BABBLE THE SPELL THAT GETS IT DONE, BABBLE IT ON COMMAND

[image description in read more]

[Image Description: a digital drawing of three white silhouettes gathered around a black book. A multi-colored glow forms the shape of a star underneath them. At each of the five points of the star, the colorful figure of a Lord in Black stands. Pokey is in blue at the bottom left, Nibbly is in pink at the top left, Blinky in purple at the top right, Tinky in yellow at the bottom right, and Wiggly stands at the top point of the star. They loom over the white silhouettes. End Description.]

2020 Writing in Review

Well, it’s been a shitshow of a year, ain’t it? The one bright spot in this year was that it left me a ton of time for writing! With no further ado, here are the fics I worked on the year of our lord, 2020. 

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the blood which we drew | Rated: M | Word Count: 7335 | COMPLETE

Castiel bears the Mark. And for a few months, it's fine.

It's fine until it isn't.

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ramble on | Rated: E | Word Count: 26,875 | WIP

A series of Season 15 codas, crossposted to tumblr. Tags, Warnings, and Rating may change, based on source material.

(Technically started this in 2019, but I added to it this year, so I’m counting it)

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protect and serve | Rated: E | Word Count: 49,953 | COMPLETE

Police officer Dean Winchester's next assignment seems easy enough: a protection detail on Assistant District Attorney Castiel Novak, who's been receiving death threats in conjunction with the case that he's prosecuting. Dean's assignment is to keep ADA Novak safe, alive, and in one piece so that he can start his trial against Dick Roman, notorious CEO charged with the death of at least eight people.

With threats that quickly spin out of control, a missing teenage genius, Dean's attraction to Novak, and Novak's mercurial attitude towards Dean--Dean Winchester's next assignment is anything but easy.

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what stays (and what fades away) | Rated: E | Word Count: 64,421 | COMPLETE

Cas Novak’s life is perfect. He has a job that he loves and friends who support him. Most importantly, he has his husband, Dean Winchester, and his two adopted children, Claire and Jack. With them, nothing could ever go wrong.

That is, until he starts having flashes of a life that isn’t his and meets someone who shares his husband’s face but not his personality, someone who insists that he’s someone, something, different altogether. Cas’ life shatters when he’s dragged into a world that he doesn’t belong to and doesn’t understand.

Dean Winchester’s life was already shattered when he lost Castiel.

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thunder road | Rated: E | Word Count: 20,883 | COMPLETE

After Chuck is defeated and the Winchesters settle into life without God, Dean Winchester is bored.

OR: Dean and Cas take a road trip and figure out some stuff along the way.

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alone together | Rated: E | Word Count: 74, 239 | COMPLETE

Like the rest of the world, Dean Winchester’s job sent him home with the supplies necessary to work from home and a vague farewell of “We’ll see you when this all blows over”. Unlike the rest of the world, Dean Winchester is entering into a quarantine with Castiel Novak, his incredibly hot and incredibly uninterested roommate. How is Dean supposed to concentrate on his job while Cas is just a few feet away, being...well, Cas?

Castiel Novak was already working from home, so the news of social distancing doesn’t affect him that much. What does send him into a panic is the knowledge that Dean Winchester, his stunning and straight roommate, will also be working from home for the foreseeable future. After spending so long trying to distance himself from Dean, Castiel now has to face a future where Dean is present. All. The. Time.

They’ve got food, Internet, and all the toilet paper they need, but neither one of them is prepared for quarantine.

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for a sinner released | Rated: E | Word Count: 8,800 | COMPLETE

Testing his theory, he runs his fingers over the soft skin of Dean’s wrist, until his thumb is pressed firmly against Dean’s hammering pulse. Cas pulls, gently but inexorably, until Dean is forced to take a step forward. The shift in positioning pushes the barrel of the gun into his forehead.

Cold metal touches overheated skin, and Cas inhales sharply at the contrasting sensations. The gun is unforgiving, relentless, beautiful.

It’s like Dean.

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and all this devotion | Rated: M | Word Count: 10,572 | COMPLETE

Dean’s not stupid. He’s seen the looks Cas has aimed his way, when Cas thought he wasn’t paying attention. He’s leveled his share of looks back at Cas when the angel’s attention was elsewhere. More than once, he’s been caught in the act. At this point, they’re both dancing around the same elephant, too scared and caught in their ways to make the first move.

OR: Dean gets hurt on a hunt. Cas takes care of him. There's only one bed. Confessions ensue.

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lost in translation | Rated: T | Word Count: 3,720 | COMPLETE 

Cas bites at his lower lip, looking uncommonly shy. Worry starts to stir in Dean’s gut, which is only compounded when Cas says something else in soft yet clear Enochian. As the new phrase doesn’t have the word stupid anywhere in it, Dean doesn’t have the slightest idea of what Cas is saying. The guilt squirming in his stomach gets worse when Cas looks at him, with gentle anticipation, as though he’s expecting a reply. Dean does what humans have been doing since the beginning of time when confronted with a language they don’t understand and smiles, wide and sunny, at Cas. Cas’ forehead creases but he returns the gesture. His eyes are still brimming over with emotion and the sight does something to Dean.

Dean begins to suspect that he may have started something which he is not equipped to finish.

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a new song about a new life | Rated: E | Word Count: 21,282 | WIP

There is no happily ever after. Mostly because there is no after. Life is just a series of days and nothing ever really ends. It just continues on, even after the curtain closes, and while the struggles might not be epic, they're no less impressive. Domestic life isn't without its pitfalls and trials, but at the end of the day, Dean and Cas still have each other and in the end, that's enough.

A series of timestamps detailing the small adventures of Dean and Castiel. Will contain teensy amounts of angst and a heap of fluff and domesticity.

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angel in black | Rated: E | Word Count: 95,325 | COMPLETE

Bounty hunter Castiel Novak has simple rules for how he conducts his business. Get in, get out, deliver the fugitive, and do it all with the least amount of effort possible. Never become emotionally involved.

When he takes on the job of hunting down Sam and Dean Winchester in order to bring them to justice, his rules start shifting. Threatened by supernatural forces as well as his attraction to Dean, Castiel soon has to decide what he’s willing to stand for…and what he’s willing to die for.

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ghosts that we knew | Rated: E | Word Count: 89,411 | COMPLETE

Dean can’t help it. Castiel’s laugh is infectious, washing over him and sweeping him up in its tide. His throat and stomach ache with the feel of it, unfamiliar muscles worked past their endurance. He hasn’t laughed like this in weeks, maybe years.

Cas doesn’t stop laughing, and Dean relishes it. It’s such a good sound, deep and throaty. It rumbles over him the same way that Baby’s engine purrs, to where he can almost feel it in his gut. Dean’s giddy, the kind of happy that hunters don’t get to feel, and if it weren’t for the ceiling, he thinks he might float away. Cas’ eyes crinkle when he laughs, and his smile goes wide and gummy. He’s so brilliant, so alive—

But you’re dead, Dean thinks helplessly. But you’re dead.

---

Castiel Novak is one of the best hunters Dean Winchester has ever worked with. He's witty, whip-smart, and has enough knowledge about the supernatural to rival an encyclopedia. He's got humor dry enough to put the Sahara to shame and he's pretty easy on the eyes as well. All in all, he's the best partner Dean could have hoped for.

Too bad he's dead.

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the best of things | Rated: G | Word Count: 2,494 | COMPLETE

There’s something.

This is significant because, for as long as Castiel can remember, there’s been nothing. --- Castiel finds a way out of the Empty.

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freedom | Rated: G | Word Count: 4,804 | COMPLETE

Freedom.

Dean rolls the word around on the tip of his tongue and tastes how it feels. Freedom.

It’s a strange concept, especially since he always assumed that he was. Ever since Apocalypse Version 1.0 was averted, Michael and Lucifer locked in the cage, thanks very much, he’s always assumed that he was the one calling the shots. No matter how badly he fucked up (and he fucked up a lot), he could at least take comfort in the fact that those were his choices. No one’s hand up Dean Winchester’s ass, no siree.

And then Chuck came and ripped that certainty away from him in one quick motion and then...everything was suspect. Sam, Mom, Jack...Cas. Every word, every action, every emotion... He couldn’t trust anything, so he trusted nothing.

--- OR: Dean makes a choice.

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at the end of the world | Rated: G | Word Count: 4,631 | COMPLETE

Rebuilding Heaven is slow work, but time doesn’t really mean anything here. It’s delicate to rebuild the walls separating billions of souls so that nothing collapses. Castiel works alongside Jack, making suggestions as his mind trips along to potential problems.

Though it’s never said aloud, Castiel knows why Jack is working tirelessly. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, the knowledge sits that Sam and Dean are going to die. One day, they will pass from the earth, and come to Heaven, and on that day, Castiel wants everything to be perfect for them. He wants to show them a true paradise, a place without walls or barriers, a place where emotion is genuine and not just a manufactured memory. Rebuilding Heaven is his last chore, the last of his penance to be performed.

--- OR: Team Free Will gets the soft epilogue which they deserve.

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let your heart be light | Rated: M | Word Count: 31,651 | WIP

It's Dean and Cas' first official Christmas together as a couple. What could possibly go wrong?

Just Cas' weird family, his own personal hang-ups about Christmas, Dean's persistent belief that the miracle of Christmas can heal all wounds, and meddling friends and family.

Have a Merry Christmas.

The Cognitive Dissonance of US backed Islamist Terror

The notion that the US is against either Islamist terror or Islamist regimes is among recent history’s more profound examples of Orwellian scale propaganda. A decades long state sponsored disinformation psy-op, directed at the American citizenry, has succeeded in creating broad cognitive dissonance among an American public who’s breathtaking ignorance on the topic can best be described as zombie-like.

Here are just a handful of fun facts to help break the mass hypnosis:

The US actually created the Islamist Mujahedeen terrorists, and the subsequent Taliban, in the 80’s in order to undermine– a secular modernizing leftist government in Afghanistan.

-Since 2013 the US has illegally invaded and occupied portions of the sovereign state of Syria in order to train and aid Islamist terror groups such as Al Nusra. This, not only against all international law and over the violent protest of Syria’s officially recognized, legally legitimate and, once again secular government but also against the will of–---wait for it–---the Christian and secular portions of the Syrian populace. Let me repeat this in case you missed it. The US CIA backs, trains and finances Islamist terrorists in Syria against the secular and Christian portions of its population, who continue to back their besieged secular government.

-As I write, the US is allied with Al Qaeda (yes, that al Qaeda!) in the Yemeni civil war.

-The US protects, defends and arms Saudi Arabia, the most extreme Islamist dictatorship on this earth–--a nation named after, and literally owned by a mob-like family whose Wahabist/Salafist ideology is the theological inspiration for ISIS.

Yet rather than bombing or invading Saudi Arabia as the US media’s anti-Islamist rhetoric would lead a rational observer to expect, the US not only does not attack or bomb Saudi Arabia, it backs the radical Islamist Saudi clan with hundreds of billions of dollars of space age weaponry. Recently the Trump cabal has even floated the idea of providing the Saudis with Nuclear reactors and given a wink and nod to the suggestion that Pakistan, another US backed Islamist nation, should sell the Saudis an atomic bomb.

The unshakable US support of the House of Saud continues decade after decade and under both Democrat and Republican administrations. It does so even after 15 of the 911 hijackers turned out to be Saudis. It continues even though the Saudis and their Emirati cousins arm and finance Jihadists around the globe and spread the puritanical Wahabist/Salafist version of Islam in madrassas across Asia and Africa. It continues even as they openly, regularly execute Christians, Jews, Shiites, and ‘Pagans’ for witchcraft, simply for practicing their religion in the rather less than magic 'Kingdom’ that is Saudi Arabia. It continues even after they cut a Washington Post journalist (a legal US person) to pieces with a bone saw, in a foreign embassy with not so much as a slap on the wrist. It continues even after they kidnap and beat the visiting Prime Minister of Lebanon. It continues even after they invade and for four years now, indiscriminately bomb and starve the impoverished pre-industrialized Yemeni people next door, killing 100,000 (and counting) and bringing millions to the edge of starvation and cholera, in what the UN terms, a genocidal brutality.

The Islamist Saudi clan does all this with not only near total silence or backing from the 'free’ US media but with a green light from Washington. In fact, it does all this with the direct, active, strategic, tactical and even operational support of the US military and intelligence apparatus.

Saudi Arabia not only backs, arms and finances Islamist radicals, it provides them with their core ideology. Saudi Arabia in fact, is ISIS, having succeeded and created a state.

It is also a US protectorate, vassal and symbiotic client state. Which means that ultimately, what the Saudis do is US approved, supported and often instigated.

What ultimately matter to US administrations, of either major political party, are the hundreds of billions of dollars from weapons sales to the Kingdom. A regime through which the West controls the supply and price of oil, maintains the dominance of the petro-Dollar as the global currency and protects, at all cost, the modern nuclear armed version of a medieval crusader state, that is Israel.

An Israel that’s both an American armed and protected nuclear fortress placed strategically to divide the Middle East at the strategic corner of Asia from Africa. And an Israel that is worshiped with religious fervor by anti-Semitic Christian evangelical know nothings whose love of the Jewish state is only equaled by their hatred of Jews.

These American end-times believing, millenarian lunatics pray for Jewish control of Palestine, despite their racial and theological anti-Semitism. They do so because their insane and ugly eschatology tells them that this will hasten the end of the world when Jesus will return they and only they, will be 'raptured’ up into the arms of their imagined German looking version of the Christ.

The Vice President of the United states is only one of countless high level American adherents to this grotesque, and world threatening, theology based foreign policy.

A. Darius Kamali

#Kurds #syriankurds #TrumppullsoutofSyria #KurdishYPG

HCMJ’s Favorite Albums of 2017!

Listen to a mix featuring these albums here: HCMJ’s 2017 End Of Year Mix

Honorable Mentions:

Carla dal Forno - The Garden

GFOTY - GFOTYBUCKS

ミスト M Y S T - 緑の目

Nmesh - Pharma

Black Marble - It’s Immaterial

Leyland Kirby - We, so tired of all the darkness in our lives

世界は80年代に終了しました - People Lead Such Busy Lives

Virtual Vice - Sanctuary Runner

Golden Living Room - Autoscopy

DESIRE - STAQQ OVERFLO

20) World War - Soundsystem

Distorted Redrum rhythms dripping with gabbery, housey, bounceable goodness. Every moment is more relentless than the last, with strange electronic and sometimes nightmarish sound elements effortlessly woven into the complicated crescendos that comprise each track. 

STREAM/DOWNLOAD

19) Curved Light - Quartzsite

It’s rare to find a synth album that isn’t endlessly droning or cheekily nostalgic. Quartzsite utilizes slow-attack expansive pads alongside stabby knob turners without falling into the tropes that have been turned over time and time again over the last decade. Subtle but fast tempo percussive elements ticking beneath pure white pads and icy synthfalls of pure crystal.

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18) Geo Metro - Ravage2099

Fellow Philadelphia artist Geo Metro dropped this dense debut on Tiger Blood Tapes earlier this year. His shows are always foggy headthumpers with mind melting realtime sampling, deep drones, dancing rhythmic enigmas and astral melodies. None of this was lost in translation to magnetic tape, the bubbling pulse of beyond - a spiritual guide.

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17) Disasteradio - Sweatshop

Another incredible performance I was fortunate to witness this year was Eyeliner AKA Disasteradio. His on stage MIDI splicing with its gravity-increasing, vocoded, show-stopping finale was exhilarating and inspiring. All of that energy, bombast, and humor can be found on Sweatshop. There’s also a high level of musicianship - touching upon 90′s FM video game music, new wave DEVO synthpop, and moments like “Unleash The Free TV Revolt” which echo Daft Punk vocoder jams. Playful and reflective of what childhood in the early 90′s actually felt like.

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16) x.y.r. - Labyrinth

x.y.r. could keep putting albums out like this every year until I die and I would still count them among my favorites. No one does lo-fi synth music the way he does - his unique musical character pulses and wanders in this fuzzy maze.

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15) Computer Graphics - Lo-Fi

This collection of hazy house jams was a lens back through time. Flashbacks of downloading strange electronic artists off LimeWire in the early 00′s, sinking endless frustrated hours into PixelJunk Eden, and now dancing around my house with Computer Graphics bumping. It’s just as dreamy and hypnotic as you’d hope.

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14) Nico Niquo - In A Silent Way

Taking a step away from the “darkwebwave” of 2015′s Epitaph, Nico Niquo explores more expansive snow plains on In A Silent Way. Gone are the stabbing vocal samples an occasional swirling rhythmic patterning - in their place is Eno-esque slow burners with that rise and fall like the breaths of a sleeping frost giant against moments of purity and silence. 

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13) Arca - Arca

Arca’s 3rd full length is thick and operatic. Like haunted ballroom music with a broken falsetto whispering in your ear, being engulfed in underwater explosions, or watching the credits roll on your own life. It’s sometimes oppressively stark, sometimes intimately vulnerable, and always entrancing. I was initially pulled in by the video premiere for the masterpiece “Desafio.”

VIDEO STREAM

12) Nyoi Plunger - Poiret Status

Playful and full of detail, twisted and bent as it’s pulled into a black hole and spit out again. Poiret Status is always teetering on the edge of a nightmare. Strange voices laugh and coo, like being trapped in a realm ruled by the manifestation of fear, or a dance hall where your very physicality is distorted, warped, and twisted as time becomes unhinged and there’s nothing left to hold onto.

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11) The Caretaker - Everywhere at the end of time - Stages 2 & 3

Discovering Leyland Kirby’s work was a turning point in my life. Over the last decade release after release of both haunted ballroom music as The Caretaker and reflective synth/piano music as himself have becomes markers for the years of my life. This year we received the next two stages of the dementia simulation of Everywhere at the end of time. The flowers have wilted, and the darkening mind is displayed with a poignant beauty.  

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10) TVVIN_PINEZ_M4LL - orz

More than half a decade after the wave rose and fell, torch bearers continue to twist the pop of the past to express new ideas and add their emotional mark to the blockchain of internet music. In the case of the prolific TVVIN_PINEZ_M4LL, orz uses vaporwave techniques and traditions as a framework for an emotionally radiant, deeply personal love story. Bursting with raw emotion and feelings of NUWRLD.

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09) Various - Even Further

It feels weird putting a remix compilation on one of these lists, but the Zoom Lens label tribute to Infinity Shred is one of those rare moments when a compilation isn’t just a total mishmash of whatever happened to be thrown into the pot. A fitting showcase of the LA label’s diverse palette of sound, from Berserk ost aping to widescreen chiptune bliss - heavy beats and the brightest black leather darkness that is worthy of Infinity Shred’s cinematic scope.

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08) FIRE-TOOLZ - INTERBEING

Metal-screeches in empty halls drip over post-eccojam synth operas, spastic crystalline outbursts, and high-tempo-high-energy half pipe spaceship rides with broken bits of sound and a cyberpunk sheen. Songs completely split open with massive bombardments of noise and an endless layering of digital artifacts. A labyrinth of glitched out modernity.

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07) Koeosaeme - Sonorant

Fast and full of neck-breaking spins, Sonorant alongside Nyoi Plunger’s Poiret Status were two of the most forward-looking albums I heard this year. With the endless tiny pattering of a billion bits of music playing up against unnatural arrangements of bizarre rhythmic breaks and supernatural harmony. Part sound sculpture part audio apocalypse.

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06) Piper Spray - r.i.p.

When pieces of you die and slowly fall away, they leave a trail of memories in their wake. Piper Spray, one of my favorite artists of the last decade, has been prolific and mysterious - even elusive. His entire body of work has since been deleted from his bandcamp and only this retrospective release that looks back at the last 7 years of his output and life in 6 tracks remains. Full of noise, pain, frustration - with a touch of sorrow and sweetness we are given once last glimpse into the nostalgia for a place we’ve never known. His music has been my constant companion on my own personal journey these last 7 years. RIP Piper Spray.

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05) Euglossine - Sharp Time

It wasn’t until I was lucky enough to play a show with Stany Bebe AKA Euglossine that I discovered to my amazement that the majority of the sounds on this album were performed on MIDI guitar. The sound blips and pan flutes expressed with metronomic precision on a real guitar having its note data interpreted by a MIDI conversion box. Mind blowing musicianship and sprawling melodic composition.

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04) Giant Claw - Soft Channel

I couldn’t stop listening to Soft Channel this year! The culmination of everything that has come before and a wide leap into the future. Orchestral fragmentation in a thick rainbow of sound that breathes and pulses - the sound design is mind blowing, frantic and brilliantly produced. It’s a crisp and meticulously designed new height. 

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03) Marcus Fjellström - Skelektikon

It’s hard to believe it’s been 7 years since Marcus Fjellström’s Schattenspieler was listed as my favorite album of 2010 (on the inaugural annotated list!). Now, all these years later, we were finally treated with a proper followup - and tragically lost Fjellström himself. Skelektikon is a remarkable swansong, picking up where Schattenspieler left off - diving deeper into the anxiety ridden halls of darkness. Larger orchestral arrangements pop up, tape flutter constantly threatening to snap the dread to a sudden end. There’s is a sometimes darkly romantic turn to its harmonic movements however - a humanizing touch that makes the ghosts that much more terrifying.

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02) Sour Gout - I S O L A T E

It doesn’t matter how you get there, only how good the ideas are. I S O L A T E may be built out of a collection of new age and incidental music samples, but its collages give a sense of a deep personal expression. Saccharin guitar, C418-esque piano phrases, and blankets of emotional vulnerability eventually fall into the uneasy loneliness of the 15 minute title track. The empty soul that was once full, bordering on brooding but very soft to lay in. I found myself keeping this one on loop for hours at a time.

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01) Machine Girl - ...BECAUSE I’M YOUNG ARROGANT AND HATE EVERYTHING YOU STAND FOR

Machine Girl puts on a really incredible/brutal show - and the recorded version of that experience loses none of the warped maelstrom of sound that makes them so viscerally intense. Heavy industrial punk with face smashing breakdowns peppering every track - like moments of floating in violence as you’re torn apart by passing gravity wells. Disillusioned anger with the musical chops and temperament of someone who grew up listening to Phantasy Star Online music - it was my favorite album of 2017!

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starting off by saying i mean no disrespect to vegans and please educate tf out of me but the animals we eat were created to be eaten and are way less intelligent than dogs?

for starters, animals were not created for us. they don’t belong to the human race for food, entertainment, or anything. they belong to the earth like we belong to the earth, we are all equal.

secondly, what research have you done to learn every kind of animal that is killed to be eaten by humans is less smart than any breed of dog, and why does lesser intelligence deem them less deserving of life? chickens are naturally intelligent and they posses communication skills on par with those of some primates. pigs are smarter than both dogs and human three year olds. and cows are the biggest sweethearts, and they’re smart as well. any of these animals you open your heart to will show you affection and loyalty and love just like a dog or cat. (I kept ducks as pets for years - they show affection in the cutest ways, love to cuddle, and they get so excited over the smallest things!)

every living thing deserves love and respect and fair treatment. animals in the industry are reduced to how profitable they can be to humans. just think about it - is drinking cows milk natural? what species other than humans takes an animals milk from its baby to drink themselves? animals are continually bred for the sole purpose of being killed - their fate is determined before they’re even born. using animals as machines is in no way natural or humane. There is no humane way to kill someone.

some things about/caused by animal agriculture: there are an estimated 5,000 wolves left in the lower 48 states(the number used to be 400,000).

thousands of wild horses are taken from the wild every year to free up space to graze cattle. one environmental activist has been killed in Brazil every week since 2002 (by threatened farmers).

there are over 550 nitrogen flooded dead zones in the ocean (more than 95,000 sq feet completely devoid of life) and there will be fishless oceans by 2048. (51 percent of) human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. water shortages.

the LEADING CAUSE OF WORLD HUNGER(3 million children across the planet die each year from starvation while hunger and malnutrition affect an additional 1 billion).

a dairy cow needs 35-45 gallons of drinking water a day, 20-30 for a dry cow, 12 for beef cattle, 8 for a pig, 15 for every 100 turkeys, and 9 for every 100 chickens. nearly half of the land in the united states is dedicated to animal agriculture.

65 percent of human-produced nitrous oxide comes from it. an acre of the amazon rainforest is cleared every second (animal agriculture is responsible for 91 percent of its destruction). it’s the leading cause of species extinction and habitat destruction.

some facts concerning animals: naturally cows live to be 20, in the animal industry they live to be (at most) 4. 70 billion land animals are killed for food by humans every year. ¾ of the worlds primary fisheries have been overexploited. instead of making up 99% of the biomass, wild animals now make up only 2% of the earths biomass.

dairy cows continuously have babies every year to produce milk (they become “downers” within 4 years and are then sent to slaughter) the baby is taken from the mother at the latest 2 days after birth(the mothers often scream themselves hoarse calling for their babies), and will be raised in an enclosure barely larger than its own body alone, the male calves (since they cannot be used to produce milk) are raised for slaughter while the females go to the dairy industry and eventually share their moms fate - meaning, all dairy cows eventually go to the beef industry.

more than 99 percent of farmed animals in the US are raised on factory farms. cannibalism is common in hogs and laying hens due to stress from lifelong confinement that doesn’t allow them to stretch, groom, or even turn around.

broiler chickens are killed at 7 weeks old (in the 1950’s they were killed at 16 weeks, but inbreeding and genetic manipulation has since shortened their lifespans) - the birds start to die of heart attacks and other diseases caused by their unnaturally fast growth by 7 weeks, which is another reason why they’re rushed to slaughter so early. baby chicks are routinely debeaked usually at 1 week old, their beaks contain more nerve endings than our fingertips - half of their beak is sliced off.

like chickens, pigs in factory farms are routinely subjected to amputations without any anesthetic. baby pigs tails and teeth are clipped. pieces of their ears are cut for identification. piglets not big enough to be profitable are “thumped” - meaning they’re held by the hind legs and are literally bashed against the concrete floor, then are left to die. a slaughterhouse worker was quoted saying that they thumped as many as 120 piglets in one day. “We just swing them, thump them, then toss them aside…[then you] stack them up for the dead truck…[if some are still alive] then you have to thump them all over again. There’ve been times I’ve walked in that room and they’d be running around with an eyeball hanging down the side of their face, just bleeding like crazy, or their jaw would be broken.”

like dairy cows, mother sows are kept pregnant 24/7 and are housed in gestation crates - they lay on slatted concrete and usually do not have enough room to lay down or turn around. pigs in industrial operations often live in crates their entire lives.

Not counting by-kill, over 28 billion animals were taken out of the ocean in one year. 650,000 whales, dolphins, and seals are killed as by-kill every year (by-kill is the non-targeted species caught in the net). For every pound of shrimp caught, there is 20 pounds of by-kill. 40-50 million sharks are killed each year in fishing lines and fishing nets and as by-kill.

More than 500 miles of non-biodegradable fishing nets have been left in the oceans by fishermen - the nets float throughout the ocean and catch whatever comes in their way.

Today, only 10 percent of all large predator fish, such as tuna, sharks, swordfish, cod, marlin, skates, and flounder, remain in the ocean.

like pigs and chickens, beef cattle are castrated and dehorned - with no anesthetic at the age of a few weeks. All of these cruelties are standard industry practices and are protected as such - they violate no state anticruelty laws.

Imagine any of this happening to a dog. No one would stand for it.

one vegan saves more than 1,100 gallons of water, 30 square feet of forest, 45 pounds of grain, the equivalent of 20 pounds of carbon dioxide, and one animals life - every day.

one quarter pound hamburger requires more than 660 gallons of water to produce (the equivalent to showering for 2 months). one pound of eggs is 477 gallons of water, one pound of cheese is almost 900 gallons. it takes 1000 gallons of water to produce one gallon of milk.

I would link all of my sources but i’m on mobile and am reading from the book Cowspiracy, so I can’t link anyways. The documentary version of Cowspiracy is on netflix, though, and I really urge you to watch it. There’s so much more to learn about the animal industry and I can’t cover all of it here - I really hope what I said here persuades you to watch the documentary and learn about the animal industry more thoroughly. The earth, the oceans, and the animals can’t save themselves, and they will never have the chance to recover if more people don’t change.

I’m always happy to discuss veganism and give advice. Five people (that I know of) have gone vegan from seeing my posts about veganism, and that makes me happier than anything!! I’m glad you want to be educated, and if you want to know more my ask or messages are always open!

END OF AGE: Our Winners from Age 86: Global Viction

This is our end age article covering our winners in the following categories: Networth / Land / Honour / War Win Crown. For the age, fairly cut and dry as we have two kingdoms that covered all categories: Emeriti won the networth and land crowns Barcoloco won the honour and war win crowns I caught up with both kingdoms to ask them about their age and to dig into some of the events that were important and played their part in coming out on top for their respective areas. EMERITI Dorje made himself available to talk to me about Emeriti's age: Mad_Scottish: Hi Dorje, age 86 Global Viction is over and Emeriti have come out on top for the land and networth crowns. Was growth and having a run for #1 the goal set for the age? Dorje: Sure. We wanted to war some, then grow. Mad_Scottish: Normally you would think that warring first would stunt growth while those focused purely on growth could get ahead. Was that a concern that you had at all? Dorje: Growth is always a crap-shoot, because you start with a lot of pool and so long as you are in war you will grow in pool without bound. Normally whoever gets wars is going to be able to double size in postwar and always end up bigger than the province that is OOW. The downside of warring is you cannot get large and strong TMs or cows, which you can do with pool aiding OOW. Mad_Scottish: That's a really good point that I totally missed with the mechanics! I believe you had 3 wars in total, were these back to back or did they end up a bit spread out? Dorge: Essentially back to back, yes. In protection we had a war arranged with what later turned out to be ascension, but as they were all undead war heroes we decided that was a suicide move. expected them to wave us but they instead kept relations open so they could put up cows. Then we lucked into a first war by waving a war-tier kingdom, and arranged a second and third war before dumping pool. The way the game works, if you have complete protection in postwar you can almost always simply dump to like 15% bigger than the next biggest kingdom, and then bully them to ensure a win. Mad_Scottish: Was the success of growth linked purely to the work during the end of war CFs? What was the plan out of war, planned waves/randoms? Dorje: Planned waves. Randoms don't exist. Mad_Scottish: Were there any points in the age that were turning points/really helped out with growth beyond the wars and end of war CFs? Dorje: We waved down on several kingdoms after our last war, so that helped with growth. however two kingdoms began giving us 3 meter a day of plunders/robs, so we could never really stock money as you would normally do in a position when ahead waiting for others to catch up. at one point Ronin did a plunder wave and we accidentally gave them ops so they FG'd 700M GC. having our small provinces always broke certainly made growth hard for most of the age. Mad_Scottish: Things were getting really hairy towards the end with #2 for nw/land and then the war with Barcoloco happened. What was going on there? What was going on at the top politically? Dorje: After they waved us, we EoA cease-fired Ronin. But SWEA would not stop robbing, or ceasefire us so that we could fight Barco and of course Barco did the same play of exploring to 15% bigger, so all the gold would be needed for a fair fight. The assumption that Barco and SWEA are friendly made this look even dumber, and SWEA had also out of nowhere told us earlier in the age they might wave into our war prep later. So we did not give Barco the full 97 hours of free pump, and waved into their postwar. After that things went down as one might expect: SWEA did wave into our war prep, we had 7 broke provinces for the fight with Barco, but we pulled out land and networth in what turned out to be a pretty even fight. Mad_Scottish: If i remember correctly, there looked to be almost a 20k jump in acres. Is that accurate? I want to say I think I remember you being around 156k before the war with Barco Dorje: My numbers may be imprecise. I think we were around 160k with 10k pool, and Barco explored 105->180k in postwar or something. So we dumped pool, waved, they ended up re-dumping even more pool with the 5 day ceasefire so were around 160k. Then SWEA waved us for 15k or something so we were within ~500 acres when the 5-day ceasefire ended. Mad_Scottish: Did the war with Barco end or did it just run through the end of the age? Dorje: Ran through EoA. I believe it was around 40 hours Mad_Scottish: Any other highlights from the age that made things interesting or just come to mind? Dorje: From a utopia perspective, it was a uniquely boring age. Nobody was competing except for Ascension, who went inactive halfway through the age, and Barco who was staying tiny to ghetto farm. The highlight I suppose would be the Black Lives Matter movement, which a lot of kingdoms renamed to support. Mad_Scottish: Any shout outs for the age? effort from the kingdom/particular players? and any closing comments from you? Dorje: Shout out to everyone in the kingdom: grant, nimtar, arpi, juicebox, unos, universe, hengz, binar, chad, allanon, sjippe, dumnorix, peetah, carber, retard, jalgir, jcdb4, kax0, chris_keeling, tox, octobrev, megafusion, lagski, jorosar, and Nuck. And a shout out to everyone who believes black lives matter. BARCOLOCO Maugrim made himself available to talk about Barco's age: Mad_Scottish: Age 86, Global Viction has wrapped up. Barco has come out on top for war wins and honor. What was your final war number and number of war wins? Maugrim: Oh jeez, I can't even remember the war score anyway. We ended with 5 war wins out of 6 wars, and we were in a war with Emeriti when the age ended, but that obviously doesn't count towards anything, I think. Mad_Scottish: How did the wars work out over the age? Were you able to plan all wars or did we have some good old waves and declarations? Maugrim: I'm probably the worst person to ask these things. I know the last three wars were arranged for sure and we had start dates and stuff. I think the first OOP war we lost was too, but maybe the 2nd was from waving, I can't recall exactly. We sat OOW a little longer than we would like to on some occasions. But that can be timing and a bunch of different things. Overall, I think it was pretty smooth Mad_Scottish: You pipped Hipmunks to the honour crown. Do you think the setup helped hold on to honor? Maugrim: For sure, we had a few extended wars too which let us float more upwards. Mad_Scottish: I should have taken a screenshot of the kingdom page before the age resets. Were the T/Ms able to stay out of range and hold onto the honour or was there more of an even spread across the kingdom? Maugrim: Most of the honour was definitely on the TM provs, we had a few big avians who managed to hold some, but that honour is always fairly fluid. The TM did most of the honour carrying and it's a lot more protected there Mad_Scottish: Was there a particular war where you grabbed most of the honor or fairly spread out across each of the wars? Maugrim: Our war vs the hitch hikers guide kingdom, 7:11??? I want to say, it lasted maybe 4 days and that one really let us pack on some big honour stacks. They had quite a bit of honour themselves, and just the extended nature of the war let us take a lot more than one might be normally able to. Mad_Scottish: Between wars, were you waving or was it a case of sit and pump to get ready for the next war? Maugrim: No, we waved a few times. That garbage 5:11 kingdom Fluffy? We waved them. We're often forced to wave, and it's fun that way. Excited for this age and waving all the time! Mad_Scottish: Any real stands outs for the age that come to mind for you? Anyone that you want to give a shout out to? Maugrim: It was a fun age with some good ol' fashioned drama. Looking forward to this age though! Shout out to everyone in Barco Mad_Scottish: End of age got very interesting with the moving pieces related to the war with Emeriti. We received the version from them, what is your version? Maugrim: After we beat Hipmunks, we were faced with a choice many have faced in the past while sitting in the shadow of Emeriti at second place: be content with second best, or try to win it all? The odds were decidedly NOT in our favor: we were less than 50% of Emeriti’s size, Emeriti had *billions* of gc, and they had sat on the throne of the number one spot for *weeks*, with nothing to do other than to pump GC, WPA, sci, whatever the heck they wanted. They even tagged up after their second war win, confident they had secured the age. Keeping with our fighting tradition, we went for it all. For 48 ticks into our EOWCF, we did nothing but send aid and hit explore on our provs. Each prov was absolutely dry- no GC, no soldiers, no WPA, nothing. And Emeriti could see this, because they intell'd us each tick. Nothing but empty acres. How could Emeriti possibly be scared? So what did Emeriti do? Trad and raze into our EOWCF like a bunch of cowards. The only explanation was their PTSD from the last time they literally handed us their crowns after we dumped our entire pool, Emeriti accused us of cheating, DavidC confirmed we hadn’t, and then proceeded to farm out to us to the tune of 22,000 acres. Emeriti’s pathetic excuse for their cowardly actions? They couldn’t get a CF with wee little SWEA to protect their 2.5 billion GC. Odd—seeing how Emeriti still had 1.15 billion GC after training at the start of our war (10x more than us) . . . After being completely stunned by Emeriti’s actions, we fortunately found out that we could force CF because we were decidedly *well* out of NW war range. What we *didn’t* know was there was a known bug that had prevented Hipmunks from crowning just the age before, that sat unfixed for an *entire* age. Until now. When it was Emeriti—and not Hipmunks—running with its tail between its legs to DavidC, he immediately fixed the bug within half an hour. The cherry on top was DavidC’s audacity to send a snarky, patronizing in mail to each of our LS, “thanking” him for helping find this bug. As if he hadn’t known about it for an entire age, but couldn’t care less until now that it was affecting his golden child. Everyone thought we had given up by that point, having been beat down by both Emeriti and DavidC. But we made the impossible choice to kill 4 provinces—Adi, Bry, Powwow, Rageman (they deserve shout outs)--that had worked hard the entire age in order to get our kingdom out of land war range—our last hope at fighting Emeriti. Dorje claims it was a fair fight. Frankly, that’s the only way Emeriti can sleep at night. But the fact of the matter was that it was a 25 v 21 province fight, Emeriti still had a +1 billion GC lead, and they had literally 3/4 of the age to pump sci/wpa against a kingdom that Emeriti could not even stand to let grow peacefully from 70k to 150k acres in 2-3 days. Emeriti’s decision to hit into another KD’s EOWCF was an act of cowardice. They knew it and everyone knew it. Dorje even had an explanatory speech ready at his fingertips to post in Discord within *minutes* in an attempt to justify his actions. They’ve established a precedent that, if ignored, will ultimately result in the demise of this game: (1) there is no code of honour or conduct in this game, i.e. anything goes; (2) developers, particularly DavidC, are biased towards certain players and kingdoms that will result in age-changing bug fixes for some and not others. **End of Article** Journalist note: Congratulation to your crown winners. Best of luck in the new age! HERE WE GO!

https://thedispatch.com/p/justin-amash-has-a-decision-to-make

This @declanpgarvey piece on @justinamash is well worth your time. A lot of good stuff. My favorite part though... https://t.co/Ziv3jTSshH

FreedomWorks, one of the country's most potent libertarian political groups, is distancing itself from Justin Amash. And this stat really tells a whole story. https://t.co/6idpEbEyoq

Justin Amash Has a Decision to Make

'Is there any better time to have a president who might be not from either party?'

By Declan Garvey | Published January 15, 2020 | The Dispatch | Posted January 15, 2020 |

Three weeks from the first votes of the 2020 election, the presidential race seems—finally—to be taking shape. Republicans, having blocked any serious attempts at a primary challenge, will field a candidate who brings passionate support from the hard-core GOP base, grudging acceptance from other Republicans, and intense opposition from everyone else. Democrats will likely field either a flawed candidate from the center—more accurately, the center-left—or an avowed leftist, maybe even an avowed socialist. 

There are millions of moments, and billions of decisions, that will ultimately determine the next president and the next four years of the American experiment. But few will be as consequential as the decision now looming before a reserved, quirky, classical liberal from south central Michigan.

The 2016 presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump was decided by 77,744 votes, split between three states: Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Rep. Justin Amash received nearly three times as many that year (203,545) running to continue on as the representative of Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District. After winning re-election in 2018, however, Amash’s frustration with the GOP and its current leader led him to leave the party he’d called home for more than a decade. And with his new independence came calls for him to make good on his criticism of both political parties with a third-party run for president. 

Amash hasn’t committed to a run. But he hasn’t ruled one out, either. And with the incredible volatility in American politics over the past two decades, marked by the record-low faith in Washington and the institutions of the federal government, taking such a leap seems less crazy today than it might have just a few years ago.

As Amash himself put it last week: “Is there any better time to have a president who might be not from either party?”

CEMENTING AN INDEPENDENT STREAK

The 39-year-old congressman had always had a bit (or more) of an independent streak. But since he emphatically left the GOP last summer, he’s truly been able to be himself.

“When you're in the Republican Party, like I was, there is a constant pressure to step carefully, to use your words more cautiously, when you are describing Republicans,” he said. “So, if you go onto TV and you're doing an interview, you don't necessarily want to throw the Republican leadership under the bus at every opportunity. Maybe you throw them under the bus, criticize them one time out of three times that you should. And most members of Congress will do it zero times out of three times. If there's three times they should, they'll do it zero times. Someone like me, I might do it once or twice, but really I'd like to do it three out of three.”

“As much as I would talk, and people thought, ‘Oh boy, Amash is so independent and he is really standing his ground, and he's making people on the left and the right upset about different things’ or whatever, I was actually holding my fire a lot on various things. And I did not like that.”

Few accused him of holding his fire then. No one does now.

Amash announced his newfound political independence in a Washington Post op-ed on, fittingly, the Fourth of July. “The two-party system has evolved into an existential threat to American principles and institutions,” he wrote. “Today, I am declaring my independence and leaving the Republican Party. No matter your circumstance, I’m asking you to join me in rejecting the partisan loyalties and rhetoric that divide and dehumanize us. I’m asking you to believe that we can do better than this two-party system—and to work toward it. If we continue to take America for granted, we will lose it.”

Allies will tell you Amash’s partisan metamorphosis was long in the making. 

“I interviewed him in, what was it, 2018 maybe?” Matt Welch, editor at large of the libertarian Reason magazine, told us. “And said, ‘okay, so, you know, you're a libertarian-leaning Republican.’ He's like, ‘no, just libertarian is fine, please.’”

But he also hoped to send a signal. “I spoke to Congressman Amash in Las Vegas in July, after his leaving the Republican Party,” Dan Fishman, executive director of the Libertarian party said. “And he had a very deliberate statement where he said, ‘The important thing is that I have left the Republican Party. And if I do anything else right now, that message is lost.’”

Amash’s message was not lost.

“Great news for the Republican Party,” President Trump, the man who perhaps had the most to do with Amash’s switch, announced on his favorite communications platform. “One of the dumbest & most disloyal men in Congress is ‘quitting’ the Party.”

Amash is not dumb—far from it. The son of two immigrants, he graduated high school valedictorian of his class and earned his bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Michigan, sticking around Ann Arbor long enough to nab a law degree as well.

But he is disloyal—at least in the Trumpian sense of the word. Amash has voted in line with Trump’s position just 63 percent of the time according to FiveThirtyEight, a lower “Trump score” than any Republican save Walter Jones, who passed away last February, and Jeff Van Drew, who was a Democrat until about four weeks ago. Amash spent his final few months in the GOP calling for the president to be impeached, much to the joy of Democrats and some of his constituents, but much to the chagrin of everyone in his own party.

THE FALL OF THE FREEDOM CAUCUS

Amash isn’t any less libertarian now than he was when he rode the Tea Party wave to D.C. in 2010, just two years after being elected to the Michigan House of Representatives. He’d contend it’s those around him who’ve changed.

On January 26, 2015, Amash and a group of eight other Republican congressmen (all men) formed the House Freedom Caucus (HFC) to stand up to a House leadership—then helmed by Speaker John Boehner—that they believed wasn’t conservative enough. Amash wrote the mission statement.

“The House Freedom Caucus gives a voice to countless Americans who feel that Washington does not represent them. We support open, accountable and limited government, the Constitution and the rule of law, and policies that promote the liberty, safety, and prosperity of all Americans.”

On May 20, 2019, the bloc, now boasting more than 30 members,  unanimously condemned their co-founder when Amash determined—after the release of the Mueller Report—that President Trump had “engaged in impeachable conduct.” Three-and-a-half weeks later, Amash quit the group of limited-government stalwarts he helped create.

They “sanctioned him for coming out in favor of impeachment in the same week that like, they increased the debt by another trillion dollars or something,” Welch said, referring to a two-year budget deal that was floated at the time, but ultimately never came to fruition. “It's like, what is the use of this group?”

“As soon as you had a Republican president, and especially one who is fairly charismatic and entertaining and can rally a lot of people,” Amash said, choosing his words very carefully, “Republicans totally mailed it in. They said, ‘Look, we're just going to go with this guy on everything.’ And when I started to see even my House Freedom Caucus colleagues do that, it was really disheartening.”

“This is a group that had formed,” he continued, “for the purpose of standing on principle, standing up for the American people, doing what was right, ensuring that all voices were heard. And now, the group had moved more toward Trump cheerleading and that's not why the group was formed. And that was really tough.”

Not everyone in Washington would agree with Amash’s assessment of the caucus, which, once it grew large enough, wielded its influence to hold Republican leaders hostage and otherwise wreak havoc on the legislative process.

“Previously, groups of members on the right flank of the House Republican Conference operated under a version of the ‘Buckley Rule’: they fought for the most conservative legislation that could pass,” said Michael Steel, former aide to Speaker John Boehner. “The self-described ‘Freedom Caucus’ often seemed more about the fight than the result, and—when they chose not to get to ‘yes’ on must-pass bills—the House Republican leadership had to go to Democrats for votes, leading to worse policies and higher spending.”

When Trump was first elected, many wondered if the House Freedom Caucus would even continue to serve a purpose. After all, the GOP center of gravity no longer revolved around the speaker of the House. But the HFC made its presence known early on in 2017, scuttling the White House’s first attempt to overhaul the Affordable Care Act. 

“The Freedom Caucus will hurt the entire Republican agenda if they don’t get on the team, & fast,” Trump wrote at the time. “We must fight them, & Dems, in 2018!”

Now? One of the caucus’s founding members, Mick Mulvaney, serves as Trump’s chief of staff. Another, Mark Meadows, is one of the president’s most enthusiastic advocates, and is rumored to be Mulvaney’s replacement in waiting.

Amash believes the co-opting of the Freedom Caucus was no accident. “I think that was intentional,” he said. “Whether it was the president's calculation or someone else's, to try to take some of the House Freedom Caucus members and bring them into the fold … I think this was a concerted effort by leadership and perhaps White House officials to pick off House Freedom Caucus members, to bring them in, to make them a part of the Republican team, in some sense, and then get them to stop battling Republicans.”

While his old Freedom Caucus buddies may have finally stopped battling Republicans under Trump, Amash was just getting started. But he claims his newfound independence has actually improved his connections on the Hill. 

“I have better relationships with Republicans and with Democrats. When you're a Republican and you break from the Republicans on a piece of legislation or you disagree with the president or whatever it might be, they tend to come down hard on you because it's like you're a family member who has betrayed the family,” he said. “Since becoming an independent, my colleagues are more trusting. They are friendlier, on both sides of the aisle, and it's certainly been an improvement on the Republican side.”

Efforts to talk to his peers about this bore little fruit. A spokeswoman for the House Freedom Caucus declined to comment for the story, and no individual members contacted responded to emails from The Dispatch.

PAVED PARADISE

“I think John Boehner is the best speaker that we've had since I've been here,” said Amash. “And I say that as someone who tried to oust him from the speakership!”

This sentiment doesn’t represent a newfound appreciation for the Republican establishment or hint at new moderation from Amash. Instead, it’s a reflection of his belief in having big, messy debates—not avoiding them.

“If I were to create, like, an ideal speaker in my imagination, it would not be John Boehner,” Amash said. But in retrospect, “his successors are not better than him.”

“Boehner would swear at me, he would curse me, he would criticize me in public,” Amash recounted with a grin, almost fondly. “But he also, in some sense, would listen. He didn't dismiss you totally. You could engage with him. You could have some back and forth. He might swear at you, but then also allow you to have an amendment vote.”

Amendment votes might just be—aside from his family, the Detroit Pistons, and Friedrich Hayek—Amash’s favorite thing. He grew notorious in his first few years in Congress for his attempts to attach riders to larger bills aimed at curtailing what he calls “the surveillance state,” prioritizing the deficit, and limiting the executive branch’s war powers. Most of them failed to gain majority support, but several passed. In the Michigan legislature, Amash once noticed a missing comma in a piece of legislation; he introduced an amendment to remedy the crisis. That one passed, too.

Sitting in his office in January 2019, Amash said he didn’t realize how good he had had it under Boehner, who, through a spokesman, declined to comment for this story. Paul Ryan—who finally gave in and took the speaker’s gavel from Boehner after weeks of telling colleagues he didn’t want it—“told us he was going to open up the process and then totally closed it down,” per Amash. “I was hopeful that the next speaker would be better. It looked like that might happen. But instead it's gone the other way.”

Ryan, he claimed, “was the worst in every respect. Worst on process. Worst on substance.” The typically understated Amash was growing more animated. “He didn't even like the president, disagreed with him on a whole bunch of things, but never stood up to him!”

Just a few minutes into our conversation, it was becoming clear: The seeds for Amash’s eventual GOP departure were planted in the fall of 2015, not with Trump’s victory one year later.

“When you get to Congress, your hope is not to enter Congress and then leave the party that you've been a part of your whole life. You try to change the party, and you try to improve it. And I tried that for a long time and I actually thought we did make progress in the first few years,” Amash said. “After a while you say, ‘Well, this is not the right approach.’ Trying to work within the party, and change the party, is not the right way to handle it. And I need to go out and change hearts and minds and change the way people look at representation altogether.”

THE END OF PARTISANSHIP

Since he became the House’s only independent member last July, Amash has thought a lot about the role of political parties.

“People aren't allowed to break,” he lamented. “Like, you literally have to stick with the party.”

Amash said he wasn’t surprised that none of his former House colleagues split from the president to vote for impeachment.

“Early on I thought someone would break, I thought maybe a few of them would break,” he said. “I thought the White House strategy and Republican leadership strategy was kind of effective, which was to mock and shame anyone who had a difference of opinion. In other words, just ridicule. And if they ridicule enough, it makes it very hard for anyone to step out of line.”

(Some Democrats have floated Amash’s name as a potential impeachment manager when the trial begins in the Senate: “I'm happy to discuss that with the speaker, but it's not something I've discussed with her, and not something I’d take a position on unless I had a discussion with her.”)

But Amash thinks the intense, partisan moment we’re in is a product of Washington, not America at large.

“Members of Congress have miscalculated,” he said. “I think they are making assumptions about how partisan their constituents are that are not correct. It is true that a small percentage of the population is very politically active and you know, will be either cheerleading for the president or opposed to the president on everything. But most people are pretty moderate.”

“If they could see themselves from my perspective,” Amash said, “as someone who's independent, and who has sort of had the ire of both sides at times and also the praise from both sides at times … they would see that there are actually a lot of similarities that they don't recognize.”

It’s unclear that polling and research bears that out. In October, Pew Research Center released a report  finding “the level of [partisan] division and animosity … has only deepened”: 79 percent of Democrats and 83 percent of Republicans gave members of the opposite party a “cold rating” on Pew’s “feeling thermometer.” Also,63 percent of Republicans said Democrats are more unpatriotic than other Americans, and 75 percent of Democrats said Republicans were more close-minded. Supporters of President Trump have attended his rallies wearing shirts that say they’d “rather be a Russian than a Democrat.” Democrats and progressives held massive protests the day Trump was inaugurated.

But Amash may have a point when he says “people care more about the character issues than they do about the particular positions or ideology of the representative.” And while Donald Trump’s character issues are something that would’ve given many Republicans pause in years past, his willingness to pick fights, and to mock and ridicule his opponents relentlessly, played a key role in his election. Trump won the Republican primary in 2016 campaigning on trade protectionism, friendlier relations with Russia, leaving entitlements alone, and withdrawing from global engagement. It remains an open question whether these positions were ever truly popular with the GOP base, but voters’ policy views can prove remarkably malleable to conform with the worldview of a charismatic leader.

Asked if he prefers to think of ideology as four-dimensional rather than two—with policy running along the horizontal axis and tone and temperament along the vertical—Amash nearly leapt out of his chair: “Yes, that’s right!”

AMASH HAS A DECISION TO MAKE

All of this makes Justin Amash one of the most interesting elected officials in the country. Does it make him a presidential candidate?

Since his personal Declaration of Independence, Republicans and Democrats alike have watched Amash carefully for signs he’d run for president. They’re unmistakable.

“I'll say what I've said before, I haven't ruled it out,” Amash said, the closest he came to sounding like a traditional politician. “But I'm running for Congress as an independent in my district. I'm very excited about that. I feel very good about that.”

He wants to be clear that he’s not abandoning his re-election bid—yet. “Just to be clear, I am running for office as an independent for, you know, my congressional seat. And I've filed for that, and you know, we're, we're doing what it takes to, to win that race.”

One more time. He begins to speak more cautiously.

“At some point you'll be at, we'll be at the point where I have to rule out, you know, running for president. And I'm not at that point yet. But, you know, we're probably getting closer to that point now. If you're going to run a campaign for president, you need enough time to run a strong campaign and you need enough time to win the campaign. I'm not running for president unless I believe I can win.”

If Amash doesn’t like the questions, he has no one but himself to blame. He’s long played coy with the idea, repeatedly, as he mentioned, refusing to rule out the possibility. When asked to describe the ideal Libertarian party presidential candidate at Students for Liberty’s LibertyCon last spring, he said that candidate would be wearing Air Jordans—coincidentally the shoes he had on at the time.

The current crop of candidates for the Libertarian crown shouldn’t instill any fear if Amash does want to run. Kim Ruff, who, according to Dan Fishman, “was certainly seen as a frontrunner,” dropped out last weekend. Lincoln Chafee—the former Republican senator, independent governor, and Democratic presidential candidate—is trying on a fourth party affiliation for size. Jacob Hornberger—founder of the Future of Freedom Foundation—and Adam Kokesh—an Iraq war veteran who has called for an “orderly dissolution of the federal government”—have thrown their hats in the ring. Fan favorites Vermin Supreme—the guy who wears a boot on his head—and John McAfee—the anti-virus software guy who wants to have sex with whales—are back for more.

“I think he would get the Libertarian party nomination,” Welch said. “He's very revered in the Libertarian world generally. If you had to name one person who people within the party would want to see run for that office, I think the name is Justin Amash.”

That’s not all. “[The Libertarians] have this great prize, right?” Welch said. “They're going to be on 50 ballots probably, and nobody else is going to come close to that. And all you have to do is win a majority of delegates of a thousand votes in Austin, Texas in May, and you get to be on 50 ballots. Who wouldn't want that?”

The Libertarian party oversees state conventions and primaries to select delegates for the national convention, but anything can happen at that point. Austin—with its “Keep Austin Weird” mantra—should prove an apt host this year. “No delegates are ever bound,” Fishman explains. “So, every delegate that comes to Austin has the opportunity to vote their conscience or vote the way they feel like the people who elected them as delegate would like them to vote. It's entirely up to them to interpret how they would like to do that.”

“Technically speaking,” he continues when asked specifically about Amash, “you don’t have to win any of the state primaries. But it’s a good idea for candidates to go to the state primaries and at least talk to the delegates that are being elected.”

Fishman didn’t explicitly comment on the quality of any one candidate over another, but when he told us that Ruff—one of the race’s front runners—had dropped out, he knowingly added: “Maybe that’s an opportunity for some other candidate who is thinking of jumping in.”

Welch isn’t sure Amash will go through with it. “Justin's a very competitive dude,” he said. “Running for something at the prospect of getting 3 percent of the vote doesn't seem like a thing that really excites him.”

“He's got this crazy challenge at home,” Welch continued, referring to the prospect of re-winning his Congressional seat as an independent. “He loves to prove people wrong about how to win elections in his congressional district … if he's able to win as an incumbent independent then that's an incredible thing to show and to prove people.”

In the race that he has filed for, Amash has plenty of competition, including businessman Joel Langlois, Michigan state Rep. Lynn Afendoulis, and Peter Meijer, an Iraq war veteran and member of the Meijer Grocery family. Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball considers the race a toss-up. The Cook Political Report rating for the district recently  changed from toss up to lean Republican, news Amash previously would have welcomed but these days does not.

“Amash is now his own island,” election analyst David Wasserman wrote. “It's doubtful there's a sufficient market for a pro-life/pro-impeachment independent in the district to allow him a path to a sixth term.”

If that’s true—and Wasserman is as smart an election analyst as there is—why not go bigger?

Amash has clearly entertained the idea of a presidential bid, and he makes the case without hesitation. “I'd say that most Americans probably do not feel very closely aligned to any of the candidates right now,” he said. “Any of the leading candidates on the Republican or Democratic side.”

“I definitely think that a strong candidate in the Libertarian party today can get more votes than any previous candidate,” Amash adds, building up steam before catching himself. “The best case right now for a Libertarian, no matter who it is, is that both of these parties have been disasters and have not really represented the American people well. Is there any better time to have a president who might be not from either party?” 

The Gary Johnson and Bill Weld Libertarian ticket in 2016 received  nearly 4.5 million votes, 3.27 percent of the popular vote. But veteran Republican political strategist Karl Rove doesn’t think that’s repeatable.

In 2016, Rove said over the phone, “one out of every six Americans, roughly, thought neither person was qualified to be president, neither Clinton nor Trump. So, there was a fertile field for third parties to fish in … I don’t think we’ll see anything close to the 18 percent who say both candidates are unqualified.”

But that doesn’t mean a Libertarian party candidate couldn’t play spoiler. “These things matter in close states,” Rove said. Ask Democrats what cost Al Gore the 2000 presidential race against Rove’s candidate, George W. Bush, and many will point to Ralph Nader’s near 100,000 votes in Florida —a state Bush won by 537 votes, delivering him the presidency.

A limited-government option might fare better in western states where “the vote for the Libertarian candidate in presidential election years traditionally is larger than the national average,” Rove said. “It's unclear whether or not Amash will specifically split the anti-Trump vote or whether he will have the ability to draw away people who might otherwise be inclined to vote for Trump. I think it's more likely that he would split the anti-Trump vote.”

Fishman, who himself ran for Congress in 2012 as a Libertarian, referenced his campaign’s internal polling in telling us that, depending who the nominees were, the split would likely be closer to 50-50. “We tend to pull evenly [from Republicans and Democrats],” he said. “But the other thing about it is that we find that we do a better job of activating the people who haven’t voted a lot … The apathetic voter is almost always the largest group.”

Trump campaign officials declined to comment on how they are thinking through third-party campaigns.

Rove is obviously a Republican through and through. But he doesn’t see a logical constituency for an Amash Libertarian Party candidacy. “What's his argument? Vote for me: I'm the guy who has no chance of getting elected, but I hate Trump? People are going to have a much better opportunity to vote for somebody who's anti-Trump than just Justin.”

Amash describes a “hypothetical” Libertarian campaign message as much more expansive than mere disdain for the president. America is “fundamentally within the classical liberal realm,” he said. “And you might call that constitutionally conservative or libertarian.”

But he thinks Libertarians are campaigning on their ideas in the wrong way. “This is a common mistake that a lot of Libertarian or Libertarian-leaning politicians make, in that they're under the impression that they have to persuade people of something that is a wholesale change to them,” Amash said, obviously having put some thought into the topic. “And that's not the case. When people ask me, ‘when has libertarianism ever been tried?’ I would say in the United States of America, this is the most libertarian country that has ever been known … Compared to countries throughout the world and throughout history, this is a very libertarian experiment, and most people are pretty comfortable with it.” 

“I think most Americans are already there,” he adds. “It's not a matter of persuading them of the principles. It's persuading them that you are applying the principles they already believe in.”

ON AN ISLAND

Whichever path Amash chooses, he won’t be able to rely on many of the deep-pocketed political organizations that have buoyed his various candidacies over the past decade. “He has access to national Libertarian network money that a lot of people don't,” Welch told us, “and he still will get some money within his district, but it's a real struggle.”

Were he to run for president, Amash could tap into a substantial network of Libertarians and disaffected Republicans. Fishman said “there are a lot of members who want to see the Libertarian party succeed,” adding that “the potential is there to raise more than what Gary [Johnson] and Bill [Weld, the Party’s presidential and vice presidential nominees in 2016] raised. It would have to be the right candidate. They would have to come in with a professional staff. But, the thing that Johnson/Weld showed is that the message does resonate and you can do a good job of fundraising among people who are concerned about the country.”

And there is little doubt that Amash, as an outspoken Trump critic and former Republican, would benefit from what campaign veterans call “earned media” coverage in the mainstream press. 

But on the congressional side, the powerful Michigan DeVos family pulled the plug on their support for Amash after he called for Trump’s impeachment. 

A spokeswoman for Americans for Prosperity—the Koch political network—said they “have nothing to announce at this time” regarding support for Amash.

The Dispatch reached a spokesman for the Club for Growth—a fiscally conservative advocacy group which itself spent millions in an attempt to defeat Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican primary—and asked if the group would be supporting Amash, who in 2018 was one of only three congressmen to receive a perfect 100 percent voting score from the organization. The response? An indignant “no.”

Welch had guessed in our conversation that Americans for Prosperity and Club for Growth would abandon ship, but believed that a third limited-government advocacy organization would stand by their man. “FreedomWorks, I think, will probably be with him,” he said. And there was good reason to reach this conclusion. Amash has been given the FreedomWorks “Freedom Fighter” award every year he’s been in Congress. The group named him “FreedomWorks Member of the Month” as recently as June 2018, writing, “We recognize his remarkable consistency on all issues and admire his dedication to his job and his constituents. We hope he continues to be a steadfast voice for liberty in and out of Congress and that his unassailable principles will serve as an example to all aspiring future members of Congress.”

Visiting his office earlier this month, we noticed Amash proudly displayed his “Freedom Fighter” award prominently on his desk, alongside a Champion of the Merit Shop plaque, Small Business Champion certificate, a book called The ABCs of School Choice, and a three-foot tall Darth Vader figurine. (We probably should have asked about that last one.)

Reached on the phone, Peter Vicenzi, a spokesman for FreedomWorks, told us that he knew the group had supported Amash in the past, and that he has a very high FreedomWorks score, but that he was not sure if the group would be backing the congressman again in 2020.

A few minutes later, we got an email. “Amash has a very high score with us, but we don't have any plans to get involved in MI-03 at this time, seeing as we're focused on some other key races to help regain the GOP's House majority.” The spokesman said the group’s main initiative, “Dirty Thirty,” is aimed at “flipping the 30 or so districts that went for Trump in 2016, but blue in 2018.”

“So, you are only putting money behind Republican challengers in those 30 districts?” we asked. “Or are you supporting some incumbent Republicans financially as well?”

His response: “We're going to support some incumbents as well, mainly HFC members.”

In his near-decade of congressional service, Amash has voted against FreedomWorks’ wishes only three times, earning a 99 percent lifetime score. The first was on a budget resolution in 2017.

The other two?

“Agreeing to Article I of the Articles of Impeachment” and “Agreeing to Article II of the Articles of Impeachment.”

______

Photograph of Justin Amash by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images.

*********

Welcome to the Era of the Post-Shopping Mall

Surfacing

As the mall declines, American Dream — a “destination” at the height of capitalism — rises.

One morning in early December, I left my office in midtown Manhattan, took a 20-minute bus ride to the New Jersey wetlands and got a few ski runs in before noon. I hadn’t been skiing for 15 years. It turns out that all I needed was for the mountain to come to me.

Enter Big Snow, an indoor ski hill filled with 5,500 tons of “real snow,” which falls not from the clouds but from the ceiling of a warehouse where the temperature is always 28 degrees. As I set out across its terrain, I was flooded with the sense-memories of childhood: frozen eyelashes, scratchy snowsuit, the abandon of tucking the poles under my arms and flying down a mountain, my father just ahead of me. That lasted for 30 seconds, which is how long it took for me to hit the end of the run. With every sluggish chairlift ride back to the top, I was reminded that I was pacing back and forth in a cold steel box. When I was done, I was released not into a warm ski lodge but into an empty mall.

Big Snow is enclosed within the 3-million-square-foot American Dream, a mall so ambitious that it has transcended the word “mall.” It prefers to identify as a “revolutionary, first of its kind community,” an “unrivaled destination for style and play” and “an incredible collection of unique experiences.” Just off the New Jersey Turnpike, a post-shopping mall is born: More than half of American Dream’s space is allotted not to retail but to entertainment. The psychic center of American social life has shifted from buying things to feeling them.

After 15 years in development, the project’s attractions are finally lighting up one by one, connected by networks of vast, unfilled corridors. In addition to Big Snow, there is a National Hockey League-sized ice rink, a Nickelodeon Universe theme park, and a dusting of retail: a Big Snow ski shop, an IT’SUGAR candy department store and a Whoopi Goldberg-themed pop-up shop selling her collections of ugly holiday sweaters and chic tunics. Teased future reveals include a DreamWorks water park, a Legoland, a Vice-branded “Munchies” food hall, a KidZania play land featuring a full commercial airliner and a field hopping with live rabbits.

These spectacles have arrived not a moment too soon. This $5 billion not-mall is opening amid reports that the mall is dying. An army of trend forecasters have decided that millennials would rather spend money on experiences than on stuff. The retail imagination has been transposed to Instagram, and shuttered storefronts have been infiltrated by “pop-up experiences” primed to monetize the selfie. As department stores retreat, they have left “ghost malls” in their wake, complexes that lack the center of gravity to pull townspeople in but that live on in the form of eerie YouTube memorials. Meanwhile, the developers of American Dream — Triple Five, the Canadian conglomerate behind Mall of America in Minnesota — believe its gravitational pull is so strong that it will draw millions from the region, the nation, the world.

American Dream may be selling experiences, but the mall always was an experience. The shopping was mere pretense; the being-there part was free. Just as Baudelaire’s flâneur roamed the arcades of Paris with his leashed turtle, converting the halls of commerce into a kind of poetry, the American’s eye for sociological observation was forged in the glow of the Orange Julius. The commercial backdrop of the mall provided the uncanny feeling of becoming commodities ourselves, a prospect we could embrace or resist.

In pop culture, the mall was alienation ground zero. It’s where the zombies of “Dawn of the Dead” descended in search of flesh and the burnouts of “Mallrats” convened in defiance of their “lack of a shopping agenda.” It’s where Tai had her “near-death experience” in “Clueless,” when some guys she met at the Foot Locker dipped her over a balcony wall and shook her upside-down. It’s where the social hierarchies of “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and “Mean Girls” were laid bare, and where, in middle school, I ducked into the Abercrombie & Fitch as if trespassing into a popular girl’s closet. It’s where America turned its public square over to private control, letting rent-a-cops reign and “Paul Blart” rise. It was a one-stop destination for American psychodrama.

What American Dream offers is alienation-plus. Everything that used to be outside — water slides, amusement parks, ski runs — is inside now. Every surface is synergized. The press release announcing American Dream’s partnership with Coca-Cola is an opus of corporate jargon: it speaks of “branded in-venue activations” and the “total beverage portfolio.”

And every American Dream attraction is the most extreme possible version of that thing. As I exited the ski hill and charted a course for the amusement park, a PR handler rattled off the development’s accomplishments. Big Snow is the largest indoor ski hill in the Western Hemisphere; Nickelodeon Universe has the roller coaster with the steepest drop in the world; the DreamWorks water park, when it opens, will host the world’s biggest wave pool. Also on site are “the first Angry Birds mini-golf attraction in North America” and IT’SUGAR, “the world’s largest non-manufacturer candy store.”

A new mall can feel a lot like a dead one. American Dream’s current attractions are limited enough that on a Thursday in December, even with Santa in the house, the place was practically deserted. Dusty tarps hung over the water slides; the rabbits were inert stand-ins for rabbits.

There was something clarifying about touring this monument to experience when there was no one there to experience it, no cheeks to flush or pulses to quicken. There was no food court, as if the few figures that stalked its halls were not in need of human sustenance. Around every corner was a security guard, guarding nothing. Instead of storefronts, the walls were covered with a seemingly endless mural of animals and mundane objects that seemed to operate under the blunted logic of machine learning. Every few feet, a new and foreboding image appeared: a tentacle snaking through a commercial airplane window; a goldfish floating up to another goldfish in a plastic bag, as if ready to be thrust into a carnival-goer’s grubby palm.

The whole place is vulgar, which I happen to appreciate. At the entrance to IT’SUGAR — a brand name styled like a desperate scream — stands a 60-foot replica of the Statue of Liberty constructed from green jelly beans. She holds a lollipop for a torch and wears a sash that says: “You know you want it.” At her feet is written: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning for the sweet life, and I will give you IT’SUGAR.”

Just next door to this chilling spectacle is Nickelodeon Universe, a nostalgia factory themed around “SpongeBob SquarePants” and “Legends of the Hidden Temple.” As soon as I arrived, I unsuspectingly boarded the roller coaster with the steepest drop of all drops anywhere in the world. The ride rocketed us up to the ceiling, then held us against the window, taunting us with a view of the Manhattan skyline before executing its 121.5-degree drop. I clutched my harness and wept in horror. I was Tai in “Clueless,” hung over the balcony and shaken by a mall I had just met.

What does it mean to buy an experience? It’s not the monetization of life, exactly, but the simulation of its extremes. Nickelodeon Universe raised for me the specter of death. A Big Snow DJ announced the beginning of “endless winter.” The Statue of Liberty to Buy Candy represents a kind of apocalypse of meaning. I felt so much in this place. At the entrance to Big Snow is a “gondola ride” I took to the slope, really an unmoving vestibule in which an instructional video plays. In a startling cartoon sequence, an upbeat narrator reveals that Big, the slope’s impish Yeti mascot, moved to New York City in pursuit of the American Dream. But soon he grew terribly homesick, presumably for the Himalayas. So he built this indoor ski hill with his bare hands. Now Big only sees his Yeti family through the screen of his phone.

It was a moving tale of profound alienation, one of the most affecting films I saw this year. Like Las Vegas, or Arizona towns styled like the Old West, the artifice of American Dream is so artificial, its capitalist excesses so excessive, that it feels somehow revealing. As the critic Dave Hickey once wrote of Vegas: “What is hidden elsewhere exists here in quotidian visibility.”

No, it is not a mall. It’s a performance piece ruminating on the corporate takeover of nature and society. The name — American Dream — is both unnerving and absolutely correct.

Surfacing is a weekly column that explores the intersection of art and life, produced by Alicia DeSantis, Jolie Ruben and Josephine Sedgwick.

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