incomplete list of artists i'm convinced are unwittingly eldritch horror writers, but the eldritch horror they write about is america:

f scott fitzgerald lana del rey

Italian in Name Only

I am a mixtape of European influences, but the two biggest are Italian and Irish, so it's maybe ironic that I've never been much for family. Not hostile toward it, more like disinterested.

 Italians and the Irish have the reputation of being devoted to their families. If there's nothing quite like a good Catholic upbringing mixed with poverty to convince people to have loads of children, then being middle-class and an only child is the antidote. Never wanted children, never wanted to be part of a family, didn't even really have a notion of them. I just never thought about it.

 Not until lately anyway, and I do not mean in the sense of having children myself. I mean of being suddenly conscious of a growing need to know what my origins are, to see how I somehow fit into the larger concept of a family. When my ancestors arrived in America, what they did once they got here, and how that differs from or mirrors what other families have found. This desire might have something to do with the pandemic and all that time spent alone when the world was shut down—the isolation making me want to reconnect and do so on a deeper level.  

Most of my knowledge of Italy is from the movies, design, and fashion. My understanding of Ireland is even more limited since I spent my only visit there wandering between pubs listening to white guys with 'dreads spinning drum'n'bass. I don't speak any Italian beyond a stray "Ciao, Bella" or "Vaffanculo." I know the second one because English soccer fans used it in a taunting chant whenever they played Italian teams ("Where were you in World War 2? VA-FFAN-CULO!!"). My father spoke fluent Italian when he was a child but forgot most of it in adulthood.  My immediate family is small and spread by time, distance, and some animosity; I know very little about most of the members of my extended one. If I have cultural heritage, it's hard to know what it is.

 I am not at all sure what made me start to think this way. It could have been watching the HBO adaptation of My Brilliant Friend, based on Elena Ferrante's novels. The show is a portrait of two women growing up in 50's Naples. We see their lives against a backdrop of a country coming fitfully to life after the devastation following the Second World War, its progress held back by repressive patriarchy. Grim moments often give way to more ecstatic ones before doubling back again the other way, leading to emotionally vivid set pieces that capture the personal and historical in the same scene. The score by Max Richter alone can induce yearning and seeing the young, very inexperienced cast gradually develop into compelling actors makes the whole experience unforgettable, like the best work of the Italian neorealist cinema.

 But My Brilliant Friend is set in Naples, and my family is from Tuscany. Italy, like the States, is a country of regions that do not always like each other, the north versus the south, and my ancestors would have been culturally different from the show's characters. Still, carried by the show, I find myself more and more drawn to thinking about Italy—I have roots in Germany and France as well, but for some reason, Italy is the country for which I feel the strongest connection. 

 Possibly I am entirely led by my stomach. Early in the pandemic, I started getting into Italian cooking, going carefully through a copy of Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hasan, who you might call the Julia Child of that countries' cuisine. I have a copy of Silver Spoon too, a compendium of real recipes from Italian families, from which I've made a few dishes, and I have my grandmother's pasta maker, and somewhere on an index card her hand-written ravioli recipe. It took all day for her and my grandfather to make that recipe; she stirred the slow simmering meat and prepared the ingredients, and my grandfather painstakingly sealed each ravioli with a fork.

 My German grandfather may have loved his pig's feet and pickled herring, but that obsession thankfully was not passed onto me, nor, as far as I know, to anyone else in my family. I might like a good stout too, even some Irish stew on occasion, but it's Italian food that captures my imagination. I am only beginning to know how each region has shaped that cuisine and the influences that created so many varied dishes. 

 I have not kept up with my family. I hardly know most of them, and outside of my parents and my uncle, I am not in touch with any other relatives. I forget the birthdays of even the closest friends and family; I must mark them on a calendar, or I'll miss the day altogether. My uncle has become something of the family historian and has been sending emails to nearly a dozen family relations. While I do recognize many of the names, there are far more that I do not remember and at least two I only know of by reputation. There are also people I met on that list, only once or twice, and those I saw most often were back when my grandparents were making their famous ravioli to go along with the Thanksgiving turkey, and that was a long time ago now.

 Those emails coincide with my awakening interest in my origins. I know a few more names now: my great grandparents Enea and Italia Lorenzetti emigrated here in 1916 and had two sons; my grandmother's dislike for Enea, a man with old-world beliefs who thought women shouldn't drive, my grandfather's brother, who threatened to walk out if Enea told them how to run their business; a rift with the Catholic Church because a priest wouldn't baptize Enea's and Italia's daughter unless they paid him an indulgence, and that the girl died soon after.

I've seen family photos, the people captured in those images ghost-like in those black and white pictures, and since I am such a mongrel, I do not look at all like them. Of course, I'd like to know more, but really, what I want is a better sense of what Italy is and why I feel so drawn toward it, not only the particulars of my one family's experience. I will start getting to know my family, but that is only the beginning of reconnecting, not its conclusion.

As I read and study (and hopefully get to make that first trip to Italy after the pandemic canceled my trip scheduled for last October), I want to know Italy without romanticizing it. You can convince yourself that life is better "over there" when it's probably the same or worse. Okay, maybe better too, possibly much better. But I don't want to become an obsessive Italy fan. Or fall for obvious cliches—about how Italy is a place where people know how to live. Italians are all passionate and stylish, speaking with their hands, operatic and over the top, and all the other hot-blooded Italian tropes. I'm sure there's some truth there as well.

But Italy also had one of the worst Covid-19 outbreaks and still struggles with a government, often in disarray, that cannot impede the dominance of the Camorra clans in Naples. And Italy still hasn't quite overcome the legacy of Mussolini: a far-right movement led by Matteo Salvini remains threateningly close to taking power, a rise aided by racism and xenophobia. I do not want to idealize or unfairly condemn the place, but rather know Italy and its' people for whatever they are, so I can see how it shaped myself and my family. I want to take pictures in the streets, wander without a plan until I got lost and needed one. Maybe discover my operatic personality.

 Coming out of this lockdown, old age not quite here but getting closer, as in just around the corner smoking a cigarette close, with the world isolated from itself, without any family of my own; maybe that is what sparked this need to connect with a sense of place, a sense of family. That's what being "white" can mean—it's when you've become so absorbed into American culture that your ancestry seems like it started around about 1980 (in my case anyway). I used to joke that my cultural heritage was shopping malls and Back to the Future movies at the multiplex.

 I think that has some advantages to being part of a well-defined community or coming from a large extended family. If you have no family, you won't be assigned an identity by what they think you should be. You won't have as many expectations about your choices before you get to choose for yourself.

 The problem is that you also have no sense of history or your heritage or how your small part fits into it the larger story. You are isolated. You can claim America, the nation of immigrants, but you make a claim not knowing where your people came from, and that might be the worst side effect of assimilation: forgetting the past. I've never known much about mine. I regret letting so much time slip before realizing family and heritage are so important. Now I am going to do my best to embrace my past, whatever it may be. 

What 'Bridgerton' Gets Wrong About Corsets

https://sciencespies.com/history/what-bridgerton-gets-wrong-about-corsets/

What 'Bridgerton' Gets Wrong About Corsets

In the opening scene of the steamy Netflix period drama “Bridgerton,” Prudence Featherington, one of the eligible daughters of the social-climbing Lady Featherington, is dressing to be presented to the queen of England. Prudence doubles over, gasping for breath, as a maid yanks the laces of her corset tighter.

“I was able to squeeze my waist into the size of an orange-and-a-half when I was Prudence’s age,” Lady Featherington says.

Many movies, historical as well as fantastical, have a similar scene. Think of Gone With the Wind’s Scarlett O’Hara death-gripping a bedpost; Elizabeth Swann in Pirates of the Caribbean laced so tightly into her corset that she can barely breathe; Titanic’s Rose in a nearly identical scene; Emma Watson, playing Belle in Disney’s live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast, declaring that her character is too independent to wear a corset.

One other element shared by some of these scenes, among many others? None of the characters suffering through the pain have control over their own lives; in each scene, an authority figure (Prudence’s and Rose’s mothers, Elizabeth’s father) tells them what they must do. It’s a pretty on-the-nose metaphor, says Alden O’Brien, the curator of costume and textiles at the Daughters of the American Revolution Museum in Washington, D.C.

“To have a scene in which they’re saying, ‘tighter, tighter,’ it’s obviously a stand-in for … women’s restricted roles in society,” O’Brien says.

The trouble is that nearly all of these depictions are exaggerated, or just plain wrong. This is not to say “Bridgerton” showrunner Shonda Rhimes erred in her portrayal of women’s rights during the early 19th-century Regency era—they were indeed severely restricted, but their undergarments weren’t to blame.

“It’s less about the corset and more about the psychology of the scene,” says Kass McGann, a clothing historian who has consulted for museums, TV shows and theater productions around the world and who founded and owns the blog/historical costuming shop Reconstructing History, in an email.

Over four centuries of uncountable changes in fashion, women’s undergarments went through wide variations in name, style and shape. But for those whose understanding of costume dramas comes solely from shows and movies like “Bridgerton,” these different garments are all just lumped together erroneously as corsets.

If one does define a corset as “a structured undergarment for a woman’s torso,” says Hilary Davidson, a dress historian and the author of Dress in the Age of Jane Austen, the first corsets appeared in the 16th century in response to women’s fashion becoming stiffer and more “geometric.” The corset, stiffened with whalebone, reeds or even sometimes wood, did somewhat shape women’s bodies into the inverted cone shape that was in fashion, but women weren’t necessarily pulling their corsets tight enough to achieve that shape. Instead, they used pads or hoops to give themselves a wider shape below the waist (kind of like Elizabethan-era booty pads), which, in turn, made the waist look narrower.

Silk stays and busk made in the Netherlands between 1660 and 1680

(© Victoria and Albert Museum, London)

Quilted silk jumps made in England around 1745

(© Victoria and Albert Museum, London)

This shape more or less persisted until the Regency era of the early 1800s, when there was “all sorts of invention and change and messing about” with fashion, Davidson says. During that 20-year period, women had options: They could wear stays, boned, structured garments that most resemble today’s conception of a corset; jumps, very soft, quilted, but still supportive undergarments; or corsets, which were somewhere in between. O’Brien says the corsets of the Regency period were made of soft cotton (“imagine blue jeans, and turn them white”) with stiffer cotton cording for support, and occasionally channels in the back for boning, and a slot in the front for a metal or wooden support called a busk. (Remember, though, these supports were made to fit an individual’s body and would gently hug her curves.) Eventually, the term corset (from the French for “little body”) is the one that won out in English, and the shape gelled into the hourglass shape we think of today..

But all along, these undergarments were just “normal pieces of clothing,” Davidson says. Women would have a range, just like today’s women “have a spectrum of possibilities, from the sports bra to the Wonderbra.” Those simply hanging around the house would wear their more comfortable corsets, while others going to a ball might “wear something that gives a nicer line.” Even working women would wear some sort of laced, supportive garment like these—giving lie to the idea that putting on a corset immediately induced faintness. For Davidson, the myth that women “walked around in these uncomfortable things that they couldn’t take off, because patriarchy,” truly rankles. “And they put up with it for 400 years? Women are not that stupid,” she says.

These garments were comfortable, Davidson adds, not just by the standards of the time—women started wearing some sort of supportive bodiced garment when they were young girls, so they were accustomed to them by adulthood—but by modern standards as well. O’Brien concurs: “To have something that goes further down your bust … I’d really like to have that, because it would do a better job of distributing the support.”

By the Victorian period, after “Bridgerton,” corsets had evolved to a more hourglass shape—the shape many people imagine when they think of an uncomfortable, organ-squishing, body-deforming corset. But again, modern perceptions of the past shape how we think of these undergarments. Davidson says skirts were bigger during this time—“the wider the skirt, the smaller the waist looks.” Museums often display corsets in their collections on mannequins as if their edges meet. In reality, they would likely have been worn with their edges an inch or two apart, or even looser, if a woman chose.

McGann suggests that one of the reasons corsets are associated with pain is because actresses talk about their discomfort wearing an uncomfortable corset for a role. “In many cases, the corsets are not made for the actress but rather a corset in her general size is used for expediency,” McGann says. “This means they are wearing corsets that don’t fit them properly, and when laced tightly, that can hurt!”

So, in the Regency era and in other periods, did women tighten the laces of their corsets beyond what was comfortable—or healthy—in service of achieving a more fashionably narrow waist? Sure, some did, when they had someone to impress (and in fact, Davidson gives the Gone With the Wind corset scene high marks for accuracy, since Scarlett O’Hara is young, unmarried, and trying to make an impression). In “Bridgerton,” social striver Lady Featherington’s insistence on her daughters’ narrow waists similarly seems logical. Except…in the Regency period, where dresses fall from the bust, what would be the point of having a narrow waist? “The whole idea of tightlacing is completely pointless…irrelevant for the fashion,” Davidson says.

“There is no way that period corset is going to [narrow her waist], and it’s not trying to do that,” O’Brien adds.

Davidson has another quibble with the undergarment fashion choices of “Bridgerton” (at least the first episode, which she watched at Smithsonian magazine’s request). Corsets and stays of the Regency period were designed less to create the cleavage that modern audiences find attractive, and more to lift up and separate the breasts like “two round globes,” Davidson says. She finds the corsets in “Bridgerton” too flat in the front.

In an interview with Vogue, “Bridgerton” costume designer Ellen Mirojnick laid out her philosophy on the series’ apparel: “This show is sexy, fun and far more accessible than your average, restrained period drama, and it’s important for the openness of the necklines to reflect that. When you go into a close-up, there’s so much skin. It exudes beauty.” But, Davidson says, “while they sought sexiness and cleavage and maximum exposure, the way they’ve cut the garments actually flattens everyone’s busts. If they’d gone back to the Regency [style of corset] you would have gotten a whole lot more bosom. You would have had boobs for days.”

“Bridgerton” does, however, get a lot right about the status of women in the early-19th century. Marriage was one of the only options for women who didn’t want to reside with their relatives for the rest of their lives, so the series’ focus on making “good matches” in matrimony holds true. Once wed, a married woman legally became her husband’s property. She couldn’t sign contracts or write a will without her husband’s consent.

By the mid-19th century, women had made significant gains in being able to own property or obtain a divorce. It wouldn’t be until 1918 in England or 1920 in the United States, however, that (some) women could vote. Around the same time, corsets were falling out of fashion, and many writers of the time saw a connection between liberation from the corset and women’s liberation.

In “Bridgerton,” Regency-era young women don corsets ahead of their presentation to Queen Charlotte.

(Liam Daniel / Netflix)

O’Brien says that looking back now, that conclusion doesn’t hold up. “You have all these writers saying, ‘Oh, we’re so much more liberated than those dreadful, hypocritical, repressed Victorians, and we’ve thrown away the corset.’ Well, I’m sorry, but if you look at shapewear in the 1920s, they’re doing the exact same thing, which is using undergarments to create the current fashionable shape,” which in the Roaring Twenties meant using “elasticized” girdles and bust-binders to “completely clamp down on a woman’s natural shape.

“Society always has a body ideal that will be impossible for many women to reach, and every woman will choose how far to go in the pursuit of that ideal, and there will always be a few who take it to a life-threatening extreme,” O’Brien adds.

O’Brien and Davidson hope people stop thinking of corsets as oppressive tools of the patriarchy, or as painful reminders of women’s obsession with fashion. That attitude “takes away female agency,” O’Brien says. “We’re allowing fashion’s whims to act upon us, rather than choosing to do something.”

Wearing a corset was “as oppressive as wearing a bra, and who forces people into a bra in the morning?” (Some women in 2021, after months of Zoom meetings and teleworking, may be asking themselves that exact question right now.) “We all make individual choices,” Davidson says, “about how much we modify ourselves and our body to fit within the social groups in which we live.”

It’s easier to think of corsets as “strange and unusual and in the past,” Davidson says. To think of a corset as an oppressive tool of the past patriarchy implies that we modern women are more enlightened. But, Davidson adds, “We don’t wear corsets because we’ve internalized them. You can now wear whatever you like, but why does all the Internet advertising say ‘8 weird tricks to a slim waist’? We do Pilates. Wearing a corset is much less sweat and effort than going to Pilates.”

#History

congratulations elaina, scorpio is now wren hugo with the faceclaim bex taylor klaus ! 

Character Sign: scorpio Character name: wren hugo Birthday: 1997 Sexuality: queer Gender: intersex, but this is not public information. legal documents say "female". has decided that thinking to hard about their gender identity will detract from the causes they support, so currently goes by she/her pronouns. Moon Sign: leo (aquarius rising) Faceclaim: bex taylor klaus Power: sound manipulation (elaboration in bio)

Biography:

1997. wren elizabeth hugo is born to a pair of modern hippies; an american father and german mother living in gao, india. she won't remember having lived there. 

1999. the hugos move to kathmandu, nepal. the missionary doctor they see while there points out that something might not be quite right with wren. sure, she seems healthy enough, but something between her legs isn't shaped the way you'd expect it to be shaped.

2002. two surgeries later, the government catches up the the hugos, who disappear dehab, egypt just in time for wren to start school.

2004. the hugos find themselves in ko pha-ngan, thailand. wren goes under the knife again. 

2005. their stay in siargo doesn't last terribly too long. wren is nearly kidnapped, but evades capture and the family leaves shortly after.

2005. the family lands in the cyclades, greece. wren faces another surgery and falls in love with computers.

2009. just when wren is starting to think they've found their forever home, the family picks up again and moves to freetown christiania, copenhagen, denmark. mr. and mrs. hugo swear up and down that this is the last move. wren starts getting headaches.

2011. it isn't the last move. amidst civil unrest in the commune, the hugos move once more, this time to glastonbury. wren's headaches get worse, morphing into migraines.

2011. wren's migraines degrade to the point where other surgeries to address her other problems are put on hold. at least once a week- sometimes more frequently- she gets excruciating episodes where it feels as if a rocket is launched from somewhere in the back of her skull and explodes just behind her left eye. no one can explain why. after the worst one of her life, wren writhing and screaming and clawing at her eye to try to get it out, her mother and father frantically pinning her arms to the bed to stop her from hurting herself, everything came to a halt as wren's vision suddenly disappeared from that eye. this leads to the discovery of wren's mystery condition- a demyelinating disease that caused enough nerve damage to irreversibly destroy the connection between wren's eye and her brain. 

2012. her other eye begins to deteriorate, as do other nerves in her body. doctors work quickly to get her on the right cocktail of medications to control the pain and seizures that result, and the medications work fairly well. wren still steadily loses vision in her other eye, and occasionally experiences tremors and palsies in her limbs, but the migraines and pain are much more bearable than they were before her diagnosis.

2013. the law finally catches up to mr. and mrs. hugo for tax evasion. wren is taken away from them and dropped into a foster home with minimal contact with her parents. while living in the foster home, with government officials aware of her condition, she's able to receive somewhat better accessibility aids, such as a wheelchair for days when her palsies are more than she can deal with on her own, as well as a service dog (a black lab named pluto). she gets placed in a school that better suits her needs and is finally able to start re-learning how to use a computer and how to read braille, among other important things like how to navigate on her own and how to operate her cell phone.

2014. wren petitions for and receives emancipation at 17. she moves into a co-op with a few other young people nearer her school and works on applying to colleges. as she still struggles to use computers, she lets go of her dream of studying computer science and becoming a hacker; instead, she decides to study sociology and become an activist of some kind. she's tired of thinking about her gender, she's tired of thinking about her disability, she wants to fight for something else. still plagues with nightmares of her near-abduction in siargao, she settles on human trafficking.

2015. thanks in large part to a sob story essay about growing up a disabled nomad, wren is accepted to several schools. she ultimately chooses durham at the recommendation of a school counselor.

2016. welcome to durham. it's a struggle to get situated starting out, but the school gives her some assistance and she's got her feet under her within a few months.

march 2017. that night at the sands... there are too many people. they're too loud. they're too close together. it's cold and wet and sand is hard to navigate and honestly wren just wants to go home and suddenly... the whole world goes silent. every sound cuts out in an instant and wren freezes in place- she's been warned already that her hearing was in danger the same as her eyes, but she hadn't expected it to just disappear like that. completely overtaken with fear, she quietly tells pluto to take her back home and follows him away from the group as quickly as possible. by the time she's off the sand, her hearing returns. overwhelmed by the sudden turn, wren falls to her knees in the grass, barely able to catch her breath. a few moments later, she hears voices approaching behind her; she scrambles to her feet and hurries off with pluto again, not wanting to explain what just happened to anyone. over the next few weeks, as the reality of what they'd experienced became apparent, wren came to realize that her experience was her first run-in with her power of sound manipulation- she was overwhelmed by all the noisy people around her, so she stopped the soundwaves from reaching herself. with time and practice, she started learning the finer points of her power- she could listen in on far-away conversations, she could say something in a quiet voice from one side of the room and send it to a specific person on the other side of the room without anyone else hearing, she could turn off all sounds in an area entirely for everyone- the applications were a bit dizzying. she hasn't developed any subpowers yet, but through the power-ups she's developed a very keen sense of echolocation; through sound she can very accurately determine the shape and contents of the space she's in, and if she knows a person very well she can even figure out where that person is within that space.

Five interesting facts about your character:

1. mother is german, father is american. spoke a mix of both growing up and is functionally fluent in both, but not 100% fluent in either. regarding other languages:

knows a few children's songs in konkani, but left india too young to remember much of the language. 

same with nepali from her time in kathmandu. 

lived in dehab, egypt in early elementary school and can still read a bit of arabic, but not much.

was reasonably okay at thai at one point after living in ko pha-ngan, but has forgotten most of it.

didn't live in siargao long enough to learn much siargaonon

became very attached to greek while living in the cyclades, is still reasonably conversational.

picked up dutch relatively easily while living in christiania, copenhagen due to already speaking english and german.

wren never feels comfortable communicating; she knows her accent is a muddy mess and that her vocabulary is small. sometimes, to get out of conversations with strangers, she'll speak a made-up language that crosses through all the various languages she knows. she worries that if she picks just one language, the stranger might happen to know how to speak that language. also, in spite of being so uncomfortable with her language skills, she picks up on other languages relatively quickly because she's so used to having to learn fast.

2. wren's memory is impeccable, she'll never forget a kindness or a slight or a random useless piece of trivia.

3. keeps a small fidget toy in her pocket at all times, finds it helps keep her calm and focused.

4. very, very, very particular about her shoes. will wear a pair of shoes until they fall apart before buying a new pair, and it takes her forEVER to settle on a new pair. she's somewhat the same way about her clothes, but it's very pronounced with shoes.

5. wren started losing her sight just as she started wanting to wear makeup. knowing she'd eventually lose most of her vision, she practiced putting her eyeliner and mascara on without a mirror. by the time she lost her sight, she could do so pretty easily, and still does. she doesn't really wear makeup beyond that.

Character Quote:

"Day surprises me and night scares me  haunts me and winter follows me  An animal walking on the snow has placed  Its paws in the sand or in the mud 

Its paws have traveled  From further afar than my own steps  On a path where death  Has the imprints of life"  from "the human face: vi. a wolf", paul eluard

If your character had a patronus what would it be? and why?

an elephant. they never forget.

a manifesto- a call for the end of liberalism, and an analysis of the 2020 election

10/18/2020 

The hypocrisy of “both sides” of the political two-party system is impossible to ignore; every day the conservative and the liberal party become more deeply entrenched in their own self-produced agendas. While most critiques of “both sides” are often center-right leaning and are encoded with messages of propaganda against extremist factions (often misguided and identified incorrectly), leaving the reader with a dissatisfied sense of center extremism, this is a critique drawing heavily on a Marxist scholarship and grassroots activism. While most would classify these perspectives as “progressive”, that term has become synonymous with a Bernie Sanders “reform” driven ideology that relies heavily on blame and cultural classism. This critique of the modern political parties and the Liberal’s abhorrent approach to “voting fascism out” resides somewhere so far left that it may touch some ideology of anti-big government libertarians-- as the political “spectrum” is most likely shaped as a circle instead of a straight line with polarizing ends. What the libertarians would take up arms to (no pun intended) is the vehement anti-capitalist and anti-private ownership approach to modern socioeconomic and political matters. The only solution to a country in need of constant reform is a complete upheaval of all governing systems. Abolition is the only answer to a failing government-- this calls for the abolition of capitalism, the criminal justice system, and politics as we know it. The framework we need is anti-racist, anti-oppressive, anti-classist, and also pro collectivity, communism, and ultimately activist-driven. 

The fundamental reality is that while the two party system controls the political realm in real applicable ways (which bills are passed, supreme court nominations, and public discourse), the social movements that are heavily categorized by “two party bipartisanship” are more nuanced-- instead of it being as simple as “the right” and “the left”, social movements and unrest derive from groups that are challenging to define. It is not so easily defined as Democrats and Republicans or Liberals and Conservatives-- while the real tangible implications of political decision making happens between these two parties, the discourse that motivates opinion, choice, and most fatal-- violence-- is hard to place. Social discourse, the “zeitgeist” of individual and collective political unrest, and thoughts are taking hold in somewhat of a makeshift fashion, thus producing a diaspora of political opinions. 

This “diaspora” of political opinions, emotions, and identities is a tool intentionally weaponized by the establishment-- and I would argue, upheld largely by establishment democrats. Collectivism or true community cohesion is the largest threat to our government’s autocratic “democracy”. Liberalism and neoliberalism are founded upon a myth of the individual, and the power of communal spirit and collective action promise to turn those ideas on their head-- reminiscent of a Marxist approach to modern philosophy. The maintenance of the economic order of capitalism through the production and reproduction of us (citizens) as individuals is not the only or highest form of psychological violence our government commits against its own people-- establishment government representatives work to also uphold a cultural and sociopolitical order by restricting our ability to be communal beings. The fact that we cannot name or place these diasporadic social movements or bodies of thought and belief are intentional-- the two party system does not want us to know where to look to find others like us. The belief and acceptance by Americans that there are two boxes wide enough to fit us all is a condition of mass manipulation and the product of the most successful bi-partisan campaign our country has ever seen-- a campaign that prioritizes violent individualization and hypercapitalism above all else. 

We see this belief in the establishment and ignorance of the emotional diaspora of political opinions in this county the most clearly when we depoliticize our emotions and identity politics and examine the inauguration of Donald Trump, and the Democratic outcry and downright hatred projected onto Trump supporters. Following the thread of deconstructing our communal emotions in a capitalist environment, and for the sake of definition, “liberals” refer to people who associate themselves with the Democratic party and work to uphold establishment liberalism. Many Democrats would not, on first examination, appear to be this sort of establishment liberal, and would not identify as such. Put simply, moderate Democrats denounce the violent BLM protests, are excited about voting for Joe Biden, and express their distaste for poor working class Americans through their cultural elitism. The “Trump supporters” I am most uniquely interested in are not the rich Republicans who have historically voted red for “economic reasons”, but those who voted for the loud mouthed, highly opinionated, and violently charged man on the grounds of social and cultural disenfranchisement-- justifying their vote and working to excuse casual racism and xenophobia through their own process of being cast off by mainstream culture. To define a type for easier identification, I focus on the poor, working class, blue collar white american men who feel an attachment through Trump and the alt-right through their inability to grapple with or find identity through the left-dominated mainstream media and “culture”. We see here a battle between white suburban mothers who first expressed collective action in the 2016 Women’s March and the rural mid-30s white man who has experienced unemployment and seen his neighbors die from opioid abuse. We see a struggle between class, culture, and the hypermasculinization of the “American Dream”; it's a battle between two individual identities, one highly rewarded by a “safe” community, and the other cast away from its long-standing supremacy. In this battleground we see how Trump’s racist hypercapitalism was elected, and will most likely be elected again. 

Within a hyper-capitalist society, the only accepted form of communalism or tribalism is an association with one’s economic class. Liberals will denounce Trump and his policies, yet be the first to excuse their neighbor, coworkers, or dinner party guest’s choice to vote for him based on economic justifications. They will excuse the behavior of those within their class-- the judgement, conflict, and exclusion will only come at the expense of those above or below them. The problem is always “rednecks”, “hicks”, “billionaires”, and “the 1%”. Liberal communities refuse to acknowledge their own as evil-- a community of individuals that actively “other” anyone who does not fit into their morally righteous club. The problem is never “the soccer mom” or the dad who is awarded the economic privilege to be a “stay at home dad”. The problem lives somewhere beyond the gated community, beyond the voting booth, and far away from the public schools that are advertised as a selling point for property. Class solidarity trumps moral judgement or empathy. Class solidarity has been prioritized most effectively by the moderate liberal class; the villainization of poverty and a lack of education has not only worked to discredit an entire subsector of our society, but has also worked to produce its own supremacy. 

The 1% did not elect Donald Trump. Donald Trump will maintain power and authority because of the lack of empathy, care, organizing work that moderate establishment democrats have ignored over the last four years. Since 2016, there has been no true investment into closing the wealth gap or the cultural gap between the rural/urban divide. There has been a lack of cross-aisle conversations in a true, radical approach to community healing and restorative justice. While restorative justice often refers to communally healing from a criminal act of harm, restorative justice in emotional political cultural settings are centered on a harm that is not inherently criminal, and has failed to be named by the current administration. Establishment Democrats are angry with the “right” and morally just aspects of Republican and alt-right rhetoric, but their approach to navigating these very real and impactful issues rooted in violence and oppression is ineffective, and at best, shallow. Liberalism is still upholding the same values we denounce in our Instagram stories and Facebook posts-- Trump and the alt-right are making an uglier and more violent face of what liberalism has been all along-- the reason people are denouncing Trump and his voters is rooted in a fear of their own racism, classism, misogyny, and hyperindividualism being more visible. Liberalism does not want to disappear racism and violence, it does not want to reestablish economic and cultural classes-- it wants to uphold these through a more clandestine approach. It does not want to understand economic and cultural oppression in an authentic way-- it is not asking the questions to uncover the implications of forgotten rural economic systems and how hypercapitalism has ruptured communities (both spatially and emotionally). 

Liberalism has not only ignored the social and economic underclass, but has worked to intentionally create the diaspora previously referred to. While class solidarity exists across political party lines for affluent classes, the underclass is plagued with a lack of cohesive identity or central communal force. A true communist approach would be to respect the proletariat's outcries, understand their lack of identity and expression of hatred as a cry for help, and to mobilize to work towards a community that is not founded on class solidarity. Liberalism has rendered a unity in class struggle among the poor impossible-- there are new “layers” to class which have undermined the ability for a true proletariat uprising. This is intentional and has been done by the liberal class to establish difference and maintain “othering” among a shared experience. Poverty does not connect people in a meaningful way-- education, race, and culture (learned through exposure and privilege) have come to define the underclass on grounds more important than economic status. The unemployed newly college graduated art student has less in common with the rural construction worker than they do the aristocratic affluent class-- their sense of the world, culture, and their identity through their liberal education places them at a higher respected value than the “white trash” population-- even if they are at the same economic situation. Long over are the days of collective action on the grounds of economic oppression and exploitation-- class solidarity does not exist when the upper classes and the machine of neoliberalism has worked tirelessly to undermine class solidarity or communalism in general for the under class. Dismantling capitalism under a communist movement would have to include reshaping our interpretations of culture, class, and status. 

--------------------------------------------

11/04/2020

The 2020 election should come to no surprise, although establishment democrats are wearing a mask of preformative outrage. Their anger-- although valid in the face of an outward and violent proclamation of violence and authoritative power, with the newly added layer of a conservative supreme court-- is misdirected. While around half of the votes counted have been cast for a man who stands on the platform of bigotry, it is not correct to assume that half of the American people agree with his dogma. The enemy is not southern voters. The enemy is not “uneducated” racist individuals-- the enemy is white supremacy. Liberalism's obsession with individualism ends up hurting its own cause. The overarching system of white supremacy is to blame for the overwhelming amount of “red states”. Trump country is not a collection of racist individuals, it is white supremacy in action. Liberalism will call into fault everything but this truth, because admitting this is the true source of our political reality would be calling into question the validity of liberalism itself. 

“Red states” within the electoral college are not red because of the previously aforementioned “white trash” individuals-- voter suppression, gerrymandering, and state sanctioned violence against Black and Brown bodies are to blame. Southern states are more diverse than Northern states (urban areas, which are more diverse, vote blue). Southern states have higher proportions of Black residents, which is a fact ignored by liberals in the outcry of the red wave. Our government has worked tirelessly to prevent Black people from voting. This is a highly successful bi-partisan state-sanctioned campaign against Black people. “Both sides” have worked to uphold systems like the electoral college, have worked to barr felons from voting (33% of Black men have felonies in the United States), and created systems which are hard to access physically as well as emotionally through a long history of redlining and segregation. Many people living in southern states cannot legally vote, and if they can, feel isolated from their government. Even for those who register to vote, polling stations are often far away from Black neighborhoods and white racists use scare tactics to prevent voting. While external influences restrict the coveted “Black vote” that liberals viscously pray on and weaponize during election cycles, the internal struggle of identity, isolation, distrust, and inherited trauma make it hard for Black voters to believe in anyone. And that is valid. 

Trump’s tailing behind Biden in a “too close to call” race to the presidency should come as no surprise. Southern states do suffer from racism-- but not in the ways in which Liberalism is quick to accept. The violent individualization of people has manifested itself in the Conservative ideals-- freedom, private ownership, and small government are dog whistles for anti-Black rhetoric. Southern whites work to preserve the sham of freedom that Trump idealizes. They believe his empty promises of prosperity, recovering economics, and expanded personal rights. They see Black people, immigrants, queer people, and progressives as the enemy. They vote against their own interests because of neoliberalism’s fanatical obsession with the individual-- white supremacy as a guiding principle manifests itself as racism in the everyday person. This individual has access to voting in the South. Black people do not. 

White supremacy and neoliberalism are the enemy of all. The systems in place in America work to suppress the working class and isolate people from one another through violent individualization. Misdirected anger from poor whites results in violence, racism, sexism, homophobia, and votes for a bigot. Misdirected anger from establishment democrats result in a protective elitism that excludes southern and rural whites and reinforces their “acts of resistance”. The working class is experiencing a diasporadic identity crisis which results in the impossibility of mobilization. Neoliberalism and white supremacy is strengthened by these internal and external tensions. It is our collective responsibility to dismantle these systems and rewrite a code of ethics for our country which prioritizes coalition building, community strength, and empathy-- and the voices of Black and Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) should be central to this effort. It is the responsibility of white people in power (politically, culturally, and economically) to leverage their positionality to incite Real Change.