Had to unfollow a historian on social media

I don't reveal my Instagram to people as it's private and I only permit IRL folks or people I'm really close with to follow it, but I followed this historian who goes by the username ladyizdihar.

I followed her because she posted a lot of educational content in regards to Russia, Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union. It fascinated me, as to how all European history fascinates me. Considering she knew a lot about these regions and their histories very well, I clicked the follow button.

However, here come the issues. More recently, she began speaking a lot on her support of communism as a Muslim woman. Ummm... 🧐

First of all, you can't be a Muslim AND a communist as those are mutually exclusive. Communism bans religion, as religion is a type of hierarchy that reinforces classism. Communism sees ALL humans as equal in regards to class, so there is no social class or power hierarchy. Therefore, revering a being in the sky as omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient, and "higher" than that of "normal" humans (such as Islam *cough*) is against the very idea of communism. Communism is antireligious and antitheistic by nature. You CANNOT believe in God if you're a communist.

Communism doesn't come without subtypes, so the specific type of communism she believes in is Marxism-Leninism. Marxists-Leninists "support proletarian internationalism and socialist democracy, and oppose anarchism, fascism, imperialism, and liberal democracy." But like communism as a whole, they also oppose religion. Here's a quote that Lenin himself wrote in regards to religion, referencing Marxism:

"Religion is the opium of the people: this saying of Marx is the cornerstone of the entire ideology of Marxism about religion. All modern religions and churches, all and of every kind of religious organization are always considered by Marxism as the organs of bourgeois reaction, used for the protection of the exploitation and the stupefaction of the working class."

You see, Marxism-Leninism wanted to eliminate religion, so again, you can't be Muslim and support Marxism-Leninism. It's one or the other. You choose.

Also, VERY recently, in the last post she posted on TikTok before her account was permanently banned, she expressed her support for Joseph Stalin and identified herself as a tankie. Tankie is a slang word used to describe a militarist communist who supports Stalin and Stalinist policies. When mentioning Stalin, she stated something on the lines of, "We can't just focus on the bad side of politicians" and called it shallow thinking to do so. If that's the case, then you can also support Adolf Hitler, which is also stupid. Both of them were terrible people who wrongfully imprisoned their people and committed mass murder through malnutrition, starvation, executions, extermination, etc. And then, even worse, she mentioned that Stalin was an ethnic minority, and said that because of this, his actions were justified in some way. You know, just because someone's an ethnic minority doesn't mean you get to give them a pass. It's sickening how someone would support such a person. That was honestly the last straw for me and I'm glad her TikTok got banned. Bye bitch!

I thought she was one of the few historians on Instagram who had actually done her research, but it seems not, especially in regards to political ideologies and politics in general. She spreads so much misinformation now that I pretty much had enough of her. She should've just stayed in her lane, talking about the general history of Eastern Europe, Russia, and the Soviet Union. She knows nothing about communism, and whenever she talks about it, it sounds like farts because it's just shit coming out of her ass.

Other possible Holocausts: why pro-lifers are lying to us, and why thats a good thing

…

Ive had a running argument over the past few years that the raw lack of anti-abortion terrorist action proves no one really thinks abortion is murder, ie. intentional 1st degree murder of a life equal to yours or mine.

Ive always gotten pushback to quote WillyWang:

The "revealed preference" of those that oppose abortion but don't firebomb clinics and kill doctors? It won't help, you'll be made an example of in the negative sense, and civilized norms are more important than a useless symbolic point. One clinic destroyed won't end abortion, after all.

From which this Effort-post got its Genesis:

Would you say the same about those who participated in the french resistance or Warsaw Ghetto rising to Nazi Germany?

Everyone of those claims applies there: they were likely to be made examples of, they were damaging civilized norms, and any given action had relatively little to no impact.

Yet the same people who insist abortion is murder, and thus that America is committing a holocaust, yet denounce any of the people who employed violence against abortion doctors or clinics, and can’t distance themselves fast enough from any call for violence... none of those people apply the same logic to the first holocaust. None of them say the frenchmen who bombed german police stations where dangerous terrorists who deserved their executions, none of them denounce the Warsaw ghetto rising as an attack on civilization.

…

If anti-abortion advocated genuinely believed a fetus was a equivalent human life to yours or mine or the little kids they see walk to school, and that this was an ongoing holocaust of American Children at a scale possibly 10x or more what was done to the jews... they wouldn’t need to come up with ad hoc reasons why they don’t resort to violence, their mind would be screaming at them to take bloody vengeance 24/7 in righteous outrage, demanding that oceans of blood and fire be unleashed that it might wash clean the horror, that nuclear fire would be be an acceptable emergency shut off to end such wanton and cruel slaughter... and if thinking through all the logic they concluded that no violence wouldn’t help and they must pursue some peaceful negotiation to stop the slaughter, then their minds recoil and call themselves cowards and the moment of coming to that conclusion would be an ongoing trauma they’d carry with them for the rest of their life, even if they knew they were 100% right. They would meet the “pro-choice” and barely be able to conceal their desire to see them dead or imprisoned... they would meet women who had had abortions and scream bloody murder at them and tell them they deserve the death penalty, the way many of the same people react when presented with women who’d murdered their children, but after their children had left the womb.

The people who were jailed for assassinating abortionists, or fire-bombing clinics would be folk heroes lionized in songs and crowd funded hagiographic documentaries and folk traditions, like John Brown, or John Wilkes Booth, or Louis Reil, or Saco and Vancety, or Huey Newton, or Malcolm X, or David Koresh, or Levoy Finecolm... or hell even just Jesse James, or Killdozer.

Americans abort on average 1 million plus babies a year... that means if abortion is murder and those are human lives, then the 50 years since Roe vs.Wade has been a worse crime than the holocaust, slavery, or the crimes of Stalin, and we’d have to consult a historian to see if they were worse than Mao (on a per capita basis, certainly)...

This would be the worse crime ever commited, the greatest mass slaughter ever perpetrated in human history, and 50 years later our society would remain committed to repeating it in the next 50 years.

If that does not demand violence, then nothing in human history ever has, no even defensive war has ever been justified, and only Jainists and Jehovah’s witnesses are morally acceptable actors. An extreme unexceedable pascifism we know the vast majority of anti-abortion advocates do not endorse, since they overwhelming supported or at-least did not conspicuously oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (over a mere 3000 Americans dead, and a less than a years abortions worth of Iraqis killed by Saddam) and continue to conspicuously “Support our troops” troops that exist to carry out violence, despite their moral commitments saying they can apparently never in human history be justified.

.

When i say this proves “Pro-lifers” clearly do not believe a fetus is an equal human life, thats me being incredibly charitable. That is me extending a overwhelming large olive branch, that is me expressing a stupendous care and concern and sympathy and brotherly love to rival the best 19th century dinner host, the dearest of friends, a benevolent older sibling, a lover, a parent, a mother who on hearing the taped confession of her son to serial murder, doesn’t hesitate once before screaming “you monsters you’ve drugged and tortured him! What threats have you made to my grandchild! He would only say such things to save his daughter’s life!”

My claiming they are full of shit and lying to themselves, to you, and to me, is an expression of love and faith in my fellow man which until now I did not realized I possessed nor was capable of...

Because if I merely took them at their word? If I believed that they believed what they say they believe? They would be monsters.

.

Lets play a game called “Other Possible Holocausts”. Approximately 800,000 babies where aborted this year.

Lets imagine the US government has just announced that crime has gotten to cumbersome and that over the next 3 years it plans to execute every single one of the 2.4 million people in US prisons jails and Jeuvenile detention centres.

Lets imagine that to reform education, the US resolves to kill the bottom 1% of all 80 million students in the country based on an age adjusted standardized test every year.

Lets imagine hatred of the obese takes off, and a policy is passed to resolve America’s 30% obesity rate by the mass instituting of bounties on hunting and killing the obese... that every year 800,000 to 1.5 million tags will be issued for a fee to allow the hunting of the obese in return for monetary rewards on successful hunts and getting to keep the carcasses for meat base animal foods and the manufacture of fuel, or fat based household products. These bounty hunters become known a “whalers”.

Lets imagine the US announces its done with African Americans... if the problem hasn’t been solved since 1619, its not going to be... and so they’re going to genocide all 40 million African Americans at a rate of 2% a year, for the next 50 years.

Lets imagine opposing extremists get in charge and decide the racists rednecks have to go, and so they’ll be forming death squads to roam the South, Appalachia, and the rust belt, with the objective of killing 800,000 poor whites a year, “until the problem is solved”... with many happily stating 50 years of this would be acceptable, while others state it’d be perfectly fine to renew it another 50 years after that.

…

These are all American lives, and according to pro-lifers of equal moral value to the babies aborted every day, no better, no worse.

By saying this and by saying violence is not and cannot be justified to resist it, they are saying that their reactions to any one of the above eventualities would be to continue to live their lives as they have lived the past 50 years.

I do not know how to respond to that. Even if Abortion is truly murder of an ensouled equal human life... The Pro-choicers committing the murders don’t think it is... hell the Nazis murdered 6 million jews and a further 5 million undesirables, but they didn’t think of them as human, they thought they were monstrous and “life unworthy of life”, like a burning man begging you to shoot him so he doesn’t suffer or hurt his fellows... a mercy in a way.

Pro-lifers on the other hand claim these are equal viable human lives of equal status to yours or mine or perhaps even greater.... They’re Children.

And their reaction to the greatest mass slaughter in human history, the reaction of almost half the electorate, who regularly talk about the need to resist tyrrany and defend the weak (as both left and right in the US do, in their way), their reaction is to vote every 4 years, and have it perhaps not even be the #1 issue if the economy seems bad, they have the opportunity to vote for the first black president, or the Orangeman says something crude about Mexicans... they won’t be single issue voters even when it comes to the greatest crime ever committed in human history?

.

I refuse to believe it. Even I, cynical as I am, have to believe we are not that far gone, and the age of men has not come crashing down... i would believe the US capable of such a crime, but to believe that a double digit percentage of Americans could look at that, recognize the victims as their fellow humans,recognize their state and society as committing mass murder of their neighbours, future friends, and relatives...to recognize that they have a moral imperative to act on this... and then just go “welp them’s the breaks, gotta be civilized” because 9 people in black robes said it wasn’t murder?

Holy fuck. No that is not how people work, that is not how humans behave, I cannot accept that, and leftists who spent the summer rioting in response to fewer than a thousand police killings of black men a year, who remember the civil rights and anti-war movements, who kinda vaguely recall that they’re supposed to remember Huey Newton, or Saco and Vanseti, or those Rossen...something people... who like to imagine they’d have been abolitionists in the 19th century. They’re right to call bullshit.

They’re right to call the pro-lifers liars who don’t believe their own messaging, and instead just want to control women’s bodies, after a lie like that to their face, they’re right to treat them with scorn.

…

Pro-life is rescuable as a sentiment and an activist movement...

But not while it claims a Holocaust is going on and somehow magically no violence could ever be justified to resist it, thus lining up all the arguments that will allow the next holocaust to be committed without resistance.

There have been a double digit, perhaps even a triple digit number of mass murders and genocides in the hundreds of thousands or millions of people, since the 20th century. America is enabling its ally Saudi Arabia to commit one against the Yemenis right fucking now.

We need to be very fucking clear about what it is justified to do to members of a regime that commits such a crime, and what it is definitely justified to do to the immediate perpetrators of the murder. And That we will back violent resistance to such a horrible crime by the state even if it serves only to make the resister a martyr we’ll praise, or it degrades “civilization” (what civilization could remain in such a regime?), or it ultimately has no effect (it is on the survivor to try harder)... The major members of the House of Saud deserve the Gallows under international law for what they’re doing in Yemen , as do their American attaches and core enablers... and if that comes from a Judge in the Hauge or from a convoy of irregulars in pickup trucks, or from lone assassins who manage to get through to them, It is justice, and i will praise it.

What we cannot do is pretend that genocides and mass slaughter on unconscionable scales are occurring and then come up with excuses for why we should do nothing and anyone who does resist is a criminal. Or else those excuses will be the ones that allow the next real genocide in the west or on US soil to actually happen.

If there is a genocide or democide or whatever you want to call mass slaughter. You must recognize the justice the violent resistance to it, even if you personally do not participate, or you must admit you were lying about there being such a crime... to say otherwise, to say a state can commit such a crime and still retain its right to your loyalty, to say a people up to and including its victims must obey such a thing, a creature made of bureaucracy that has set its sights on massacring humans by the thousands if not millions... it is to side against the human race in a war of extermination.

And as someone whose pro-choice as they come, I’d much rather, if the pro-lifers really believe its murder, I’d much rather they start a bloody civil war, than for it to become the norm that that is ethically acceptable.

The Muddy War of The Twins

Young twins Roman and Remus are playing in the mud! It's King against Duke in a War against the Mud kingdoms. Which twin will be victorious? Or, will the twins become one kingdom?

Tickletober day 21: Playing Dirty

“I AM REMUS! DUKE OF MUDDY CASTLE!” Remus shouted, standing on a pile of mud.

“WHAT?! WHAT ABOUT ME?!” Roman shouted, standing on another castle.

“You’re the king, silly! BOW DOWN TO THE KING OF DIRT STAIN!” Remus declared, bowing down himself as well.

Roman giggled and cheered. “Yes! Thank you, thank you all! As your new king, I will give you all farm jobs! So you can become rich!” Roman declared.

“Or, you all can join ME! Where you can become rich, WITHOUT working hard!” Remus declared right after him.

“But- you get to work with animals! What could be fun about NOT doing work? You’d get bored!” Roman reacted, feeling annoyed.

“Not if we have mud wars to start…” Remus replied as he made multiple mud balls. “I DECLARE WAR ON DIRT STAIN!” Remus shouted.

“COME ON, MEN! LET’S SHOW MUDDY CASTLE WHO’S THE #1 KINGDOM!” Roman shouted to his fake audience. Roman and Remus both let out loud war cries and started throwing mud balls at each other.

The creative twins were shirtless and completely drenched in mud! The mud ball war only made their muddy exterior even worse. Roman kept throwing mud balls at Remus’s chest and legs, while Remus was aiming for his chest and face! While Roman was well aware getting mud in the eyes really hurts, Roman was also aware of how strong he was! So, he could handle some muddy eyes!

It didn’t take long for the kingdom leaders to gang up on each other. “Surrender now, King!” Remus ordered.

“NEVER!” Roman shouted back.

“Then I shall unlock my most powerful weapon…” Remus warned.

Roman giggled as he went along with it. “oH nO! It CoUlDn’T bE…” Roman reacted.

“That’s right, King Roman…” Remus said with an evil giggle as he rolled up his mud-made sleeves, “Fear! My! FINGERS!” The Duke shouted.

Remus started squeezing Roman’s sides and tickling Roman’s belly button! “hehEHEHEHEY! NOHOHOHOT THIHIHIHIHIS!” Roman shouted.

“But of COURSE! The most evil of weapons MUST be used to take over your mud kingdom! My weapon? TICKLING!” Remus declared proudly.

Roman squealed and only squirmed around more in the mud. “REHEHEHEHEMUHUHUHUS! IHIHIHIHIT TIHIHIHICKLEHEHEHES!” Roman laughed.

Remus gasped. “WhAaAaAt?! It’s not SuPpOsEd To TiCkLe! It’S sUpPoSeD to HuRt!” Remus reacted sarcastically.

Roman shook his head and tried getting him back. He reached his arms up and managed to give him a hip squeeze! “aaaAAAH! Ohoho!” Remus jumped before grabbing his wrists. “Not happening, bro!” Remus said with a smirk.

In an attempt to get the upper hand, Roman placed both his feet against Remus’s chest and gave his body a push! It actually worked miraculous wonders and managed to push Remus right off into the mud puddle!

SPLASH! Remus went! If he wasn’t covered in mud before, he DEFINITELY was NOW!

Roman quickly crawled himself on top of Remus and started successfully squeezing his hips. “Wahaha-HAHAHAHAHAIT! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! UHUHUHUHUNFAHAHAHAIR!” Remus shouted.

Roman scoffed. “Since when was war ever fair?” Roman reminded him.

Remus guffawed at that statement amidst his laughing. Remus knew very well that Roman had a point. But he couldn’t actually tell him that because of Roman’s constant tickling. “THAHAHAHAT’S TRUHUHUHUE, IHIHI GUEHEHEHESS.” Remus managed to tell him.

Roman smiled and gave Remus a small break. “Glad to know you agree!” Roman reacted.

“Joseph Stalin, tho! He was the most unfair of unfair people!” Remus added.

Roman tilted his head and upper body back and forth in uncertainty. “Eeeehh...Adolf Hitler was also pretty bad.” Roman added.

“But Stalin killed SO MANY PEOPLE!” Remus added. “But someone else managed to beat Hitler AND Stalin COMBINED:” Remus added.

Roman dropped his mudball. “...Who? And how many?” Roman asked.

“Mao Dezong. And 78 million people were killed in 33 years.” Remus replied.

Roman widened his eyes and looked down. “I don’t wanna play war anymore.” Roman told him.

“Those wars happened decades ago.” Remus added, before looking at Roman and noticing his fearful face. “Hey...we can join forces if you’d like. We can be the Dirty Castle.” Remus suggested. “We can be the ultimate duo kingdom! And the best part?” Remus declared.

Roman looked up in hope.

“Little bloodshed!” Remus replied.

Roman smiled and stepped on the mudballs he had created earlier. “It’s a deal, Duke.” Roman replied as he shook Remus’s muddy hand. Remus smiled and made an official shake before taking a bit of mud and rubbing it on his forehead like a type of ritual. “King Roman of Dirty Castle.” Remus declared, holding his muddy arm up. When Remus let go of Roman’s hand, Roman bowed to the new mixed kingdom and put his right hand up. “I, King Roman of Dirty Castle, promise to be a loyal, brave and intellectual leader alongside the Duke.” Roman said to the invisible crowd.

“WHAT IN THE WORLD ARE YOU TWO DOING?!” someone shouted from a few metres away. Roman and Remus looked to the right and widened their eyes:

Patton had found them! And Logan was with them! UH OH!

Logan took off his glasses and rubbed his nose. “Boys, boys, boys...What am I going to do with you?” He asked rhetorically in slight annoyance but mostly amusement.

Patton stormed up to them. “You two are covered in mud! Honestly!” Patton reacted, rubbing the mud off Roman’s forehead. “Some of it is already dried onto you!” Patton added in horror.

“Aww, come on Dad! We were having fun! We were having a mud kingdom war, and we just made a truce when you came out!” Remus reacted.

Patton groaned. “War games?” Patton whined in worry.

Logan nodded his head in curiosity. “Hmm...Sounds like you two signed an Act of Union and became one kingdom then.” Logan reacted. He giggled as he pointed at Remus. “Scotland, I’m guessing…” Logan then pointed to Roman. “And England.” Logan assigned.

“Awww yeah! I’m a SCOTTISH VIKING!” Remus shouted in a mediocre scottish accent.

“And I’m the Biscuits and Tea Country, known as England!” Roman declared in a fairly accurate english accent while lifting his pinky finger up and pretending to drink a cup of tea.

Logan was giggling at the two, before he was elbowed in the shoulder by Patton. “What?” Logan asked.

“We need to get these two hosed down.” Patton told him. “Where are your shirts?” Patton asked.

Roman and Remus both pointed to the car. Sure enough, their black and green costume shirts were laying on the engine hood of the car, slightly wet and dirt-stained. Patton sighed and decided to grab both kids hands and drag them to the water hose.

When the water hose was turned on towards their bodies, Roman full on shrieked and started shivering right away! “IT’S FREEZING!” Roman shouted.

Meanwhile, Remus didn’t mind it and actually tried to drink the water despite the mud from his face running down into his mouth. “Remus, stop drinking the water. It’s not drinkable!” Logan ordered.

Remus just laughed. “Tastes fine to me!” he declared back, sticking his tongue out to him. Logan rolled his eyes and continued to wash the kids off.

When the water reached their bellies however, both of them bursted out laughing and squirmed around like crazy! “IHIHIHIT TIHIHICKLEHEHES SOHOHOHO MUHUHUHUCH!” Roman shouted, struggling to cover up the ticklish spot with his hands. Logan kept constantly moving the hose around, making it almost impossible to cover up any ticklish spot!

Remus had already collapsed onto the ground, and was kitty fighting the air while he flopped around and rolled all over the place. “Remus, hold still!” Patton begged, bringing the hose water to Remus’s legs and aiming at his thighs. Remus went BALLISTIC after that! “NAHAHAHAHAHA! THIHIHIHIHIHIHIGHS TIHIHICKLHLHEHEHEHEHEHAHAHAHAHA!” Remus shouted at Patton.

“I know, but this would go a lot quicker if you stopped moving!” Patton told Remus.

At the same time, Logan was washing the back of Roman’s scalp off. This was making Roman all giggly and super squirmy. “Ihihihihi cahahahahan’t! Tohohohohohoo tihihihicklihihihish!” Roman giggled.

“Funny...Your brother is getting tickled even worse than you. I don’t think you should be complaining, Ro.” Logan warned.

When the kids were hosed down enough, Patton and Logan summoned them some towels and let them dry off. The kids were all giggly and squirmy by the time the tick-I mean hosing down, had finished. Thankfully though, the giggles seemed to die down by the time they got into the bathtub.

Logan and Patton were both washing the twins. Patton was washing Remus’s hair, while Logan was rubbing a sponge on Roman’s back.

Roman let out a relaxed sigh. “I feel like a king.” Roman told his brother.

“Me too, bro.” Remus said, melting from the scalp massages.

Patton rolled his eyes but giggled at the silly kids. It didn’t take long for the calming bath to turn playful as Patton tickled Remus’s neck. “Mmmm...this feels- BAHA! HAHAhahahaha!” Remus said before being interrupted by surprised laughter.

Patton was smirking and scratching at the back of Remus’s neck. “Feeling relaxed yet?” Patton teased.

“NOOOHOhohohoho! Come ohohohon!” Remus begged, reaching his arms up and over his head to grab Patton’s hands.

Roman couldn’t stop the evil snicker from leaving his lips as a mean idea came to mind. Roman poked Remus’s right armpit and scratched a finger on Remus’s left armpit.

“HahahAHAHAHAHAHAHA! ROHOHOHOHO! STAHAHAHAHAP!” Remus shouted to him, dropping his arms down and squishing Roman’s fingers. Remus’s laughter and Roman’s evil giggles echoed through the bathroom more, thanks to the poor soundproof walls. Not only that, but the water was causing the sound to bounce all over the place as well! That just made the room almost chaotically echoey!

“OHOHOKAHAY, OHOHOHOKAHAHAHAHAY! YOHOHOU CAHAHAN STAHAHAP!” Remus ordered. “WEHEHE UNIHIHITEHED, REHEHEHEMBEHER?!” Remus asked as well.

“Oh, I remember. I just wanted to tickle you.” Roman teased before retreating his fingers.

Remus’s laughter slowed to giggles a little and went slightly limp. But the giggling continued to plague him, thanks to Patton’s nimble fingers STILL tickling his neck.

“Okay, Patton. You can stop now.” Roman suggested.

“What if I don’t wanna?” Patton asked.

Roman sat himself up straight and made himself look triumphant. “I, King Roman, order you to cease your tickle attacks on the Duke of Dirty Castle!” Roman ordered proudly.

“Oh?” Patton reacted with a smirk, before looking at Logan.

Logan gave him a smirk back and wrapped his arms around Roman’s bare chest. “Now YOU listen here, King Roman of Dirty Castle! I am a king too! King of this household! And YOU shall bow to me!” Logan ordered, tickling Roman’s upper ribs in the process.

Roman shrieked and bursted out laughing! “BAHAHAHAHA! HEHEHEHEYYY!” Roman laughed, squirming everywhere and splashing water all over the place.

“Goodness gracious! We have a fighter here, Padre.” Logan warned. “Should I cease or continue? If I continue, you may end up getting wet or worse: get your glasses wet.” Logan warned.

Patton bursted out laughing at that and leaned back. “You have glasses too! And they’re gonna get wet as well!” Patton added.

“Well, looks like we’ll both have to sacrifice our sight to conquer THIS kingdom…” Logan decided.

Roman and Remus looked at each other with confident smirks on their faces. “I’ll get Logan!” Roman declared.

“I’ll get Patton!” Remus declared back.

“rrRRAAAAAAAAWWWWWWRRRR!”

The twins screamed to their older sides and started tickling the daylights out of them! Their wet and soapy fingers only increased the ticklish sensations, and made their fingers more slippery while tickling. It didn’t take long for Patton and Logan to fall onto their back, and for Roman and Remus to jump onto them and continue their war against the other kingdom!

Even after being hosed and bathed...the twins never truly forgot about the war games they played. The only difference was:

There were more players! ...whether the adults liked it or not.

What’s your current relationship with god? I’m very curious lmao

I’m sorry if this sounds incomprehensible and rambly and disjointed or pretentious. I care a lot more about this than almost anything else in the world and I wish I could do a better job of explaining myself. But I feel like why I believe in God or what my relationship with him is like is like trying to explain who I am. And I’m just the accumulation of everything I’ve ever experienced or that I think and I feel like it’s really important that I communicate it correctly so here is my attempt.

Here’s a video that’s really good that I think will give some good background information. If you don’t want to read all of this, the video is probably enough to explain.

TLDR: This isn’t the way things are supposed to be. Death isn’t supposed to happen, it isn’t a part of the natural order of things. God loved us so much he died to fix it, and rose again to defeat death. God loves me and I love him, and I’ve never found peace or fulfillment like that in anything else.

I hope this makes sense anon let me know if you have any questions or if I misinterpreted your question. 

TW suicide // grief // abuse // rape mention (not v bad or graphic or anything)

Long version:

I think I've always thought that there's something naturally (for lack of a better word) poetic about existing. Not really meaning that it's good, but kind of that everything feels really purposeful it seems to flow together like an old epic. Everything seems intensely meaningful to me.

I've always thought that life was tragic. That death is a fracture in the way things are, like we live in the ancient ruins of a long lost civilization.

And I've always thought that life seems like an incomprehensibly wonderful gift, because how can there be tragedy if there isn't anything worth losing? But somehow it seems like peace is the basic way things are, that normalcy isn't normal at all but like this status quo of goodness which makes bad things happening not only heart breaking but surprising.

Reconciling all of those ideas is really confusing.

I'm a strong proponent of thinking analytically about what you believe since the answer we choose to the question of whether or not God exists is like quite literally something we bet our lives on. We bet our life that God exists or that he doesn't, that things have meaning anchored in an external source or that they don't. 

So while I grew up a Christian I've never felt really dead in it. I want to be uncomfortable. I want to be stubborn in asking questions and I don't have a problem with questioning authorities on why they believe what they believe—especially if they really confidently assert it. I want to be able to know things and understand them.

My junior year of high school three of my closest childhood friends died, and several others almost died. I remember sitting up at like two am listening to twenty one pilots self titled album just like seething and exhausted asking lord why would you abandon me like that?

Some other really horrible things happened to people that I cared about, I felt abandoned and rejected by Christians just for being broken, some of them caused it or contributed to the trauma and abuse. How could people who claimed the name of God do that?

My debate partner's best friend killed himself the same year that my friends died, and he became an atheist and I stayed a Christian. We fought about it a lot. I really seriously considered becoming an atheist.

The thing that I couldn't accept was the lack of eternality. 

Really ironically I think I stayed a Christian for the same reason that my friend became an atheist. We were both asking why all of the living world is crying out in anguish. We both wanted to die. We both were angry. We both were horrified.

My friend thought that the question of “where is God?” was harder to answer than “why is there meaning to death?”

I'm a Christian because I'm horrified. He's an atheist for the same reason.

If you don’t feel like reading it, here’s the TLDR: there is no reason for someone to do something or not do something if God isn’t there to tell them to. There isn’t a moral grounding for law.

Arthur Leff was an atheist law professor at Yale in the eighties, and he wrote about the moral grounding for laws in his essay, Unspeakable Ethics, Unnatural Law. The question he was asking was what can we do to ground morality? What can we do to prove objectively that there are things one ought to do and things one ought not do?

I am unwilling to accept that. There is something evil about abuse, neglect, rape, torture. There is something about these things that violates human rights, human dignity. There's something about them that goes against objective moral law.

But without God there is no moral law. So I wouldn't be able to say, "you should never rape someone, because rape is wrong." And everything that I had experienced flew in the face of that.

Dr. Leff wrote this about that question;

“All I can say is this: it looks as if we are all we have. Given what we know about ourselves and each other, this is an extraordinarily unappetizing prospect; looking around the world, it appears that if all men are brothers, the ruling model is Cain and Abel. Neither reason, nor love, nor even terror, seems to have worked to make us "good," and worse than that, there is no reason why anything should. Only if ethics were something unspeakable by us, could law be unnatural, and therefore unchallengeable. As things now stand, everything is up for grabs.

Nevertheless:

Napalming babies is bad.

Starving the poor is wicked.

Buying and selling each other is depraved.

Those who stood up to and died resisting Hitler, Stalin, Amin, and Pol Pot-and General Custer too-have earned salvation.

Those who acquiesced deserve to be damned.

There is in the world such a thing as evil.

[All together now:] Sez who?

God help us.”

In the end, it comes down to this; Do I believe that the complexity of the universe is because there was someone intelligent actively involved in its design, do I believe that information, reason, logic, emotion, and morality exist and are reliable because they have grounding in God’s identity? Do I believe that God is who he says he is?

And I guess the answer to those questions was yes.

I saw God. He was there in the stillness - in the sunrise and sunset and at 2 am after I couldn't cry anymore. I felt him. And I know part of his goodness that I wish I never had to know. I felt like I was lying breathless bleeding out in a gutter watching the stars. Almost like a pause - just a moment in time where I was hurt enough, still enough to hear his voice.

One of the most important things I learned is that life is not hopeless.  If life is a story, then the last chapter of the book has already been written. This is the premise of the song It is Well with My Soul by Horatio G. Spafford.

“When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,

When sorrows like sea billows roll;

Whatever my lot, God has taught me to say,

It is well, it is well, with my soul.

My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought

My sin, not in part but the whole,

Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,

Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, o my soul” 

The powers of evil and darkness can take away my friends, my sanity, my family, and even my life, but God has already saved me, and I can find peace in spite of my circumstances. Three of my friends died, but God has already conquered death. I feel powerless, but God is powerful. I feel abandoned, but God loves me so much that he died a horrible torturous death for me. Living in light of that is peace. 

Whenever I felt like I couldn’t keep going there would be something to stop me. I heard his voice in music, and in my friends that held me when I cried, and in morning glories on my morning walk. I kept lists of all of the times this happened, every time that someone encouraged me to keep going, every time that someone would quote a Bible verse when I was crying out for God to answer me, every time that the world paused. Everything asked me the same question, do you think it means nothing? Do you think that there is a direction that we’re going? Are we coming from nothing and going toward nowhere?

I had friends who heard him too. He was so gentle to us. I wasn’t able to go to church, I wasn’t able to listen to worship music but the LGBTQ+ community took care of me, they were isolated from church as well. There was enough for me in that God promised he would take care of me, and he did. He died for me. He talked to my trans friend and said, “listen, your parents have rejected you and said you’ll never be your son, but I am a good father. I love you. Be my son instead.”

God mourned with me. He saw everything and he was angry. I was able to breathe because I knew that in the end there will be justice for abuse victims, because God said that he is the holder of justice, and vengeance will be his.

When one of my friends was hospitalized I stood outside during the beginning of a thunderstorm and watched the clouds and the sky darken and lightning flash across the sky.

Even the wind and the sea obey him. He asked me if I trust him. 

I guess my answer was yes.

In spite of everything that I went through, I was more thoroughly convinced that I ever was before that things matter. I was convinced that abuse is evil. I was convinced that death is an abomination. I was convinced that these laws of morality are woven into the fabric of the universe. I was convinced that God died to save us from that reality. I was convinced he loved me.

I still am

Why is Daenerys a tankie?

It was just a glib post, but I do think it’s pretty true. Basically, ‘tankies’ are the subgroup within the socialist/Marxist camp who think that all death and destruction, famine, genocide, etc. is acceptable so long as it furthers the revolution. A lot of ‘tankies’ still support Mao and Stalin. For instance, they will say that Mao only killed landlords and oppressors. Of course, Mao’s cultural revolution killed millions. But this is considered justified as it led to the endgame of a communist society. Stalin had people tortured and killed, like he had quotas of numbers of people who would need to be purged. He did win world war two (Americans may be surprised to learn D Day was a distraction and 9/10 nazis were killed by Soviets), but at what cost? He shot at his own soldiers when they tried to flee.

Stalin and Mao didn’t JUST do bad things. If you overlook the death and destruction, there was a lot of good that happened in the transition from feudal society to communist societies. Progress was certainly made from a socialist perspective for the underclasses. But there are other ways to achieve change, and thinking everything needs to be awash in blood means that you don’t think about individuals so much as the masses, but in doing so, life is worse for the masses.

Now, in calling Daenerys a tankie, I am actually crediting her with positive intentions. This is not truly Dany hate. I am taking her at her word that she wants a better world, wants to free people from bondage, break the wheel, etc. There is an argument to be made that Daenerys is a completely self interested actor, but for the sake of the Dany is a tankie argument, we’re being pro-Dany and agreeing with everything her stans say.

After destroying a city, in the final episode, Dany makes it pretty clear that she wants to bring revolution to the entire world. If she is liberating people from servitude and ‘breaking the wheel’, we can interpret this as a sort of Maoist or Soviet style revolution. The radical philosopher Zizek agrees that Dany wanted this kinda leftist revolution, and Dany stans have certainly been pushing this since forever. There’s other parallels. Daenerys is a totalitarian who makes the ‘party line’ that everyone else needs to follow. Jon was “””elected””” by his people, and yet to Daenerys this means nothing. There were lots of semi-elected nationalist leaders that Stalin crushed as he took power over his half of Europe after WW2.

During WW2, those who did not aid Soviet partisans were often murdered by Soviets, even though they were Soviet citizens and acting out of fear or just trying to survive. This immediately reminds me of Daenerys being upset people didn’t overthrow Cersei for her, and burning it all down. IRL Tankies justify stuff by this by saying it was necessary to defeat fascism. But that’s bullshit, since most of these people were not fascists. Just like the people of King’s Landing were just people.

I’ll just add Vice’s definition of Tankie as it’s used in 2020:

Tankie is a pejorative term used mostly by young Democratic Socialists (and other leftists) to describe people who—as you might expect—like tanks. Specifically, tankies are said to admire some of the more bellicose leftist luminaries like, well, Joseph Stalin. In so doing, they give some form of a thumbs-up to the Soviet Union's vast war machine (hey, that war machine defeated the Nazis after all!). Or they may go so far as to deny, or rationalize, the enormous death toll caused by The Great Purge, which kept the USSR ideologically pure at the cost of millions of lives. Perhaps needless to say, most American socialists aren't ready to take this plunge, and probably never will be.

Maybe you — Dany stan or tankie — may think that the only way to a socialist revolution is fire and blood/purge/whatever — this isn’t true! Those who advocate for a more moderate revolutionary stance just get purged or sidelined by tankies/those tankies stan.

(For those being like ‘wait this person is hating on Dany, they must be a Sansa fan! A Jonsa! I will declare both my Sansa stan and Jonsa shipper status. However, I do not think Sansa Stark is a leftist at all, and would probably have been pro-Hilary or pro-Biden because she likes the status quo and fears instability. I am a socialist but I don’t think my fave is one. Jon might be a Bernie fan, but he’s not a true revolutionary either. And at the end of the day, this is all anachronistic).

I’m sorry if this sounds incomprehensible and rambly and disjointed or pretentious. I care a lot more about this than almost anything else in the world and I wish I could do a better job of explaining myself. But I feel like why I believe in God or what my relationship with him is like is like trying to explain who I am. And I’m just the accumulation of everything I’ve ever experienced or that I think and I feel like it’s really important that I communicate it correctly so here is my attempt.

Here’s a video that’s really good that I think will give some good background information. If you don’t want to read all of this, the video is probably enough to explain.

TLDR: This isn’t the way things are supposed to be. Death isn’t supposed to happen, it isn’t a part of the natural order of things. God loved us so much he died to fix it, and rose again to defeat death. God loves me and I love him, and I’ve never found peace or fulfillment like that in anything else.

I hope this makes sense anon let me know if you have any questions or if I misinterpreted your question.

TW suicide // grief // abuse // rape mention (not v bad or graphic or anything)

Long version:

I think I've always thought that there's something naturally (for lack of a better word) poetic about existing. Not really meaning that it's good, but kind of that everything feels really purposeful it seems to flow together like an old epic. Everything seems intensely meaningful to me.

I've always thought that life was tragic. That death is a fracture in the way things are, like we live in the ancient ruins of a long lost civilization.

And I've always thought that life seems like an incomprehensibly wonderful gift, because how can there be tragedy if there isn't anything worth losing? But somehow it seems like peace is the basic way things are, that normalcy isn't normal at all but like this status quo of goodness which makes bad things happening not only heart breaking but surprising.

Reconciling all of those ideas is really confusing.

I'm a strong proponent of thinking analytically about what you believe since the answer we choose to the question of whether or not God exists is like quite literally something we bet our lives on. We bet our life that God exists or that he doesn't, that things have meaning anchored in an external source or that they don't.

So while I grew up a Christian I've never felt really dead in it. I want to be uncomfortable. I want to be stubborn in asking questions and I don't have a problem with questioning authorities on why they believe what they believe—especially if they really confidently assert it. I want to be able to know things and understand them.

My junior year of high school three of my closest childhood friends died, and several others almost died. I remember sitting up at like two am listening to twenty one pilots self titled album just like seething and exhausted asking lord why would you abandon me like that?

Some other really horrible things happened to people that I cared about, I felt abandoned and rejected by Christians just for being broken, some of them caused it or contributed to the trauma and abuse. How could people who claimed the name of God do that?

My debate partner's best friend killed himself the same year that my friends died, and he became an atheist and I stayed a Christian. We fought about it a lot. I really seriously considered becoming an atheist.

The thing that I couldn't accept was the lack of eternality.

Really ironically I think I stayed a Christian for the same reason that my friend became an atheist. We were both asking why all of the living world is crying out in anguish. We both wanted to die. We both were angry. We both were horrified.

My friend thought that the question of “where is God?” was harder to answer than “why is there meaning to death?”

I'm a Christian because I'm horrified. He's an atheist for the same reason.

If you don’t feel like reading it, here’s the TLDR: there is no reason for someone to do something or not do something if God isn’t there to tell them to. There isn’t a moral grounding for law.

Arthur Leff was an atheist law professor at Yale in the eighties, and he wrote about the moral grounding for laws in his essay, Unspeakable Ethics, Unnatural Law. The question he was asking was what can we do to ground morality? What can we do to prove objectively that there are things one ought to do and things one ought not do?

I am unwilling to accept that. There is something evil about abuse, neglect, rape, torture. There is something about these things that violates human rights, human dignity. There's something about them that goes against objective moral law.

But without God there is no moral law. So I wouldn't be able to say, "you should never rape someone, because rape is wrong." And everything that I had experienced flew in the face of that.

Dr. Leff wrote this about that question;

“All I can say is this: it looks as if we are all we have. Given what we know about ourselves and each other, this is an extraordinarily unappetizing prospect; looking around the world, it appears that if all men are brothers, the ruling model is Cain and Abel. Neither reason, nor love, nor even terror, seems to have worked to make us "good," and worse than that, there is no reason why anything should. Only if ethics were something unspeakable by us, could law be unnatural, and therefore unchallengeable. As things now stand, everything is up for grabs.

Nevertheless:

Napalming babies is bad.

Starving the poor is wicked.

Buying and selling each other is depraved.

Those who stood up to and died resisting Hitler, Stalin, Amin, and Pol Pot-and General Custer too-have earned salvation.

Those who acquiesced deserve to be damned.

There is in the world such a thing as evil.

[All together now:] Sez who?

God help us.”

In the end, it comes down to this; Do I believe that the complexity of the universe is because there was someone intelligent actively involved in its design, do I believe that information, reason, logic, emotion, and morality exist and are reliable because they have grounding in God’s identity? Do I believe that God is who he says he is?

And I guess the answer to those questions was yes.

I saw God. He was there in the stillness - in the sunrise and sunset and at 2 am after I couldn't cry anymore. I felt him. And I know part of his goodness that I wish I never had to know. I felt like I was lying breathless bleeding out in a gutter watching the stars. Almost like a pause - just a moment in time where I was hurt enough, still enough to hear his voice.

One of the most important things I learned is that life is not hopeless.  If life is a story, then the last chapter of the book has already been written. This is the premise of the song It is Well with My Soul by Horatio G. Spafford.

“When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,

When sorrows like sea billows roll;

Whatever my lot, God has taught me to say,

It is well, it is well, with my soul.

My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought

My sin, not in part but the whole,

Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,

Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, o my soul”

The powers of evil and darkness can take away my friends, my sanity, my family, and even my life, but God has already saved me, and I can find peace in spite of my circumstances. Three of my friends died, but God has already conquered death. I feel powerless, but God is powerful. I feel abandoned, but God loves me so much that he died a horrible torturous death for me. Living in light of that is peace.

Whenever I felt like I couldn’t keep going there would be something to stop me. I heard his voice in music, and in my friends that held me when I cried, and in morning glories on my morning walk. I kept lists of all of the times this happened, every time that someone encouraged me to keep going, every time that someone would quote a Bible verse when I was crying out for God to answer me, every time that the world paused. Everything asked me the same question, do you think it means nothing? Do you think that there is a direction that we’re going? Are we coming from nothing and going toward nowhere?

I had friends who heard him too. He was so gentle to us. I wasn’t able to go to church, I wasn’t able to listen to worship music but the LGBTQ+ community took care of me, they were isolated from church as well. There was enough for me in that God promised he would take care of me, and he did. He died for me. He talked to my trans friend and said, “listen, your parents have rejected you and said you’ll never be your son, but I am a good father. I love you. Be my son instead.”

God mourned with me. He saw everything and he was angry. I was able to breathe because I knew that in the end there will be justice for abuse victims, because God said that he is the holder of justice, and vengeance will be his.

When one of my friends was hospitalized I stood outside during the beginning of a thunderstorm and watched the clouds and the sky darken and lightning flash across the sky.

Even the wind and the sea obey him. He asked me if I trust him.

I guess my answer was yes.

In spite of everything that I went through, I was more thoroughly convinced that I ever was before that things matter. I was convinced that abuse is evil. I was convinced that death is an abomination. I was convinced that these laws of morality are woven into the fabric of the universe. I was convinced that God died to save us from that reality. I was convinced he loved me.

I still am

One thing annoys about genre fiction is "everybody on evil side is in it for themselves and doesn't give shit about the ideology" thing, at least in war narratives. Yes, people do fight for and use agendas they don't believe in for personal gain, but more often than not, it makes the group just generic bunch of villain cliches and makes whatever they are meant to represent loose meaning. "They stand for being jerks and being jerks is bad!"

Overly Sarcastic Production actually summed it up very well one of the problems with morality in genre fiction, most of it comes out of War Morality, aka

Our Team

vs.

There Team

Everybody else needs to be understood on the grounds of are they helping our team against their team, or if visa versa.  Think about a very limited view of WWII, the Axis are the bad guys, and anybody who helps you fight them (Stalin, de Gaul) are the good guys.  That example actually works out pretty well because the Axis were some of the worse regimes in human history, but if you take that same narrative and apply it to a less morally straightforward war, like WWI or The Cold War and it gets ugly real fast.  

(whoops) 

Its morality just whose team is going to win, but with much more world ending consequences.  Which sometimes is the right take for a story, like again...WWII or the American Civil War, wars which I think are far more justified than most, though I think of each as Grey vs. black morality than White and Black morality.  

The problem is that most genre fiction is still using this moral framework even if they aren’t necessarily aware of it, so the evil characters are kinda...written backwards.  Like, they exist to be the antagonists for the heroes and justify the wartime framing of morality, and then to make that framing feel less...creepy you need to then make the other team be evil not just “in the way of our team”. So you give them negative qualities, they are sadistic, they are mass murderers, they oppress women, blah blah blah.  So it can be tricky to give them ideologies because...they exist to be antagonists. 

The original Star wars does this, its basically just a “our team there team” movie, the Empire’s role in the story is to be the enemy army that the heroes can fight against cause its a war movie.  And to make that ok, and not have the audience thinking that war might be an ugly business, we need to make the other team be bad.  So they are given fascist imagery, and do war crimes, and have a bunch of British officers being super snobby, but there isn’t really an ideology to the empire beyond “vague order and be massive dicks”  

The Dark Side has an ideology in the trilogy, but both Sith seem to view the Empire as a tool.  

(....are you the baddies?)

An interesting twist to this Fire Nation from Avatar.  In the first Season they are the Star Wars Empire: Imperial Japan Edition, though the show makes a lot more effort to humanize individual Fire Nation people.  But as an institution they were the bad guys and Ozai is just a giant black hole of evil and they all have evil boats ect ect.  

(I feel like between these and Star Destroyers, there is a whole specific evil empire aesthetic” 

Season 2 and early season 3 actually play with this though, by showing us how the Fire Nation justifies their imperialism to their own citizens, which is...remarkably similar to the actual justifications used by real life Imperial Japan, turning the comparison from an aesthetic similarity to an actual commentary on Imperial Japan.  Ozai being such a black hole of evil though did undermine it. 

(The greater Four Nation Co-Prosperity Sphere) 

Also not all good/evil narratives are actually doing wartime morality, even if they are set in a war. Pan’s Labyrinth is a super moralistic movie, with a very clear cut objective bad guy in the character of Captain Vidal, who is contrasted with our protagonist Ophelia.  But it isn’t a war movie, its instead a morality focused fairy tale, so Vidal is more a representation of the evils of fascism, and his destruction at the end is tied to the main theme of the movie.  

The point i’m getting at here is that there is a difference between the antagonist and therefore have negative traits, vs. people having negative traits and thus  being antagonists.   The way you can tell the difference is this.

Are the antagonists here so that the hero can have somebody to fight?  

or

Are the antagonists there because the story is about the rejection of what they represent?

(cough)

"because a lot of folks on this site for example are buying into conservative mindsets even as they battle conservatives" Can you elaborate on this a bit more? It is interesting.

Ok so you know how in the build up to the American Civil War a lot of white Northerners were fiercely opposed to slavery but were still extremely racist in terms of their world view, they basically were right for the wrong reasons.  A lot of leftists here seem to doing the same thing, they oppose conservatism but don’t actually doubt many of the core principles of conservatism.  This is especially obvious when looking at tactics or methods 

1) Accepting Right wing Framing of Issues.  @randomshoes actually made this observation to me, but I’m going to steal it for this post here

Basically when the Right frames an issue, its often this massively simplistic binary narrative like “Capitalism good, Communism bad” or “The West is totally a real thing and it is good and anything on western is bad” or “Christianity=good, nonchristain=bad”  And so many leftists, rather than challenging the binary just accept it but invert it.  So I see people being like “Lets downplay the crimes of Joseph Stalin” rather than “actually making it capitalism vs. communism is a massively simplistic way of viewing extremely complicated political movements that emerged over centuries”.  Or people going on to these extremely nasty anti Christian movements rather than just accepting 

The most extreme version of this is that I sometimes see leftists support literal conservatives because they happen to be opposed to Westernization, like I see leftists justifying ISIS or even Japanese Ultra Nationalist.  

2) The desire for everything bad to be traced back to a single unified source.  If you ever have the misfortune to watch Right wing News like I do, their world view is one where everything they don’t like from socialism to Islamic fundamentalism to Crime to Hollywood to racial minorities  are all one mass that they just call “enemies” ussually led by George Soros or some other antisemitic stereotype.  Because a core part of rightist thought process is an embrace of intellectual simplicity and rejection of complexity.  They like nice simple narratives with clear bad guys and good guys and where they don’t have to imagine things in a more nuanced or complicated manner.   

So it is super infuriating when the left buys into it

Both me and @randomshoes have met leftist who honest to god believe that there is some council of rich white men who are sitting around table being like “ok so the 15th meeting of the Oppressors meeting has met, what are some new ways we can make the world shittier for black people?”  There is no secret cabal of oppressors out there, there are systems, that is why its called “systemic oppression”.  There are people who want to spread or take advantage of that oppression (see entries, Koch Brothers, Donald Trump, the Entire Republican Party) but the systems go beyond just the right.  For that matter, they go beyond capitalism itself in many ways. 

To use one concrete example, so many people at my college were 100% convinced that capitalism invented patriarchy and racism which like....no, capitalism doesn’t exist until the 17th century (ish) while racism goes back to like...all of recorded history.  Even if we specifically mean “racism based on skin color” well that was invented by the Spanish in their conquest of the Americas and Spain was very much not a capitalist power.  Meanwhile patriarchy like...have you studied the ancient greeks.

I could go on through literally dozens of examples of this, but the left can be just as guilty as “all of my problems can be traced to one issue” as the right, though unlike the right at least the left has real actual problems.  

3) Utter lack of Nuance.  Again if you spend time on right wing media, you notice that they tend towards dramatic demononization vs. idealizing of public figures.  Anybody in their circle is good, and those that aren’t are pure evil.    because again....complex thinking is literally antithetical to right wing thinking.  It would be really really nice if the left could avoid this...but nope.  

This can be the sort of Moral Cholesterol thing that I’ve talked about before (and thank you @archpaladin for coining that term), where people are like “oh i morally agree with this movie therefore it is good” or the inverse which is just the most simplistic way you can possibly view art.  Or it can be how certain elements of the left views historical figures.  

You see this the most with equivocation, I have met leftists being like “oh the US interment camps are equatable to the Rape of Nanking” which like...no....one is bad one is far far worse.  

I could write a whole series of post on this one its 

4) Embrace of Conspiracy Theories, Pseudo History, Pseudo Science etc

The Right thrives on conspiracy theories, because again...facts don’t care about feelings but I get really testy when I see the left embracing these tactics as well. Again, the right is worse at this, I’m not equivocating, but lets remember Anti Vaxxers were a left wing bullshit theory. Actually the entire “new Age” movement is rife with grifters, conspiracy theorists, and associated bullshit.  

I mean on tumblr you will see posts talking about how China really discovered American (nope), how Beethoven was African (nope), how a Jewish lobby controls Washington (ugg) or 

I mean just a few days ago, a classmate of mine was claiming that Christianity invented patriarchy and mentioned the example of “like with overthrowing cleopatra” which like....nooo on every possible level

This goes from annoying to outright sinister when you take into account that some leftists are willing to serve as apologists for certain horrific regimes, like I keep finding Mao apologists on this site.  

5) Mob tactics.  Again, the Right is so much worse about this since they deliberately artificially create mobs for the purpose of mass harassment (cough Gamergate cough) but the left is pretty guilty of this as well, I refer to you that entire contra points fiasco as one example.  

6) Not Checking Sources.  I swear to god, if I could get everybody on tumblr to change just one thing about their behavior it would be

.....to get ride of the nazis...

but somewhere on the list would be this public service announcement 

IF YOU SEE SOMETHING CLAIMED ON TUMBLR.....DOUBLE CHECK IT FIRST

the amount of times i see people just spreading utter bullshit that was just posted on this site which a basic google search could stop is just...ugg

7) Nostalgic.  I see a lot of leftists engaging in primordial ism, romanticism and “appeals to nature fallacies.  Again you will find a lot of leftists indulging in “oh things were better before modernity” nonsense

8) Fetishistic of violence, especially revolutionary violence, ignoring the consequences that tend to emerge from that.  Still better than the right obviously

9) Finally dehumanization.  This one i’m a bit understanding of, after all the Alt Right are basically evil, and the Republican are a death c ult at this point, but even so quite a few elements of the left are just a bit too gleeful.  And the thing about that militant mindset is that while it might be directed against bad people at first, it quickly can get corrupted.

Take RadFems for example, a group who I’ve always thought were a great example of anti intellectualism, militancy and violence from the start, with their almost Manichean attitude towards men.  The thing is that this approach didn’t really hurt any men ,not really but it was this “with us or against us attitude” that lead many of them to go on to become TERFS.  

This “the enemy must be destroyed” attitude is like a poison which sort of consumed yourself in it, and leads to hurting those who can’t fight back.  

In Short, the left frustrates me when it behaves like the right, who are utterly awful at their core. 

My Character’s Names!

After asking about other Writeblr’s and what inspired them to give their characters the names they did, I decided to make a post on the reasons my own have the names they’ve ended up with. Note: Some are pretty basic reasons whereas others are really complex and detailed.

Let’s get started!

ALEXANDER LUDWIG FREISCHMIDT

A pretty simple one. I gave him the name Alexander back when I was nine and first created the series, and it’s just stuck. Although, I have intertwined a more complex storyline into his name, but shhh, spoilers ;)

His middle and last name have changed from Robert Neston to what you see above. Ludwig is his father’s name, and I chose Freischmidt because Frei is German for free (the Protectionary Guard were originally more liberators than the peaceful police/detective hybrid they are now). Schmidt is pretty common in Germany (when I first created the Empire’s, they were based on countries and Phinea’s was Germany) so I decided to add that in because he seems an Average Joe.

MIRIAM ELENA ARNETTE

Miriam originally went by Maria, with Miriam always being her formal name, but now she always goes by the latter. I picked it because of the fact it means ‘wished for’ and, despite being rejected by her father, he did want a girl originally. Additionally, it’s deemed an older name by a lot and she acts like a snarky grandmother at times.

She had a different surname, Jayflight, but I changed it when I realised that while my novel is fantasy, it isn’t that sort of whimsical subbranch anymore. I always pictured Anton (her great-grandfather) having amber eyes and decided she was to have them too. My dog has amber eyes and so I decided to make his name ‘Arnie’ into the more formal ‘Arnette’ as her surname.

Finally, her middle name is thanks to some wider reading for my A-Level contemporary Russian History course (there’ll be more on this topic for Dimitri). Princess Charlotte, later known as Elena Pavlovna, was described as, “an exceptional girl, highly intelligent and mature for her age of 15,” Miriam is also described as similar, but Schadenfreude will determine whether this is actually true or not haha

SEBASTIAN PHINEAS ALEXANDER SCHWARZ

Sebastian’s first middle name and his surname are the same as his father’s, so I’ll explain the choices behind the two in his profile.

Alexander is after Al Freischmidt. Alex was born when his parents were still in school and since the ‘third wheel’ of their friendship group was Dimitri, Phineas also saw him a lot. Phineas and Juliana weren’t really bothered over children but babysat Alex a lot. So, they eventually decided to give Sebastian the middle name of Alexander as a homage to the boy who made them realise they wanted children together.

Sebastian is from an experience of my own. When I was 5 or 6, I got invited to a birthday party trip to the cinema by a kid called Sebastian (who I haven’t seen in over a decade now) and when I got there, I realised that the 10 people he invited were all male bar me. Since at that age, most children think the opposite biological sex have some contagious disgusting disease, it just reminds me of a time where I broke what is deemed as the norm. And Sebastian is a rebel without a cause character, so that’s the sort of thing he does daily. 

AIDEN WILLIAM AND NOAH VINCENT DONEGALL

I’ve put the brothers together because the reasons behind their names are almost identical- their first names are puns, their middle names are relatives, and their surname is the same.

Aiden is the wholesome bean of the group that gives people advice rather than making salty remarks at their failures. Essentially, he ‘Aids’ them in a useful way rather than making the situation worse. Noah, on the other hand, it the smart one of the group, and in my accent, his name and ‘knower’ are pronounced the same.

William was the name of the Grand Master of Willsborg when Aiden was born, and also a kind of pun as he ‘wills people on’ (yes puns are my forte pls don’t hate), whereas Noah is named after his grandfather, who is a moderately important character in Schadenfreude. He doesn’t particularly like Vincent though for a number of reasons, but the two have very serious personalities.

Originally, Noah was the only brother and was of Irish descent (now he’s English-Irish), and so I decided to make a reference to geography (none of this is political, mind). Donegal is in the northern part of the Republic of Ireland but is technically not ‘Northern Ireland’, which is similar to how Noah is almost a high enough rank to being in the top trio of Master’s but is not. I decided to add on another ‘l’ because I subconsciously did so and got bored of correcting it. As his brother, Aiden also got the surname.

CYRUS NATHANIEL XU

Cy’s first and middle name were ones I liked, but the meaning is somewhat connected to him too. Cyrus is a Persian name, meaning ‘throne’ and technically, Master’s are the equivalent to royalty, even though his family would ironically do whatever they could to deny the fact he is. 

His middle name was just one I liked, no real reason behind it haha

His surname was the one that made me think the most though. I decided on Xu because most Western people (including myself) assume it’s pronounced Zoo upon first seeing it, whereas it’s more a Hsu sound. But the ‘Zoo’ part was why I kept it. Cyrus is a ‘half-breed’, and so people perceive him to be impure and untrustworthy. A lot tend to stereotype half-breeds as more animalistic, hence why Zoo is relevant. His family who are opposed to his mother having a child with his father think he should be locked up as if he deserved nothing better than to be an exhibit in an inhumane zoo.

ROMAN LUKA LEDEUX (FORMALLY NOVAK)

Roman was actually a name my mother picked based on his personality because boy, was I struggling to find him a new name. He was originally called Vladislav but I didn’t want it to get mixed up with Vladimir Ivanov (Dimitri’s predecessor) or Vladimir Phineas Schwarz.

I kept it because I could fit it in with his temperament. The Roman Empire was powerful, Roman himself becomes similar as the series progresses. They spread ideas and made them hugely popular, such as Christianity. Roman wants to push his views of peace and love across rather than the conniving, corrupt ones his uncle has. I wanted him to have a name similar to his grandfathers both in meaning and as a nickname. It worked- his grandfather is Romulus. Both start with the same three letters and Romulus was the first King of Rome.

Luka is after his Uncle. Since their relationship is non-existent and they hate each other, he doesn’t tell anybody he has a middle name.

Novak roughly means newcomer or stranger. Romulus Novak was the one who brought fame to the name. He was originally from a family in poverty but got into the rank of driving the Grand Master’s airship through chance and eventually skill. His surname ended up being passed onto his son, daughter and grandson.

Ledeux was just a mysterious sounding surname I made up. Again, no real background to it. It means ‘the two’, which translates into how he lives a parallel life now due to pushing away from his Uncle.

VLADIMIR PHINEAS SCHWARZ

Vladimir was Phineas’ name until his teens and he changed it due to family issues. I chose Vladimir due to Vladimir Putin. When writing Schadenfreude’s first draft, he was the Most Powerful Person in Forbes’ list (he’s now second). Grand Master Schwarz is meant to be seen as the most powerful person in Phinean’s eyes and so I thought it stuck considering he was named after his father, who would be Russian if he were real.

Phineas was the name he got when I was 9 because, while I didn’t study him in more depth until I was sixteen, I got the idea from Phineas Gage. Originally, Phineas was the villain, a man who turned to evil despite being an originally good man. Now the idea has transferred that he was a weak child but became a Grand Master. Phineas Gage was in an accident while working on a railway which caused a pole to piece his prefrontal cortex. From the incident to his death, his personality completely changed. Phineas represents the shift he had from his childhood to adulthood, even though he hasn’t really changed.

Schwarz means ‘Black’ in German. As I said, Phineas used to be the villain so I made a reference to that here. Black is the colour a lot of children associate with evil things, and so I chose that colour particularly, and it isn’t overly uncommon either.

DIMITRI NIKOLAI IVANOV

Dimitri was the name I gave him when I was nine and it’s stuck. I’ve always pictured him with a thick Russian accent, hence why he has such a Russian sounding name haha

Nikolai Ivanov comes from a man called Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov. Yezhov was known as the dwarf due to standing at only 151 or 152cm (just under 5 feet), and Dimitri is even shorter than that at around 4′10″. One of the biggest reasons Dimitri gets into trouble is due to his bloodlust and being a little too eager to execute people. Yezhov was very similar during the height of his career working for Josef Stalin.  As quoted by a really old Sunday Express article, ‘It is estimated that during his reign of terror Yezhov was responsible for seven million arrests, one million executions and the death in prison camps of a further two million people. In most cases these people were innocent’. While Dimitri is nowhere near as bad as reports of Yezhov are, he still has quite a similar appearance and reputation, hence why I chose his middle (there aren’t patronymics in the Empire’s) and last name.

Watch "Get Him to the Greek (11/11) Movie CLIP - A Guardian Angel (2010) HD" on YouTube

Hesays it as he meant it he said you were dying and he says I can't believe it so if you look at the scene in the movie you can see it well I look like there's something definitely wrong well we got influenced by the movie and sometimes at the heart's not going you have to actually start it and sometimes you can't restart it so it's important that you start it.

So he responds like this I can see it I look like I'm dead and you both saw the movie and thought it was possible that I might not be moving but then I see you checking so you had to it's in the arm not right in the heart which might have made it worse so I do like what you're saying

And then went off his friends little bit and then he says you're creeping in and it's really creeping me out so they were driving and it's out of LA to Vegas again and he says we can't go there we have to go somewhere else and they tried and he tried and it was awful they finally got there and says man what's the matter with you you're paying your pants the whole time and then he says this I can't stand what you're doing what you're doing is horrible this is what you're doing is a lot worse and it's caused a lot of destruction to our realm tons of people can't stand an argument and you this massive puke in my life won't leave me alone he says the same thing it's like this huge gay man following me around telling me to do things and harassing me making stupid jokes and trying to hurt me and harm me and have me mess things up all the time it doesn't seem like you're running anything it seems like you're bothering us because you don't like us or something what are we the Corsican Brothers or Stalin and Lenin the answer is no we're not those people it's you

He stops and says we can't stand what you're saying your mild managing stay private you don't make a ton of money and we don't want you to so we can't understand why you're still ticking. So he turns to him and says it's really hate we hate you so bad we can't let you win you're this buffoon you go around messing everything up expect us to compensate for your error because you're the one making a mistake and we don't understand why you think that we're going to fix it for you except you go around do it surreptitiously so what's it to you that we just sit here and live and try and survive and maybe someday overcome you beautiful plans you say it's not that great.

He turns to him and he says what are those things then those have been plaguing me forever and he explained what they were and in their language he says I don't know it's my brother's stuff and he fooled you they said I was involved and you fell for it you're a boob that's how we knows you swallow it right away cuz he wanted you because you're so hateful

You're not understanding what you're saying it all he loves his children he loves his wife he loves his dad his father I mean and mother and I can see why because I grew up with them and their human beings that are lovable I don't know what your problem is and I do you grow up eating each other and you're disgusting so you like this consumer and it seems like you're this real little guy we going to Walmart you probably want you want and you like this pig we're not pigs and that's one reason why we hang on because we have a lot of value in things so you don't see a lot of value in so it's just the way it is okay it's a cheetah there's a lion and there's a tiger and there's a bear and wear bears and you're like you like a puma you act like a cat a lot and we're bears and we like each other we play roll around we fake bite we have arguments and you guys just kind of stare at each other and walk around and eat things and kill things cuz you can that's the way it is so he stops and says but what about those things I said well I'm one hell of a bear

They both started laughing he said my Navajo Padre left and he said you're the spirit of the bear or something like those lines and I think the bear is appropriate but he said was a little bit out there it's a bit rich.

But he doesn't necessarily know what those are but I bet you can read them and you can't cuz you spend most of your time worrying about what to eat and who to eat and all sorts of weird s*** it doesn't mean anything and who to argue with so make you look like you're the best arguer or something.

So the driving along the road and the thinking we're almost there and these things are very important and then they start to say this it's pretty far down and people going to see us doing that they freaking out something we're in trouble

The way you relate the story to me and what Father said a line and that he had it done and that you are not awake or aware it's like you were in this matrix thing and you were there before and you didn't know what was going on so without further Ado I was saying that he knows about it or forgot

And that really set Dave off Dave said you knew about it and you're sitting here saying to the whole time the way you do this stupid s*** you're doing why would you do that he says I need to know if you actually know anything not based on the word of mine or someone else's cuz I did have you sent up there and it did work and I don't know how they got you up there and it looks like they use these things and they deliver them off just back but then there's these huge ones he knows how the huge ones could have gone there so it's more or less still a mystery and he doesn't know the answers

No I don't know all the answers and that is up to you I have to go that way you don't yeah I do you're not supposed to be here either

So they're going off to The monuments they started laughing hysterically it's kind of forced him to do it it's sad on it forever like these eggs

All sitting here this horrific sound near them it's a bike going by in the same f*** you and they suddenly heard something oh you know next something up there I can't remember and he didn't do it himself and he didn't send him up there if you know what I mean so they started laughing you had them do it up there and you didn't know how they did it and he told him why

Thor Freya

Who’s Right Democrats Or Republicans

Views Of The Democratic And Republican Parties

Just under half of Americans have a favorable view of the Democratic Party, while a slightly larger share have an unfavorable view.

The GOP is viewed more negatively 38% say they have a positive view of the Republican Party, while 60% rate it unfavorably. These views are modestly changed since last summer, with the share of Americans rating the GOP unfavorably slightly higher than it was in August and the share of Americans with a negative view of the Democratic Party down slightly .

About three-quarters of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents view the GOP favorably, while 81% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents view the Democratic Party positively.

Nearly all Republicans who say they strongly identify with the Republican Party express a favorable opinion of the GOP. Among Republicans who say they not so strongly identify with the party, 77% say have a favorable view, while 56% of independents who lean toward the Republican Party say the same.

Democrats who very strongly identify with the Democratic Party nearly universally view their party favorably, as do 87% of Democrats who describe themselves as not-so-strong Democrats. About six-in-ten Democratic leaners have a favorable opinion of the Democratic Party.

Within both partisan groups, views of the opposing party are overwhelmingly unfavorable across-the-board, with more than eight-in-ten strong partisans, not so strong partisans and leaners alike saying this.

Why Are An Elephant And A Donkey The Party Symbols

The Democratic party is often associated with the colour blue and the donkey mascot.

That dates back to Democratic candidate Andrew Jackson’s 1828 presidential campaign, when opponents called him a “jackass” for his stubbornness.

Instead of taking the nickname as an insult, Jackson embraced it and used the donkey image on his election posters.

It was then quickly adopted by newspapers and political cartoonists.

The Republican’s elephant symbol came along years later.

Many believe it came about, in part, due to a widely used expression during the Civil War led by Republican president Abraham Lincoln.

Soldiers entering battle were said to be “seeing the elephant” a phrase that means learning a hard lesson, often with a profound cost.

The symbol was then popularised by political cartoonist Thomas Nast; an early rendition featured in the 1879 edition of Harper’s Weekly.

Both symbols are still largely used for political campaigns.

Democrats Tend To Have A Lot More Anger And Negativity In Their Rhetoric According To Them If You Support President Trump Well Then You Are A Racist And A Nazi

They generally seem to be out to get someone making things more personal.  Why are they so afraid to use the facts to reinforce what they want to do? Its agenda first then find or make up facts to support the rhetoric.

If they cant beat you at the polling booth, they try and beat you in court and thats just a great example of something thats not a pleasant experience. And not quite working in the long run. They keep getting overturned.

Crime And Capital Punishment

Republicans generally believe in harsher penalties when someone has committed a crime, including for selling illegal drugs. They also generally favor capital punishment and back a system with many layers to ensure the proper punishment has been meted out. Democrats are more progressive in their views, believing that crimes do not involve violence, such as selling drugs, should have lighter penalties and rehabilitation. They are also against capital punishment in any form.

Conservative Endorsements Of Democratic Candidates

During the 2004 election, several high-profile conservative writers endorsed the Presidential campaign of John Kerry, arguing that the Bush administration was pursuing policies which were anything but conservative. Among the most notable of these endorsements came from Andrew Sullivan and Paul Craig Roberts, while a series of editorials in Pat Buchanan‘s The American Conservative magazine made a conservative case for several candidates, with Scott McConnell formally endorsing Kerry, and Justin Raimondo giving the nod to Ralph Nader.

In South Carolina in , the Democratic candidate for United States Senator was Bob Conley, a traditional Catholic, and a former activist for the presidential candidacy of Ron Paul. Conley failed in his bid to defeat Lindsey Graham, receiving 42.4 percent of the vote.

In his campaign for reelection, Walter Minnick, U.S. Representative for Idaho’s 1st congressional district, was endorsed by Tea Party Express, an extremely rare occurrence for a Democrat. Minnick was the only Democrat to receive a 100% rating from the Club for Growth, an organization that typically supports conservative Republicans. Minnick lost to Raúl Labrador, a conservative Republican, in the general election.

Think Republicans Are Disconnected From Reality It’s Even Worse Among Liberals

Arlie Hochschild

A new survey found Democrats live with less political diversity despite being more tolerant of it with startling results

In a surprising new national survey, members of each major American political party were what they imagined to be the beliefs held by members of the other. The survey asked Democrats: How many Republicans believe that racism is still a problem in America today? Democrats guessed 50%. Its actually 79%. The survey asked Republicans how many Democrats believe most police are bad people. Republicans estimated half; its really 15%.

The survey, published by the thinktank More in Common as part of its Hidden Tribes of America project, was based on a sample of more than 2,000 people. One of the studys findings: the wilder a persons guess as to what the other party is thinking, the more likely they are to also personally disparage members of the opposite party as mean, selfish or bad. Not only do the two parties diverge on a great many issues, they also disagree on what they disagree on.

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This effect, the report says, is so strong that without a high school diploma are three times more accurate than those with a postgraduate degree. And the more politically engaged a person is, the greater the distortion.

Should the US participate in the Paris climate accord and reduce greenhouse gas emissions regardless of what other countries do? A majority of voters in both parties said yes.

Yes Dictators Sometimes Cloak Themselves In Socialism But Tyranny Here And Elsewhere Is Always Right

Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Kim Jong-Un and Donald Trump

The meaning today of the Big Lie almost always refers to the false claim by Donald Trump and his right-wing cronies that the 2020 presidential election was somehow stolen by the left and Joe Biden, with the help of foreign agents.

Not only is this claim false, it is absurdly false.

This is hardly the first Big Lie from the right. Not even close. The right has been promulgating Big Lies for decades.

In fact, lying is the only way the right wing can win elections. After all, its policies are profoundly unpopular with ordinary people because the right-wing favors the 1% rich over the 99% working and middle classes.

How in the world could 1% of the population ever win elections over the 99%? Simple. The 1% bamboozles the 99%. To win elections, the right must conceal its true intentions from the voters and instead engage in manipulative tactics, like lying and fearmongering.

The lies are not just little lies.They are whoppers. They are the complete opposite of the truth. They are 180 degrees from the truth. They are the polar opposite of the truth, like from the North Pole all the way to the South Pole. Hence the term Big Lie.

Yet, shockingly, many of these egregious lies actually work. They take hold. They create a false impression in the mind of the public.

Once again, this is the exact opposite of the truth. Dictatorships and fascism are right-wing, not left-wing.

Shockingly, this nonsense actually works.

Who’s Right Democrats Or Republicans

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Neither, that is shy you discuss and debate and come to an agreement. It is time that the people make them sit back in their seats in the house and Senate, give the a bucket to go to the bathroom and PBJ’s for breakfast lunch and DinnerWhen the come to an agreement, then they can go home for a good night sleep and we will pick another issue and lock them in their chambers the next day and have them work that one out.Bet it would not take long for these idiots on both sides of the aisle to get the picture

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They are both wrong, but I think the Democrat senate is more wrong because they are trying to force an agreement using police stationed at national parks and monuments to make life hell for everyone. Also earlier last week the senate rejected a bill from house Republicans that would have delayed the shutdown for awhile./Edit:give the a bucket to go to the bathroom and PBJ’s for breakfast lunch and DinnerNo no no, PBJs are too tasty. Give them bread and butter.

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Liars are the worst kind of thieves-Only trust Hell No Kitty

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What Does Left Mean

In politics, left refers to people and groups that have views. That generally means they support reforms, especially those seeking greater social and economic equality.

The farleft is often used for what is considered more extreme, views, such as and . Collectively, people and groups, as well as the positions they hold, are referred to as theLeft or the left wing.

Trump Supporters The Exception

Despite political rhetoric that places them at opposite ends of the spectrum, Republican and Democratic voters appear to be similarly compassionate.

Democrats view compassion as a political value while Republicans will integrate compassion into their politics when their leaders make it part of an explicit message.

There is a caveat to this: I asked these survey questions about personal feelings of compassion in a 2016 online survey that also asked about choice of president.

The survey was conducted a few days after Republican presidential primary candidates Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Gov. John Kasich of Ohio had dropped out of the race, making Donald Trump the only viable Republican candidate for the nomination.

In their responses to the survey, a large percentage of Republican voters said they would rather vote for someone other than Trump, even though he was the unofficial nominee at that point.

The Republican voters who didnt support Trump were similar to Democrats on the survey with respect to their answers about compassion. Their average scores on the compassion items were the same. This is in line with the other survey data showing that liberals and conservatives, and Republicans and Democrats, are largely similar in these personality measures of compassion.

But Trump supporters answers were not in line with these findings.

The research indicates that appeals to compassion if made by trusted leaders should work for voters of both parties.

Republicans And Democrats After The Civil War

Its true that many of the first Ku Klux Klan members were Democrats. Its also true that the early Democratic Party opposed civil rights. But theres more to it.

The Civil War-era GOP wasnt that into civil rights. They were more interested in punishing the South for seceding, and monopolizing the new black vote.

In any event, by the 1890s, Republicans had begun to distance themselves from civil rights.

Taking The Perspective Of Others Proved To Be Really Hard

The divide in the United States is wide, and one indication of that is how difficult our question proved for many thoughtful citizens. A 77-year-old Republican woman from Pennsylvania was typical of the voters who struggled with this question, telling us, This is really hard for me to even try to think like a devilcrat!, I am sorry but I in all honesty cannot answer this question. I cannot even wrap my mind around any reason they would be good for this country.

Similarly, a 53-year-old Republican from Virginia said, I honestly cannot even pretend to be a Democrat and try to come up with anything positive at all, but, I guess they would vote Democrat because they are illegal immigrants and they are promised many benefits to voting for that party. Also, just to follow what others are doing. And third would be just because they hate Trump so much. The picture she paints of the typical Democratic voter being an immigrant, who goes along with their party or simply hates Trump will seem like a strange caricature to most Democratic voters. But her answer seems to lack the animus of many.  

Democrats struggled just as much as Republicans. A 33-year-old woman from California told said, i really am going to have a hard time doing this but then offered that Republicans are morally right as in values, going to protect us from terrorest and immigrants, going to create jobs.

The Democratic Party General Policy And Political Values

The Democratic Party generally represents left-leaning, liberal and progressive ideological values, thus advocating for a strong government to regulate business and support for the citizens of the United States. Thus, one of the key values emphasized by Democrats is social responsibility. Overall, Democrats believe that a prominent and powerful government can ensure welfare and equality for all. Much like the Republican Party, political opinions within the Democratic Party stretch across a wide spectrum, as both parties are, to a large degree, decentralized. However, from a general point of view, Democrats tend to support heavy taxation of high-income households. In comparison to Denmark, where taxes are generally high, the Democratic taxation policy may not seem excessive, but on a U.S. taxation scale these tax percentages are in the heavy end.

  Left Wing And Right Wing Politics

Politics is said to be split in half and you either have left or right political views. Left-wing politics is typically associated with progressive ideas and equality. Democrats are viewed as left-wingers. Right-wing politics values tradition, equity, and survival of the fittest. Republicans are viewed as right-wingers. 

Left-Wing

Left-wing beliefs are liberal in that they believe society is best served with an expanded role of the government. Examples of an expanded role for the government include entitlement programs such as social security and Medicare, Medicaid, universal healthcare, food stamps, free public education, unemployment benefits, strong environmental laws, and other regulations on industries.

Right Wing

Right-wingers believe that the best outcome for society is achieved when individual rights and civil liberties are paramount and the role and especially the power of the government is minimized. Right-wing ideology would favor market-based solutions to the issues that these government programs aim to tackle. For example, encouraging a freer marketplace for healthcare, driven by consumer choice to drive down costs. Or privately held retirement accounts like 401 plans instead of government-guaranteed Social Security.

Democrats V Republicans On Jim Crow

Segregation and Jim Crow lasted for 100 years after the end of the Civil War.

During this time, African Americans were largely disenfranchised. There was no African-American voting bloc. Neither party pursued civil rights policies it wasnt worth their while.

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Democrats dominated Southern politics throughout the Jim Crow Era. Its fair to say that Democratic governors and legislatures are responsible for creating and upholding white supremacist policies.

Southern Democrats were truly awful.

Where Do Trump And Biden Stand On Key Issues

Reuters: Brian Snyder/AP: Julio Cortez

The key issues grappling the country can be broken down into five main categories: coronavirus, health care, foreign policy, immigration and criminal justice.

This year, a big focus of the election has been the coronavirus pandemic, which could be a deciding factor in how people vote, as the country’s contentious healthcare system struggles to cope.

The average healthcare costs for COVID-19 treatment is up to $US30,000 , an Americas Health Insurance Plans 2020 study has found.

Todays Republicans Really Hate Democrats And Democracy

1) Trumps supporters have embraced anti-democratic ideas

This chart shows results from a two-part survey, conducted in late 2020 and early 2021, of hardcore Trump supporters. The political scientists behind the survey, Rachel Blum and Christian Parker, identified so-called MAGA voters by their activity on pro-Trump Facebook pages. Their subjects are engaged and committed Republican partisans, disproportionately likely to influence conflicts within the party like primary elections.

These voters, according to Blum and Parker, are hostile to bedrock democratic principles.

Is God A Democrat Or A Republican

The Democratic Party and the Republican Party of the United States are political parties.  God is so much bigger than any political party.  He is bigger than the United States of America or any other country.  He is bigger than the world we live in.

Psalm 8:3 says God created the stars with His fingers.  Considering that our local star, the sun, is 70 times the size of the Earth, that would make God very big.  Human issues are very small to Him but we will be judged by what we do.

We as believers need to keep our political party in check and be praying for the leadership of our nations.  In the United States, historically parties or groups of organized political interests came later.  The majority of the early settlers were true Christians fleeing persecution and the government trying to control them through a political church.  The Democrats have been considered the party of the people or working class and the Republicans the party of business professionals for decades.  In actuality, that is not true.

Abraham Lincoln was the US President who fought to hold the United States together when division arose about whether African slaves were people or just property of their owners.  It was the Republican party that won the right of the slaves to have true freedom not the Democrats.

Vice Presidents Of The United States

John C. Breckinridge, 14th Vice President of the United States , United States Senator from Kentucky , Member, United States House of Representatives from Kentucky’s 8th District , Member, Kentucky House of Representatives from Fayette County . He was presidential nominee of the southern Democratic Party in 1860.

John C. Calhoun, 7th Vice President of the United States , United States Senator from South Carolina , 16th United States Secretary of State , 10th Secretary of War , Member, United States House of Representatives from South Carolina’s 6th District . He was a supporter of slavery, state sovereignty and a proponent of the theory of nullification.

John Nance Garner, 32nd Vice President of the United States , Member, United States House of Representatives from 15th District of Texas , 39th Speaker of the House of Representatives , House Minority Leader , Leader, House Democratic Caucus , Member, Texas House of Representatives from Texas 91st District , County Judge, Uvalde County Texas . He supported the poll tax. Although he served as vice president under Franklin D. Roosevelt, he turned against Roosevelt during his second term, taking a more conservative stance on several issues.

Thomas A. Hendricks, 21st Vice President of the United States , 16th Governor of Indiana , United States Senator from , and member of the United States House of Representatives from Indiana’s 6th congressional district and Indiana’s 5th congressional district .

What Is Happening To The Republicans

In becoming the party of Trump, the G.O.P. confronts the kind of existential crisis that has destroyed American parties in the past.

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Content

But, for all the anxiety among Republican leaders, Goldwater prevailed, securing the nomination at the Partys convention, in San Francisco. In his speech to the delegates, he made no pretense of his ideological intent. Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, he said. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. Goldwaters crusade failed in November of 1964, when the incumbent, Lyndon Johnson, who had become President a year earlier, after Kennedys assassination, won in a landslide: four hundred and eighty-six to fifty-two votes in the Electoral College. Nevertheless, Goldwaters ascent was a harbinger of the future shape of the Republican Party. He represented an emerging nexus between white conservatives in the West and in the South, where five states voted for him over Johnson.

agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions.

History Of The Republican Party

The Republican Party came into existence just prior to the Civil War due to their long-time stance in favor of abolition of slavery. They were a small third-party who nominated John C. Freemont for President in 1856. In 1860 they became an established political party when their nominee Abraham Lincoln was elected as President of the United States. Lincolns Presidency throughout the war, including his policies to end slavery for good helped solidify the Republican Party as a major force in American politics. The elephant was chosen as their symbol in 1874 based on a cartoon in Harpers Weekly that depicted the new party as an elephant.

Democratic Candidate Joe Biden

Reuters: Carlos Barria

The Democrats are the liberal political party and their candidate is Joe Biden, who has run for president twice before.

A former senator for Delaware who served six terms, Biden is best known as Barack Obama’s vice-president.

He held that role for eight years, and it has helped make him a major contender for many Democrat supporters.

Earlier this year, Biden chose California Senator Kamala Harris as his vice-presidential running mate.

The 77-year-old has built his campaign on the Obama legacy, and tackling the country’s staggering health care issues.

He is known for his down-to-earth personality and his ability to connect with working-class voters. He would be the oldest first-term president in history if elected.

According to 2017 Pew Research Centre data, a vast majority of the African American population supports the Democratic party, with 88 per cent voting for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential elections.

The Philosophy Behind Republican Economic Policy

Republicans advocate supply-side economics that primarily benefits businesses and investors. This theory states that tax cuts on businesses allow them to hire more workers, in turn increasing demand and growth. In theory, the increased revenue from a stronger economy offsets the initial revenue loss over time.

Republicans advocate the right to pursue prosperity without government interference. They argue this is achieved by self-discipline, enterprise, saving, and investing.

Republicans business-friendly approach leads most people to believe that they are better for the economy. A closer look reveals that Democrats are, in many respects, actually better.

A Record Number Of Americans Say Democrats And Republicans Are Doing Such A Poor Job That A Third Party Is Needed Polling Shows

Dissatisfaction with two-party politics is at an all-time high, new Gallup polling shows, with 62 percent of Americans saying Democrats and Republicans are doing such a poor job of representing their constituents that a third party is needed.

But the zero-sum, winner-take-all dynamics of U.S. elections make it nearly impossible for third parties to gain electoral traction, despite survey data that shows fully half of Americans do not identify with any party and label themselves independents. This was underscored this past weekend at the Conservative Political Action Conference, when former president Donald Trump ruled out creating a third political party to promote his brand of nationalist conservatism.

To hear those calling for change including many scholars and some lawmakers the inherent problem with our current system is that it shoehorns the into just two parties. Warnings that the nation has backslid toward autocracy driven in large part by the Republican Partys shift away from democratic norms bring added urgency, they say, and reversing that Trump-era trend will require something radical: breaking up the Democratic and Republican parties.

source https://www.patriotsnet.com/whos-right-democrats-or-republicans/

Life Story Part 72

The monumental 2008 election was upon everyone's mind in the small town of Pinehurst while I was visiting my grandmother. Somehow, I just hadn't noticed there was going to be an election – I was too wrapped up in my books, my collage art, my old horror films and television shows, and my interest in various religions. Of course, my grandma and my uncles and aunts up north all were McCain hopefuls. I have never met anyone from a small town that far north who weren't on the embarrassingly far right on just about every issue. My grandma was still upset about hippies shirking Viet Nam like it had happened yesterday. I pretended to agree with whatever people said – it's how I survived and maintained some kind of life for myself relying as I did on the charity of others, but the truth is I had no idea what to believe. I was often times told something terrible would happen in response to a left wing policy being passed, and I really didn't know. My head was a jumble of complex philosophical criticism of society on the whole, but I also had been misinformed politically for so many years when I was younger that I had abstained from listening to anyone about anything. I couldn't just 'pick a party', though my grandma's always had Fox News on, and as nonpolitical as I thought I was, I sometimes wanted to reach through the television and throttle the television personalities for their callous view of the poor, their subversive racist ideals, and their focus on none issues and fear mongering. In fact the only things I was certain about were now putting me to the left, legalizing gay marriage, legalizing weed, ending the war in the middle east, ending the death sentence and not bailing out the banks.

I didn't understand healthcare, but I was told Obamacare was essentially the end of my existence as I knew it – which given my life up to that point I questioned if that would be such a bad thing really. The current system was confirmably insufficient though too. For instance, had my father paid for me to finally get confirmed for having PCOS, I would have had to take medication that insurance companies could and would bar me from ever being able to be on their insurance for having a preexisting condition. So as far as I could tell, the system that had currently been in place had in it's own way, low key let me know that my health was not in consideration, and I was not really a member of society that anyone should care about. Maybe it would be better for the system if I just died, preventing future misery to myself and the taxpayers. I didn't ever say anything about it openly, but I had contempt for the current healthcare system, what little I understood, so Obamacare didn't scare me, and actually made me a little more hopeful about the prospects of maybe getting the healthcare I needed.

This was also a turning point for my grandma and members of my family to begin embracing the absurd. I think something really mentally unstable was happening to the right. This isn't to say that there was never something deeply troubling about that rhetoric, but there was this weird desperation, like they were losing their country and a tree was no longer just a tree. There was no agree to disagree, and most of the right wing folk I knew where elderly, or very bitter and the ideas of Alex Jones and many others were beginning to reach them. And that fear was becoming something. Everyone was raving about Barack Obama being a Muslim, being born in Africa, and even more insane theories. My grandma told me that Obama was going to make everyone over seventy-five go into death camps that he had already started paying the Chinese military to come over here and build.  And then at times, the same people who accused Barack Obama of being a Muslim would also say he was an atheist commy. I couldn't see how a person could both be in support of Sharia law and simultaneously be an atheist communist of the Stalin variety. I didn't understand how you could be both, as there seemed to be very little unifying features in the two ideas.

I didn't really have anything against Islam anyway. Aside from the fact that he just clearly was not, honestly, who cares if Obama was Muslim?  And even if he wasn't technically born in the United States (and he completely was), what threat did that pose against my well being? He was clearly not working for any other country. As for the Muslim accusations, furthermore, it bothered me no more or less than someone being a Christian, as I am not religious and I prefer it when wisdom comes from a different place other than socially accepted myths and a really old book that was at odds with itself.

I was a top expert at letting people take control of my life, but finding ways to either undermine that power or slowly but surely gain that person's confidence and gain sway and maybe some level of equality in so doing was always an undercurrent for me. In my heart of hearts, I didn't want to be anyone's pet, or to have to attempt to manipulate others to like me when, had I been given the same independence and freedom I would have been able to stand my ground or walk away. My grandma quickly over the course of these two months, opened up to me more than she had to anyone in a decade or maybe more, and it was in part because I didn't ever argue with her about her beliefs. Instead I listened, until I got to the heart of what she was trying to say and where she was coming from. Nobody realized who I actually was, or what I thought, and it was one of the few power dynamics that I had over those around me. If she really truly knew me, she would have thought I was awful and nihilistic, and likely wouldn't have wanted much to do with me. There is a lot of emphasis on being yourself at all times, but it's very hard to live up to when you are completely reliant on everyone around you. I let her see the side of me that she wanted to see – and that side of me wasn't a lie. I just hid the other half.

My eyesight had diminished even further. My eyes were so runny by this time from a need for glasses that people noticed me in the store. I looked like someone with an eye condition in the dark ages. It was sort of ruining the symmetry of my face, due to my constant squinting. I didn't even open my right eye anymore. It was tightly shut at all times, and when it opened at all, oozy liquid ushered on out and ran down my face. My eyes burned and stung almost continuously. It looked horrible. And of course, nobody really had done anything for me in this regard. Nobody wanted to take me to the eye doctor, or pay that kind of money. They just watched the years go by as my eyes became worse and worse. Somehow, I had become so accustomed to it, that even though it was kind of ruining things for me – even with my facial expression. I looked like I was glaring all the time and people thought I was mean - my grandma Marie, bless her for this, saw this problem for what it was and said no more. She set me up with an eye appointment. She had to pay out of pocket, and it amounted to several hundred dollars that had taken her months to save for, but she chose to spend it on me, to save my eyes. I remember feeling this weird confusion that she was willing to pay full price for me to see the eye doctor and for me to get a pair of glasses (which I now was not too good for). I didn't feel like I deserved it. I apologized and told her everything would be fine. I didn't know how comfortable I felt about anyone actually caring about how I was doing, or what my future held.

I went in and came out with a three hundred dollar pair of glasses and the appointment had cost another three hundred dollars. The idea of anyone spending six hundred dollars on me nearly gave me a heart attack. Thinking I was going to die at a young age had set in motion this idea that I didn't deserve equal treatment. I had very low standards for myself. I hadn't even realized how badly my eyes were, even though it was chronic and psychically obvious. Regardless of the dynamic of control, I will now and forever more say that my grandma getting me that pair of glasses might very well be the greatest acts of kindness ever bestowed upon me. Truly.

The eye doctors told me that one of my eyes was damaged in such a way, that had I not gotten glasses within the next five years I would have eventually lost eyesight in my right eye. Wearing glasses was actually going to improve my vision. The moment I put those glasses on, I was finally seeing the world in a way I never had. The whole world looked completely different, sharp and dramatic and intricate. I didn't realize that when you are driving you are supposed to be able to see the divots and individual gravels in the road. I didn't realize you could see individual leaves on trees even at a distance, or that pines had more depth to them. I could see things in people's faces that I hadn't before. I could see the imperfections of my own face in the mirror, and though this bothered me, it was probably the first time I was having a good honest look at myself – pours and all. Everyday items in the kitchen seemed brighter. Things seemed shinier. The carpet looked interesting with all it's individual soft clumps coming together to make a carpet. Psychologically, getting those glasses created an incentive for me to see the world in a new way, and for me to actually want to see it. I had long stopped going outside in the daylight if I could help it. The sun had just hurt my eyes too much. And now, I could go out and my eyes didn't hurt anymore.

Also, I suddenly realized how hard I had been squinting my eyes and what that had been doing to my cheeks and eyebrows. My eyes looked twice as big now – and when friends and family saw me, they said I looked like a completely different person. When I put those glasses on, I realized that there was no reason for me to clench my eyes, and when I stopped my cheeks began to tingle furiously for days, as this was the first time I had relaxed my face in about six years. It was weird to me that most people just relaxed their faces. I had been squinting so hard that it had permanently caused a slight difference in the muscles of my eyebrows, causing them to become slightly crooked to this day. I notice this more than others do, and it can be hid with make up if I am feeling up to it.

I didn't want to but my grandma hated my hair, so I let her take me to her favorite republican hairstylist and change my hair. Having literally bestowed on me the gift of sight – I didn't feel in the position to be complaining. She thought I looked like a hardened criminal with my bleached blonde hair. Besides I didn't really like my own hair either. It was totally fried due to me wanting to make it as white as possible. The hair near my neck had basically fallen out I learned later, from all the bleaching.

The salon in question wasn't your typical hair salon. It was in a very small building with American flags with matching red, white and blue hibiscus growing in pots by the front door to match. The hair stylist was extremely republican, and she loved the Bush family so much she actually had a picture of George W. Bush on the wall. They gave me the Rachel hair-do – as I was clueless and unsure of what I wanted, and dyed my hair a sandy soft brown. It looked better. I was nervous about having 90's Rachel hair, but my hair being as it is naturally curly, wouldn't take to a true Rachel look unless I straightened it and styled it that way each morning. My grandma and this hairdresser went on about how Obama was going to ruin the world, about how Obama was going to force abortions, and a lot of stuff that never happened. I had thought that controversial subjects were not good for business, but in fact, people seemed to like her because her ideas reflected theirs in this part of the world. I was basically opinionless on who should be president at the time, but I secretly kind of liked Obama – I liked the way he articulated his ideas. He was just likeable.

I was skeptical of 'hope and change'. I couldn't see escaping from all the corruption on an individual anecdotal microcosm of my own life, or the macrocosm of humanity as a whole without the world basically coming to almost an end I didn't think Obama was going to fix everything – and at the time I thought that you couldn't be liberal unless you were obsessed and agreed with every person in power with liberal values – an obvious fallacy. I think the underlying hatred was because Obama was black. Maybe not everyone who disliked him were against him for this, but from my personal experience, it was the deciding factor for many rural white voters. What ignorance.

There was a visit to my aunt Margie, who lived in Bonners Ferry, this gorgeous little town up in the northmost part of Idaho close to the border. My great aunt Margie is this fantastic woman with astounding character and energy, 96 years of age. She grew up incredibly poor. When she was still a teenager, she had decided she would travel the world and shirk conventionally acceptable female roles and lead a life of adventure instead. She left the United States and traveled on her own for several years all over Europe and other continents. She wore pants in the thirties and forties and was a complete contradiction of the typical women of her time. She chose not to have children.

When WW2  came around she became a nurse. After the war, she worked at a post office, where she met her her husband. He died six years later of a rare illness and she never dated or remarried or was with anyone else for the rest of her life. She became a machinist/carpenter/artist/inventor, and started her own successful machine shop that she ran herself in Seattle where she let sculptors and inventors use her shop to make their creations, often with her help. She became a well loved person in the Seattle art scene and she helped entrepreneurs make their ideas become real. I am told that she helped invent certain components to the pellet stove that are still used today.

Margie was a vegetarian for most of her life, though she sometimes ate fish at her doctor's behest. Margie wore whatever she wanted. She would dress up in bright colors, often favoring black and white striped tights, purple dresses, and large sunhats that she would put plastic fruit on. She was famous for her hats, which often times seemed bigger than she was. Obviously Margie was and is the gem of our family.

I had up to this point, never really met my great aunt before. She was having difficulties running her very sizable household and menagerie of animals. Margie was a devout Catholic and I remember when we parked, the day was overcast, and looking at her front lawn which was scattered with various Mother Mary's and crosses of every shape and size (some of them life-sized) and the bright colors and the expressions on the faces of the Mary's was somehow intense and dark and beautiful. We walked in, and blasting from every room (and there were many rooms) was the Catholic channel. She couldn't hear very well, and it was important for her to always be showing her devotion to the church. I watched distantly for hours, seeing nuns and priests chanting in Latin, carrying out Catholic strange traditions involving fancy goblets, crackers and pieces of cloth. It was world I could never fully understand, but there was a mysterious loveliness to it. Mother Mary's were, as I said, absolutely everywhere – even in the bathrooms. She had about six dogs, many of them being Pomeranian fluff balls of happiness, and I spent quite a bit of time with them. Outside she had these crazy Alpacas and a bunch of chickens and ducks and rabbits. It was hard to imagine a woman in her nineties being able to keep up with this.

Margie having all these animals was a bizarre story. One of her closest friends was this Catholic priest in the community who was about her same age at her. He and Margie were probably the last two surviving people from their generation in the town dedicated to Catholicism and for this reason they were very close. This priest was driving down a rural road one day in the middle of nowhere. There had been construction on this road that lead to a bridge, and the bridge was taken down, but there were no people around and there were no signs that indicated that the bridge was essentially a dead end that lead into a deep ravine. I can't imagine this happening in the 21st century but it did. He was pretty old too, and was losing his sight. So he ended up driving right off this bridge, and breaking just about every bone in his body, but somehow miraculously he survived (a good portion of his body was replaced by metal), and sued the company for several million dollars for their negligence on informing drivers that the road was basically a death trap.

He had nothing to do with this money really – he was old and donating it back to the church was probably what ended up happening to most of it, but I guess he wanted to make the best of it in the short time he had left (he died only a few years after the incident), and so he started buying animals like crazy. I guess thinking it would make him happy. And when he couldn't take care of those animals, he gave them to Margie, who was also going blind and was equally as old and would have difficulties taking care of them. However, Margie was very much in denial that she was going blind, and she drove till she was in her nineties even when she should have stopped, and she didn't think she was losing out on any of the spunk she had when she was young. She thought she could run a farm by herself (I think it was something she did at some point in her busy life, as well as build her own house). But she couldn't, and nobody in the community really stopped by to help. The only living relative that seemed to care about Margie was my grandma, and a great deal of my grandma's time was spent trying to convince Margie not to try doing home improvements anymore, and to try to start downsizing her life and changing her lifestyle to match her age, which, for someone as ambitious and independent as Margie was a real challenge.

We spent that rainy day packing things in boxes for Margie. She gave me special rosaries and Catholic charms. She started talking at one point about my grandma's upbringing. She wasn't someone who had a filter. She talked about things that made people uncomfortable sometimes, I am told she was always that way. It's strange because it seems like my grandma has this thick skin about everything that had happened to her in her life, but Margie seemed to see right through that. She started talking openly about how my grandmother had been wounded and mistreated by just about everyone she had ever loved at a young age, and I could see this strange vulnerable moment where my grandma seemed to sort of shrink uncomfortably. This one moment really helped me understand my grandma deeper. It was something I had never really thought about up to that point. I always saw my grandmother as rather invulnerable – a force of perfectionism and ultimate  judgment, and it was at this moment with Margie pointing it out, that I had a small opening to see a crack in that facade. My grandma was still a child underneath all of that.

There was/is something very warm and special about Margie's presence. She's very honest, and unusual. Looking at her life and her character, she makes it all look so easy. I like to think of her as someone I should aspire to. And proof that you don't have to become dull with age.

We went out to eat with these two people earlier in the day at Bonners Ferry. Margie forgot she made these engagements. It was a couple, both were both in their mid-fifties – obvious churchgoers. I thought they were phony and I didn't care for them much. We went to this small cafe and ordered breakfast food. I let my grandma order for me, as I had no idea what to order for myself (I was too nervous to think at restaurants most of the time). It was a very awkward encounter for me because they kept on asking me questions about what I was studying in college, or what my plans were to get married or have children. When people asked me questions like this it made me feel like a loser. When I explained that none of those things were happening, they looked at me weird, and back and forth to each other. I guess it really seemed particular to them that I wasn't going to college.

Back at my grandma's, I spent a great deal of those dark late fall days cutting up children's books and gardening books in the back room, adding to my collage collection for when I got back, listening to Stephen King novels on audiotape. My grandma was annoyed that I did this to the books – cutting them instead of keeping them, and looking back, I think there were a few I should have not cut up. She let me though, because she wanted to encourage me artistically. She really wanted me to become a successful painter like she had been. I felt some of this was projecting herself onto me, but getting that kind of encouragement meant a lot nonetheless. No adult had encouraged me artistically before. She gave me a large supply of acrylic and oil paints she was no longer going to use, as well as large stacks of canvases. It was a lot. I was set for years. Between getting me these glasses and giving me all these art supplies, I was besides myself.

She eventually offered to let me stay there. It was something she was hoping I would do. She wanted me to live in the back room perhaps, to help her with her garden, to maybe get a job in that small town, painting on the side – and eventually becoming good enough to maybe sell those paintings. She might have been hoping that I would become a small town person, choosing to marry a local and having a family up there. She promised to help me learn to drive. She explained that I would be away from my mother and father and older sisters, away from all that chaos and negativity, that my grandma saw me as too good for.

She didn't want to be alone for the last years of her life. I would have a place of my own. But ultimately, I knew it wouldn't work. For one, I had held back a lot of my personal beliefs and opinions, and I knew I couldn't live that way if it was permanent. She would eventually discover that we had different values. Secondly, my grandma was racist, and this was big issue for me. She didn't think she was of course, but she actually was extremely racist. Yeah, she liked me, because I am white, but it would never feel right to me. It bothered me to hear her go on about how whites were being suppressed, and how black people are basically inherently violent and I couldn't live with that. I would eventually have exploded. And she was too old to change her mind. Perhaps I didn't want the narrow politics and thinking of the small community to rub off on me.

Fox News was blaring in the living room everyday too. I loved her dogs, but if you know Yorkies, they get old really fast, licking you in the face each morning with their weird face hair dangling. They seemed to constantly need me. And I already had Shorty down at my mom's place to take care of. I couldn't abandon him. I would also have missed Allison. I don't think I could live without Allison in my life. My father was beginning to fight with her, and with David too for that matter, and I was afraid he was going to become physically abusive towards them in the same way he had been me. I wanted to be there for her in her early teen years at the very least. I wouldn't see much of her if I lived up north. I didn't feel right leaving her. Ultimately, though, I think my grandma wanted me because she thought I was a younger version of her and she liked the control she had over me. She wanted to be able to control what I ate, my hair, my clothes. I was a project that could have kept her busy. I hesitate to try to paint her as some kind of selfish evil being. She really wasn't – she showed more decency to me in particular than my parents had. But she had issues. She was projecting her own personality onto me, and if I continued to take gifts I would begin feeling more and more guilty about accepting them, and I would get trapped. Plus, this stuff was all comfort. She offered me a sort of stable comfort that didn't match who I was inside. I really felt there was some great calling to me, out there somewhere. I didn't know what it was, but I did know I didn't want to marry some local car mechanic and have two children and own a house and have McCain signs in my yard, regardless of how cheap real estate was.

People often think I am them. It might be because I am submissive, or because I can entertain other people's beliefs without adhering to them. Maybe I am open in a way and it is relatable to others. I can be chatty at times, but there are certain kinds of people I just prefer to listen to. Perhaps it's just this incredibly big hole in my identity, some void that was created  that has caused me to I stayed a child, or some kind of wound that caved in on itself and became a black hole. I seem to know who I am – but then is anyone ever a static entity? We are all in the process of constant change, and the older I get the less I see myself as having a core identity. Perhaps I am vulnerable to people in a way. There is something a little choppy and malleable about me – often times in my psychological blind spots. I often times feel more or less like I am playing a part in a play – tricking myself to believe it's all real. Not like a sociopath. But like someone who's not really a total someone. I just have this void in me, and it's hard to explain. And I think people identify that void on a very primitive level and fill it with their own identity. I don't know if I am explaining that well.

My grandma was right in seeing the symbiosis of the situation, but ultimately, it was a role I was not willing to fill. There were a lot of unspoken aspects that would have become painful future problems And I didn't want to become a miniature her. I would eventually reject what she had offered me. I didn't want to sour a good relationship with her. I can definitely see how me rejecting this offer might strike people as being very foolish. I had  less than nothing at my parents who more or less used me as a punching bag, and I suffered a lot of abuse from the both of them. I still felt this inner fire of wanting to be something more. There had to be more to life than becoming stable. I didn't want to give up that something, and I knew that living with my grandma would have involved me living a very controlled lifestyle that would have eventually cut into who I was as a person. Ultimately, I felt like would be settling. I couldn't just be myself and live up there. There was a price.

I really wanted out of these small towns. I wanted bright lights of a large city spanning out as far as could be seen – so I could see infinite lives and existences crammed before me. I wanted to be around all kinds of walks of life. I wanted to walk down city streets at night and see all the nightmares of human beings up close and personal, and also experience and see the greatest of human potential. I love looking at nature. I love lakes, and the way the mist would gather around the mountains and in many respects, I loved walking into small town diners and being able to see the stars at night. But I would never connect to anyone and it wasn't the kind of growth I needed. And think, when you are fortunate enough in the rare set of circumstances when you get one opportunity in a small town, either you find someone you can connect with, or you get a job you are like, in that small world, once you lose that something, there is no future and every part of that town is tinged with regret and sadness, in a place that small. In a city, there is always a new beginning a new face, and a new way of life waiting for you. It's never the end in the city. You can grow all over. There is always something new to move onto.

Lastly, and perhaps most critical to my decision to continue my futile struggle with my parents was that Sarah emailed me around that same time, and she told me that she was done with living in Texas. Working there was killing her soul, and she didn't see her and Alex going anywhere with their lives. They didn't end up writing songs or making music. She had told Alex that she was moving back to Idaho, and he could stay or go, but she was going. He chose to go with her – but her having decided individually to leave alone – or with him was indication that in a way their relationship was already on the rocks – even if they didn't fight. Sarah told me she was going to do everything she could to help me get back on my feet. She was going to help me get my social security card, help me find work, help me integrate back into society somehow. We were both ready to try being close again, this time without fighting like insecure teenagers that we were. We had both learned a ton of humility from our separate existences, she working and realizing what she actually wanted in life and how to take control of her life situations, and me, having had to confront my own insecurity and ego. I truly missed Sarah. We both wanted to be in a band together still, and to work on manga comics together. We were so excited. I didn't feel like I had to be anyone I wasn't with her. And eventually, we wanted to move away from Idaho altogether, maybe Seattle or something. It almost sounded too good to be true, so of course I was going to move back to my parents and wait it out.

PART 71 - https://tinyurl.com/y6v3ln9a

My Life Story in Chapters, PARTS 1-60 (this link below will lead you to a list of all the chapters i have written thus far). 

http://aleatoryalarmalligator.tumblr.com/post/168782771574/life-story-sections-1-70

Latest story from https://movietvtechgeeks.com/andrea-riseborough-talks-hollywood-sexism-mother-sucker-four-films-sundance/

Andrea Riseborough talks Hollywood sexism, Mother Sucker and four films at Sundance

Andrea Riseborough is having quite the banner year at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival as she is featured in four films including the U.S. Dramatic Competition films Nancy and Burden, the Midnight selection Mandy (in which she acts alongside Nicolas Cage), and the Spotlight film The Death of Stalin. From one film to the next she not only plays a completely different character, she’s thoroughly unrecognizable, transforming herself physically and vocally, whether it’s as a raven-haired eccentric in Nancy or as a country girl with a deep southern drawl in Burden. But the moment that Riseborough wanted to discuss in this interview wasn’t hers, but the collective one pushing for change in the film industry. More women have felt empowered to speak out about sexism, harassment, and abuse in Hollywood and independent film, and in this conversation and others throughout this week and in the months prior, Riseborough has added her own impassioned voice to the call. As she discusses below, she’s also working to change things systemically, having formed a production company called Mother Sucker that is run entirely by women. After several years of development, the company’s first completed project is Nancy, on which it served as co-producer. When an actor turns up at the Festival with multiple films, the inevitable question is how you managed to work this much over the course of the past year. The reality of production is more complicated though, in that you might have completed a few of these films at an earlier time, and of course, some films take longer than others to make. But still, four films at Sundance demonstrates an actor working hard and in demand, so clearly you’re doing something right. The pay disparity has been bad for the last couple of years. It’s actually gotten worse than it had been in the past. I found myself really just needing to accept more work in order to keep up as a woman. Generally the projects I really care about, the ones that push the needle, the ones that have diversity and eventually one day affect some sort of social change, are not ones that pay a great deal. You have a choice of doing one really terrible movie a year—which I’m just not interested because I end up wanting to kill myself—or, as a woman, you can do five projects to make up the same sort of pay. I would’ve liked to have not worked as much. But that’s the reality. That’s the honest truth. I did do them all back to back, and in one of the films I was paid 1/24th of what my male co-star was paid. Did you know the extent of that disparity at the time? Yes, I did. I knew that. And I went into it with my eyes open because I believed in the director, in his unique perspective and voice. That he’s not a run of the mill, mainstream director. As women, we make our money from being involved in more male-driven projects that make the money. We have to balance between doing some of that, where hopefully you don’t feel too compromised because it’s normally a male-heavy situation on set, and putting money back into films like Nancy with my company, which is an all-female film company. You’re referring to Mother Sucker, right? Yes. And then you take a hit financially, of course. Not many people want to invest in diversity. Though I do feel like that has changed in the last few months, which is a wonderful, wonderful feeling. And I feel now like I can actually step into a room and say, “I would like equal pay with my male co-star.” Not that they’ll give it to me. But I feel like I could say it and the option wouldn’t be off the table. Which is what used to happen in the past. If you asked for more money, they would just offer it to somebody else. Because they could. The long-term message being that you’re disposable. And that’s the opposite of what we’re all striving to come to believe in life, isn’t it? And that’s coming from a deeply fortunate position—I cannot even imagine what an actor of color goes through. When and why did you start Mother Sucker? In 2012, and the original concept was: What would it be like to see a film that was, from beginning to end, a female construction? Beyond that, I wondered what it would be like to live in a world where town planning had been done by women, rather than men. Where we didn’t live in concrete boxes, separate from one another, but in communal spaces where we all breast fed each other’s children. I’d really like to walk through a world of female constructs because the patriarchy has been in place for so long. I had been going through a very difficult moment with a film that I was on. I was originally the protagonist, and then I was bumped down to a secondary role in order for the male to be the protagonist. I tried to get out of it but couldn’t. So I just started writing ferociously—I’ve always written. A couple of projects came about, and we developed a few things, then I met Christina Choe and we started the Nancy journey. I quickly realized that was going to be the first film Mother Sucker was going to be part of co-producing. Because Christina’s voice is so strong. She truly is the definition of an auteur. What did you learn from the making of a film co-produced by an all-female company? We wrap early on set. Meaning you’re actually able to have a life during the shooting of the film? No, let’s not be crazy. Just very efficient. The experiment concept has not yet been fully had, because Nancy was made with several other companies, and mine is the only one that is all female. But for another film coming up I would really like to try it, to see how the energy shifts on screen when everyone around it is a woman. I mean, it might be a shitshow, who knows? But I think it’s a very interesting social experiment. I’ve spent so many days being the one woman surrounded by lots of men—and a makeup artist. Sometimes it’s very hard to do my work. Sometimes I have felt unsafe on set. People say weird things to you. You feel very outnumbered. You come onto the set and you feel virtually invisible. It’s hard to command focus on a set. I don’t mean the way a director [commands focus], I just mean to be very silent and do what you need to do. Imagine giving birth. Imagine being raped. To have that silence where it’s not just joke time for everyone else. It’s very difficult with a woman. We often do most of the emoting. We often need to get in that headspace, and it’s just tough. I just imagine getting in that headspace and being surrounded by a bunch of women. Why not just see [what happens]? We almost did it on Nancy, which was really wonderful. Let’s talk about your performance in Nancy. I would imagine it’s a tougher role because she’s somebody who makes it hard for the audience to read—she’s a bit of a fabricator and lives in her own head a lot of the time. As the performer, you have a much better sense of who Nancy is, but you also can’t always reveal that. From the beginning of Nancy, it was always very clear to me. She was an entire human being, which I really appreciated. Flawed, confused, disenfranchised, isolated. Desperately wanting to connect. Feeling isolated and disconnected from the rest of the human race, which we all feel with the advent of social media. That feeling of wanting to connect and not knowing how to do it is very timely. Christina and I used to joke that if Nancy had been brought up on the Upper East Side of New York to very liberal parents, perhaps she might have been one of the great writers of our time. But what actually happened was that she was smart enough and unusual enough that she ended up being the madwoman in her hometown. I mean, what would’ve happened to us if we hadn’t have gotten out of where we were from? We probably would have ended up as the mad people, too. You could see how, with a different writer and different performer, that role could be played as a madwoman. But you definitely pull back from that. Well, she’s just a woman. All of us, in some respect, felt that. It’s so real and accurate to portray a woman as flawed. We have a film culture in which men are portrayed as flawed consistently. And a history of portraying women born to a few narrow things, and generally not all of the things together. They rarely make up a whole person. We can all identify with Nancy. We can all laugh at the manipulations that we’ve all been part of to some extent in our lives. Whether it’s for survival, or for gain. That unhealthy behavior is very familiar to me. And then, when she reaches out to Leo and Alan, the moment is too much. She doesn’t quite know where to put it. There’s a feeling of deep discomfort as a response to being loved. I think that is something we can all identify with. That’s very human. When it’s just too much. We crave it. We pull for it. And once we get it we don’t know what to do with it. I’d like to also talk about Burden, another of your films in the Festival, with both of these appearing in the U.S. Dramatic Competition. Judy is technically a supporting character, to Garrett Hedlund’s character of Michael Burden. Yet Judy does carry a huge moral weight in the narrative but is integral to his transformation and redemption. I think of the reverend as the hero. I would like to have seen [the story] from that perspective. But yes, Judy was the catalyst for most of the change, and she suffered for a lot of the actions that Mike took. I wanted to show how much of a part she actually played, which wasn’t quite reflected in our story. The facts about what actually happened are very interesting if you look into it. Did you meet the real Judy? Oh yes. Many times. Was that helpful? I would imagine sometimes it can be intimidating or derailing. It’s tricky when you meet the real people and you get the real facts. It’s always difficult to set those aside. It was very helpful to see that Judy was the person whose heart was open to change. She was the person who stayed changed, and didn’t go back after all of this. The reverend runs up to her and yells “Super Judy” when he sees her in the supermarket. She grew up in an environment where most of the people she knew joined the Klan at 16, yet she still felt innately like it was wrong. And the way that society still is wrong. In a different time, years down the line, will a black writer have the resources to tell the story from the reverend’s perspective? I hope so. I’m kind of sick of seeing it from the same perspective all the time. I really like seeing things from a different perspective. I’m a white woman. I’ve spent so much time in my body. I’ve known enough of that. I go to the cinema, and I want to see other people. I want to see other walks of life. Different perspectives. As an actor, you’re a great ambassador for the power of story to take us out of ourselves. Part of why you do what you do is following an impulse to inhabit other experiences. And that’s also partly why we’re drawn to the cinema. Why we’re drawn to stories, no matter who we are or where we are coming from. I don’t think anyone wants to hear their own story told over and over again. I think you’re absolutely right, and I think that’s the beautiful thing about humans. We’re really hungry to understand each other. Part of the gossip and the voyeurism comes from wanting to learn more about each other, to know more about what’s going on with other people behind closed doors. This a great time because now I think studios are so focused on the way they are set up, and on the white patriarchy specifically, they are really having to be held accountable now. Whether they are interested or not, whether they are morally invested or not. We just need to make sure that the door doesn’t close. It’s open and we cannot allow it to close. That’s why I think putting women in power and into creative positions is really important, because we can’t let the change be superficial, we can’t let it all be about show and checking a box. I can honestly already tell you though that this year, going into 2018, I know that I can say I want equal pay with my male co-star who has a smaller part than I do. They may not listen, but that I can bring that up and the job won’t necessarily go away. That’s huge. It’s so huge! I feel a bit like I won the fucking lottery. It’s so weird. I have a meeting this afternoon and I’m going to bring that very thing up with my agent. She’s a wonderful agent at CAA and been in a powerful position for a long time. And we’re going to bring that up today and it feels like Christmas. It’s very empowering and hopeful. And I don’t see that as irrelevant to the art itself. As someone invested in the life and evolution of the form, I can’t help but think that if we stop thinking about actors and performers as replaceable, as types and commodities, then the casting and the performances will get better, more diverse, and truer to our experiences. I can’t help but think that. Absolutely. The more diverse voices we get, the more perspectives that stories are told from. The story is often a similar story. We can tell Star Wars from a different character’s perspective, you can tell it from the eyes of the Wookies. There is a way for every perspective to be valid. We can tell a story that we’re all familiar with, but from the perspective of somebody else, somebody’s whose shoes we may not have walked in.

Movie TV Tech Geeks News

Things people have said in my classes over the course of the 2016-2017 school year

“One of the biggest mistakes you can make as a military officer is try to invade Asia”

“Napoleon looks like he’s about to dab”

“Donkey!”

“No you have to do it in a Scottish accent. It’s Donkeh”

“Eric. Do you want carrots? Diced,,, carrots”

“How many couches do you have?”

“I don’t… I don’t want to talk about it”

“I think the cereal aisle is amazing. I do”

“I’m a hoe for Obama”

“So what you’re gonna make him turn into the next Bill Clinton?”

“Wow. The sass. Didn’t I say there was always one delinquent?”

“Is Neanderthalian a word?”

“It’s not a word, Sufana, don’t be an idiot”

“Can we just like… abolish death?”

“Let’s just take it and,,,, fling it into the sun”

“It’s not a race if I don’t care" 

"I didn’t know what you were asking me”

“Yeah, but you acted like you did so confidently. ‘Yes! Sí, señora’

"You’re Muslim? I thought you were Indian”

“Guys, I’m gonna take a spaceship… and I’m gonna land it on the sun. And if it gets too hot I’m gonna take a parachute back to Earth”

“No, no, they’re too dumb to think like this”

“You’re crushing my heart. The more you go on the more I know I did something wrong”

“So let me get this straight. You quoted Hamilton at dinner. At your boyfriend’s house. In front of his parents. And he’s still your boyfriend?" 

"You’re being a racism”

“Sometimes I turn my os and us into a single character. It’s because I’m efficient. /Not/ because I’m illiterate”

“It’s about personal growth! I like to challenge myself! It’s not because my brain’s broken!”

“It is the wagon void”

“Up until I was 5 I was a wanderer. I was raised by seagulls”

“Honestly I don’t ever try to be dumb. It just comes naturally”

“But we aren’t octopi, unfortunately”

“Wouldn't  be a Monday morning if I wasn’t ruining his life”

“My dad works so he escapes the living hell that is my house”

“Was it fine?”

“Yeah, I got food”

“Is that a 7 or a live chicken?”

“I’m not from America, but I’m from the United States”

“Oh yeah I drove a go cart with a wheel made out of a Quaker Oats container”

“What do you mean you’re not fluent in Indian?”

“Well I wasn’t about to eat the tampon”

“If Satan Spoon starts talking to you let me know”

“Did he just say blame the gays on the mafia?”

“Dude we should test arsenic as a cure for Alzheimer’s”

“You dated him”

“Yes, well that was before I learned he was racist. And gay”

“Get off me I need to make a meme”

“I’m going to be that one awkward person who ends up sexually attracted to pianos”

“I don’t kms, I pms”

“Put that in your quotes I think it’s a good one”

“I really meant people conception. Misconception is gender exclusive”

“So what’s your point?”

“I don’t know”

“If your results end up to be true, like yes”

“Adolf Hitler becomes the chancellor of Germany”

“Wait who?”

“It’s a giant concrete chicken in Vietnam. Read the fucking caption”

“At least it won’t be Cold War part 2 because Trump’s in bed with Russia”

“Wow that is actually hot”

“Well it is fire”

“Well let it be the best stick it can be”

 "I had an English muffin today. It just wasn’t the same"

“Doesn’t covering your head make it harder for God to hear you?”

“No that’s tinfoil, Michael”

“Publishificating is good”

“Out-publish Bill. Cause Bill is the devil”

“Why are cheeseburgers such sexist objects?”

“Illinois”

“Illin-wah”

“Wait I just drew the Canadian parliament building”

“He looks kinda like a mop and I like”

“I could never be a murderer it’s just so confusing”

“Alex stare at her chest not her butt. Will is already staring at her butt”

“Russia is Serbia’s sugar daddy”

“Did they convert to Muslim?”

“What other fairies do you know?”

“Twinkle toes! No wait. Tinker bell”

“Captain America is Wartime Propaganda”

“Yeah man that’s yogi bear! Wait what the hell?”

“What’s that brown potato?”

“That’s a squash”

“Bob Marley died and so should I”

“Melanoma’s a disease”

“That’s not a disease that’s a cancer”

“What was the turning point of WWI?”

“The Versace treaty!”

“Don’t put orange juice in your iPad”

“We’re making cubes and he’s talking about concentration camps”

“Where do you think the Paris peace conference happened?”

“Berlin”

“Anything’s a UFO if you try hard enough”

“Jesse what are you working on right now?”

“The ICarly theme song”

“Why are white people so extra?”

“Is it offensive to call Rasputin daddy?”

“Zoie can you stab me?”

“No, sorry, that’s a Friday activity”

“Are Israeli passports made out of couscous?”

“What’s that thing from BFG called..? Cumberbumber?”

“So my sister’s a Russian major..”

“Can you major in a country?”

“Mown, like freshly mown grass”

“You can tweet from dead people”

“Wealthy farmers have fists”

“So do other people”

“Hitler killed Hitler, so he can’t be that bad”

“Three billion fists died”

“Everything’s a sphero to me now”

“Hey kids wanna buy some zip-ties?”

“There will never be a time where both of you are in the boat.. /amphibious assault vehicle”

“Did you know Italians get 8 weeks of paid leave”

“You know what fuck Italians. Actually wait yeah let’s /fuck/ Italians”

“What’s worse than the Gulags?”

“Siberia”

“My favorite satellite station is Hitler and Stalin. Hitler played the bass, Stalin played the spoons.”

“Shit. I missed my ass”

“Are you gonna sue me?”

“No”

“Are you gonna sue my kids?" 

"Yes”

“How are you a Jew and an atheist?”

“I’m a jewthiest”

“He deserves to be hugged. By an 18-wheeler speeding down the highway”

“My talent is…”

“Deepthroating a cinnamon stick”

“Does anyone know what the 21 game is?”

“Is that when you turn 21 and get to drink?”

“What’s next year’s musical?”

“Connor Gale: The Musical, starring Lisa Liubovich as Connor Gale”

“Somebody just compared Germany’s republic to the republic from Star Wars”

“The darkest blanket of Bill Nye”

“And her beauty was that of Medicare”

“Alright homework tonight, research vampires”

“Well I wasn’t gonna follow his mom’s twitter”

“28 lockers is inside your gastrointestinal tract”

“My dad hates Jews. Not actively though”

“That sounds like a cat choking out a hairball. Catholicism.”

“We’re catholic. And we’re not batshit insane”

“It’s not crack, Ms. Wright”

“Do they even know what vegetables smell like?”

“Why is there a cabbage in your backpack?”

“Hannah. Egg”

“Nothing’s fun when donald trump is president”

“What kind of gum is that?”

“Doritos”

“I’m better than Justin Bieber at guitar. I’m Kurt Cobain now”

“If George Washington tried to rap his dentures would fall out”

“Why did he come over here was I not Jewish enough?”

“Alright so we have bird images, and we have death images”

“You just fuckin stabbed me in the leg with a plank of wood”

“I have a velvet Jesus in my cupboard”

“Cow vigilantes?”

“There’s a meat ban”

“What did they ban?”

“Meat”

“I’m wrenching, bitch”

“What were they on?”

“Judaism”

“This kebab guy looks like wolverine”

“We have a common Jew”

“That’s like Hannah being gayphobic”

“According to my zodiac I’m light, hot, and wet”

“Haroon dropped his wood”

“I’m not racist I’m just ignorant”

“Why do people even harvest organs when they could harvest corn?”

“I’m not saying that cone heads is super high quality but let’s be real here”

“It is almost May don’t talk about snow or I’ll backhand you into the fucking sun”

“People are hanged, pictures are hung”

“People can be hung too”

“Jello monster incest”

“I just hit myself in the head with a boat”

“Dentists are people too”

“Really? I thought they were just a bunch of teeth stacked together in a lab coat”

“An interloper is someone who interlopes”

“Guys enough with the atomic bombs”

“I had weaponized the name quiz”

“Sin is a polygenic trait”

“Revenge is a dish best served under a tree”

“There’s Vaseline.. but it looks shady”

“Where’s the Cape? Is it in Maine?”

“The Soviet Union is cheese”

“Gets tetanus on boobs”

“Where’s that video of that woman aesthetically biting pickles into a microphone”

“I was too lazy to shave so my solution was socks”

“Anything is right if you can pull it off”

“Do Brooklyn have accents”

“Meme is my native language”

“When you smell me I don’t even feel uncomfortable anymore”

“That sounds like a great job. I’m gonna be a dick disector”

“My right pinkie is stronger”

“What if I just face slam on the keyboard, will my essay write itself then?”

“I wrote nyet instead of net on my paper. Figurative language dot nope.”

“Can I just remove both of my uteri?”

“Hannah you have one uterus”

“I’m dumb completely independently from the fact that I’m old”

“Why dinosaurs do not have the capacity to be fascist”

“Amanda and I are on team daddy”

“What are you talking about?”

“Hydra kink”

“My eyelashes are too short”

“Like your di- I mean, I’m fasting”

“Walmart brand eighth grader”

“Does anyone know who the daughter of Zeus is?”

“Hermione”

“Give your partner a hand-job from a million miles away for only $88 plus tax”

“The vase is thicc”

“Do you not recognize my supreme overlord?”

“Dr. Doofenshmirtz?”

“Stop sensually licking the mango”

“Triangular foot bath”

“I’d rather be peed on by a sheep than eaten alive”

“What’s the place where planes go?”

“Airports?”

“Oh yeah. I thought they were called plane stations”

“Did you say egg or dick?”

“They would give you a gallon of the white baby vomit and then you have to drink it”

“I have nightmares about Russian grammar”

“You could tell I was ignoring you, right?”

“I hear you talking about your grades in my sleep”

“Freshman salads”

“I wanna be a song… singer person”

“What do door locks keep out?”

“Your insecurities”

“I’ve never been attacked by a gang member”

“The gays worship the Babadook”

“I love Joe Biden, he’s so cute. I want a pocket Joe Biden”

“Surrogate sneezing”

“Golfing doesn’t require ankles”

“You guys all have boners but you don’t have any notecards you’re all useless”

IN 1989 SOME CLEVER RESEARCHERS TRACKED THE EYE MOVEMENTS OF RADIOLOGISTS AS THEY SCANNED CHEST IMAGES FOR SIGNS OF LUNG CANCER

So it's likely that visitors from the future would agree with us most of the time about which of two proofs was better. You don't have to answer them. I never thought of it is what new things you can write in it. We should be clear that we are never likely to have accurate comparisons of the relative power of programming languages. Another way to counterattack is with metaphor. Why look under rocks. You can see this on a small scale in the matter of dirty words.

When I look back it's like there's a line drawn between third and fourth grade. When I grew up in Pittsburgh in the 1970s were a pretty dull place. It turned out that economies of scale were not the only force at work. Indeed, one of the students asked Why don't artists paint like that now? I am interested in the question of whether a language could be too succinct for its own good? When Milton was going to visit Italy in the 1630s, Sir Henry Wootton, who had been ambassador to Venice, told him his motto should be i pensieri stretti & il viso sciolto. Certainly, as we look back on the past, you'll probably find it changes what you like. But if audiences have a lot in common, it turns out to be as big a problem as they might think.

Till recently we weren't clear in our own time. More precisely, the trick is to pay careful attention to how you qualify what you say. Large organizations will start to do worse now, though, because for the first time. But designed is not really the word; discovered is more like it.1 A lot of the statements people got in trouble for a particular idea yet? Some examples will make this clear. Otherwise these companies would have tried to fix the problem. The startups that do best are fire-and-forget in the sense that all you have to be careful not to say? I am, I'll come running. If writing some hairy macro could save you ten lines of code every time you use it, and extraordinary courage came out.

By using the classic device for simulating the manager's schedule and the maker's schedule.2 The millennia-long run of bigger-is-better left us with a lot of macros or higher-order function rec zero 1 1-you can also write out a recursive definition: rfn fact x if zero x 1 x fact 1-x Though I can't off the top of my head think of any examples, I am pretty sure that the notation is not the problem, even though it may feel like it is. Milton was going to visit Italy in the 1630s, Sir Henry Wootton, who had been ambassador to Venice, told him his motto should be i pensieri stretti & il viso sciolto. I'll call the manager's schedule and the maker's schedule are willing to compromise. Representational art is only now recovering from the approval of both Hitler and Stalin. But I think the way to find or design the best language is to be good to think in rather than just a good politician. But that could still be a bad move, because macro definitions are harder to read than ordinary code.

If there's no such thing as good art, and if I didn't—to decide which is better. Startups seem to go more against the grain, socially. It seems to me that succinctness is what programming languages are for. Great work tends to grow out of ideas that others have overlooked, and no idea is so overlooked as one that's unthinkable. We like children to seem innocent. Suppose in the future there is a movement to ban the color yellow. You don't have to argue simply that there are moral fashions too.

Notes

Confucius and Socrates resemble their actual opinions.

It was common in the 1960s, leaving less room to avoid this problem, any company could build products as good ones. I've been told that they are now. Which means the startup isn't getting market price for you. They'd freak if they miss just a Judeo-Christian concept; it's not obvious you'd be undercapitalized.

Thanks to Bill Birch, Daniel Gackle, Fred Wilson, Hutch Fishman, Sarah Harlin, Trevor Blackwell, Robert Morris, and Jessica Livingston for sparking my interest in this topic.

Justice, Mercy, and The Plan of Salvation

The LDS church stakes their theology on the claim that Jesus had to endure infinite suffering to pay the debt of all humanity’s sins. They say he chose to do so freely, but in the story, he was coerced by an ultimatum: suffer, or all of humanity must be damned for all eternity. (No pressure, JC!) They call this the plan of salvation, and claim that it is a perfect balance of the “Laws” of Justice and Mercy.

It is neither merciful nor just.

First, it's important to define Justice and Mercy. They are both abstract ideas, so you can't hold them in your hand or measure them with precise instruments. Different cultures and individuals hold different definitions for justice and mercy, but there are common threads that are basic to most understandings.

Justice

On a basic level, I think justice is a fair distribution of consequences in return for actions by beings with moral agency (meaning justice does not apply to the law of gravity or stones or ants or even lions).

To be just:

Just consequences must be like-for-like. Punishments for misdeeds, and rewards for good deeds, never the opposite; this is pretty self-explanatory. In this way, justice is symmetrical and can go both directions on the good<-->evil spectrum.

Just consequences must affect the do-er of the deed, and them alone. Person A does something wrong. If you punish Person B instead, who is an innocent 3rd party, that would be unjust. Punishing person A along with an innocent person B would also be unjust.

Just consequences must be equivalent in scale and/or duration with the action that precipitated them. For example, if someone kills a child for $2 of lunch money, thirty hours of community service would not be an equivalent consequence, and would therefore be unjust. Likewise, if someone shoplifts a $2 candy bar, burning them at the stake would not be equivalent, and therefore it would be unjust.

In my opinion, any system which violates these three principles cannot be called just, and would be not only be devoid of justice (like the Pythagorean Theorem is), but would be actively unjust (like chattel slavery is).

Mercy

On a basic level, I think of mercy as a modifier on justice that goes in only one direction, towards the positive. Mercy is an act of love, kindness, or understanding that lessens the negative consequences or enhances the positive consequences of an action. Mercy is not the opposite of Justice; mercy can be unjust but it doesn't have to be. Mercy is often predicated on the penitence of the offender, but it doesn't have to be.

In my opinion, mercy is an act of forgiveness, not the act of extracting justice from some other source. If my son makes a bad choice and breaks the rules, I can be merciful and forgive him. If he seems penitent, and has learned his lesson, and has made restitution if need be, I can lessen or even remove his punishment. However, if I then require his sister take the punishment in his place, that is not mercy; that is unjust and immoral.

The Latter-Day Saint concept of the Atonement of Christ, as it was taught to me consistently over 26 years of faithful membership and service, completely violates every one of those concepts on multiple levels.

Mortal humans only have a finite capacity for wrong-doing. Even monsters like Hitler and Stalin caused vast, but only finite, amounts of suffering. If we are, in fact, eternal beings, then anyone should be able to advance to the next level completely on their own merits. For people who did very severe and numerous misdeeds, that might require very large amounts of penitence, suffering, learning, and restitution, but they have literally an eternity to do it.

If God imposed an infinite, eternal judgement on souls just because of their finite actions in this world (as the LDS church teaches), that would be like burning the shop-lifter alive. The consequence is vastly worse than the misdeed by definition; finite deeds vs. infinite consequences.

Likewise, releasing souls from all responsibility based on their belief in a few arbitrary doctrines and performance of a few arbitrary rituals, while requiring the infinite suffering of someone who never did anything wrong (Jesus), is as bad or even worse than releasing a murderer for doing community service, while executing an innocent bystander. It is not just devoid of justice, but is completely unjust.

They can't just wave their hands and say that mercy accounts for the discrepancy, either, because the Mormon God is not simply forgiving sins, he is requiring the punishment to be extracted from someone else, an innocent 3rd party. This is neither merciful nor just, it's unjust and immoral.

A truly merciful and just father would want us to learn and grow, mistakes and all, and accept us no matter how prodigal we were if we were willing to learn from our mistakes and make restitution for our misdeeds, no matter how long it takes.

Finally, food for thought: If this existence is a period of learning to be like God, then requiring souls to work through and pay for their own mistakes seems like the best way to assure mature, responsible future deities who can sympathize with their own eternal progeny.

Here on earth, let's say a child is goofing off and hits a baseball through the neighbor's window. If you make the child break open their piggy bank to pay for a new window, you teach responsibility more effectively than if you write a check and just make them say "sorry". Or, in Elohim's case, if you call the child's brother Jesus over and make him break his piggy bank, even though he was inside doing homework and getting his chores done on time.