any laws. We pay our taxes, speak English, have a house, etc. we are like every other American. Just a bit more discrete about our status. Anyways we need to find a new method of keeping illegals out besides this fence in our border. My first steps would be making it easier for immigrants to come here. Now then…do I seem like some right winged dick who just wants to keep immigrants out? No. I want criminals out. Not immigrants. I want our country safe. Speaking of which. @hyenatiddy. This son of a bitch. This pathetic manipulative piece of shit. He’s the main reason why I shot myself on a livestream. And some of his followers actually wished death on me. Oh don’t even get me started on some of the shit they said 'this world is better without him’ 'he was a right wing troll’ etc. Somehow they believe in him. Thinking that he’s the victim here. Oh how much he has fucking lied to you. First of all he’s lied to me. The first thing he did was when he played as some girl telling me that he killed himself and she took over. I knew he was lying when he’s posting art and pics of himself without mentioning suicide. Next thing he does? Of boy. This son of a bitch tells me he’s in the hospital for for what…three weeks? I dunno. But he reused the same pic of a hospital band saying he’s still in the hospital. I was so confused. I knew something was up since he said he 'took’ a picture even though it was reused from last week. (Not really last week but awhile back.) oh and then he tells me he loves me. I actually felt happy for once. I actually felt joy in my life. I felt loved. And then this piece of shit drops this on me. He asks if I’m right winged. He doesn’t even give me time to explain. The bastard just leaves. Blocks me and makes me feel like shit. I felt abandoned. This manipulative trash never loved me. I found out because he was already dating someone else. Hell I was gay for awhile. I admit it. But now I’m sticking as a straight Latino male. I don’t trust any trans person. Sure one mistake doesn’t represent all trans but I’ve encountered a lot of trans and they always treat me like trash. I can’t take that encounter anymore. Oh but hey I’m a 'transphobe’ for not trusting trans people but oh wait I hear a bit of hypocrisy coming from the snowflake! What’s that? You don’t trust all males for the actions of a few? Then that doesn’t make you sexist one bit according to your agenda. Anyways moving back to the subject this son of a bitch is the main reason I have a higher hatred for SJW’s. He lied. He was a sick liar. I don’t have proof because why should I keep the messages from him? It makes me feel awful and I needed to get rid of something that hurt me. He would say some bullshit like 'that’s why I got rid of you because you hurt me’. My response is how? How do I hurt you? For stating the truth? For stating my opinions? My political views? Fuck off. How can you not feel safe with someone who has not brought up their political opinions directly. How can you not fucking feel safe with someone who said they love you and care for you. How? How the fuck can you not feel safe? It’s absolute bullshit. I had a friend call the cops but they couldn’t do shit since wherever he lived wasn’t in their power since it’s a different state. Then again my friend though I was dead when I hit my chest. I laid on the floor for awhile. When I shot myself i went into some type of shock. I didn’t move. I was unresponsive. I was like asleep. The pain was just so unbearable I think I must’ve passed out. Then the cops and paramedics arrived and they closed my laptop which ended the livestream. Someone reported the stream and it got taken down. When I was in the hospital i was already awake but I was in so much anger. I had to go through heavy treatment. I had to be away from my phone. I had to. But I decided to stay away from tumblr. I recently came back since I feel better and I’m up to confront what made me feel like this. I’m not running away like hyenatiddy does by abusing the block button to hide from arguments and people confronting him. I’m up to fire back if someone shoots at me. I’m not fucking scared. I don’t care for the thousands of followers he has. I’m not scared of they get manipulated by his beliefs. I came to confront my fears and take on what made me shoot myself. The hatred of other people won’t take me down. It’s why I made this post and why I won’t stand down. I’m a Latino male. Straight. Centrist. I won’t be silenced by a bunch of horny bastards who believe in hyenatiddy’s lies. Now I wanna thank a few friends who supported me. @takashi0 @boss-hoody @fatponyroleplays @forgottonbutstillbreathing And some other friends who’s URL I’ve forgotten of lol. Thank you all. I know some of you didn’t notice when I got shot but I knew some of you were worried for me. My friend tried his best to spread that I shot myself but some wouldn’t believe him. I’m fine however. I’m just glad that you guys are still up and running. Thank you so much. I no longer fear people who just…hate. In fact I’m gonna be more open about my opinions. I just need help to recover from this first.

So Saturday evening, some shit went down. I had a bit of a meltdown and nuked my friendship with Maria because I thought it was “the right thing to do,” which more and more I’m starting to realize is a narcissistic viewpoint.

So sometimes I’ll have a meltdown over certain unpredictable triggers. This is mostly my own damn fault because I haven’t made a serious enough effort to seek mental help and open up to my friends. When living with Maria, oftentimes I’ll “offer” to leave partially because I have a serious guilt about living with her and when I’m in that state of mind, I have this faux-”selflessness” where I narcissistically assume that me leaving/dying will contribute to solving Maria’s problems. Obviously this is demonstrable false but it feels so logical at the time. This is compounded by the fact that I have terrible communication skills (partially because my concern over being abusive leads me to feel like I can’t open up without seeming emotionally manipulative, which ironically seems to lead to actual emotional manipulation as I attempt to solve all mine and Maria's problems in the most mentally fucked up ways possible).

So me and Maria had this friend who was a lot closer to her than to me. He comes off quite often as being condescending towards me, and whenever he talks about being a furry, he oftentimes comes painfully close to saying that his being a furry and the negativity that brings is somehow equivalent to, say, the oppression felt by being trans or gay or what have you. I’ve tried to be accommodating as best I can, despite these annoyances, and most of the time we got along fine. He has this painfully annoying inability to deal with any sort of conflict, and very often tends to do that “I’m a centrist so I’m morally superior” thing.

So he posts that markiplier video (you know the one) which is the stupidest thing to have a fight about, but he’s very self righteous about it. I offer one reply to his video (saying that everyone is not deserving of respect and that calling people out for shitty behavior is not dehumanizing as is said in the video) and he replies with a tweet heavily implying that his being a furry is in any way comparable to being a jew (or alternatively, if he was being sarcastic, implying that “death to all jews” is an acceptable joke).

So I don’t respond back because I don’t want to make this worse, and Maria says she’s not coming home and is going to sleep in her car because she wanted to be alone. Now, the reasonable thing to do would be to offer to go sleep at a friend’s house so that she could be alone in her apartment, or to accept her decision, but I’m already super off-kilter and rather than explaining what I am upset and stressed out about, I tell her I’m moving out.

You see, this friend just bought a huge house but only him and his wife live there. It seemed obvious to me that the only reason they’d get a house that big is to house Maria since they are helping with her bills currently and will be helping her pay for college soon. As I don’t think I could stand living in the same house as this guy, I’ve been panicking silently about what I’m going to do if/when the time comes. Of course, I don’t tell Maria any of this because I’m terrible at communicating (I was scared that expressing my fears would be seen as trying to manipulate Maria into denying the friend’s potential offer even though such an offer is objectively in her best interest) even though we’ve had multiple conversations after various breakdowns about this same communication issue.

So here I am, feeling backed up against the wall because I feel like I’ve nuked the relationship with this mutual friend and increasingly worried that if I stick around I may fuck up Maria’s friendship with him. My mind is already telling me I’m a shitty person when Maria says she’s not coming home for the night, so my brain instantly goes to “God, you’re so terrible that she’s afraid to come home because of you,” instead of the much more realistic “She just wants to be alone, this is a normal thing Maria does.”

So of course, thinking I’m an abuser (but being blind to the actual abusive things I’m doing) I decide it’s time to kill myself, as I almost always do when I’m having a breakdown, and knowing my last experience with attempting suicide, I know I can’t convince myself to jump over the ledge to my death, so I decide that if there is nothing to come back to, I’ll have to reason to hesitate (this is stupid for multiple reasons, the prime one being that self-preservation doesn’t fucking work like that). So I say some shitty things and pack a bag of basically nothing (I’m not intending to stay alive for long after all) and leave. The next day, I try to kill myself and discover my self preservation is as strong as ever.

So I’m freaking out about what I’m going to do. I’ve had some breakdowns where I left to go kill myself, but never this serious. Mistake #473 was messaging Maria to ask her if I could get my meds (when what I really wanted was to talk to her and try to calmly explain myself, because even in crisis I don’t realize it’s probably a good idea to be crystal fucking clear about what’s going on), but of course, I get there and Maria leaves to avoid me (a good fucking idea on her part, as my brain was swimming with “I have an amazing idea that will make everything better!” because I’m still high on adrenaline from the attempt to propel myself over the edge of a parking garage roof and thus was probably not in the best condition to calmly explain myself) and I just panic and grab the pills (all my pills, even the ones I don’t actually need just because whenever I face the slightest obstacle and I’m not in my right mind, I go straight to suicide and overdosing seems like a good idea, right?) and leave, not thinking to grab any clothes because I’m still thinking that things are gonna work out all right or I’m going to die. I sit down across the street because I’m exhausted from walking. I get the “great” idea to leave a note on Maria’s door trying to briefly explain myself and offer to talk at a place down the street (as my phone is dead at this point and the charger I took is non-functional), “trying” to respect her boundaries by not confronting her at or near her apartment. Of course, trying to fit a bunch of complex feelings on an index card with a sharpie while still fucked up is not possible so I write the stupidest thing ever and leave it.

A few hours later, I walk and see the note hasn’t been taken, so I leave a note on her car that I’m going to a friend’s house to charge my phone. I get the phone charged after much difficulty and message her, and she tells me to not talk to her again. My head starts spinning and I start crying and after trying and failing to sleep because I’m disassociating hard, not able to tell what is read and my perception of time gets all fucked up. In desperation, I message Maria (despite telling her I would respect her wishes and not contact her again) hoping for some grounding in reality and  of course I just blather a bunch of desperate bullshit, prompting her to rightfully block me. I start trying to down a bunch of pills but fail because ever since my last overdose, I can’t get down even single pills easily at all, my body pretty violently rejects them.

That was the point that I message Meghan and we did a call. Hearing her voice helped bring me back to reality and think slightly more reasonable, instead of living in my night-terror-lite state for the rest of the night.

Overall, I think Maria was totally in the right here to cut me off the way she did. We’ve had numerous conversations about my tendency to fly off the handle and my failure to communicate and I obviously haven’t taken those conversations to heart. I also have refused to commit to seeking therapy and anti-depressants and allowed my anxiety to keep myself from getting better. If I could do this over, I think moving out while trying to seek therapy would have been a damn good idea anyways, and it would have given us both some time to ourselves and a chance to unwind.

Of course, my mind is swimming with “what-ifs” but none of that matters when the damage has been done. It becomes clear to me that my attempts to “Sacrifice” myself (I.E suicide) are narcissistic in nature. In reality, my death would mean nothing but grief for those close to me, and not some mystical way to solve everyone’s problems as if I’m that important. It would seem that my attempts to try to be as different as possible from my family have led me to being much more like them than I could ever be comfortable with. I’ve abused those close to me thinking I was doing right by them without ever caring to ask them what they wanted. Brain Maria was for some reason much more trustworthy than real-life, best friend Maria and that behavior is what cost me almost everything I cared about.

It’s beginning to look like if I want to live, I’ll need to move back with my parents if they’re willing. It terrifies me, but they’re my best chance at getting on disability and finally being self-sufficient. I just hope that if it does turn out with me getting approved for disability however long in the future that it will have been worth losing Maria over. This wasn’t just one mistake, this was a long series of mistakes and ignorant decisions that led to this outcome, and pretty much every single one is my fault. If I don’t learn from them then I won’t ever get better, no matter how much help I’m given