the anti-american rhetoric is so exhausting. you guys think we're stupid but fail to realize why. your lack of sympathy for those of us (read: the majority) being hurt by the system helps the people who hurt us.

People, what is somethings you wish writers knew about your culture, I'll start (I'm English):

If you say British-English I will riot. It's standard English, American English is just the most commonly spoken version of English, being the dominant culture

Nobody cares about sports at Secondary school, I didn't realise my school had sports teams until like year 11 when I saw them leaving and it was just a casual observation

Also Primary school = reception to year 6 or ages 4 to 11, Secondary school = years 7 to 11 or ages 11 to 16, Sixth Form (attached to a secondary school) and college (independent from a secondary school but otherwise same thing) = 16 to 18. Primary school to Secondary school is compulsory, after that you have to attend some form of further education whether that be an apprenticeship or sixth form/college is up to you. It is common to have a compulsory uniform for secondary school and less common for both primary school and sixth form/college. Primary school and sixth form/college uniforms are noteworthy whereas a lack of compulsory uniform in secondary school is noteworthy

American culture is the dominant one, we have watched and read a lot of American media

If you're poor, you live in a council flat and probably have free school meals, "trailer trash" isn't really a thing because trailers just aren't a common occurrence, the only group I can think of that commonly lives in "trailers" is 'gypsy' who are their own community and live in motorhomes. Discrimination against them is common but not in your face, which I will explain in a bit because that is its own point

People care a lot about both rugby and football and if you call it soccer and act all superior about you will make a lot of people mad because British football officially came first and a lot of languages call it something that sounds very close to football in their language and American football is closer to rugby in how it looks to us so it is a very sore point

Also, in case you haven't gathered, Britain is subtly anti-American we had an empire and we are bitter we lost it so seeing America get to where we were is something Britain does not react well to

British culture is all about pretending everything so normal and subduing, ignoring and otherwise refusing to acknowledge what strays from that "normal" so unless we are forced to openly acknowledge it we will not and then we will passive aggressively snipe at it. American culture is all about being in your face, British culture is all about pretending we don't see what's wrong. We refuse to acknowledge we even had an empire

Class is a big deal. The elites in our culture have historically been their own one and this is still seen today. Class divide is what defines us. We have things like the house of commons and the house of lords. Rather than the rich ending up in positions of power due to society falling to prevent their privilege, British culture and actively encourages elite power. There is still discrimination but because of the importance of class divide and the British refusal to acknowledge our own faults, it presents differently. Race is seen as it's own class below working class and there is discrimination between the white classes. The working class are seen as beneath the rich and the rich are seen as 'upperclass tw**s'. The middle class are then seen as traitors and having abandoned the working class because the elite government has purposefully drafted policies to ensure that happens

Also,all of the above applies to English culture. There are three countries in Great Britain and 4 countries in the UK. England, Wales, Scotland and North Ireland and the divide between these countries is clear. Scotland actively hates England, Wales passive aggressively hates us and Ireland is a mess we created (I would suggest waiting for someone who is Irish to explain that because I don't know enough about it and it is an incredibly complicated topic which plays a significant role in politics)

Also we dislike the French, Britain and France are rivals because we have been fighting on and off for centuries but the French are still seen as equals. We dislike them but we will fight alongside them if if comes to it

Also accents are important, because of the class divide, if you have a working class accent you are being discriminated against, if you have a posh accent you will be hated but people will respect your 'authority', no matter how much they hate

Oxbridge is elitist but there are so many other great Unis across the UK

To American media specifically, stop romanticising British culture, I have never seen the academia aesthetic you are portraying and it irritates, we are not just the rich upper class, look at our history people you portray and because of the class divide it hurts to see that as our only representation

Also London is its own thing, Britain does not recognise London as representative of Britain and London does not like everywhere that is London, it is the most diverse and the biggest city in the entirety of England by a large margin, it does not feel like the rest of Britain

On that point, there are many, many other cities and other towns outside of London, please acknowledge them (having never been to a lot of cities I can't explain them to you)

London does have divides within it such as the divide between North and South of the river, the South does not want to be part of London and the North refuses to acknowledge it. The Northern edge of London is also up for debate, for me it is the edge of Zone 3 (on a tube map) and the other side of the North circular by car but for others it might be further in or out so be aware of that. There is also divide between the post codes for example Wood Green and Tottenham, both have the same council (Haringey) but there is a clear divide between them only further emphasises by Haringey having two MPs one for Tottenham (David Lammey) and one for Wood Green and Hornsey. Both Wood Green and Tottenham have bad reps but the Wood Green half of Haringey starts drifting into middle class at its edges with Hornsey being solidly middle class so be aware of the variation in boroughs

And, London has no centre. It is a city that grew with its country and absorbed the surrounding towns. So if you say the centre of London people will assume you mean a specific part in zone 1 but will not know which part you are talking about and will assume you are talking in a generalisation. If they are traveling with you though, they will expect further clarification, don't say the centre and expect me to know where

Also, there is no space between houses in England, they are mostly semi-detached. I once watched an episode of escape to the country where someone tried to find a detached house and just struggled massively. You either have to pay loads of money or be in the middle of nowhere before your house is fully detached and it will still be only the same distance away from another house as the average American house is. We have one of the highest populations in Europe but a small land mass

Going on from that, Britain is definitely European and has a lot of shared culture whilst still obviously being it's own thing (like every single other country) but Britain acts like and will get mad at the suggestion that they are European like any other European country because 'we are entirely seperate and on an island and how can we not have become our own thing' the actual variation is because Rome (contrary to what the school system will teach you) had very little impact on Britain so we aren't as similar to the other Latin speaking countries as is expected, the main reason we are still similar is because of the impact of Norman conquest. Also everyone underestimated the effect of Scandinavian and Germanic culture on Britain because we act like all they did was pillage when in fact they settled down and where embraced by Briton (unlike Rome which did actually pillage and subjugate Britain without being widely accepted) so that's why there is variation. We are very European but not in the way people expect so Britain refuses to acknowledge it

Honestly British culture is a lesson in tolerance versus acceptance. But there is still active discrimination as people of colour and the LGBTQ+ can attest

Also Christianity is baked into Britain to the point that even atheists follow Christian customs without questioning it but significantly less extreme than France which just stops on Sundays (but is acknowledged as a Christian country so you know) and 'pagan' - so, in this case, Celtic, anglosaxon and Norse - culture has effected us being carried down in fairy tales and witchcraft

Some of this will be upsetting to many people as it should be because British culture hurts, it discriminates without acknowledging it and I want people to know that. I want people to see that when they write about it because the alternative is writing about Britain as if it has faults and that would be so much worse. So writers, please bear all of this in mind when talking about Britain, even and especially, the ugly parts

This has been a white, middle class, Londoners, perspective on Britain and no I will not call myself English because the divide between England and London means that being a Londoner rather than just English matters in this context

I would recommend listening to the perspective of Brits from other groups, such as England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, working class, upper class, Brit of colour, non-passing queer folk, Muslim, Hindu, Indian (the largest immigrant group is actually Indian and that's just immigrated in their lifetime rather than born British and Indian), Jewish (especially Jewish I can talk about that on another post but let's just say the Jewish have never been accepted but always been part of Europe) and so on, to get a more comprehensive view of Britain

Click below to read my veiws on the "Me Too" movement!

How is this really a sexist movement, designed to divide women against men in order to demasculate them?

Also, read here, why I think the "ME TOO" culture, actually keeps women powerless to their abusers!

The real unspoken victims of the "Me too" movement are men!

Yes I just said that! I tend to speak up for the underdogs and black sheep like myself in life. Always have, always will!!!

As a woman, porn star/sex worker, an actual survivor of a child predator, a mom 2 both girls & boys, & an ADORED wife IMMA SAY IT!

I'm not one that buys into the demasculation of men narritive of the "ME TOO" generation. It's a power PLAY from WEAK WOMEN to be able to prey on ALL MEN, whether they be good or bad men.

There are really great men out here, despite all the bad men out here in this world. Woman are way too powerful to need to enjoy grouping together to have laws changed to better their chances at being opportunistic whores. Yes I didn't stutter. Hear me out for a minute.

As a survivor of my own child predator father, I find it beneath me to make ALL MEN bad men. I could have hated God. I could have permenantly hated ALL men. I CHOSE not to do either of those choices. I've seen plenty of evil men, and good men do not deserve to be stepped on by this "ME TOO" generation. It's disgusting to me as a strong and powerful woman, wife and mother!

The greatest power a woman can weild is to submit to a good man, in any platform. I do not care if it is simply at home with her husband, or in a business setting while climbing a corporate ladder. If your war in life has a higher moral ground, you will find men to come along and champion your cause. Yet you must learn patience as a woman, because revenge is a dish best served COLD! These men who abused us needing their justice served, does not give us women a right to go around demasculating ALL men to get to the top. It only shows a lower moral grounding in you that you are opporating from. And lower moral grounding will not give you any power as a divine being. Just because some men are in power, and use it abusively, does not give us a right to play a "I'm a delicate helpless woman" card.

The truth is women are divine, we have divine rights as divine beings, that men do not get blessed with from the creator. Women are literal flesh covered angels or demons, depending on their own choice. I just want to applaud all the women who understand that it is vital if we should accomplish good in this war on evil in the world, that our goals must be in line with the creators ideas for pure joy and a world without suffering. Which that does not include having to overpower any man at all, you can win at the "Art of war," without overpowering and demasculating any men. Finding a man who is willing to give you a table to turn on the enemies of evil within this world can be acheivef. You are more likely to win at "the art of war," if you do things in submission to and alongside of good men who share your higher vision for overcoming this evil world. In doing that in unison with good men, you will get to see miracles happen.

Without that, miracles will not happen for you as a woman. Period. Men are natural providers and protectors, they are not typically predators. They are natural borne leaders, until the end times where women lead men back across the finish line into paradise, because here is a little secret, woman are heavens best and most effective angels!

Believe me, I've had my fair share of predators in my 33years of life that I have not been pleased to have the privilege to know, but furthermore, most of the time, it's the men who want better for the world in general, way more than the majority of women. I'm just saying.

There is a stark difference in men and women. We are already more powerful as woman in almost anything in prospective, aside from a mans physical brute stregnth, by natural design.

So why in the hell would I ever want to demote myself into becoming treated EQUAL to a man? Think about it?.

If you don't like an abusive man that is in power, go around him and find a gentleman to "align" yourself with, then take that abusive man's job from him together with the gentleman who sees your vision. Easy as pie. Outsmart the evil men... They only work for one person, the evil woman running this one world government. You have no need of demasculating GOOD men, and it is even detremental to the ends of the means of doing so in the first place. If you want to harness your fullest measure of divine feminine power, then alingment and submission to all good men is more than necessary! Now how hard was that to come up with?

Women are at no disadvantage other than what we pitty ourselves into becoming. If you hide behind something that made you feel weak... You will see weak results. That's on you as a woman.

Men are the marginalized and disadvantaged sex, in this "Me Too," culture, and we should have mercy on the great men who don't deserve to be bled on, because those men never cut us.

Stop buying the narritive that you are anything more than a sexual being as a woman! Pussy is what starts wars, and it's exactly what ends them. That's power! Explosive power that causes pain and suffering, or power that brings pure peace and joy and essentially paradise, down to the earth from heaven above. Now I just let you in on the secret about who runs this evil world, a damn woman!

You have less power as a woman by rallying together and saying, "I want to be treated equal to men." Get lost with that! You make us queens look bad with that equality to men agenda. We don't need pitty, we don't deserve to be equal to men and less than the most powerful sex. We need a platform to share our story of encounters with evil men, but you should always start your testimony with, "do not pitty me as I share my story, the very thing meant to break me, I let it make me."

Women, how about this idea? Go make somebody invest in your superior intellegence as a woman and get paid MORE than an evil man in his respectful feild of expertise. Men who are good do not care who is the better choice of a leader in male or female terms, in a feild they work in.

Learn the difference, and there is one, between an evil man and a good man. Please ladies, I'm begging you... It's not all about you ALL of the time.

To the good men out there, I see you, you are loved, and I leave you with this advice: All women are attention seeking whores, but there are only the good kind and the bad kind. Women love attention by design, we will and become useless in our divine nature without attention. We cannot acheive our creator designed purposes, without having attention. That can be sexual attention, attention needed for homemaking, attention needed for rearing children. We need so much male attention it hurts, and even better is if we get feminine attention too. That's fire to the flame for our purposes. However, there is only one difference between women. We are only either whores or sluts. There is no in between, because we are sinners who desire to be saints and we are sexual beings created for a very sexual purpose among other heavenly things. There is no other type of woman. She is either sent from hell, or sent from heaven. She is either a whore or a slut. Fellas here is your tip from me, to be able to tell a good woman from an evil one:

*****Evil women are WHORES, they seek opportunity for themselves at ANY "cost" to those around them. Children are even at a loss with opportunistic, advantage seeking whores in charge. So in light of that, I leave you with this:

***a heaven sent woman is what is known as a "slut," and...

"a slut is just a woman, with the morals of a man!"

Xoxo HarleyQueen

(Formally known as adult star, Holly Bryn xxx)

Spoil me here:

https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/22B0IOIGEO7AS?ref_=wl_share

prejudice in fantasy lit and the use of metaphor

reallybigshadowhunterstvfan said:

what can you say about making Simon a shadowhunter, Mrs Clare? it seemed odd to me that after a whole series of battling for equality between species/races, the downworlder had to become a shadowhunter. not only he basically ceased being a minority, he also became a part of a privileged community, and it just didn't sit well with me.

 Just for the record — I’m not Mrs. Clare; there is no Mr. Clare. I am married, but my pen name is not my husband’s property. :-) 

I think this is a very interesting question that brings up a ton of issues, but there are some aspects of it I’d love to clarify — for instance, I am puzzled at calling Simon “the Downworlder.” Is he more a Downworlder than Magnus? Things like that actually are really important when discussing stories — if he were the only Downworlder in the story, that would be one discussion, but he isn’t, and therefore his story does not speak for the experience of all Downworlders or even a small fraction. 

I am sorry you were surprised negatively by Simon’s story in TMI. Simon never wanted to be a vampire — he always hated it, and unlike Raphael and Lily, he never joined the community of vampires but instead spent all his time with Shadowhunters. Being a Daylighter had already changed him from being any kind of regular Downworlder, as did bearing the Mark of Cain: both made him even less “the Downworlder” and more of an anomaly. It also separated him from the other Downworlders, who treated him with distrust. In my experience, very few readers expected Simon to remain a vampire, given that it was something he never wanted or got used to, and that it was not his dream. More on that in a bit.

As to the question, to me the suggestion that Shadowhunters are “the privileged” and Dowworlders are as a block “the marginalized” — instead of being a complicated metaphor in which they sometimes but not always stand in for people who have had their rights curtailed —  overly simplifies the situation. It is an argument seems to ignore the fact that in fact, humans exist along axes of privilege and marginalization: that people can be privileged in one way and marginalized in another and that when Simon becomes first a Downworlder and then a mundane and then a Shadowhunter, he is not moving clearly from marginalization to privilege, but rather exchanging some types of privilege for others (he remains white as a Downworlder, and is a Daylighter), and exchanging some types of marginalization for others (the marginalization of being a Downworlder for the marginalization of being a mundane-born Shadowhunter and a Jew in a world where Shadowhunters are meant to have one religion). 

Because the argument disclaims spectrums of privilege and marginalization, it also suggests that the world of the Shadowhunter Chronicles is one in which there are no gay or POC or trans people in existence; one in which there is no racism, homophobia, ableism, cis privilege, or bigotry against the neuroatypical. But that is both problematic erasure, and also not true of these books. Downworlders don’t stand in for people of color or LGBTQ+ people because people of color and LGBTQ+ people are in the books; they have not been subsumed into metaphor. (I know the showrunners said there was no homophobia in the Shadowhunter world, only warlock-phobia, but that’s the show, not the books, and it has a different world and world-building. I notice this is a question I get since the show came out, and I sometimes wonder if it’s a question of confusion between the two different universes? It’s easy for that to happen.)

Fantasy prejudice metaphors are complex and confusing and they rarely work as a one to one comparison (in other words, there is a difference between saying that this fantasy situation is reminiscent of this real world thing and saying this fantasy situation is exactly the same as this real world thing. For instance, one of the really interesting things about True Blood is that it made many deliberate parallels between “vampire rights” and GLBT+ rights — referring to vampires “coming out of the coffin” and “God Hates Fangs” on church signs. However, its vampires were also often violent predators who killed and ate people. The argument that Simon “basically ceased being a minority” (while, somehow, remaining Jewish) is similar to making an argument that True Blood was saying that gay people kill and eat their neighbors; I’m fairly sure in fact, they weren’t. They were reaching for a resonance — the echo of a real world situation that would give a layer of relatability and meaning to their points about difference. But they were not creating a literal “these things are the same” comparison or they wouldn’t have had vampires chewing off people’s heads.

So: are Downworlders discriminated against? Yes, sometimes, by Shadowhunters, who are a small specific group. Do they “stand in” for a specific minority group? No, they cannot, because they are accessible as a metaphor to any marginalized group or groups whose rights have been abridged. Also: the world at large does not discriminate against Downworlders because they do not know they exist, nor do they privilege Shadowhunters because they don’t know they exist either. It would be one thing if this was a high fantasy and Shadowhunters and Downworlders were all there was, but these books are set in our world, and the characters experience real-world bigotry, racism, homophobia etc. because of it.

Alec sighed. “Sorry to wreck your vision of our happy family. I know you want to think Dad’s fine with me being gay, but he’s not.” 

“But if you don’t tell  me when people say things like that to you, or do things to hurt you, then how can I help you?” Simon could feel Isabelle’s agitation vibrating through her body. “How can I—” 

“Iz,” Alec said tiredly. “It’s not like it’s one big bad thing. It’s a lot of little invisible things. When Magnus and I were traveling, and I’d call from the road, Dad never asked how he was. When I get up to talk in Clave meetings, no one listens, and I don’t know if that’s because I’m young or if it’s because of something else. I saw Mom talking to a friend about her grandchildren and the second I walked into the room they shut up. Irina Cartwright told me it was a pity no one would ever inherit my blue eyes now.” He shrugged and looked toward Magnus, who took a hand off the wheel for a moment to place it on Alec’s. “It’s not like a stab wound you can protect me from. It’s a million little paper cuts every day.”

 *** 

“He hurt you. It was a long time ago, and I know he tried to make up for it, but—” Bat shrugged. “Maybe I’m not so forgiving.” 

Maia exhaled. “Maybe I’m not either,” she said. “The town I grew up in, all these spoiled thin rich white girls, they made me feel like crap because I didn’t look like them. When I was six, my mom tried to throw me a Barbie-themed birthday party. They make a black Barbie, you know, but they don’t make any of the stuff that goes with her—party supplies and cake toppers and all that. So we had a party for me with a blonde doll as the theme, and all these blonde girls came, and they all giggled at me behind their hands.”

***

If we carry the theory through (Shadowhunters are THE privileged, Downworlders are THE marginalized) that means that Alec, as a gay Shadowhunter, is more privileged than Simon, a straight vampire. That Ty, who would be locked in a mental institution if the Clave discovered his autism, is privileged beyond white, rich, immortal and powerful Malcolm Fade. It’s saying that when Cristina encounters a wealthy, white, straight, misogynist male werewolf in Lady Midnight who tries to force sexual attention on her, she, a Latina woman, is the one who is the privileged character because she is a Shadowhunter and he is a Downworlder (though Sterling has arguably, given that he lives outside the supernatural world, never experienced a whit of prejudice because of it.) So I’m sure you can see where the problem lies.

It also erases Simon’s Judaism entirely. Stating without caveat that Simon has become “part of a privileged community” means ignoring the fact that Simon is Jewish; that he decides in Tales that he will continue to practice, and that he was the only Jewish protag written by two Jewish authors that I’m aware of having been on the bestseller lists last year. He didn’t think about being a vampire as he was preparing to transform — he never wanted to be one or consented to be one, nor was he part of the community, as Raphael constantly pointed out — though he does later think of having previously been a Downworlder when interacting with vampires and Shadowhunter prejudices. He thought of the important thing to him: his Judaism, which he both couldn’t and wouldn’t give up. To me it is personally painful to think that for any reader, Simon’s status as a vampire is more significant than his status as a practicing Jew.

I think sometimes it is possible to invest yourself so heavily in a metaphor that you forget the real world that surrounds the metaphor and the flexibility of metaphors in general. The Shadowhunter/Downworlder situation could stand in for the systemically privileged and marginalized of our world: sometimes it does. However it also can stand in for the way totalitarian governments abuse their own people: there are echoes in Shadowhunter history and current events of the Cambodian genocide, of Stalinist violence against intellectuals and resistors. There are also echoes of police brutality — what Shadowhunters have is the privilege of the Law, specifically: the Law is what allows them to enact bigotry in the name of justice, and when they abuse their jobs, it has resonances of the way police can abuse their jobs and use the privilege conferred on them by their authority to murder and abuse the helpless and marginalized. There are also echoes of the way soldiers carry out immoral orders given by superiors: the Shadowhunters are taught to be obedient to the Clave, and one of the ways we know who our Team Good is in any TSC series that they question that obedience. All of these are echoes and resonances: they are not saying that the Shadowhunters are the police, or the US military, or the Khmer Rouge; the resonances provide context and hopefully add a sense of realism to a situation that is fantastical in its nature.

 (It’s also a wise idea not to so totally buy what the Shadowhunters are selling about themselves. They think they’re special and better and awesome, but the books constantly question and problematize that. Shadowhunters also pay a high high price for their runes and their sense of superiority: they die young and often and experience brutal constant violence and the pressures of a repressive society that allows for little divergence from an idealized norm.)

There are reasons that the Downworlders were never constructed to be a specific marginalized group and their situation was never meant to be limited in its relatability to one situation— for instance, it’s very hard to not look askance at the argument that Downworlders are meant to be specific “race” when you can become a Downworlder and then stop being one: when you can, as Simon does, change what kind of magical creature you are, because there is absolutely no correlation between that and what race or ethnicity means in our world. 

 So yes, Simon becomes a Shadowhunter: however, what I don’t see acknowledged here is not just his ethnicity and religion, but the fact that he becomes a Shadowhunter partly because he is aware of the prejudice of Shadowhunters, and fights against the bigotry they show not just to Downworlders but also to their own. He is part of Magnus and Alec’s Shadowhunter-Downworlder Alliance. He continues to work for change from within the system, arguably something almost no one else could do, because there are almost no other Downworlders who have become Shadowhunters. It is odd to me to consider Simon as simply ascending to a height of blithe privilege when he is fact much more like someone who has become a police officer in order to root out corruption and racism in the police, and brings his own knowledge of marginalization (which he still experiences) with him.

That is why Simon in Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy is constantly fighting and bending the rules in the name of his evolving social conscience, though I understand if you haven’t read TfTSA. One of the things about having had a flood of new readers enter fandom because of the TV show is that I’ve seen a lot of arguments based on the idea that TMI is the entire story of Downworlders and Shadowhunters, or the entire story of these characters. I see people talking about characters getting a happy or sad ending in TMI even when those characters go on to feature heavily in the sequel books and could by no reasonable account be considered to have any ending, happy or sad — unless you thought TMI were the only Shadowhunters books that existed rather than a chunk of a larger ongoing mythology. In no sense has Simon’s story ended: you have no idea if he will remain a Shadowhunter or not. Perhaps if you consider the fact that TMI is not a story that has ended for Simon, but rather one that continues, the fact that he has now been two magical species and might well move on to become another will sit less poorly with you? After all, this is not “after a whole series of battling for equality between species/races” this is “in the middle of a whole series of battling for equality between species/races.” Usually the middle of a story isn’t the place it’s best to draw all your conclusions from. :-) 

Credit where it is due

I dont put a whole lot of weight on sporting events anymore. I used to think that professional athletes were the most physically superior specimens alive. And while it is true that there training has afforded them certain abilities and luxuries, they are not superior in every way. I watched most of the football game tonight, with about the least amount of vested interest as anyone watching. I didnt have any loyalties to either team, and Atlanta had my cheer only because I think matt ryan deserves a ring. He didnt get one, and tom brady did...for the fifth time in his professional career. He will be remembered as the greatest QB to ever play the game. And with the records he holds, its really not up for debate. Of course you will always be able to debate it if you want, he hasnt played with a spotless resume’. there is spygate and deflategate to name a couple of talking points. But however you shake it, he has won more when it mattered than any other to play the position. We are living in a wonderful time to be a sports fans. The Cubs won for the first time in over 100 years, we get to witness Brady at the height of his career, and the NBA has two super teams, one of which has the greatest/second greatest basketball player of all time. Not to mention that Tiger Woods guy. Say what you may about his personal life, but the man can flat out play golf. Or could anyway. We are seeing the pinnacle in every major sport. Every major American sport that is. 

This led me to think about all the non professional athletes that may never be mentioned outside their immediate sphere of influence. Lets think outside the box for this one. Because it is easy to think of athletes as sports figures, and rightly so, but let us not forget those men and women who will never play a sport in any relevant capacity. Im talking of course about the men and women who spend their lives, or a good portion of it, in the service of man. Soldiers, Firefighters, Police Officers, Paramedics. Of course, these professions are not without the marginal, or even less than desirable, but that does little to tarnish the names of the elite. Is Brady looked at less because a minuscule percentage of college athletes ever play professionally?  Quite the opposite. I have had the privilege of serving among some of the finest men this country has to offer. And I mean that literally.  My deployment to Iraq transpired in such a way that I was able to work in direct contact with members of both the private, and public sectors. Men who were among the most elite soldiers available to America, and members from other countries as well. Ill let that sink in for a second...Ok good. Now let me start of by saying that I know why a great many people view our military in a bad light, and they have good reason to. Soldiers are the face of a conglomerate of men at the very top of the food chain who need an army to do their bidding. To see a man or woman in uniform, is to put a face on wars, conflicts, or policies that you may not agree with. But the soldier that you see, the soldier that most likely has a wife or husband, kids of their own, or at the very least parents and/or siblings that care greatly for them, has sworn under oath to sacrifice their life in the name of freedom. They did so willingly, and 99% of them did, and will do so, with the greatest amount of pride they will likely ever feel. I know I did. Soldiers, particularly those who deploy, have the weight of a country on their shoulders. And the elite men that I was privy to working with took this responsibility to another level. They had a work ethic that was unrelenting. As though they were chosen to be set apart and were programmed differently than others. I have seen them, and all soldiers, carry more weight, further distances, through harsher terrain than most people would think possible. We have dragged comrades to safety through enemy fire. These men in particular were almost always ahead of the front lines, under cover of darkness, gathering information to benefit the larger forces behind them. They did not view situations in three dimensions like anyone else would, they had access to a fourth dimension for processing the needs of others in such a way that the only time their personal needs were thought of, was for the success of a mission. These men were tactical savants, physical specimens, and ambassadors for freedom.

These men, and most all soldiers, have put down their personal needs on more than one occasion. Missed holidays, birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, funerals, first steps and just about any other meaningful milestone you can think of...and here is the best part, the part that still blows my mind...they have done, and continue to do this to protect your freedom to spit in their faces, to call them murderers, baby killers, genocide soldiers. They...we...took an oath to protect, with our lives, your right to hate us. It amazes me that this aspect of freedom is so often glossed over. Maybe I am in the minority, but before I served, I never gave much thought to the fact that my way of life was made possible by men and women giving their lives to protect America. Say what you will about our Government, I have opinions of my own, most of which are not in high regards. But the military, the actual people, are pretty bad ass. 

C.A.

WE ARE ALL, to one degree or another, both products and prisoners of our backgrounds. Through an exploration of modern-day human trafficking, A. M. Bakalar’s unflinching yet ultimately compassionate second novel, Children of Our Age, confronts the physical and emotional carnage that results from an inability to relinquish the chains of the past.

Bakalar precedes the novel with an excerpt from Polish Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska’s poem “Children of Our Age,” from which the book draws its title:

Whether you like it or not Your genes have a political past Your skin, a political cast Your eyes, a political slant.

In the early 1980s, when martial law was declared in Poland, Szymborska, known for her increasingly overt criticisms of the government, was forced into hiding for almost a decade, printing her works in various underground publications under a pseudonym. This rebellious, risk-taking stance is something of a tradition for Polish writers.

Bakalar’s first novel, Madame Mephisto (2012), told from the perspective of a female Polish drug lord operating in London, is also quite critical of Polish culture and politics. In interviews, the author has discussed the hate messages she received from her countrymen after Madame Mephisto was published. She was attacked for displaying a complete lack of patriotism in her fiction; that the novel is no less critical of Britain is a point often lost on Bakalar’s fellow Poles.

One can only imagine, then, what the increasingly authoritarian Polish government under the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party, and its supporters, would make of Bakalar’s latest novel. Human trafficking in general has become the subject of much media interest of late, but it is a very recent, ugly permutation of the phenomenon — Polish expats trafficking other Poles into the United Kingdom for benefits fraud — that forms the narrative fulcrum about which Bakalar’s cast of characters revolves.

The book opens with a shocking incident perpetrated by brothers and thugs-at-arms Damian and Igor, who work as enforcers for criminal mastermind Karol. Soon after, we meet Karol’s wife, the hard-nosed entrepreneur Milena, as well as pious Angelika, her bumbling husband Mateusz, and their increasingly distant daughter, Karolina, and a host of lesser players within a tightly knit community of Polish expats. Thus the stage is set, and the story rockets along in classic thriller style as we watch the seemingly disparate lives of Bakalar’s immigrants connect and, in some cases, self-destruct with the terrifying inexorability of ships caught in the maw of a giant whirlpool.

Bakalar does not shy away from describing the horrors endured by the trafficked Poles, whether it’s Karol’s cool, clinical voice detailing how he tricks them into relinquishing their passports, bank cards, and, eventually, their dignity, or the heartbreaking physical descriptions of the men forced to work from sunup to sundown gathering mollusks for paychecks that never materialize, their “hands like leather, swollen with fractured nails and grimed dirt, the coarse skin broken in places, raw with pain; painfully damaged by the mixture of biting seawater, gale and sharp shells.” The world the author depicts is a singular example of human brutality. Separated from their families and the only home they know, unfamiliar with local customs, unable to speak the local language and made into slaves by their unscrupulous supposed benefactor, the immigrants are strangers in a land that is not only foreign to them, but also relentlessly hostile.

One of the key elements of the novel’s structure is Bakalar’s choice regarding point of view. The easy — and perhaps lazier — option would have been to tell the story strictly from the victim’s standpoint, thus garnering instant sympathy from the reader. Instead, the author gives us a firsthand look into the minds of the perpetrators of evil, a decision that proves as mesmerizing as it is uncomfortable. One of the strengths of the writing is that even the most repugnant members of Bakalar’s cast become somewhat sympathetic; their histories and innermost desires are so well laid out that we feel a sense of kinship with them, simply because we understand their motivations. None of them were born evil. Years of pattern-building, of being defined by their relationships to one another, shaped who they are. We are forced to recognize that they are as trapped in their roles by other people’s assessments of their worth and temperaments as they are by their own.

This is particularly evident in the co-dependent relationship between Damian and his younger brother, the dangerously unstable Igor. Their shared history fosters a strong bond, but that connection hampers as much as it protects them. They cannot transform until they escape each other’s gazes. And indeed, it is only through a chance meeting and subsequent unlikely friendship with someone who has no preconceived ideas about Igor that he manages to break free from Damian and make the choice to “recover what was left of himself, lose the fury that had been devouring his mind from within.”

Adapt or die is a recurrent theme in the narrative. Only the players who manage to divest themselves of established notions about their relationships are able to escape and claim some kind of happiness. Those who cannot are doomed. On a broader level, this reflects the age-old struggle of the immigrant. Survival depends on the ability to change, to fit the mores and lifestyle of the adopted country.

This struggle for survival can prove quite desperate. Throughout the novel, Bakalar uses her characters to make shrewd psychological observations about the inventive ways in which people manipulate others to establish dominance and elevate their own status. There are no selfless angels here; everyone has something to hide, and everyone is able to justify inhumane behavior. A prime example of this is Karol, who desires “power, unlimited control — some extraordinary version of himself.” Toward that end, he has become the greatest of con men, so attuned to human sensibilities that he always has the right lie at hand when he needs it, and so convinced of his own superiority that he feels no guilt whatsoever as he condemns his fellow countrymen to desperate lives of poverty and forced labor.

Their faith in him only confirms his disdain: “If people were stupid enough to believe his lies, Karol believed they deserved to suffer the consequences.” This concept of just deserts — as the manically cheerful Angelika states, “Good things come to good people” — reverberates throughout the story. All the characters cling to their notions of themselves as good, honest, hardworking people. It’s their protection, an amulet meant to shield them from the dark forces in life. As the narrative progresses and their worlds come apart, they are caught completely off guard by the apparent unfairness of their predicaments, unable to make sense of why disaster has disrupted their lives.

And yet, amid all the splashy double-dealing and self-involved machinations, a quieter thread emerges, an examination of how people, particularly those who are marginalized or who behave in ways that put them beyond the protections of normal society, express love. Bakalar’s damaged and often damaging characters still find ways to affirm their affection for one another, though at first this might not be immediately obvious. For one, it’s the gift of silence; for another, it’s the gift of listening; for still another, the gift of remembering, even when that act brings personal pain. Material presents and commodities are exchanged as well, but it’s the small, unadorned offerings of the soul that have the greatest impact on relationships and the story’s outcome.

From time to time, the pace of the novel suffers a few lulls, brief moments where it can’t quite decide whether it’s a thriller or a rumination on human nature. But this is a minor quibble. Children of Our Age is an ambitious work of great scope and power. While the book’s arresting subject matter makes it very much a story of today, the narrative transcends its era. The book is a searing exploration of the ways in which people value and degrade one another, and of how moments of impulse and whim, rather than carefully reasoned action, can change the course of our lives.

¤

Mary Rodgers is a writer, actor, and musician who splits her time between the United States and the United Kingdom.

The post The Chains of the Past: On A. M. Bakalar’s “Children of Our Age” appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books http://ift.tt/2mOv3Bc via IFTTT

Is Donald Trump a Legitimate President?

So, here’s a fun little graphic sent to me by a friend:

My friend and I are both Canadian. For us, Donald Trump is always seen through a filter, provided by our great nation’s sovereignty. To suggest that who the President of the United States is doesn’t matter to us is to be a bit naive about the U.S.’s global impact politically, but I think it’s fair to say it matters less to Canadians than it does to level-headed Americans.

(Here’s a “fun” side story. The night Donald J Trump was elected United States President, I was on a 5 hour flight back from Fort McMurray where I’d been working with disaster relief teams. Every channel you could get well in the air on this particular flight was election coverage. Your options were, provide your own entertain, buy a movie, or watch election coverage. The plane was about 15 minutes from landing when it was announced he won. The whole plane was devastated. Children crying. People were sobbing, shaking their heads. The Pilot made an announcement saying he was disappointed too but that everyone really needed to keep calm. Canadians can pretend his election doesn’t affect us, but when faced with the reality of it, everyone on that plane knew the truth.)

So we care but not as much as Americans, who are more directly affected, might. If we care, it’s probably more because we care more about concepts like justice, human decency, honesty and integrity than who gets to sleep in the big white house.

But a lot of Americans are upset, rightfully so. And some Canadians too. Because Trump is awful. 

(The fact that Trump is awful? That’s not really up for debate at this point, but if you feel the need to point out that I shouldn’t just assert Trump is an inhuman, racist, sexist, lying prick without evidence, you’re technically right. In lieu of that evidence, howabout you just boot up, CNN, Washington Post, New York Times or literally any television within a hundred miles. Chances are it’s talking about some horrible shit Trump did right now. And if you said “Those are fake news”, do me a favour:

 1) Buy a boat. Maybe give it a fun name like the “U.S.S. Spray Tan”

2) Take the boat out on to the ocean. Really get out there.

3) Pour kerosene on the boat, and then light it.

4) Burn to death, while drowning. Thanks. You’ve just single-handedly raised the level of public discourse in America.)

So Trump’s a dick, but as this chart points out, you can’t just hashtag “Not MY President” and pretend to be doing something about it. In fact, trying to discredit the sitting President, or attack his legitimacy is something we frequently got pretty mad about when people did it to Obama with such iron clad logic as “He’s Black, and therefore from Africa”. When I say “people” I mean obviously, Donald Trump, but hey, let’s not beat a dead horse. 

America is rooted in the idea that the will of the people be heard. Donald Trump won an election, and by the rules of the game, that makes him the will of the people. You can hate Donald Trump, but attacking the legitimacy of his presidency is attacking the legitimacy of the election. If trust in the electorate falls low enough, than America’s great experiment ultimately ends in failure. You can’t attack the results you don’t like without eroding the system that got you there.

And it’s not like that system is perfect. As is worth pointing out (and reminding yourself as you hug a teddy bear and rock yourself back and forth in the fetal position at night) Trump lost the popular vote by a wider margin than any president in history, over 3 million votes. Voter suppression of minorities was rampant in places like North Carolina, Michigan and Nevada.  Oh, and FBI director James Comey made public declarations about Hillary Clinton’s emails eleven days before the election in direct violation of FBI policy, commenting on a current and open investigation.  So yeah, the electoral college isn’t perfect and neither is American democracy. People have their thumbs on the scale for sure. Reforms are needed. But for the time bring, you can’t use those problems to undermine the office itself and declare and president illegitimate.

So, if you want to hold Trump accountable for his disgusting words and actions, hey, go ahead. He’s clearly broken a bunch of laws, between his fraudulent university scam, the accusations of sexual assault, and his failure to pay hundreds of people who work for him.   Attacking Trump on specific issues doesn’t negate his election, but it could deal with him without decaying the faith in the electorate. But that should be it, because calling him an illegitimate president would need massive evidence to back it up. Otherwise, you’ve set a precedent for every losing party to attack democracy itself whenever they get a result they don’t like. And surely, the evidence that Trump’s win is illegitimate doesn’t actually exist, or hasn’t been produced...right?

Actually, we have no idea. See, if Trump conspired with the Russian government to undermine his political opponents, that’s not a problem with the election. That’s treason and espionage. It would suggest that America elected, what is in essence, a stand-in for a foreign government. That would be completely illegitimate. The CIA, NSA and FBI clearly investigated Trump ties to the Russian government, but none of them seem to be willing to release too much in the way of details to the press. Ex-MI6 agent Christopher Steele leaked a massive report to the press, suggesting Trump is basically a puppet candidate, but the media focused on a juicy bit of gossip about Trump being urinated on by a pair of Russian prostitutes instead, and then turned around and called Steele “discredited”. Despite the fact that he has not been discredited and in fact jeopardized his career to release those documents when it was clear his superiors wouldn’t, because they feared revealing sources they had in Russia. 

 About a dozen members of Trump’s campaign, including Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson, have strong financial and political ties to Russia. And Trump has refused for weeks now to say anything negative about Vladimir Putin or his hostile regime. Remember, Russia invaded Crimea this year and that problem didn’t go away when CNN started election coverage. Russia wants the Ukraine, they want to undermine NATO and potentially start a new Warsaw Pact. That would be infinitely easier to do if Trump defunded American support to NATO which he has publicly stated he planned to do over a dozen times during the election. Note that supporting NATO and America’s European allies was standard Republican policy until Trump suddenly flipped one day. It’s highly suspicious.

But, you can’t impeach a president on suspicion alone. And whatever tack you take on attacking Trump, you can’t do it by attacking the election results or the electoral college directly. If you want to avoid a president who can lose the popular vote by 3 million and still win office, that will take thoughtful reform. If you want Trump gone, you’re going to need to attack his crimes and his words at every opportunity. But #Notmypresident accomplishes nothing, and worse, might even damage American democracy. Pick another strategy.