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chosobeee · 7 months

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𝓕𝓪𝓵𝓵𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓐𝓼𝓵𝓮𝓮𝓹 𝓞𝓷 𝓗𝓲𝓶 ♡

Pairing: Soft!Toji Fushiguro x GN!Reader

Word Count: ~1.2k

Warnings: Again very self indulgent, lots of fluff. Toji is WHIPPED. Extremely ooc--I just really love me some soft Toji, I'm sorry, I promise I'll do one where he's his mean little self to balance it out. Some cussing, mentions of Toji being a dick.

A/N: Yay my second fic! I got even more carried away with this one than the last. But I think this one came out better, so I'm not upset. Also yes, it is in head canon format, but honestly it makes me feel more comfortable to write in this format, especially after being SO out of practice writing. Anyways, I hope you all enjoy! xx

- Your work week has been a long and tiring one. Being promoted was something that excited you at first, more hours equals more money—which never hurt anyone, right?

- Now, a few months into the promotion, you’re starting to heavily regret accepting the position. Constantly picking up shifts for people who called out, having to go the extra mile all the time and never being thanked or rewarded for it. Truth be told, it fucking sucks.

- But now that you and your boyfriend have finally moved into an apartment together, you both need to work in order to pay the bills. Rent isn’t gonna pay itself.

- Toji picked up a contractor job for some of the larger buildings currently being built in the inner city area—a job that paid well, but kept him away from you for longer than you liked. You’re proud of him, though, knowing he’s working hard for the life you’re slowly building together. The thought made your heart flutter in your chest.

- Stepping onto the welcome mat you had gotten as a house warming gift, your feet ached. Each step felt as though you were walking on shattered glass and upturned nails. Sharp pains shoot up your thighs and lower back as you dig into your bag to retrieve your keys.

- Inside, you’re greeted with the delicious scent of an unidentified food being cooked. It was so pleasant compared to all of the other signals felt in your body that you immediately let out a sigh of contentment.

- Kicking off the shoes that were now suffocating your feet and dropping your bag and keys at the door, you shuffle your way into the kitchen and lean against the frame.

- There Toji stands, his back facing you, focused on stirring whatever is in the pot in front of him. You can hear him whistling a soft tune, one that makes the warmth in your chest spread to your cheeks.

- He was so… husband material now. You thought back to when you first met him, the way he acted. He was so much more cold, distant—abrasive, even. You don’t know how or why, but as you started growing closer, it was like a switch flipped in his head. Well, maybe not that quickly, but it still surprised you.

- Not that you were complaining.

- He became so sweet when it came to you. He was so reassuring, soft, and kind. He would give you gifts—and not necessarily expensive ones, but ones that held sentimental value. Things that reminded him of you, and things to remind you of him. He would call you sweet nicknames, take care of you when you fell ill, call and make appointments for you when you felt particularly anxious.

- It’s precious to see him now, bustling about in the kitchen to cook a meal for you in your shared home. It seems so anti-Toji. The old him would’ve scoffed at this idea, claiming he would never be "weak" enough to settle down for someone like that.

- Suddenly sensing your presence, Toji’s whistling comes to a halt and he turns around, wooden spoon in hand. He smiles and raises an eyebrow. “Staring again, doll?” He puts a hand on his hip. “I know I’m pretty, but a ‘hello’ would be nice, too.”

- You chuckle, walking up to the counter and leaning on it for support. “You are pretty. And you seemed so peaceful doing your little house husband things, I didn’t want to disturb you.”

- He scrunches his eyebrows and pouts. Toji Fushiguro is pouting. “We both know I’m the real breadwinner in this family.”

- Your roll your eyes and he points the wooden spoon at you punitively. “Now come taste this and tell me what you think, brat.”

- After you’re both finished with dinner you decide to curl up on the couch and catch up on an episode of the show you guys have been putting off for a while now.

- Not even five minutes into the episode your eyes are already growing heavy. The day is really catching up to you now. Sighing, you gently lift Toji’s arm and lean down, resting your head in his lap.

- Before you even have the chance, Toji is grabbing the blanket at your waist and pulling it up over your shoulders. He keeps in in place with his arm while he combs his fingers absentmindedly through your hair, his attention still on the screen in front of you. Unknown to you, though, is Toji's face-splitting smile, always happy to be the one you lean on.

- You’re already fast asleep by the time the episode is over, and Toji is well aware of it, too. He smiles gently at your soft snores, leaning over you just enough to see your face squished against his thigh.

- He lets out a quiet chuckle and shakes his head. He doesn’t know how or when it happened, but he is absolutely taken by you. He hasn’t held anything this close to his heart in a very long time, and honestly, that sometimes scares him a bit.

- Carefully, he rolls you into a little burrito and picks you up bridal-style, carrying you all the way to your shared bed before setting you down gently and unwrapping you from your burrito prison.

- Before crawling into bed he looks down at you once more, taking in the peaceful expression you wear while asleep. Caressing your cheek, he leans down and kisses you on the forehead.

- Every single day he falls more in love with you, and he’s almost certain you barely notice how genuinely deep his feelings run. He tries to make it clear with reassurance and gift giving, but he knows that he’s still not the best at communicating his feelings. But he tries, really hard. Just for you. Because he loves you and he wants to make sure you understand just how much.

- He knows how hard you’ve worked for this life together with him. He knows how hard it can be on you, especially with your new promotion and his work hours being almost completely opposite of yours. He knows how much you care about him and this relationship, and it makes his heart soar. He’s had flings in the past, but nothing that’s ever been this serious. No one who has ever taken him serious.

- You’re a blessing, a miracle. To know that he gets to spend his life by your side isn’t something he takes lightly. He’s forever grateful that you chose him, that you chose to be by his side, even when in the beginning he was more of a dickhead than anything else. And for that, he will always protect you. He will always cherish you.

- Slipping out of his shirt and sweats, he takes his place in bed next to you, covering you both up with the blankets and pulling you into his chest.

- You breathe out a contented breath and lay your arm across his chest, bringing your leg up and over his. Snuggling into his side, he smiles. He turns off the bedside lamp and lets the darkness cover you both like a blanket.

- He kisses you on top of the head once more before closing his own eyes, happy to be able to wake up next to you in the morning to come.

#jujutsu kaisen #jjk #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jjk x reader #toji fushiguro #toji x reader #toji fushiguro x reader

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bokutoslittlebird · 3 years

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Your Place

Akaashi x sister!reader

Author’s Note : This was originally gonna just be a short drabble but like.. I’ve thought of this before. So I changed it into a full fledged fic; Fukurōdani has a girls’ volleyball club ; Love hotels in Japan are pretty popular, especially in Tokyo, and happen to have kiosks to keep up the anonymity, while also offering options of staying overnight or for a few hours (generally 2-4). The rooms offer lots of options, including room service (including food and toys), such as jacuzzi, showers, massage chairs, King-sized bed, as well as a box of free condoms ; okay I don’t know if a butt plug can actually plug up a vagina and if it is even safe (it should be) so don’t take my words as fact! Please!

Warnings : Incest, noncon/dubcon, gaslighting, naïve and innocent reader, manipulation, alcohol, underaged drinking [legal age in Japan is 20], love hotels, Keiji wants lil sis to be his housewife, mating press, pussyjob, orgasm denial, overstimulation, sex toys [butt/anal plug, egg vibrator, hitachi wand vibrator], lots of Nii-sans used, breeding kink, no actual pregnancy (yet), fingering (f. receiving)

The roars of the crowd enters your ears as the ball bounces against the floor of the large stadium, the opposing players diving to receive the ball only to fail. Your team screams and cheers, everyone running to envelope the ace of your team, Akari, as she hugs everyone back. Screaming hurts your ears, yet you’re still doing it. Adrenaline rushes through you as the announcer claims your team with the victory and the announcement that you’ll be moving onto the next round, the finals of Nationals.

Your team lines up, shaking hands with the opposing team as congrats is shared between members. Once that is done, you all face the seats on both sides, bowing and thanking them for cheering you all on. When your eyes look into the stadium seats, they immediately catch the lidded eyes of Keiji, his hands clasped together as he smiles. The simple motion has your chest puffing with pride, tears sliding down your cheeks as you know you made him proud. With your position on the team, he’s the one who trained you to be the best setter the Fukurōdani girls’ volleyball club has ever had these last three years.

Once the moment is over, everyone is back at the hotel room and either on their laptops, phones, television, or asleep. When you exit the bathroom, your hair has been brushed and styled with a nice dress, accompanying the leggings and boots Keiji gifted you to wear. Akari whistles, her arm over your shoulder as she talks to you.

“Who you lookin’ so good for?” She pries, eyes tracing the lip gloss you put on.

“My brother. He requested me to wear something nice. He’s taking me to dinner,” a bit of heat is in your voice as you say that. Keiji’s always pampering you, he loves seeing you dolled up. It’s been like that since you were playing dress-up when he was 10 and you were 5. Akari’s gaze takes on a confused look, pursed lips as she processes your words.

“He’s always taking you somewhere nice after a good game, it feels like. Why don’t you ever invite us?” She finally says. Your head snaps up, looking in the mirror at yourself compared to Akari who is also looking at your face and outfit. It wasn’t glamorous in your eyes, but it suddenly dawns on you that it’s more than a brother should expect. The twist in your gut is ignored, your head shaking as you clear your head.

“He doesn’t know any of you guys. Plus, he’s an alumni. He’s always at our games,” your response isn’t what she was expecting, you’re sure of it. But the truth is, you don’t know why Keiji takes you out to nice restaurants or just on nice walks after games. It’s the few times he has off, always requesting off to be with you, cheering you on, his full support as your brother. Occasionally, he even brings along Bokuto, his best friend, who always congratulates you and asks to have you visit his own team someday. It’s a request that you always turn down, Keiji’s eyes taking on a dark glint that sends shivers down your spine at just the mere memory of them.

Akari leaves you alone after that, your time to get ready slowly coming to an end as your phone rings. It’s Keiji, of course, asking if you’re ready yet. “Almost, nii-san! I just need to get my coat and then I’ll head down.”

He’s at the lobby of the hotel, lounging in a chair as he swipes on his phone. He’s dressed as nicely as you are, black slacks with a nice white dress shirt, all under a large coat to keep out the cold. You bounce up to him, excited for the dinner. “You look beautiful, [Y/N],”

“Thank you! You know me so well, so it’s really all your doing,” you giggle, linking your hand in his offered elbow. It felt so right, being beside as you had been these past few years. Walking towards the restaurant, you didn’t even feel the ache in your ankles and balls of your feet from the heels nor the unmistakeable tension between the two of you. It just felt familiar and right to be in this position, sitting across from Keiji as he lets you gush about all the stuff going through your head during the match or even when you happened to be getting ready for the dinner. A shadow seems to settle over his face as you refer to it as such, just a dinner. You almost referred to it as a date, but quickly corrected yourself.

Tension hangs between you two, you having to force it away by breaking the silence Keiji brings. He’s usually much more talkative, praising you as he talks about what you did right and correcting you on things you did wrong, but never criticizing you too hard. Dinner ends, with Keiji paying the full bill without ever letting you know, saying that he simply cannot let a woman pay, regardless of situation. The champagne and wine he let you have a taste of lingers in your mouth, a burn in your throat from the bitter taste of alcohol. It’s not enough to get you drunk, but you do find yourself clinging to Keiji tighter, feet unstable and legs unreliable as he brings you back to the hotel.

He stops and even in your bubbly and hazy state, you can tell the hotel isn’t the same. “Come on, you need to rest,” he says, lips next to you ear as he ushers you inside. Upon entering the room, the lobby, you know it’s not the same. You panic, the alcohol making you less restrained in your actions as you go to tug on Keiji’s arm.

“Nii—”

“Ah, ah, Keiji, dear. Until we get back to your room,”

His usage of ‘your room’ has your nerves calming down, even as he uses his card to pay the kiosk and tap on the screen, buying something. A metal jingle comes from the bottom of the electronic, Keiji picking up the key to a room. Urging you along, you follow him to the elevator. The lack of people seems to enter your mind, confusing you as you glance around the spotlessly clean black elevator. A small voice enters your mind, telling you that the hotel’s elevators are supposed to be silver, shimmering in the light that shines down.

Keiji has to practically drag you into a room, the door shutting and clicking behind you as it locks. The room is spacious, a large tub in the corner of the room as the king-sized bed offers comfort and relaxation. Yet, you falter— unmoving, your voice seems to barely get out as you question your brother. “Where... where are we?”

“My room for the night, dear. You’re drunk, you need to rest,” his comforting words have you slowly shuffling towards the bed. The chair beside the bed seems too fancy for something in a normal hotel room, more adrenaline entering your veins as you panic from unfamiliarity.

“Nii-san, I don’t like this. Take me back to my room. Akari and Hana and-”

“Shut up, you little slut,” the venom in his words has you squeaking, your much smaller frame easily being pinned to the bed by Keiji’s much broader frame. “I’ve been generous this entire evening and all you’ve blabbered about is your team and your friends. What about me, huh? You haven’t even asked how I was doing the entire date,”

“Nii-san, stop!”

“Do I not hold the most importance in your life anymore? You used to be all over me, my sweet little sister that absolutely enjoyed being around me. Now you’re prancing around as if you have not a care in the world. That boy from the boys’ volleyball club seemed awfully close for comfort, don’t you think?”

“He-,” you once more falter, the brief images from after the game when the captain of the boys’ team congratulated all of you on the win. He wasn’t close to you, you were sure of it, but why would Keiji have been there? “He’s barely a friend, nii-san,”

“Not only that, but you always have that giggle and tendency to twirl your hair as you talk to Bokuto-san, your body moving closer to him as he would walk beside you. You barely acknowledge my existence anymore. Do you know how that makes me feel?”

“I’m sorry,” the tears spill down your cheeks, a hiccup as he continues to say mean things. “I’m sorry,”

“You’ll be graduating soon and then you’re going to live with me. You’re going to live with me and be my little housewife. I’m going to make you completely mine, inside and out,” his breath is hot as it fans over your face, his grip strong as he continues to squeeze and hold your face. You’re unable to do anything, the fear from his words and actions has you frozen beneath him. As his words settle in, ice crawls through your veins as you realize your gut feeling, the tension between you two, everything you ignored for the past hour and a half had a reason for being there. His entire plan was to bring you here, but you’re unable to do much of anything against him — he’s always been stronger than you. When you were young, it was comforting, his arms holding you after a nightmare or even when your first friend moved to America, but now it just served to bring more tears to you eyes, your body forced to let him do what he wants to you.

Keiji’s quick to undress you, your coat being shed as he pushes your fancy dress up, the leggings, shoes, and panties being pulled off and left to fall on the floor. Tears continue to fall, chest heaving as you’re powerless to do anything. Even if you could find the energy to move and attempt get him off of you, it wouldn’t bring anything to fruition. “You’re so dry, are you not enjoying this?”

“No, nii-san. I’m not,” you’re honest with him, yet he doesn’t stop. Sitting back on his heels, he lets his eyes trail over your form. Before a thought can enter your mind to move, he’s pushing his weight on top of you as he grabs something the table beside him, a long metal rod emerging from the miniature dresser. He keeps you pinned, moving the rubber head down to your clit, pressing a button as it begins to vibrate. “Ah! Nii-san,” your muddled voice comes out, the sensation sending an unfamiliar tingling up your spine.

“It feels good, doesn’t it? Don’t worry, I’m going to make you feel even better. All you gotta do is relax, pretty girl,”

“I’m- I’m still- y-your—” your words die on your tongue, your gut twisting into a knot as the sensation turns pleasurable. You’ve never touched yourself, always being told by Keiji that only bad girls touched themselves, that whores and sluts did. Keiji-nii doesn’t like those kinds of girls, so you never dared to go against his wishes.

“Of course you are, baby. You’ll always be my pretty girl, even if I have to remind you exactly where you belong. I’ll remind you of your place,” his words stop there, but in your head his words continue. Silently, the words of ‘if you’ll let me’ enter, an unspoken question that asks for your consent. Yet, you don’t give him anything else. Your moans and mewls are all he gets, a hand grasping at the unbuttoned dress shirt still on him. A small smile paints along his lips, your vision going black as you roll your eyes. Before the knot can release, the vibrations are removed from your clit and you whine, aftershocks coursing through you.

Keiji’s voice is barely a whisper, under his breath, “I’ll give you something much better, don’t worry.” The vibrator is forgotten and discarded, his hands fumbling with his slacks as he pulls them down, along with the dark grey underwear. His cock springs free, hard and thick and long, you unconsciously scoot away as he strokes himself. “Don’t move away,”

“But it’s scary, nii-san,” you whimper, arms close to your chest as your head bumps against the headboard. He doesn’t say anything, using his hand to rub his cock’s tip against your folds. Contrary to earlier, you’re dripping wet as the wet smacks of his appendage against your skin has you clenching around nothing, more juices dripping out. Moving his hips back and forth, he adds another sensation on your clit as he thrusts in between your folds. His tip catches onto the hood of your folds, brushing against the overly sensitive nerves as you whine and mewl at each move he makes.

“You’re so nice and slick for me, it won’t hurt. It just seems scary, look,” he forces you to do just that, hand gripping your hair as he forces you to look at his cock. The underside of it is glistening with your slick, absolutely dripping with you as it slides down to his base and over his balls. “It’s just in your mind, it won’t hurt. Don’t you trust me?”

“But nii-san, I don’t want this,” it’s not what he wants to hear, you’re sure of it. Yet he says nothing. A sigh finally breaks the silent tension as he rubs his finger against your cunt, two fingers slipping in until they can’t anymore. You’re tight, you know you are, clenching around only two of his fingers.

“If you didn’t want this, you would still be dry. You wouldn’t be squeezing my fingers so snugly. This is your body saying it wants this, don’t you remember what I said?”

Of course you don’t, he says a lot to you, so you shake your head. Another sigh.

“You need to listen to your body. It knows you better than you know yourself. I know you better than you do, you know,” his words ring true, his fingers continuing to pump themselves into you as he talks. Eventually, the feeling is no longer unfamiliar, the sensation pleasing as you moan. He smiles at that, leaning to press a kiss to your forehead as his fingers retract themselves. Using the slick on them, he rubs them against his cock to use as lube.

Pushing his tip into you is scary, but it’s not painful. As he sinks further into you, it becomes much more painful. The room must be soundproof, since Keiji keeps pushing in without trying to make you stop your screaming. He does, however, lean down to press his lips to your tear-stained cheeks as you squeeze him. He groans, his hips rutting against you. “You’re fine, stop screaming. Stop being so pathetic,”

His harsh words have your screams silencing, tears and sniffles as your walls flutter around him. It still hurts, it burns, it stings, it’s more painful than anything you’ve ever dealt with before. Before you can manage to get adjusted, Keiji is pushing your legs up to your chest, somehow making himself feel deeper than he actually is. The feeling of being crushed is back once more, his hips rearing back only to come back down against your skin. The scream from your throat is more of a moan, nails digging into the back of Keiji’s neck and teasing the small hairs as he pistons his cock into your cunt.

It’s a tight fit, the way you’re sucking him in and squeezing him with every thrust. Keiji’s balls slap against your slick ass, cunt squelching with each pump of his cock into you as more juices are forced out. His own moans and grunts of pleasure are drowning in the wave of mewls, squeals, and moans spilling from your lips. The feeling from before is back, the knot in your tummy as he rubs his cock against the inside of your walls and instead of being denied once more, the knot finally snaps as you cream all around his cock, accompanying a squeal of his name.

“That’s it, pretty girl. Cum on my cock, let me know how good you feel,” he chuckles, picking up his pace as you continue to suck him in. A garbled call of ‘nii-san!’ leaves your lips, the sensation of his heavy balls slapping against you and his thick cock against your fluttering walls has you creaming around him once more. A sound akin to a growl comes from his throat, leaning even further forwards as he gets himself as deep as he can go, the hair at the base of his cock rutting against your sensitive clit. “I’m going to fill you with my seed and you’re going to have my babies, okay?”

“No, nii-san, I don’t want that!” You cries are ignored, your body continuing to clamp around his cock as he shoots his load into you. The feeling of being full and so warm inside has your eyes rolling, drool spilling from your open mouth as you gush around him, clear liquid splashing against his abdomen.

Once the high has passed, he removes his cock from you, keeping you in that position. You don’t dare speak, unsure you’ll be able to as your throat burns from all the screaming and cries. A metal object briefly enters your vision, the object being inserted into your pussy that drips with your brother’s seed, milky white and thick.

“If you keep it all inside, I’ll give you another treat, okay? You wanna be a good girl for me, don’t you?” He doesn’t wait for a response, but he does take out another object. “You need to keep having an orgasm, I’ll make sure you feel real good, okay?” A medium-sized egg-shaped object enters your ass, another stinging pain from the insertion. Another round of vibrations start, your legs shaking as you mewl, head thrown back as you feel another orgasm quickly coming on. “You’ll be a good little housewife for me, won’t you? Swollen with my child and your pussy will be all for me, you know this, don’t you?”

Of course you do, regardless whether your mind agrees with you or not. He’s your nii-san and he knows best.

#haikyuu x reader #haikyuu smut #akaashi x reader #Mr. Keiji #BB.Kinky #BB.Dark #BB.Requests #tw.dubcon #tw.noncon #tw.alcohol #tw.manipulation #tw.incest #tw.gaslighting #tw.degradation #tw.breeding #tw.pregnancy #cw.pregnancy #cw.alcohol #cw.overstimulation

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somethingusefulfromflorida · 4 years

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If John F. Kennedy had not been assassinated, how long would he have lived for?

His father Joseph P. Kennedy lived to be 81, and his mother Rose Fitzgerald lived to be 104. Of his siblings who died of natural causes, Rosemary lived to be 86, Eunice 88, Patricia 82, Jean 92, and Ted 77.

JFK was chronically unhealthy, so he would probably skew low compared to his siblings. He was born in 1917, so he probably would have died in the mid-90s at the earliest. Can you imagine the Democratic Party if Kennedy were alive through the 70s and 80s? He would have been our Reagan, idolized even more as an elder statesman than he is as a martyr.

If he had survived his assassination, he almost certainly would have won re-election in 1964, would have passed the Civil Rights Bill and fought for de-segregation like LBJ did. Nixon probably would not have been elected president if Kennedy lived, either Kennedy, Jack or Bobby. He ran against JFK in 1960 and lost, then ran for governor of California in 1962 and lost again; at the time, California was a Republican stronghold, so it was a big deal that he lost in his own home state. Following that humiliating defeat, he threw a hissy fit, declaring that the media was the enemy of the people and threatening to leave politics altogether, “this is my final press conference, you vultures won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore!” Everyone thought his political career was ruined, but he managed to drag himself out of the hole he dug and back to the limelight by being a more appealing candidate in 1968 than Barry Goldwater had been in 1964. If JFK was still alive in 1968, the media would never stop comparing Nixon to him, and he would have been laughed out of the primaries.

It’s also important to realize that he only became president with 43% of the vote. Segregationist George Wallace ran a frighteningly successful third party campaign as a Dixiecrat (a conservative southern democrat, as opposed to the rising liberal wing from up north), receiving 14% of the vote and winning 5 states. If Kennedy had survived, his anti-segregationist policies would have made it impossible for Wallace to get any traction, so Nixon would have lost in 1968 anyway. Nixon and his main opponent Hubert Humphrey both got 31 million votes, but without Wallace running as a spoiler, Humphrey would have received a huge bump in both the popular an electoral college votes, almost certainly winning the presidency, though it’s uncertain if he would still have become the nominee in this version of 1968; he was LBJ’s Vice President, but if LBJ never became president, then Humphrey would have remained a Senator.

Maybe LBJ would have run in 1968, which would have hurt Wallace’s chances even more, as Johnson was a very popular southern Democrat. Johnson and Kennedy were not friends, there are rumors that Johnson blackmailed his way onto the 1960 ticket, and Kennedy’s secretary claimed years after he died that he would have replaced Johnson on the 1964 ticket with someone else, so I don’t know if a surviving incumbent Kennedy would have endorsed him in 1968. I’s likely that Kennedy would have endorsed his younger brother and Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, who would probably have survived his own assassination attempt just due to the butterfly effect; Sirhan Sirhan shot him for his support of Israel and the engagement of US troops in Palestine, but also because he was JFK’s brother. Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK for being anti-communist, which was also part of Sirhan’s motives in killing RFK. If JFK was never killed, the idea of political assassinations wouldn’t be as strong in the cultural zeitgeist, meaning it’s likely that Martin Luther King Jr and Bobby Kennedy both would have survived. MLK might have entered politics like AL Sharpton and John Lewis. Bobby would have run for president in 1968 or 1972.

The Democratic party was basically leaderless in our 1970s. Nixon won re-election in a landslide in 1972, and Jimmy Carter just barely eked by against Ford in 1976 because Ford lost all credibility when he pardoned Nixon for Watergate. If Kennedy assumed a leadership role in the 70s, it would have pushed the Democratic party into a much strong position going into the 80s. Ronald Reagan would have run earlier in this timeline; he was elected governor of California in 1966 and ran for president in 68, 72, and 76 before finally winning his party’s nomination in 80. Without Nixon and Ford, Regan would probably have run in 72 or 76, which means he would be the one who dealt with the Iranian Revolution, Oil Crisis, and Hostage Crisis, nuking his popularity and throwing a wrench in his economic plans, meaning he would be reviled rather than revered by the country. If Kennedy survived, there would be no Nixon, and a very different Reagan, meaning the entire last quarter of the 20th century would have gone differently,

How would the Cold War have ended if there was no belligerent Reagan followed by diplomatic Bush? Would Mikhail Gorbachev ever have come to power in the Soviet Union? He was chosen as the new leader in part because he was so young; his three direct predecessors had all died in office (Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko, the last two having only served about a year each). I can’t even picture the Soviet Union without Gorbachev. Kennedy wanted peace and conciliatory talks with Khrushchev, so perhaps relations would have normalized and the fight between capitalism and communism would have ended diplomatically instead of at the brink of war. Maybe the Berlin Wall would have fallen earlier, the Vietnam War could have been avoided or else won by the south, and the international space station would have gone up in the 80s instead of the 90s. With enough Gorbachev-esque reforms, the USSR might still exist today, in much the same way that the PRC still exists (China is capitalist in all but name, they only claim to be communist to “uphold the revolution”). Of course, without Gorbachev, such reforms would have been unlikely; Glasnost and Perestroika were overly ambitious, and his repeal of the Brezhnev Doctrine directly led to the fall of the Iron Curtain and the rise of democracy in Eastern Europe.

From Kennedy to Obama, the Democrats only elected southerners, so it’s likely that if Kennedy had survived the northern progressive faction would have been in a much stronger position in the 80s and 90s, meaning no Bill Clinton, which means no Republican Revolution under Newt Gingrich. Reagan still influences the GOP to this day, and he disappeared from the public eye immediately after leaving office because he brain was turning to mush. Imagine if the Democrats had a Regan-like figure to hold up, to model themselves after. Democrats are listless and leaderless, they’re not blindly loyal to whoever is in charge, so it would be a difficult sell to get them to all rally behind someone as divisive as Kennedy (because he WAS divisive; southerners HATED him, he only held the south because he had LBJ on his ticket), but were it to happen it would change the course of not just American history but world history over the last 60 years for the better.

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theliberaltony · 3 years

Link

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarah (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): Georgia’s new voting law has captured headlines for all the ways in which it makes voting harder. It’s also not the only state considering these kinds of laws; there are nearly 20 states in which voting restrictions have already passed at least one step of the legislative process. More than 300 voting restriction bills, according to an analysis by FiveThirtyEight, have been introduced in state legislatures this year following months of fraudulent claims from former President Trump and his supporters that the 2020 presidential election was rigged. (Sixty percent of Republican voters still say the election “was stolen” from Trump.)

But understanding the effects of laws like Georgia’s is complicated. There’s not really solid evidence one way or the other that this law will hurt Democrats or help Republicans. It’s also a point that elides a more fundamental one: If one party increasingly supports anti-democratic measures, does anything else outweigh that?

Public opinion on voting laws isn’t clear-cut either — provisions like a ban on giving voters food and water (something the Georgia law did) are unpopular, but voter ID laws are broadly popular. So let’s address the politics, public opinion and research on voting laws to better understand the contours of this debate, tackling this chat in two parts:

First, how much does it matter that Republicans’ election security push is precipitated on a lie? That is, as there has been no evidence the 2020 election actually experienced wide-scale fraud, does that undermine Republicans’ argument?

And second, how much do Americans care about voting rights as an issue?

OK, first up — The argument from Republicans supporting these new laws. What do they want in the push for more “election security”? And how much does it matter, at this point, that there wasn’t actually wide-scale voter fraud in 2020?

nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, elections analyst): IMO, the “Big Lie” is the key to understanding Republicans’ motivations. Everyone can agree that elections should be secure. But …

… the specific methods of voting being targeted by Republicans (almost half of the voting restrictions that have been introduced regulate absentee voting), the states in which they are targeting them (disproportionately swing states), and the timing of that targeting (after Republicans lost the 2020 election) all suggest that they are only passing these restrictions because they think they will help the GOP win future elections.

alex (Alex Samuels, politics reporter): But to your second question, Sarah, this is the narrative conservative lawmakers and many of their voters have bought into, right? That the 2020 election was supposedly stolen from Trump?

There was never — and still is no — evidence of massive voter fraud that Trump and his allies stated as fact. But because it was repeated so many times and with such certainty, large parts of the GOP electorate came to believe it.

As long as the “Big Lie” continues to be pervasive, we’re going to keep seeing these efforts to get these restrictions passed, as Nathaniel notes.

nrakich: Alex, it’s an interesting question whether these Republican legislators actually believe that rampant voter fraud cost Trump the election or they are just going along with it because it’s politically convenient. But I’m also not sure it matters. Either way, they are making policy based on a conspiracy theory.

sarah: Right, setting aside the question as to what extent Republican politicians buy the “Big Lie,” it is pervasive among Republican voters: In a March 30-31 Reuters poll, 6 in 10 Republicans said they still believed the election “was stolen” from Trump “due to widespread voter fraud.”

nrakich: And rank-and-file Republicans are correspondingly willing to make voting harder in order to get their desired outcome. According to the Pew Research Center, only 28 percent of Republicans now say “everything possible should be done to make it easy for every citizen to vote,” down from 48 percent in 2018.

alex: Republican politicians also seem to acknowledge that it’s likely they won’t win future elections without some sort of changes to the voting system. Sen. Lindsey Graham told Fox News that “mail-in balloting is a nightmare for us,” even though it wasn’t controversial before this past year. I think these changes are more about preserving power than about “voter fraud.”

And to Nathaniel’s earlier point, few Republicans lawmakers are doing anything to stop these bills from passing. Even the ones who don’t necessarily think there was fraud.

julia_azari (Julia Azari, political science professor at Marquette University and FiveThirtyEight contributor): The argument about election security boils down to an argument that people voted who shouldn’t have, right? That there were questionable votes.

And so reforms based on the “Big Lie” hinge on the 2020 election having those kinds of irregularities. People might not come out and say it was because people of the wrong skin color voted — they might say, well, people should have been ineligible because of changes to early voting rules or whatever. But in the context of both the history of disenfranchisement of African Americans and more recent fears about people living in the country illegally voting, the implication is pretty clear. When the solution is to tighten up the voting rules, you have implied that the problem is the wrong people voting.

nrakich: Yeah, Julia, you see this in how surgically targeted some of these provisions are. For example, legislators in Georgia originally proposed banning early voting on Sundays, which would end the “Souls to the Polls” initiatives that are so popular at Black churches. That provision did not end up passing, but one that did — prohibiting food and water be handed to voters in line — will disproportionately affect urban areas, where there are both more lines and more voters of color.

alex: Myrna Pérez from the Brennan Center told us something similar, Julia. The bills we’re seeing now reflect “a real fear over the browning of America, and folks trying to protect what they have and keep the power for themselves.”

sarah: And as you all are saying, sometimes it’s hard to see that this is what these restrictions intend to do, because some of the more draconian measures don’t end up passing and the exact language of the measures that do pass isn’t quite so explicit (i.e., “This voting measure intends to disenfranchise Black Americans.”).

The New York Times’s Jamelle Bouie argued this in his essay on how it’s not an exaggeration to compare the current voting restriction push to the Jim Crow era. That is, a lot of the ramifications and larger purposes behind these bills weren’t immediately clear until all the pieces fell into line. “[T]he thing about Jim Crow is that it wasn’t ‘Jim Crow’ until, one day, it was,” writes Bouie.

At this point, though, do Republicans need the “Big Lie” to push through this agenda?

That is, it feels like there is a shift at play here with Republicans increasingly distancing themselves from the election being stolen in 2020 and more so focusing on scoring points against how Democrats are now characterizing the laws (i.e., Jim Crow 2.0).

In fact, we’ve already seen some of this reframing in how Republican politicians criticized Major League Baseball’s decision to pull its All-Star Game out of Georgia over the new voting law, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell warning CEOs to “stay out of politics.”

What’s Republicans’ long-term strategy?

nrakich: Many of the new arguments that Republicans are pushing are in bad faith, though. For example, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has claimed that Georgia’s new law actually expands voting rights because it allows for more early voting. But that completely ignores the many more objective restrictions in the law, such as less time to request an absentee ballot and the need for absentee voters to provide voter ID — not to mention arguably the most concerning part of the law, the part that gives the state elections board the ability to remove local election officials.

alex: I agree. Republicans’ motivation, long term, seems to be anti-democratic. Even Trump dismissed proposals to make voting easier last year. So now the post-Trump strategy seems to be focused on how best to win elections, and even though Republicans have maybe not explicitly said they don’t think they can do that without overhauling the current system(s) in place, that seems to be what’s happening.

nrakich: McConnell’s request for corporations to “stay out of politics” is also pretty funny — he sounds like Bernie Sanders! What McConnell means, of course, is that he wants corporations to stop disagreeing with him politically. (Corporations have been intimately involved in politics for hundreds of years.)

sarah: It is a difficult position for a party that is traditionally pro-business to adopt this stance, too.

nrakich: Exactly, Sarah; it’s disingenuous. Republicans have historically wanted corporations to be more involved in politics — e.g., when they’ve defended corporations’ right to give money to political campaigns.

julia_azari: I mean, part of the founding ethos of the Republican Party was about creating a strong national economy based on free (as opposed to slave) labor. Nineteenth-century Republicans saw the purpose of government as being able to help American business grow strong.

So I read McConnell’s statement as “stay out of politics that challenge existing power arrangements.”

alex: Isn’t Republicans’ argument with MLB, though, that it’s overstating what Georgia’s law does?

nrakich: What do you mean, Alex?

alex: Maybe my Texas bias is showing, but Gov. Greg Abbott said yesterday that he wouldn’t throw out the first pitch at the Texas Rangers’ home opener after MLB adopted “what has turned out to be a false narrative about Georgia’s election law reforms.” (That’s straight from his statement.)

sarah: Right, Republicans are now attacking Democrats for overplaying their hand in how they’re describing what the laws actually do. But Nathaniel hit on this earlier — while there might technically be a longer early voting period in Georgia now, there is less time to request an absentee ballot and it’s harder to cast an absentee ballot because a voter must provide voter ID.

julia_azari: The inconsistency of the arguments the GOP has been using to defend their position is wild.

nrakich: Yes, Julia, it’s so bizarre! If you truly believe that “voting shouldn’t be easy” is a defensible position, you should make that argument (e.g., on security grounds).

But instead many Republicans are insisting that they are the party expanding voting rights, which suggests that they agree with the premise that restricting voting is the wrong side of the debate to be on.

julia_azari: I think this reveals a key asymmetry (or at least a potential one). Democrats can overplay their hand by stoking outrage in their supporters and end up being lambasted for being wrong or exaggerating. Republicans, on the other hand, don’t seem to suffer repercussions for changing up the logic of their arguments; instead, they seem to have found a strategy in attacking “cancel culture” whenever under scrutiny.

sarah: What’s also so hard to disentangle in laws like Georgia’s is there are really two things happening at once. First, there are actual changes to the voting process, but then there are also changes that affect how elections are administered, and in the case of Georgia, make it easier for politicians to interfere.

Nathaniel mentioned it earlier, but take the part of Georgia’s law that now allows the Republican-appointed state elections board to remove local election officials and essentially remove the secretary of state’s role in ensuring the election was conducted fairly.

We know that in the 2020 presidential election, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger refused to kowtow to Trump’s demand that he find “11,780 votes,” but now that guardrail is gone.

A lot of what we’re talking about here is moot, though, if Democrats are able to push through their sweeping voting reform bill, H.R.1.

julia_azari: I’m on team “nothing else matters” once we’ve passed a certain anti-democratic threshold. And the provisions on election administration in Georgia’s law are worthy of a lot of attention — even if it’s not clear what they’ll mean in practice.

The period between the 2020 election and the inauguration featured a lot of attempts to mess with the Electoral College votes. There was real drama over certification in Michigan, for instance. You’re seeing a move — even if it’s slight — toward the direction that people shouldn’t actually get to choose their slate of electors or that state legislatures can have a stronger hand in that process. This is like early 19th century stuff.

sarah: Is voting rights something Americans care about, though?

alex: Considering this is something some people fought for the right to do for decades, I’d say yes. Others might have a different answer, though, because not everyone votes.

nrakich: Historically, voting rights hasn’t been an issue that has motivated many voters; it barely cracks the list of the most important problems facing the country, per Gallup polling. It’s hard to get people worked up about wonky provisions like whether people should be able to register to vote on Election Day or sometime before, or whether there should be one week of early voting versus two.

But I think framing these wonky issues as questions of rights and the health of our democracy has the potential to be very motivating. Especially if some voters (i.e., people of color) feel that their rights are being abridged.

alex: And I think that’s what Democrats have been doing so far: framing what’s happening in Georgia and other states as a “Jim Crow 2.0.”

That’s also probably easier to understand — and more motivating — than explaining the nitty-gritty measures in each individual bill.

nrakich: Look at what happened in North Dakota in 2018. The state passed a law that required voter IDs with residential addresses on them — something many Native Americans who live on reservations didn’t have. But the law appears to have backfired; Native Americans were highly motivated to exercise their right to vote in spite of the law, and Native American turnout skyrocketed.

julia_azari: Yeah, this is a pretty well-documented phenomenon. I want to make sure we clarify, though, that we are using this as an illustration of how important voting rights are to people, and not in the sense of “these laws are OK because there’s always countermobilization!” The latter caused so much angst on Twitter over the weekend in response to The New York Times’s Nate Cohn’s analysis of Georgia’s law.

alex: I’m torn on the countermobilization argument, because I’ve seen the same logic used to talk about Black voters (i.e., efforts to make it harder to vote will motivate more people and backfire against Republicans). But people shouldn’t have to surmount unconstitutional hurdles to vote!

I’m not saying you’re making that argument, Nathaniel, I’m just saying I’ve seen a few people argue that voter suppression isn’t real because a turnout gap didn’t/doesn’t materialize as expected.

nrakich: Agreed 100 percent, with both you and Julia. Even if a law doesn’t deter a single person from voting, it might still be restrictive if it imposes additional hardships on existing voters.

For example, even if people are willing to wait hours in line to make sure their vote gets cast, that inconvenience can have non-voting-related consequences, such as having to pay extra for child care or losing out on wages at your hourly job.

sarah: For sure, the most important thing is that people have the right to vote without it being a burden. But I also want to return to this question of electoral impact, because the research is really mixed on it.

Some studies have suggested that absentee voting didn’t help Democrats’ margin in 2020, or as Cohn’s analysis of Georgia’s law suggests — it’s really hard to know whether this will impact turnout negatively in elections moving forward. But something we found in the research for our 2020 forecast was that if we account for changes in how easy it is to vote in each state based on a cost of voting index researchers have put together, states with higher barriers to voting tend to produce better results for Republican candidates while states with fewer barriers tend to lean more toward Democrats.

nrakich: I think a lot of nuance is called for when attempting to answer this question of electoral impacts. Discussions like these often lump different types of voting restrictions (or expansions) together, but not every voting reform is created equal.

For instance, I am persuaded by the studies that show that changes to absentee voting laws are unlikely to change the outcome of an election. But political scientists have found that things like banning/instituting same-day voter registration actually can have significant effects! This thread from political scientist Charlotte Hill was very instructive in that regard:

The idea that making voting easier *won't* improve turnout is one of political science's worst takes. (And to be clear, many political scientists don't buy it.) In this thread, I'll explain why. Buckle up. https://t.co/NH1HH0YYuZ

— Charlotte Hill (@hill_charlotte) April 3, 2021

sarah: It also seems as if making voting easier is becoming an increasingly polarized issue, with far more Republicans now unwilling to say that “everything possible” should be done to make voting easier.

julia_azari: Yeah, on the question of polarization, this debate isn’t necessarily always going to be directly related to which laws help which parties, but rather how voters understand those laws in relation to their own partisan motivations — what they dislike about the other party, how their own identity motivates their partisanship.

This thread from political psychologist Christopher Federico linking support for restrictions to racial attitudes is also useful.

Been digging into the new 2020 ANES release this week, and I got curious as to what might predict negative attitudes toward increasing ballot access. So, I took a look at the ANES items on early voting, voter ID, and felon disenfranchisement. (1/n)

— Christopher Federico (@ChrisPolPsych) April 2, 2021

sarah: Where do you all think the fight over voting rights heads next?

alex: Whether Democrats can actually agree on something and get H.R. 1 passed is a big open question. But there’s also how many of these restrictive bills actually pass and where that leaves Republicans two years down the line.

If Republicans only pass a few dozen of these bills, do they continue pushing for them in future legislative sessions? (I would bet the answer is yes, but I’m curious to see how this progresses over time.)

julia_azari: A couple of questions I have been thinking about: One is the degree to which Trumpism within the Republican Party is about winning elections without winning majorities of the multiethnic electorate, and another is where standard political hardball ends and being anti-democratic begins.

And at the risk of sounding stupid because I know these things are so intertwined at this point, I also wonder how to think about what’s about partisanship versus what’s about race. A really cynical take would suggest that elite Republicans are taking advantage of the salience of these demographic issues in order to produce institutional changes to consolidate power.

nrakich: I just think voting rights is an extremely nuanced issue that requires people to acknowledge a ton of realities all at once.

Some voting restrictions probably don’t affect turnout or who wins.

But others might.

But backlash/countereffects can scramble that calculus too.

But electoral impacts are only one small part of why these laws matter.

They matter in how they affect the convenience of voting too.

Regardless of impact, intent is important (e.g., it matters that Republicans are pushing voting restrictions shortly after losing a major election and crying “voter fraud” about it).

It matters normatively that it has become the position of one of the two main political parties that it should be harder to vote.

Regardless of impact, context is important (e.g., this is not the first time that a state like Georgia has tried to make it hard for certain people to vote).

It’s important to acknowledge the racial impacts/motivations of these laws.

“Voting restrictions” (or “voting expansions”) is an extremely broad term that encompasses a ton of more specific proposals, which should probably be judged on their own merits because they each have different impacts and are just or unjust to varying degrees.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #A FiveThirtyEight Chat

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ordinaryschmuck · 3 years

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Top 20 BEST Animated Series of the 2010s-15th Place

The fifteenth place is a tie, primarily because both of these shows are equally good, in my opinion. Some of you might disagree with me, but to that I say-

ALL ABOARD THE HATE TRAIN!

CHOO CHOO!

#15-We Bare Bears (2015-2020)/Big City Greens (2018-)

The Plot(s): Both shows involve an unorthodox family trying to fit in with what’s considered normal. In We Bare Bears, it’s three brother bears (Grizz, Panda, and Ice Bear) trying to fit in with modern society. And in Big City Greens, it’s a family of farmers (Cricket, Tilly, Bill, and Gramma) trying to adjust to city life after the family farm got sold due to low profits. In both shows, these characters make new friends, go on wacky adventures, and learn that they’ll always be okay as long as they’re together.

Aside from that brief description, I can sum up these shows in two words: Charmingly simplistic. There’s no intense continuity, no ongoing story arcs, or even an evilly evil villain hoping to take over the world...for the most part. These are just two different shows, with two types of families trying to get by in life. And honestly, it’s those families that make these shows work.

The dynamic between the bears in We Bare Bears is what makes the show so charming to watch. These three actually act like brothers (from what I’ve been told. I, unfortunately, don’t have brothers), and seeing their brotherly bond does nothing less than putting a smile on my face. Plus, the loyalty they have for each other is downright heartwarming, especially when the series flashes back to when they were kids.

And while I can’t entirely say that the Green family has the same amount of charm to them, there is one thing that I love. And that’s the fact that (kinda spoiler warning) they are an almost complete family in a Disney cartoon, with both parents being a prominent role in the series. Yes, Bill and Nancy are divorced, but that doesn’t mean Nancy isn’t around for her kids. She shows up frequently after her introduction and even gives off an impression that she’s a semi-good mom. In fact, Bill and Nancy seem to still have a level of respect for each other despite missing their old spark. It’s almost as if the writers are trying to say that not all divorces mean the destruction of a family, which I can respect. Because it can teach kids to not be afraid of the “D” word (kinda spoilers over).

But it’s not just the main characters that shine in these shows. The members of the supporting cast in We Bare Bears have a level of likability and depth. Chloe is often outgoing and laid back when she’s with the bears, who fails to make any other connections due to being a child prodigy. Ranger Tabes is often audacious and enjoyably energetic while also taking pride in her work and feels hurt when she thinks she’s not taken seriously. Then there are Charlie and Nom Nom, who have a level of charm to them. Despite being intended to come off as annoying and unlikable. Even the background characters are impressive due to the diversity of cultures and races that a viewer can see in each episode.

As for Big City Greens, the characters do not really have any depth outside of the main cast. What you see is pretty much what you get with most of these characters, aside from maybe Gloria, but even then, it’s only on occasion. Big City Greens also dodges showing diversity by having everyone be a shade of bright pastel colors. But I give credit to the show for having the first gay couple in a Disney cartoon...even though they get dropped by season two and are never fully confirmed as gay. Which pales in comparison to Luz and Amity from The Owl House, but it was at least a start! Sometimes, you gotta take baby steps before taking leaps ahead of the game. And don’t get me wrong, while I still prefer characters who have depth, that doesn’t mean I hate the characters in Big City Greens. Everyone does their job of adding to the story and making audiences laugh. In fact, making audiences laugh is what I would say Big City Greens does better than We Bare Bears.

Now in fairness. We Bare Bears is pretty funny from time to time. However, when it comes to which series makes me laugh the most, I have to pick Big City Greens. The first few episodes alone had me laughing much more than most of We Bare Bears' first season. It also helps that the show has a very random sense of humor elevated by the show’s energy. But I'll give it to you that comedy is subjective, and there are a couple of jokes that don’t work in Big City Greens. The best example is when the show lingers too long on a joke that didn’t really work as much as the writers thought it did. But that does not change the fact that Big City Greens is still a pretty funny show.

However, while We Bare Bears lacks comedy, it more than enough makes up for it with charm. This show is downright delightful to watch in almost every episode. Rarely do I feel anger when watching this series (which I wish I could say about previous/future entrees), and it has everything to do with the cast. I wasn’t kidding when I said that even intentionally annoying characters have a level of charm and likeability to them. In fact, the only bad episodes are when they begin to act uncharacteristically cruel and selfish. Mostly because those words could not be farther from a definition of We Bare Bears.

However, if I had to pick out the major fault that We Bare Bears have, it’s the fact that the show plays things a little too safe. For instance, whenever the show tries to go dark, it is pretty tame compared to other shows. The best example is how nearly every dangerous predator in this series somehow looks adorable. Wolfs, snakes, and even cougars (the big cats, not the middle-aged women) are somehow drawn to be cute and cuddly. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want a show to make kids think that dangerous woodland creatures like these are something you could just give a belly rub. I understand that this is a kids' show, but Big City Greens not only has the same rating, but it’s on the Disney Channel. And yet, it feels like that show has bigger cajones than the series formerly on the same network as Regular Show. That is not a good thing.

Going back to Big City Greens, I can sum up every problem I have with this show with one character: Cricket Green. Now I don’t entirely hate Cricket...but I’m willing to bet other people will. I can tell that the show is trying to make him a lovable little rascal that’s sort of a mix of Bart Simpson and Timmy Turner. But in the end, I think he causes more damage than either of those characters have in their entire lives. Cricket claims how sorry he is at the end of every episode, but I doubt he learns his lesson. We Bare Bears has a similar problem with Panda, but even when Panda is at his most selfish, he doesn’t do anything harmful to anyone but himself (except in the episode “Braces," but we don’t need to talk about that). Plus, even when he does go a tad too far, Panda’s voice actor (Bobby Moynihan) does a great job at making Panda seem sincere when he’s apologizing for his actions. Not to mention that Bobby gives a sense of realism and relatability with most of Panda’s lines. Then there is Cricket’s voice actor, Chris Houghton, an adult man trying to voice a child. I understand the logic behind using an adult over a kid (this happens more times than you think), but I feel like I would get the impression that Cricket is an innocent kid who doesn’t know better if he actually sounded like a kid.

In the end, neither of these shows are really that impressive compared to others. Thankfully with good comedy, charm, and great characters, they still manage to be really good for all ages. So while We Bare Bears and Big City Greens may not be as big as any other show in the last decade, they’re still good enough that you might just bear it!

(Two for one! I told you I would make up the embarrassment that was Dan Vs.!)

#top 20 of 2010s #we bare bears #big city greens #what i thought about

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deniscollins · 4 years

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Finland Is a Capitalist Paradise

Finland’s capitalist growth and dynamism have been helped, not hurt, by the nation’s commitment to providing generous and universal public services that support basic human well-being, which have buffered and absorbed the risks and dislocations caused by capitalist innovation. In Finland, paying higher taxes is a convenient way for capitalists to outsource to the government the work of keeping workers healthy and educated. This liberates businesses to focus on what they do best: business. It’s convenient for everyone else, too. All Finnish residents, including manual laborers, legal immigrants, well-paid managers and wealthy families, benefit hugely from the same Finnish single-payer health care system and world-class public schools. Should the U.S. adopt the Finland’s version of capitalism: (1) Yes, (2) No?

Two years ago we were living in a pleasant neighborhood in Brooklyn. We were experienced professionals, enjoying a privileged life. We’d just had a baby. She was our first, and much wanted. We were United States citizens and our future as a family should have seemed bright. But we felt deeply insecure and anxious.

Our income was trickling in unreliably from temporary gigs as independent contractors. Our access to health insurance was a constant source of anxiety, as we scrambled year after year among private employer plans, exorbitant plans for freelancers, and complicated and expensive Obamacare plans. With a child, we’d soon face overwhelming day-care costs. Never mind the bankruptcy-sized bills for education ahead, whether for housing in a good public-school district or for private-school tuition. And then there’d be college. In other words, we suffered from the same stressors that are swamping more and more of Americans, even the relatively privileged.

As we contemplated all this, one of us, Anu, was offered a job back in her hometown: Helsinki, Finland.

Finland, of course, is one of those Nordic countries that we hear some Americans, including President Trump, describe as unsustainable and oppressive — “socialist nanny states.” As we considered settling there, we canvassed Trevor’s family — he was raised in Arlington, Va. — and our American friends. They didn’t seem to think we’d be moving to a Soviet-style autocracy. In fact, many of them encouraged us to go. Even a venture capitalist we knew in Silicon Valley who has three children sounded envious: “I’d move to Finland in a heartbeat.”

So we went.

We’ve now been living in Finland for more than a year. The difference between our lives here and in the States has been tremendous, but perhaps not in the way many Americans might imagine. What we’ve experienced is an increase in personal freedom. Our lives are just much more manageable. To be sure, our days are still full of challenges — raising a child, helping elderly parents, juggling the demands of daily logistics and work.

But in Finland, we are automatically covered, no matter what, by taxpayer-funded universal health care that equals the United States’ in quality (despite the misleading claims you hear to the contrary), all without piles of confusing paperwork or haggling over huge bills. Our child attends a fabulous, highly professional and ethnically diverse public day-care center that amazes us with its enrichment activities and professionalism. The price? About $300 a month — the maximum for public day care, because in Finland day-care fees are subsidized for all families.

And if we stay here, our daughter will be able to attend one of the world’s best K-12 education systems at no cost to us, regardless of the neighborhood we live in. College would also be tuition free. If we have another child, we will automatically get paid parental leave, funded largely through taxes, for nearly a year, which can be shared between parents. Annual paid vacations here of four, five or even six weeks are also the norm.

Compared with our life in the United States, this is fantastic. Nevertheless, to many people in America, the Finnish system may still conjure impressions of dysfunction and authoritarianism. Yet Finnish citizens report extraordinarily high levels of life satisfaction; the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ranked them highest in the world, followed by Norwegians, Danes, Swiss and Icelanders. This year, the World Happiness Report also announced Finland to be the happiest country on earth, for the second year in a row.

But surely, many in the United States will conclude, Finnish citizens and businesses must be paying a steep price in lost freedoms, opportunity and wealth. Yes, Finland faces its own economic challenges, and Finns are notorious complainers whenever anything goes wrong. But under its current system, Finland has become one of the world’s wealthiest societies, and like the other Nordic countries, it is home to many hugely successful global companies.

In fact, a recent report by the chairman of market and investment strategy for J.P. Morgan Asset Management came to a surprising conclusion: The Nordic region is not only “just as business-friendly as the U.S.” but also better on key free-market indexes, including greater protection of private property, less impact on competition from government controls and more openness to trade and capital flows. According to the World Bank, doing business in Denmark and Norway is actually easier overall than it is in the United States.

Finland also has high levels of economic mobility across generations. A 2018 World Bank report revealed that children in Finland have a much better chance of escaping the economic class of their parents and pursuing their own success than do children in the United States.

Finally, and perhaps most shockingly, the nonpartisan watchdog group Freedom House has determined that citizens of Finland actually enjoy higher levels of personal and political freedom, and more secure political rights, than citizens of the United States.

What to make of all this? For starters, politicians in the United States might want to think twice about calling the Nordics “socialist.” From our perch, the term seems to have more currency on the other side of the Atlantic than it does here.

In the United States, Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are often demonized as dangerous radicals. In Finland, many of their policy ideas would seem normal — and not particularly socialist.

When Mr. Sanders ran for president in 2016, what surprised our Finnish friends was that the United States, a country with so much wealth and successful capitalist enterprise, had not already set up some sort of universal public health care program and access to tuition-free college. Such programs tend to be seen by Nordic people as the bare basics required for any business-friendly nation to compete in the 21st century.

Even more peculiar is that in Finland, you don’t really see the kind of socialist movement that has been gaining popularity in some of the more radical fringes of the left in America, especially around goals such as curtailing free markets and even nationalizing the means of production. The irony is that if you championed socialism like this in Finland, you’d get few takers.

So what could explain this — the weird fact that actual socialism seems so much more popular in the capitalist United States than in supposedly socialist Finland?

A socialist revolution was attempted once in Finland. But that was more than a hundred years ago. Finland was in the process of industrializing when the Russian empire collapsed and Finland gained independence. Finnish urban and rural workers and tenant farmers, fed up with their miserable working conditions, rose up in rebellion. The response from Finland’s capitalists, conservative landowners and members of the middle and upper class was swift and violent. Civil war broke out and mass murder followed. After months of fighting, the capitalists and conservatives crushed the socialist uprising. More than 35,000 people lay dead. Traumatized and impoverished, Finns spent decades trying to recover and rebuild.

So what became of socialism in Finland after that? According to a prominent Finnish political historian, Pauli Kettunen of the University of Helsinki, after the civil war Finnish employers promoted the ideal of “an independent freeholder farmer and his individual will to work” and successfully used this idea of heroic individualism to weaken worker unions. Although socialists returned to playing a role in Finnish politics, during the first half of the 20th century, Finland prevented socialism from becoming a revolutionary force — and did so in a way that sounds downright American.

Finland fell into another bloody conflict as it fought off, at great cost, the Communist Soviet Union next door during World War II. After the war, worker unions gained strength, bringing back socialist sympathies as the country entered a more industrial and international era. This is when Finnish history took an unexpected turn.

Finnish employers had become painfully aware of the threats socialism continued to pose to capitalism. They also found themselves under increasing pressure from politicians representing the needs of workers. Wanting to avoid further conflicts, and to protect their private property and new industries, Finnish capitalists changed tactics. Instead of exploiting workers and trying to keep them down, after World War II, Finland’s capitalists cooperated with government to map out long-term strategies and discussed these plans with unions to get workers onboard.

More astonishingly, Finnish capitalists also realized that it would be in their own long-term interests to accept steep progressive tax hikes. The taxes would help pay for new government programs to keep workers healthy and productive — and this would build a more beneficial labor market. These programs became the universal taxpayer-funded services of Finland today, including public health care, public day care and education, paid parental leaves, unemployment insurance and the like.

If these moves by Finnish capitalists sound hard to imagine, it’s because people in the United States have been peddled a myth that universal government programs like these can’t coexist with profitable private-sector businesses and robust economic growth. As if to reinforce the impossibility of such synergies, last fall the Trump administration released a peculiar report arguing that “socialism” had negatively affected Nordic living standards.

However, a 2006 study by the Finnish researchers Markus Jantti, Juho Saari and Juhana Vartiainen demonstrates the opposite. First, throughout the 20th century Finland remained — and remains to this day — a country and an economy committed to markets, private businesses and capitalism.

Even more intriguing, these scholars demonstrate that Finland’s capitalist growth and dynamism have been helped, not hurt, by the nation’s commitment to providing generous and universal public services that support basic human well-being. These services have buffered and absorbed the risks and dislocations caused by capitalist innovation.

With Finland’s stable foundation for growth and disruption, its small but dynamic free-market economy has punched far above its weight. Some of the country’s most notable businesses have included the world’s largest mobile phone company, one of the world’s largest elevator manufacturers and two of the world’s most successful mobile gaming companies. Visit Finland today and it’s obvious that the much-heralded quality of life is taking place within a bustling economy of upscale shopping malls, fancy cars and internationally competitive private companies.

The other Nordic countries have been practicing this form of capitalism even longer than Finland, with even more success. As early as the 1930s, according to Pauli Kettunen, employers across the Nordic region watched the disaster of the Great Depression unfold. For enough of them the lesson was clear: The smart choice was to compromise and pursue the Nordic approach to capitalism.

The Nordic countries are all different from one another, and all have their faults, foibles, unique histories and civic disagreements. Contentious battles between strong unions and employers help keep the system in balance. Often it gets messy: Just this week, the Finnish prime minister resigned amid a labor dispute.

But the Nordic nations as a whole, including a majority of their business elites, have arrived at a simple formula: Capitalism works better if employees get paid decent wages and are supported by high-quality, democratically accountable public services that enable everyone to live healthy, dignified lives and to enjoy real equality of opportunity for themselves and their children. For us, that has meant an increase in our personal freedoms and our political rights — not the other way around.

Yes, this requires capitalists and corporations to pay fairer wages and more taxes than their American counterparts currently do. Nordic citizens generally pay more taxes, too. And yes, this might sound scandalous in the United States, where business leaders and economists perpetually warn that tax increases would slow growth and reduce incentives to invest.

Here’s the funny thing, though: Over the past 50 years, if you had invested in a basket of Nordic equities, you would have earned a higher annual real return than the American stock market during the same half-century, according to global equities data published by Credit Suisse.

Nordic capitalists are not dumb. They know that they will still earn very handsome financial returns even after paying their taxes. They keep enough of their profits to live in luxury, wield influence and acquire social status. There are several dozen Nordic billionaires. Nordic citizens are not dumb, either. If you’re a member of the robust middle class in Finland, you generally get a better overall deal for your combined taxes and personal expenditures, as well as higher-quality outcomes, than your American counterparts — and with far less hassle.

Why would the wealthy in Nordic countries go along with this? Some Nordic capitalists actually believe in equality of opportunity and recognize the value of a society that invests in all of its people. But there is a more prosaic reason, too: Paying taxes is a convenient way for capitalists to outsource to the government the work of keeping workers healthy and educated.

While companies in the United States struggle to administer health plans and to find workers who are sufficiently educated, Nordic societies have demanded that their governments provide high-quality public services for all citizens. This liberates businesses to focus on what they do best: business. It’s convenient for everyone else, too. All Finnish residents, including manual laborers, legal immigrants, well-paid managers and wealthy families, benefit hugely from the same Finnish single-payer health care system and world-class public schools.

There’s a big lesson here: When capitalists perceive government as a logistical ally rather than an ideological foe and when all citizens have a stake in high-quality public institutions, it’s amazing how well government can get things done.

Ultimately, when we mislabel what goes on in Nordic nations as socialism, we blind ourselves to what the Nordic region really is: a laboratory where capitalists invest in long-term stability and human flourishing while maintaining healthy profits.

Capitalists in the United States have taken a different path. They’ve slashed taxes, weakened government, crushed unions and privatized essential services in the pursuit of excess profits. All of this leaves workers painfully vulnerable to capitalism’s dynamic disruptions. Even well-positioned Americans now struggle under debilitating pressures, and a majority inhabit a treacherous Wild West where poverty, homelessness, medical bankruptcy, addiction and incarceration can be just a bit of bad luck away. Americans are told that this is freedom and that it is the most heroic way to live. It’s the same message Finns were fed a century ago.

But is this approach the most effective or even the most profitable way for capitalists in the United States to do business? It should come as no surprise that resentment and fear have become rampant in the United States, and that President Trump got elected on a promise to turn the clock backward on globalization. Nor is it surprising that American workers are fighting back; the number of workers involved in strikes last year in the United States was the highest since the 1980s, and this year’s General Motors strike was the company’s longest in nearly 50 years. Nor should it surprise anyone that fully half of the rising generation of Americans, aged 18 to 29, according to Gallup polling, have a positive view of socialism.

The prospect of a future full of socialists seems finally to be getting the attention of some American business leaders. For years the venture capitalist Nick Hanauer has been warning his “fellow zillionaires” that “the pitchforks are coming for us.” Warren Buffett has been calling for higher taxes on the rich, and this year the hedge-fund billionaire Ray Dalio admitted that “capitalism basically is not working for the majority of people.” Peter Georgescu, chairman emeritus of Young & Rubicam, has put it perhaps most succinctly: He sees capitalism “slowly committing suicide.”In recent months such concerns have spread throughout the capitalist establishment. The Financial Times rocked its business-friendly readership with a high-profile series admitting that capitalism has indeed become “rigged” and that it desperately needs a “reset,” to restore truly free markets and bring back real opportunity. Leading captains of finance and industry in the United States rocked the business world, too, with a joint declaration from the Business Roundtable that they will now prioritize not only profits but also “employees, customers, shareholders and the communities.” They are calling this “stakeholder capitalism.”

If these titans of industry are serious about finding a more sustainable approach, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. They can simply consult their Nordic counterparts. If they do, they might realize that the success of Nordic capitalism is not due to businesses doing more to help communities. In a way, it’s the opposite: Nordic capitalists do less. What Nordic businesses do is focus on business — including good-faith negotiations with their unions — while letting citizens vote for politicians who use government to deliver a set of robust universal public services.

This, in fact, may be closer to what a majority of people in the United States actually want, at least according to a poll released by the Pew Research Center this year. Respondents said that the American government should spend more on health care and education, for example, to improve the quality of life for future generations.

But the poll also revealed that Americans feel deeply pessimistic about the nation’s future and fear that worse political conflict is coming. Some military analysts and historians agree and put the odds of a civil war breaking out in the United States frighteningly high.

Right now might be an opportune moment for American capitalists to pause and ask themselves what kind of long-term cost-benefit calculation makes the most sense. Business leaders focused on the long game could do a lot worse than starting with a fact-finding trip to Finland.

Here in Helsinki, our family is facing our second Nordic winter and the notorious darkness it brings. Our Finnish friends keep asking how we handled the first one and whether we can survive another. Our answer is always the same. As we push our 2-year-old daughter in her stroller through the dismal, icy streets to her wonderful, affordable day-care center or to our friendly, professional and completely free pediatric health center, before heading to work in an innovative economy where a vast majority of people have a decent quality of life, the winter doesn’t matter one bit. It can actually make you happy.

#Finland

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unicorn-sprinkles-101 · 5 years

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I'm an autistic, mentally ill young adult who very desperately needs to find a new place to live.

I can't exactly recount what happened during most of my childhood but I have to say that my parents have drastically spiraled out of control since then.

My mother had never really been a big impact on my life other than being my primary guardian and taking me from place to place. Other than that, she has little to no emotional connection to me and especially not now. I don't really "hate" anyone listed here, I just don't care for my family anymore and don't want anything to do with any of them.

My mother is completely unable to work, relying mostly on disability since I was a baby due to an ongoing condition. My father refuses to get a better job to support my mother and I, often leaving us with around $5-$10 at a for gas money (often with tons of quarters) or to take with me when it is absolutely required.

Now that I've turned 18, things have gotten much harder when it comes to me being used for financial gain. I do admit that alot of that money was used towards me in some way or another while I was growing up, but not anymore.

While my father is unable to let go of grandmother's old house (which has gone to shambles), one of my mother's friends has lives under us in the basement after being rendered homeless, which can make akward when describing family troubles.

She started living with us a while ago after her trailer finally caved in after we packed water jugs back and forth to her location for several years.

Ever since she moved here, she's developed an overbearing attachment to her "animals". It got so bad she refused time and time again to put her very ill 16-year-old dog to sleep, rendering them unable to walk, see, eat or hear for months on end. The breaking point was when they bled out all over the kitchen (which we knew would happen eventually), which was traumatic for us and highly unnecessary for the dog to go through considering how miserable they were when they came here.

She has made tons very rude and hurtful comments to me about how I'm such an "abuser" when I told her dogs (she has 3) to go away or get off the couch in front of her. She often claims that I'm abusive towards my guinea pigs, saying that I don't "take care of [my] animals".

This friend of my mother has also made comments ranging from my weight to my behavior and called me names ranging from "brat" to the more recent "trashy white girl" while my mother rolls her eyes and tells me it was all just a joke.

She's physically done things towards me such as shoving me out of the way, crushing me on the bed, and almost hauling a foot tall scratching post towards my direction after I refused to get her a broom the second she demanded it (I ended up getting it for her anyway.

However, physical altercations between me and my mom's friend are very rare and this type of behavior is often seen as the norm in my area, so unless it's something that left bruises or sexual assault, it isn't really that big of a deal compared to the other stuff I face on a daily basis.

It only got worse after I graduated from highschool. It got so bad that it became worse than all of the countless harassment I faced throughout my highschool education combined.

I was forced to give up over 3/4s of my $700 worth of graduation money to my mother in order to pay off bills, food, and other neccessities. While I ended up snagging some small gifts for myself (apx. $120) before it was all sucked up, I know I'll probably never be able to get paid back that amount of money from either one of them and I feel extremely cheated as a result.

While I was legitimately excited to see them grow as people in a good home, my sister's kids have drastically changed for the worse ever since they've been shoved in a tiny old trailer and moved back to the classic small town community full of people with money (maybe extracurriculars will keep them busy).

The youngest of them (8), who is often dumped here on a daily basis, has disrespected us in a variety of ways including: eating at the computer after my mom's friend made a rule not to, not picking up after themselves when they did so (often leaving uneaten food out), and using every other dollar my mom had to go get candy and drinks from the Dollar Store (they stole my leftover change in front of me and lied about it, but that was a one-time occurrence).

The back room often smells like trash because my mother puts off going to the dump until the very last minute.

Nobody can keep up with the animals, use a flyswatter on the cat to keep it from climbing everything and having to lock it up so it wouldn't take the food straight off our plates while we were eating.

While two of the dogs from my mom's friend stay downstairs in the basement, the third one stays up here and refuses to go downstairs.

The dog is well-behaved (aside from agressive barking) but while it doesn't pee anywhere in the house (as far as we know), it appears to leave, traces of leftover urine on pillows, blankets, and the furniture (or at least the odor, although I felt small wet spots on the couch before) which could spread germs, not good for someone with a few open sores.

None of them use leashes, so when this dog bursts out the door it takes off up the street aggressively barking at everyone and everything, with little to no repercussions from either adult. The overly intense noise from this small dog has gotten way out of hand, making me a nervous wreck.

These two stress factors combined with everything else makes it impossible to keep the house clean by nearly any means (I'm doing my best just to sweep off the porch).

I'm grateful that my mom's friend took one last shot at trying to clean up the bedroom, but there's no point in trying to keep anything kept up when all it does is get destroyed.

Moving to my own place means I won't have to look after anyone else but me and my pets (guinea pigs). However, I don't have anyone to support me in my endeavors.

As my parents often failed to attend my physical and emotional needs, I became highly unstimulated and constantly stressed as a result. This has lead to severe bouts of depression and executive dysfunction, which has caused my mom's friend's harassment to get even worse.

Not only did they fail to properly take care of my needs all throughout highschool, we've never been able to afford ANY sort of renovations to the house during our residence here (about 8 years), aside from basic roofing which was performed by a small Hispanic business instead of a professional company.

The only two instances of DIY fix-ups I can remember during my 8 years here are replacing the shattered windows with plexiglass (which happened years ago) and recently restoring some of the rotten floorboards under the washer that were caked in mold.

The simple act of taking a shower has now become one of my worst dreaded nightmares and unless I move to a safe environment then I won't ever be able to properly take care of myself like I dream of doing someday.

Even though it'll take top surgery to make me feel comfortable taking showers again, moving to an inspected apartment means I have one less worry about falling through the basement and the rancid smell of burnt urine that sometimes reeks from the basement.

I never went outside much, aside from sitting on the corner of the porch since the rest of it was turned green by air conditioning water and the walkway was flooded by overgrown plants (even they've been given more respect than I have).

I often vented through various social platforms but I decided that enough is enough: I needed to grow as a person and stop shoving all my problems on others.

It was then I knew I had to find a way to escape. Unfortunately, in order to move out I needed at least a little bit of stable funding, which I'm very, very far from.

My sensory issues make it hard to gain interests in whatever food was cooked (ex. spaghetti, dumplings), and I didn't have the desire to eat expired canned greens from the food bank, which have since been covered in roach poo. They're pretty much everywhere you go.

Even the cleanest of countertops could be seen crawling with a few roaches. They reside deep within the microwave along with fried maggots from ages ago.

They have also made their way into the refrigerator, making it difficult to scour what little there is without feeling grossed out. It's getting harder day by day to tell the difference between of the smallest of bugs and pepper. Since we we can't afford a closed-top hamper, our dirty clothes are often covered in roaches trying to find a place to hide, making it difficult to gather the strength to wash them like I should.

They've also taken over my computer, rendering my unable to even touch it for months.

No amount of bombing, traps, or pesticides will clear them either. They were there to begin with, and they always come back.

There's even been an increase in other types of bugs, most notably fly's and gnats.

The Crock-Pot would often fill up with mold every other week because me and my mother didn't like chowing down on her friend's grand "homestyle cooking" every day.

We didn't eat it as much as we should've because it was often bland in taste and we don't know how to make her stop (I know I can't). She ended up making a fuss when we tried to make suggestions, so we let her get what she wants even if it wasting precious ingredients we could've used to make something we could actually eat.

To make up for it, I often had to buy single cans of Spaghettio's at a time from the Dollar Store and call it my meal for the day.

Now it seems like I can't even do THAT anymore.

It got to the point where I even considered that any drink besides water, hell even soda, could have some sort of nutritional value. It was better that eating nothing, after all.

I often pondered mother's financial choices when came to these things but as we all have been told "mother knows best" and we as children should not be allowed to question our parent's decision.

She recently told me my SSI completely cut because the government labels me as "being able to work". It turns out that they cut my disability check as opposed to SSI but I'm still left just as broken inside as before.

Why? Because there's absolutely no way I can save up such a large amount, we need every last drop to survive off of. I've used a very small portion of it to buy some little stuff to help me cope from time to time, but I'm gonna refrain from that from now on until I completely move out.

Even though the issue has been resolved for now, I'm tired of being dragged through hoops when I know they'll just try to cut it off again. I can't keep staying here because I'm sick and tired of having our only source of income dangling on a string.

I would really like to gain some much needed work experience and I plan on applying to Wal-Mart as soon as I upload this post.

However, there's one problem: I have no source of reliable transportation to get to my job.

My mother had to borrow money off of my grandmother (as she has done in the past) in order to have the gas to pick me up from therapy this week. While that tank of gas may last a bit, this is not sustainable enough for me to keep any sort of job regardless if it were part-time or full-time. The three job options in this very small town don't offer a position that would be comfortable enough for me to perform the tasks I am assigned and two are often known for mistreating their staff members on a regular basis.

Another reason I want to get a job in a bigger city is so I can continue to work once I move closer to Wal-Mart, which will save tremendous amounts of gas money and time. To avoid the trauma of driving, I will probably be using a transport bus as opposed to using a car.

The reason it appears that I don't look after my guinea pigs as much as I should is because their cages are inaccessible making it excruciatingly difficult to clean their cages and fufill their needs. With my own apartment to live in, I will have the ability make room for them and I can organize a place for my piggies in a much more open location free of mess.

I'd really like to keep them with me when I move alone, especially considering that I adopted one all the way from Louisville (I live around the west side of KY). I want to give Marlene the proper life she deserves after traveling across the state to take her beautiful soul home with me.

While I probably won't have access to a small animal veterinarian to get a proper diagnosis, my older guinea pig Chloe (about 4 years) had a massive tumor/cyst on her leg burst open a while back.

Her weight has drastically increased to the point where she feels like a limp water balloon when I attempt to pick her up, so it lead me to assume that her body is slowly being taken over by some form of internal cancer.

Even though there's nothing I can do to heal her, my ultimate wish is for Chloe to drift away peacefully in a safe environment free of bugs and other filth. This means that not only do I have myself to care for, but my two precious babies as well.

I admit that I have been going through a slow regression in regards to financial behavior, but I would love to learn how to shop responsibly while keeping my true interests at heart. I have plenty of plushies and figurines to keep me company at the moment. Some I'll sell to make room for new ones, but most of them will there to comfort me during stressful times.

After buying one of the most beautiful children's lamps I had ever seen at GoodWill, I soon found out that buying doesn't have to be boring and dull like all the adults have told us all our lives. I learned that you should buy furniture and clothes based on how it makes you feel instead of relying on others to tell you what to do, I would love to purchase decorations for my apartment that reflect who I want to become as a person.

Not everything should have to be about scrounging for my next meal.

However, the funds from this will go towards covering down-payment, rental costs, and buying a new setup for my guinea pigs if they are allowed at the apartment (I don't want to track bugs from the old cages, plus they need a bigger space).

I wanted to let you guys know that I will have to use a portion of the donations

to cover my mother's monthly electric bill. As much as I want to talk myself out of it, she literally relies on me for money so I don't exactly have the ability to opt-out of that right now.

The extra stuff (such as small appliances, furniture, groceries, and of course... a limited-edition plush or two) will be paid for using a compilation of my paycheck and whatever I earn off of Redbubble.

I'd love to start a YouTube channel where I do things like art, gaming, and reviews to strengthen my voice and get it out into the world in a peaceful, sanitary environment free from interruptions or harassment over a seemingly innocent/important subject matter.

There's lots of things that I missed out on when I was younger and I bet it would be so awesome to finally express myself free of constant toxicity and hatred.

I deeply love OK K.O. and I'd love to honor the impact that this person of color and his creation has left on me someday, as well as continue down my path of original content that I've been waiting to share with you guys!

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ashelizabeth97 · 5 years

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The Truth about Emotional and Psychological Abuse

I write about this topic because so many people, both who I know personally and total strangers who read my work on Instagram, ask me questions regarding my experiences and how to help their loved ones. I don’t claim to know every feeling or every experience, and I can only speak about my personal experiences.

I grew up with parents that love me deeply, but their relationship has always been strained. I don’t think I grew up with the knowledge of what a healthy relationship should look like. I also had my youth to shield me from fully understanding emotional and psychological abuse.

When I was a teenager, I entered a long term relationship. My first long term relationship, without anything to compare it with. At the time I really did love this person, but the majority of our relationship did not embody what love should be. I was blinded by love and lack of experience, and that led me down the road to a toxic relationship that still impacts my self-worth.

At first everything was going very well. The “honeymoon stage”, or in the case of an abusive relationship, it was the stage of establishing the “love” that would be used to cause abuse over and over.

When I went off to college and he was still in high school, our relationship began to change. He became very controlling, afraid that I would break away from the “ideal” girlfriend that he wanted. I couldn’t live the college experience- go out with friends, join clubs, or have guy friends just to name a few. I even had a curfew of 11pm (yes, as if he were my parent). At the time, I didn’t care. All I cared about was making sure that he was happy and that we would stay together to fulfill the perfect future he had planned for us.

During the first 2 ½ years of my undergraduate career, I put up with what I described above and more. We would fight constantly, breaking up and then getting back together only an hour later. Sometimes he wouldn’t like the way I dressed, would get angry if I hung out with a group of people that included even just one guy, and criticized my family and friends. I grew very lonely during the first part of college because I was so isolated, and almost considered transferring.

When he went to college at the beginning of my sophomore year, he decided he wanted to be a new person, and that did not involve me. He broke up with me, but still talked to me everyday. He eventually started seeing another girl for about a week, and would send messages about how great he thought she was. I was devastated. My support system had grown slim because of him and all I was left with felt like nothing.

When he decided he actually wanted to be with me, I stupidly took him back. The abuse cycle causes you to feel worthless. He told me that I would be lucky to find someone who loved me as much as he did. I believed it. I truly believed that this was love. However, my feelings for him would be forever altered even though I hadn’t realized it yet. Also, during that time we were broken up I went on a couple of dates with a very nice boy, and he never let me forget it even though he too saw someone else. I was always in the wrong.

Everything was a competition. I always strive to do my best, and he would put me down by comparing our successes. “I got an internship after my freshman year and you got one after your sophomore year” being one of them. I was not “allowed” to talk about my successes in school because it “bored” him. Everything he did was hypocritical too. On school breaks I looked for jobs to pay my bills, and he told me I wasn’t allowed to be a waitress because “all the boys would flirt” with me. I never applied for any waitressing positions. Not even six months later, he began working at a restaurant. I pointed out that this was hypocritical, but his only response was that “it’s different for guys”.

My family and friends began to see the things that I turned a blind eye to. My relationships with others became further strained. He always had negative things to say about everyone (literally everyone) in my life. Isolating the victim is yet another step in the cycle.

Something started to click within myself. I began to stand up for myself more frequently, which increased how much and how severe our arguments were. I began to step out of my shell a little bit and became a little more involved with classmates and school functions. As you can probably predict, this was not something he was pleased about. He constantly pressured me into intimacy, cornered me in the kitchen on several occasions, and tried to suffocate me under his weight. He eventually pushed me to my breaking point, to the point where I did not even recognize or like the person sitting across the table from me. So, I left.

It didn’t end there. He spent months confusing me through emotional and psychological tourture. He told me that he threw himself in front of a car over our breakup. He told me that he had brain cancer and would not live past age 35. He told me that he missed me, that he wished he could just kiss me, and asked for inappropriate pictures while having a new girlfriend. He tried to contact me in any way he knew how-texting, calling, social media, typed letters, email, and even through my mom (crazy, right?). He even threatened to “go after” my family and I. I don’t exactly know in what way, but I didn’t want to find out. I was and still am with a lovely man, but he continued to confuse me with his mind games. One day he would make me feel as if he still really “loved” me and the next he would brag about how much better his new girlfriend was. To quote one of these instances, “you would be lucky to be half a beautiful as my girlfriend inside and out”. This did not stop until I took legal action.

To this day I still question my worth. I have difficulty with serious commitment because I’m terrified of being hurt. He has altered my life, and I’ve spent the last two years trying to rebuild.

Despite all of this and the lasting impacts, my life is better than it ever would have been with him. I have become strong, I’ve followed and am still following my dreams, and I know what real love looks like. I will never settle for emotional and psychological abuse again. I share these personal details in the hopes that someone out there knows that they are not alone and to recognize that abuse does not always have to be physical bruises.

You are worth it. You are strong. You will get through this. And you will find someone who will treat you exactly how much you deserve and more.

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back-and-totheleft · 5 years

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A test for ‘Platoon’

In January 1987, the Chicago Tribune invited a group of Vietnam veterans, then in treatment for PTSD, to privately screen Platoon and provide their reactions. They were accompanied by a mental health professional for safety and support. As the article notes, “Most of the veterans were visibly shaken or in tears, well after the movie had ended.”

The critics have embraced it; audiences across the country are now flocking to see it. Indeed, the national opening of the Vietnam war film ''Platoon'' was pushed up two weeks in response to intense media coverage of it as a special event.

But the one audience reaction that hasn`t been heard from yet, as Ted Koppel said on a recent ''Nightline'' program devoted to the film, is the Vietnam veteran himself. What do combat veterans think of the film that claims to be the first fiction film to truthfully portray ground fighting in Vietnam?

To find out, we enlisted the help of the Chicago chapter of the Veterans Bedside Network, which assembled a group of six Vietnam combat veterans to watch a private screening of ''Platoon.'' Five men, all of whom saw front-line duty as Marines, were accompanied by a social worker-vet who has been treating them recently for post-traumatic stress disorder, which can strike anyone suffering from trauma.

Warning for frank discussions of violence, combat and mental illness.

Most of the men are 40 years old now, which meant they were about 20 when they saw battle. Each had resentment about how the war was conducted at the command level and how he was treated when he got back home.

More subtle, in some cases, was the barely hidden pain caused by having participated in or at least witnessed the killing of Vietnamese civilians. That nightmare is recalled in ''Platoon'' by a My Lai-style massacre sequence that makes such hideous violence seem reasonable.

For those who have yet to see ''Platoon,'' the movie was written and directed by Oliver Stone, a college dropout, who like the film`s young hero, played by Charlie Sheen, volunteered for infantry action in Vietnam to prove his manhood.

The film follows his bloody tour of duty with a platoon near the Cambodian border in 1967. And Stone`s film did its job extremely well, according to the veterans in our group, providing an eye-popping portrait of what Vietnam combat was all about: the heat, filth, confusion, fear and rotting bodies -- white, black, and yellow.

The veterans watching the movie were told very little about the film before it started. They were simply asked to take notes and to keep their reactions to themselves for a series of individual post-film interviews that would avoid any influence of ''group think.'' Then, they were told, they would reassemble as a unit to discuss the film and just how true-to-life any war film can be.

What follows, first, are the individual reactions of veterans and their counselor. Most of the veterans were visibly shaken or in tears, well after the movie had ended.

THOMAS WILLIAMS

''I served in Vietnam in 1966. I was a scout. And that scene of [the American platoon] being overrun, I've experienced that. The pain and the killing is shown right -- there`s no mercy.

'Having to kill like that and then having to come back here and having to pretend like nothing happened because you can`t tell anyone the horror of what it was like: This is what Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome is all about.

You get flashes of scenes like the ones in this movie, which is the closest I`ve ever seen to the real thing.

It was hell, man. And the first thing they had written on screen before the movie began -- that quote from Ecclesiastes about `losing your youth and becoming old` -- that`s very deep. That`s what happened over there.''

Williams, 39, with tears in his eyes, said he saw combat for 9 1/2 months in Vietnam. The most brutal battle he was involved in was called Operation Hastings.

''We fought the 324th B Division of the North Vietnamese. We fought them for 4 1/2 hours. They cut off our platoon from the rest of the battalion. Thirty-two of us killed approximately 1,000 men. That scene at the very end of the movie with [the overhead shot] all of the dead bodies in the valley -- it was exactly like that. Exactly.''

Tears were running down Williams` face.

''I thought I was going to die [in that battle]. The guy next to me, a round went through his head and blew the left side of his brains and skull onto the right side of my face. The guy carrying the [Vietnamese] flag, I hit him, and the guy next to him I unloaded a magazine [of bullets] in him and he still didn`t want to drop. I reloaded and I threw grenades, and that`s the only way that I made it. Out of 32 Marines, only five lived.

It hurts, man. It hurts. `Cause a lot of guys died for nothing. For nothing. Nothing."

FRANK KAUZLARICH

''The character portrayals were outstanding; they didn't `Hollywood it up,` '' said Kauzlarich, 40, who served in 1968-9 as a helicopter crew chief. ''They had the details right about the leeches--and the dust everywhere when [the college kid] arrived in Vietnam in the very first scene. I saw the same dust and the body bags when I first got there, and I thought to myself, `What the hell am I getting into?`

''The characters were all right on: the good, the bad, and the ugly, you might say. Also it showed the things you had to do -- the people you had to leave behind. As a helicopter crew chief, I saw areas I simply couldn't get into, and we had to leave people behind.''

Kauzlarich was different from the rest of the group in two ways. He didn't want his photograph taken, and he appeared to be the most composed after the movie. His self control, he intimated, grew out of his job in Vietnam.

''As a crew chief, I lived in my chopper. I had to maintain the chopper and make sure I was always ready to take off and get our guys who usually were in deep [shit].

''But my eyes were watered up during the movie. 'I just had a little more time to get myself together. I`ll be keyed up for a couple of days. It`s a good movie. He portrayed it all very well: the noise, the dust, the crap.

He did a good job, but no one could ever tell you about Vietnam in a movie. They can`t show the pain, the absurdities, the horror. You end up being an animal yourself in order to survive. You don`t have time to register the horror, until it just wells up in you. It was 13 years before I began reliving the thing. I got flashbacks of sounds and smells.''

TERRY TIDD

''That`s the most realistic movie I've ever seen,'' said Tidd, a burly, bearded man, who has just turned 40. ''I`m shaking inside."

''One thing that was good about it is that they didn't glamorize the killing and dying. Some of the other movies about Vietnam made it look like it was too much fun.

I just want people to know that [American soldiers] did go back and kill [Vietnamese] people in villages like that. But the people that did it,'' Tidd said, his voice cracking, ''weren`t rotten people. But if you go into a village, and there are no VC, and all you see are women and children, and you step outside of that village and you saw your buddies getting killed, and they`re screaming, well, some guys went back to the village.

''And this film showed it was that kind of a dirty war. I just wish people could know that we weren`t just a bunch of baby killers. We really thought we were fighting for our country and to stop the spread of Communism. And people who died over there, maybe they have an advantage over us who lived through it. Because we know it was a lost cause. They died not knowing it.

''I want to get my ma and dad to see this movie. I got a 13-year-old boy I might want to take. It may be too heavy, but he`s asked me a lot about Vietnam, and I probably should take him to see this.''

Tidd served in 1966 with the Marine I Corps near Da Nang.

''If anyone wants to know what the war is like, this would be a good one for them.''

LARRY BRIMM

"It can`t be fully felt unless you`ve been there. [The taste of death] just stays in your throat. I brush my tongue every morning, but I can`t get rid of it."

Brimm, 40, a 1965-6 Marine Corp veteran, also seemed composed as he stepped out of the screening room to talk. But then he opened his hands. His palms were full of sweat and creases formed by dug-in nails.

''As far as the technical end of the movie is concerned, it was good. It showed that for each man, it really was their own private little war of staying alive. There weren`t a lot of massive sweeps of men.

''When [order] broke down, you counted on your buddy to the left and your buddy to the right, and that was it. There wasn`t another squad, another platoon. There was just you and what was happening within three feet of you. And I got that in this film.''

Brimm also said he found the emotional transitions of some of the characters to be accurate.

''For me in 1965, I went over there idealistic. After a while though, I realized there was no point about fighting Communism. It was all a matter of simply staying alive. And then you start hating yourself for the things you have to do to stay alive -- like killing civilians.

I can really empathize with that scene where [the Americans] burned that village because of all that had gone on before. In 1965, it was more of a booby trap, sniper war of not being able to see the enemy. So to retaliate, you just didn`t care. But now I have to live with that.''

BILL BURTON

"In Vietnam there wasn`t the racism I find here. We called each other names, but we were there for each other when it counted. All of our blood was red."

''It was almost real,'' said Burton, a Marine who fought in a variety of locations in 1968-9. ''There were some things I saw in the film that I did.'' He began shaking his head.

''No, I`d rather not say,'' he said, taking out his handkerchief. ''It affects me to this day.''

Was he glad he saw the picture? ''Oh, yes,'' he said, ''it might help me. I`ve never seen anything since I`ve been back to compare to this. I could identify with a lot of it. For example, the scene where the [American soldier] shot the [Vietnamese] woman. It happened, man. You saw it happening all around you, and it was scary that it started to make sense.''

RAY BLANFORD

"The emotional side of the experience can never be communicated. If you fought and lived through that war, you were damaged."

Ray Blanford, who served two tours of army duty in Vietnam, now serves as a therapist in the Stress Disorder program at the North Chicago Veterans Hospital.

''I have heard the exact stories that were up on that screen--everything from the blood on the soldier`s face [when his buddy bashes a Vietnamese man`s skull] to the loss of control, the hate, the fear, and finally the killing of the [Vietnamese] guy with one leg. It was so real. The emotions in this film could have been taken right out of what we get in the Stress Disorder unit."

Blanford, 52, said he handled the stress in Vietnam because he was older than the average soldier. ''Most of the guys that fought were pretty young. We`re talking about, in many cases, mere high school kids. Forget the real war, if you simply subjected them to what you saw in this movie, you would have a bunch of traumatized kids.''

Along with the other vets, Blanford took special note of the film`s opening scene. ''I could almost smell the fuel of the C-135 [aircraft] and the dust, as well recall the confusion of the body bags going out and the men coming in.''

Now the men were brought together, and they were first asked to react to the final line in the movie in which actor Sheen, in voice-over narration, speaks, in effect to all veterans, saying that they, as survivors, ''have an obligation to build again, to find a goodness and meaning in this life.''

To a man, the veterans said such noble sentiments were a pipe dream. One exception is a cause promoted by Thomas Williams.

''The goodness and meaning that we`ve found on the ward is to try to find housing for the many homeless Vietnam veterans. Through our own illness and strength we`re trying to help them through an organization called Veterans for Housing, Inc."

But in general the mood of the vets turned dark when they were asked about their chances of ''building again.''

''I find a lot of irony in that,'' said Frank Kauzlarich, ''in that our society doesn`t want to give us a chance to build again. They just want to forget the mistakes that we and our government made over there. We`ve been looked down on since we`ve come back, and consequently we look down on ourselves.''

Bill Burton had a more specific complaint. ''I`ve only been able to hold onto a job for two years since I`ve been back. I just need a chance. I need a job. I live on the North Side, and it really gets me, man, to see these Vietnamese with jobs, but I can`t get one myself."

''It`s funny,'' said Burton, who is black, ''in Vietnam there wasn`t the racism I find here. I mean, we may have called each other names, but we were there for each other when it counted. All of our blood was red.''

At that point, Burton grabbed the hand of Terry Tidd, who was sitting next to him.

''That last line makes me angry,'' said Thomas Williams. ''They don`t try to understand us. They never tried. There were no parades -- everybody knows that. But what they don`t know is the sense of powerlessness we feel.

''I mean there`s a real power you have in `Nam when you have a gun and you`re killing. Then you come back, and you`ve got nothing. You`ve given up your flesh, your blood, and your mind. So that bit about coming up with a new life is bullshit. People just don`t care about us. The government doesn`t have the money to treat us. Thousands of vets are going without help.

''Hell yes I`m angry. Many of us lost our families `cause we couldn`t handle life when we came back. Build again? That`s a joke.''

''You get your ass blown up, they want to give you peanuts,'' said Terry Tidd. ''I got hit twice in my legs, they give me 10 per cent of my pay -- 126 dollars a month -- the absolute minimum for legs that are filled with metal. When I get X-rayed, they ask if I was in a car accident. I`m supposed to build a new life on that?!''

''On a job application,'' said Frank Kauzlarich, ''it`s not too smart to put down that you`re a Vietnam veteran. You`re better off putting down that you`re an alcoholic. Chances are the boss drinks, too.''

''The damage done to the warriors does not always go away,'' said Ray Blanford, the social worker.

The anger of the vets was a surprising turn of events, considering that their praise of the movie had been so effusive.

Some might say the group we interviewed was heavily battle-scarred. That may be true, but realize that only a small fraction of the people who served in Vietnam saw combat, and that combat soldiers is what ''Platoon'' is all about.

As it turned out, the veterans` anger was also rooted in their treatment at home, today. It became apparent when the vets were asked to complete the following thought: ''It`s a terrific movie but, even so, it doesn`t communicate...''

''It can be accurately portrayed on film,'' said Larry Brimm, ''but it can`t be fully felt unless you’ve been there.''

''The movie is missing the taste of death,'' said Bill Burton.

''It just stays in your throat,'' said Larry Brimm. ''I brush my tongue every morning, but I can`t get rid of it.''

''It was so hot in `Nam,'' said Thomas Williams.''The movie didn`t show people tying T-shirts over their face to cut the smell of death. But the smell you can never get rid of. It will always be with you.''

It was up to Ray Blanford to sum up.

''I say to all the veterans: See the movie, but be with somebody you care about so you can talk about the emotions the movie brings back. And if you need help, call us.

'As for the public: See the movie, but know that the emotional side of the real experience can never be communicated. A movie can`t communicate the terror or the lasting damage. If you fought and lived through that war, you were damaged. And I want every kid who sees this picture and thinks that war is exciting to know that.''

-Gene Siskel, “A Test for Platoon,” Chicago Tribune, January 4 1987 [x]

#oliver stone #platoon #ptsd #the vietnam war #mental health #war #violence #survival #chicago tribune #gene siskel

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angelreys-blog · 5 years

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Change...it's inevitable.

Life is a guarantee of only one thing....change. It seems we are always experiencing some form of it whether in relationships, employment, finances, living conditions, etc. In some of these cases we want and crave change and it seems to come slow. Other change comes unexpected and is sadly often tragic or traumatic. But change comes none the less. In fact, some life changes we have actually named. Menopause is known as "the change" for women and "mid-life crisis" for men. Yes, I believe men go through menopause. Lol! When all of our children leave the house, which is a huge adjustment in the world of change, we call that "empty nest". Of course the hardest changes are those that involve relationships and finances.

Friends come and go, only few are lifelong, if we have the privilege of experiencing a life long friend. Sometimes family or those we deem family separate themselves in some way or another, sometimes through divorce, and ironically sometimes through marriage. Other times it is just due to life taking people in different directions or those people trying to figure out the direction of their life; whatever the case...change will come and how we deal with those changes has a great deal to do with the core of our charcter as a human being, the growth or deterioration of that character.

The last couple years in my own life have been the most challenging I have ever faced in my adulthood. My life was introduced to financial disaster, loss of loved ones, friends, businesses, credit, our credibility, and sadly whatever good reputation we had because people judge based only on what they see right in front of them or worse what they hear from others. What we had worked to build over years was lost in what seemed like a moment. A loss so great for us as it involved every aspect of our lives. It hasn't just been financial in losing our businesses, income, and properties, including our home. We lost friends that were family to us. We saw separation within our immediate family. We walked through an immediate family member recieve a diagnosis of cancer and within a few months was gone. It was all incredibly devastating.

I had never felt more alone in life and many times asked God to let me die because I couldn't figure out how to overcome this life-altering place I was in. At that time we lived in a town that printed everything in the paper and to put it mildly we were a weekly occurance due to the lawsuits from the downfall of my husbands company. We tried to sell whatever we could, pay what we could, but ultimatley the debt was so large we couldn't seem to make a dent. The downfall of my husband's business and the people it hurt nearly destroyed him. He went into a dark place that I didn't know he would ever escape from. He wanted to drown out the voices, the death threats, the bill collectors, and the loss he couldn't fix. Our marriage nearly ended and frankly I don't really know how we were able to survive except for the love and grace of God.

I found myself hiding away rarely ever leaving the house unless it was absolutely necessary. I would pray I didn't see anyone because I couldn't take hearing another person tell me they saw our names in the paper again with their judgement and disdain. Not that they intended to be hurtful, or most anyway, they didn't understand how awful it had been and any reminder of it only threw me backwards. Only a few people actually took the time to find out the whole story, most just believed whatever they read or whatever someone else told them. The hardest part was that most of those who were Believers with us never reached out with any form of real help or advice even when we sought it. I saw a side of Christiandome that I hope I can be part of changing.

It seemed when we were doing well we were accepted, supported, help was more then available. When our world fell apart it was as if we had leprosy and everyone scattered. I am not talking about one church in particular. We knew people that attended several different churches. I'm talking about the church as a whole. I am not angry or bitter. I even somewhat understand because I used to behave the same way before this to some degree. Not that I realized it then but certainly do now.

We had only God and some small shred of hope that we had some kind of fight left in us.

Now, a couple years later, still walking through the aftermath of it all as we face the only choice we had left to attempt to rebuild our lives; we see so many things we could not see until healing began.

We don't blame "the church" or those Christians who chose to judge rather than to help. They were just following the examples set before them that sadly teaches when your doing we'll God is blessing you and when your not it must be because your disobedient. Though I realize my situation is not fully comparable to Job's, and though I cannot claim that we didn't make some mistakes and bad choices along the way, I certainly have an understanding about how he must have felt that I didn't have before. I have also found that I am certainly less likely to assume whats happening in someones life than I once was, which I am truly grateful for. God allowed this for a purpose and my part in all of it is to take responsibility of my own behaviors, actions, and decisions. For me to learn and grow and use it to help others. Especially those in similiar situations reminding them they are not alone.

I cannot know what is yet to come or how all of this will work out but my God does. This has not turned me from Him but has pressed me into a deeper place with Him. I could be angry because He could have stopped all this but He never promised me a wonderful life on earth. Yes, he did say we would have life abundantly but that is very different than comfort and ease though sometimes He does allow us those pleasures. However, the definition of abundant is actually this...existing or available in large quantities; plentiful. I don't believe Jesus was talking about money and comfort here but instead he was talking about Himself. That He is available to those who believe in Him and call on His name and accept with thier whole heart that He is the life, the truth, and the only way to God, the Father. He was saying that with Him at our side, no matter what we face, we will have life abundantly because of the inner joy only He can provide. That peace passes all understanding. In fact, He told us that in this world we will have trouble but not to worry because He conquered the world. He is the abundance, not what the world has to offer.

He has shown me there is so much good in all of this hardship and loss. These irreplaceable understandings and lessons that are priceless. Without this dark place my character could not have further developed positively, my faith would not have been rooted deeper, and my eyes could not have been given a greater depth of vision to see hardship differently.

Here's my conclusion...

Don't assume...if you want to know ask but only if you want to know because you truly care about the well being of the person your asking. Otherwise it is just for the sake of gossip.

If you are afraid to ask but genuinely want to help, don't speak what you don't know but instead pray fervently for God's will in the life of whomever you are praying for or whatever situation you are praying over.

If you are the one going through a great hardship, let yourself feel but don't give yourself that permission without also being in the Word to help guide you through it. The enemy will always use our dark places to attempt to turn us against God. We must guard ourselves.

If you are facing a situation you cannot fix, especially one that has caused hardship for others, you have to decide to trust that God is fixing it in His time. We do not often understand God's ways and He reminds us of that when He says in the Word...My ways are not your ways and my thoughts are not your thoughts. God never allows something that won't end up benefitting many. Whatever He is teaching you through your situation, He is using to teach whomever has been effected what He wants them to learn as well. Trust in His timing even when others talk about you, say you have no right to do God's work or even proclaim to be a Believer. Don't ever forget they said those same things about our Savior and He reminds us in His Word that we are not greater than our Master. So stand firm and walk out the path God has you on however long it may take to make things right.

Lend a hand. When you see someone hurting, no matter what you may feel, take them for coffee or dinner. Make them laugh or simply listen and then pray with them right there. We all need to hear and feel those prayers so don't be afraid to be bold in that. It is truly the most encouraging and uplifting thing we can do for one another.

Even if you disagree with someones opinion, don't argue. If what they seem to believe doesn't line up with the Word and they claim to be a Christian ask them how often they read the Word. Most of the time they aren't reading and studying it. Being in church and listening to a preacher or listening to other preachers, speakers, or teachers is not listening to God. God is our teacher first. Everyone else should simply be confirmation of what God is teaching us and if they aren't, stop listening! Encourage others in love to read what the actual writer Himself wrote. Even if its only two verses a day to start. Then pray over them every time you think of them.

Lastly, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. We live in a world that screams...ITS ALL ABOUT ME! ME! ME! Thats not what Jesus taught us. Attempt to put yourself in someone elses place. Get to know them and learn a bit about where they come from and what they have walked through and you might find yourself surprised at how understanding someone can change your perception.

There it is again...change. It may be inevitable but how we respond to it often holds more power and influence than we can understand.

Learn from every situation and change well.

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sarahreeese · 5 years

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(Chicago) MED VS Med (ical show) #1

Maybe this will be a continuing series of posts, maybe not but I’m here to compare Chicago Med against other currently running medical shows (or recently concluded. Mostly I’m just cutting ER and previous out, but the Night Shift etc can still be included).

This round: Cardio Surgeon pays for patient’s surgery

Players: Chicago Med and New Amsterdam

In Chicago Med, series main Dr. Connor Rhodes is introduced to a patient via another lead Dr. Will Halstead. It’s important to note that Dr. Rhodes canonically comes from an extremely wealthy family. In the previous episode he purchases a Porsche to help him cope with a break up, this has also signaled a new change in him, a fresh start. The patient is a young comedian who is constantly feeling sick, but doesn’t have health insurance. She goes to Med for another injury and is diagnosed with a severe form of cancer. Dr. Halstead and Dr. Rhodes find out there is a surgery she can have that would give her a shot of winning, but it’s incredibly expensive. During this season the hospital was facing massive budget cuts, and so even though the two doctors believe they can have the hospital pay for it they are shut down by Ms. Goodwin, the director. The patient is supposed to be transferred, but then Connor says he’s “got this” and an anonymous donation is made that would fulfill the patient’s treatment. Dr. Rhodes then drives off in his Porsche at the end of the episode.

In New Amsterdam, a series regular Dr. Floyd Reynolds has a regular patient who comes in with problems on her heart. They have a report and at the beginning of the storyline he promises her that they’d fix it today once and for all. Floyd believes that New Amsterdam, which has recently begun taking on any patient to and trying to improve their lives regardless of cost, will foot the bill like it has with other patients. Then the Chief of Medicine, Dr. Max Goodwin, who typically is very supportive of changing people’s lives regardless of cost is rushed into the Emergency Department. He’s unconscious and unable to approve the surgery. The hospital Dean, who is very concerned with the budget they currently have, tells Reynolds to send his patient home. Reynolds struggles with what to do, claiming that this is a life changing surgery. The next scene with him that we see is Dr. Reynolds in the middle of surgery on his patient. The Dean comes in and asks what he’s doing and Reynolds tells him what has been already placed in the patient and that she will be going home after one days rest “without a bill”. He goes on and explains that the hospital won’t handle it either and to send the bill to him. He says it very plainly while continuing to work. While most of Reynold’s background has not been discussed, he has discussed growing up poor, and getting into Yale only on a scholarship.

So after laying these out, it becomes evident for a few reasons that New Amsterdam pulled this idea off better than Chicago Med.

The first has to do with the characters selected to do this with. Connor Rhodes is insanely wealthy. He has a large apartment, and a Land Rover as he “practical” car. His father is one of the richest men in Chicago and had at that time purchased a whole wing of a hospital. Money means very little to Connor Rhodes, emphasized by the fact he purchases a Porsche without even test driving it. He then get’s an extended shot, one that does not fit the typical Chicago Med cinematic style, of him driving his Porsche to work in the very episode this case takes place in. Whatever this girl’s payment was, would be very little to him, once again emphasized by the fact he didn’t even have to sell his brand new extremely expensive car to be able to afford the donation.

On the contrary, Floyd Reynolds does not have that kind of money. While he is a Cardio Surgeon, he was recognized by Max for having significantly lower surgery rates than other cardio surgeon. This could indicate less promotions or bonuses based on surgical rates. We also know, that though he is head of the Cardio Surgical unit, he’s only been in that position for 3 weeks at this point. While he may be comfortable, it’s unlikely he’s accumulated a lot of wealth. Taking on a bill for a surgery will have a significant impact on his financial situation, yet he was fully willing to do it.

Another misstep for Chicago Med was in their selection of patient. While the patient was endearing, funny, and immediately liked by both the audience and Connor, there was no specific reason that he’d have to help her over any other patient that came in without insurance. Yes the situation is heartbreaking, but Chicago Med has showcased other, sadder situations without Connor rushing in. It fit within his storyline for that one episode so they added it without there being any lead up or follow up over this new found philanthropic side.

Though we spend very little time with Reynold’s patient, it is still much more believable that he’d step in and save her. She’s been his patient multiple times, she jokes about how bad she feels that he constantly has to keep fixing her up. He makes the promise that they’ll do this surgery today. It feels natural that Reynolds would be inspired to do this with this specific patient. This is a natural continuance of Reynolds learning to bend rules, and make bold choices that had been set up in the episodes prior. He wanted to do what Max would have done, and he did it. This is a triumph not only for the patient having her life changed, but one for Reynolds accomplishing something the viewer has been watching him learn.

The last major reason Chicago Med didn’t have their moment work was the context of how the act was done. This includes what was said, the lead up in the episode to it, and the context of the episode. Connor had been dumped, and his girlfriend ran away without telling him. He was in somewhat of a spiral which ended with his purchase of the Porsche. This whole episode was supposed to be about Connor “moving on” from his ex and pouring himself into Med and his beginning descent into a “player” life style. Then he meets this patient and “takes care of it” and fixes the situation in a faux modest secret donation. It is the climax of the episode. This donation just feels liked forced drama and somewhat deus ex machina. It’s also supposed to show the audience was a good and humble guy Connor is. But it does the opposite. Everyone in that room knew it was Connor. He could have very easily said he’d take care of it, and there’d have been no panic/upsetting the patient. Everyone could have just started what was necessary to heal her. But none of this happens. It is purely a character moment for Connor, and one that has very little impact as he drives off in his Porsche at the end of the episode.

The Porsche has been brought up a lot in this, but when looking at it in a more analytical/writer mind set, the Porsche is a symbol of his new found attitude, of getting rid of the hurt from his ex-girlfriend in an emotionally cheap and unfulfilling way. It signaled a change in the character, and one that was not for the better. The car was set up like an emotional crutch. It would have been so powerful to see him give that car up to heal someone else. A return to his character, and an acknowledgement that things can’t help you not feel sad, but actions that improve and save others might help.

Once again New Amsterdam did the whole episode deftly. Reynolds paying for the patient was a blip that played in with everything going on in the show. Max is possibly dying, and all the characters have to reflect on the choices they’d make now, without Max backing them up. Do they stay the recklessly good, and hopeful doctors that Max has helped them be? Or fall back in line with the hospital first mindset. Reynold’s actions played perfectly into this theme and feel purposeful. He did this in a practical, logical choice for his patient. None of it was to make himself feel good or show anyone anything. It was quiet and sure footed and was done because he thought the patient should have a better life than the one she was living. It was a quiet victory for Reynolds that he was the man that Max had known he was. It’s not brought up again in the episode, but it didn’t need to be. It was something that only two characters know and that only two characters needed to know.

So in my opinion New Amsterdam is the first winner of the the MED vs Med showdown. If you want to submit other shows and specific moments or themes to go up against Chicago Med or others shoot me an ask or message.

#chicago med #new amsterdam #floyd reynolds #connor rhodes #why is it written like a college essay you might ask #i was in a mood would cost likely be my reply #please let me know what you think of this

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patriotsnet · 3 years

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How Many Democrats And Republicans In House

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/how-many-democrats-and-republicans-in-house/

How Many Democrats And Republicans In House

Republicans Suddenly Sweating Falling Deep Into House Minority

Democrats win House, Republicans keep Senate in US

GOP leaders tout their chances to win back the majority, but falling poll numbers for Trump have some worried they could lose seats in November.

07/29/2020 04:30 AM EDT

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A slew of dismal summer polls and a persistent fundraising gap have left some Republicans fretting about a nightmare scenarioin November: Thatthey will fall further into the House minority.

Publicly, House GOP leaders are declaring they can still net the 17 seats needed to flip the chamber. But privately, some party strategists concede its a much grimmer picture, with as many as 20 Republican seats at risk of falling into Democratic hands.

Far from going on offense, the GOP could be forced to retrench in order to limit its losses.Theres a growing fear that President Donald Trumps plummeting popularity in the suburbs could threaten GOP candidates in traditionally favorable districts, and that their partys eagerness to go on offense might leave some underfunded incumbents and open GOP-held seats unprotected.

Internal Democratic surveys in recent weeks have shown tight races in once-solid GOPseats in Indiana, Texas, Michigan, Ohio and Montana that Trump carried handily 2016 data that suggest the battleground is veering in a dangerous direction for the GOP.

And should the environment worsen, other seats in North Carolina, Minnesota, Missouri, Washington state, central Virginia and Michigan could be at risk.

Rising Violent Crime Is Likely To Present A Political Challenge For Democrats In 2022

But there are roadblocks to fully enacting Democrats agenda. Their thin majorities in both chambers of Congress mean nearly all Democrats have to get on board with every agenda item in order to push through major legislative priorities. And without adjusting or eliminating the legislative filibuster in the Senate, Democrats need 10 Republicans to join them for various legislation a near-impossible task.

Theres Never Been A Better Time For Civic Engagement

Youve cast your vote. Now what? Join 10 million other Americans using GovTrack to learn about and contact your representative and senators and track what Congress is doing each day.

And starting in 2019 well be tracking Congresss oversight investigations of the executive branch.

Youre more than a vote, so support GovTrack today with a tip of any amount:

Or keep using GovTrack for free! Our public interest mission means we will never put our service behind a paywall.

Recommended Reading: How Many Congressmen Are Republican

Map: Republicans To Have Full Control Of 23 States Democrats 15

In 2021, Republicans will have full control of the legislative and executive branch in 23 states.;Democrats will have full control of the legislative and executive branch in 15 states.

Population of the 24 fully R-controlled states:;134,035,267Population of the 15 fully D-controlled states: 120,326,393

Republicans have full control of the legislative branch in 30 states. Democrats have full control of the legislative branch in 18;states.

Population of the 30 fully R-controlled legislature states: 185,164,412Population of the 18 fully D-controlled legislature states: 133,888,565

This week, Andrew Cuomos star went down in flames. While the smoke clears, lets take a moment to sit back and reminisce about the governors long history with ethical and legal violations.

Cuomos controversies regarding sexual harassment and nursing homes deaths were far from his first abuses of power. In fact, his administration has a long history of it, ranging from interfering with ethics commissions, to financial corruption.

In July 2013, Cuomo formed the Moreland Commission to investigate corruption in New Yorks government. At first it was a success, giving Cuomo good PR. Yet as it went on there were rumors that, contrary to his claim that Anything they want to look at they can look at, Cuomo was interfering with the Commissions investigations. There was friction within the Commission, itself with two factions forming: Team Independence and Team We-Have-a-Boss.

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Eric Holder: There Is Still A Fight For Democrats Against Gop Gerrymandering

In McConnells Kentucky, for instance, Republicans are divided over how far to go during the upcoming redistricting process, which they control in the deep-red state. The more extreme wing wants to crack the Democratic stronghold of Louisville, currently represented by Rep. John Yarmuth. More cautious Republicans like McConnell are willing to settle for smaller changes that reduce Democratic margins while stuffing more Republican voters into hotly contested swing districts.

Make no mistake: McConnells caution isnt rooted in any newfound respect for the integrity of our electoral process. Instead, Republicans are mainly worried about avoiding the costly and embarrassing court decisions that invalidated their most extreme overreaches and potentially turn the line-drawing over to the courts. So McConnells approach doesnt reject partisan gerrymandering it just avoids the type of high-profile city-cracking that could land the Kentucky GOP in federal court.

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Are Canadian Senators Appointed For Life

Unlike the Members of Parliament in the House of Commons, the 105 senators are appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the prime minister. Senators originally held their seats for life; however, under the British North America Act, 1965, members may not sit in the Senate after reaching the age of 75.

Important Dates And Deadlines

The table below lists filing deadlines and primary dates in each state for Democratic Party and Republican Party candidates for congressional and state-level office.

Primary dates and filing deadlines, 2020 State Filing deadline for primary candidates Primary date 04/21/2020 & 05/08/2020 08/04/2020 04/24/2020 & 6/12/2020 05/05/2020 & 06/02/2020 09/01/2020 06/24/2020 07/10/2020

The embedded spreadsheet below details filing requirements for major-party and unaffiliated congressional candidates in 2020.

Read Also: Will Any Republicans Vote For Impeachment

A Candid Conversation With Eight Women Of Color Running For Congress This Year

Gore is running against Democratic incumbent Rep. Marcia Fudge, who has represented Ohios solidly blue 11th Congressional District since 2008 a majority Black urban area.

Maybe the candidacies arent taken seriously because typically we dont get the Black vote. And sometimes we dont get the white vote, you know? So were kind of in a bit of a quagmire, Gore said, reflecting on her challenges to fundraise.

Klacik, a former Democrat who voted for Barack Obama, faces an incredibly steep climb in a reliably blue urban district, which includes parts of Baltimore. She is running against incumbent Democratic Rep. Kweisi Mfume, who was sworn in earlier this year after the death of Rep. Elijah Cummings in October 2019. Cummings held that seat since 1996.

I get called names all the time for being a Black Republican. Meanwhile, my whole push is to make it better in the Black community, Klacik said, criticizing Democratic politicians for a lack of investment in the inner cities.

Asked what advice she has for other Republicans of color who face similar backlash, Klacik urged them not to be discouraged.

People are always gonna either love you or hate you, she said. Youve got to fight for whats right.

The primary is our biggest place of hurt

Compared to an expansive network of Democratic organizations built over the last few decades to support female candidates, there are only a few Republican groups working specifically to boost the campaigns of Republican women.

Why The Number Of House Members Hasnt Changed Since 1913

US Midterms 2018: Democrats take the House and Republicans keep the Senate | #GME

There are still 435 members of the House of Representatives a century later because of the;Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929, which set that number in stone.

The Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 was the result of a battle between rural and urban areas of the United States following the 1920 Census. The formula for distributing seats in the House based on population favored urbanized states and penalized smaller rural states at the time, and Congress could not agree on a reapportionment plan.

After the 1910 census, when the House grew from 391 members to 433 , the growth stopped. Thats because the 1920 census indicated that the majority of Americans were concentrating in cities, and nativists, worried about of the power of foreigners, blocked efforts to give them more representatives, wrote Dalton Conley, a professor of sociology, medicine and public policy at New York University, and Jacqueline Stevens, a professor of political science at Northwestern University.

So, instead, Congress passed the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 and sealed the number of House members at the level established after the 1910 census, 435.

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Era Of Good Feelings 18171825

Monroe believed that the existence of political parties was harmful to the United States, and he sought to usher in the end of the Federalist Party by avoiding divisive policies and welcoming ex-Federalists into the fold. Monroe favored infrastructure projects to promote economic development and, despite some constitutional concerns, signed bills providing federal funding for the National Road and other projects. Partly due to the mismanagement of national bank president William Jones, the country experienced a prolonged economic recession known as the Panic of 1819. The panic engendered a widespread resentment of the national bank and a distrust of paper money that would influence national politics long after the recession ended. Despite the ongoing economic troubles, the Federalists failed to field a serious challenger to Monroe in the 1820 presidential election, and Monroe won re-election essentially unopposed.

Botched Afghanistan Withdrawal Gives Biden Biggest Crisis Of His Presidency

David Smith

Joe Biden was facing the biggest crisis of his presidency on Monday after the stunning fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban caught his administration flat-footed and raised fears of a humanitarian catastrophe.

Recriminations were under way in Washington over the chaotic retreat from Kabul, which one Biden opponent described as the embarrassment of a superpower laid low.

Bowing to pressure, officials said the president would leave his country retreat, Camp David, to address the nation from the White House on Monday afternoon.

The Taliban swept into Kabul on Sunday after President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, ending two decades of a failed experiment to import western-style liberal democracy. Diplomatic staff were flown to safety but thousands of Afghans who worked with US forces were stranded and at risk of deadly reprisals.

As harrowing scenes played out on television including desperate Afghans clinging to a US transport plane before takeoff the White House scrambled to explain how the government collapsed so quickly.

Last month Biden, pointing to the Afghan militarys superior numbers and technology, predicted: The likelihood theres going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.

Unrepentant, the president issued a statement on Saturday, insisting the sudden withdrawal had been the only possible choice.

Also Check: How Many Republicans Are Now In The House Of Representatives

Gop Women Made Big Gains

While the majority of the Republican caucus will still be men come 2021, there will be far more Republican women in Congress than there were this year. So far, it looks like at least 26 GOP women will be in the House next year, surpassing the record of 25 from the 109th Congress. Thats thanks in part to the record number of non-incumbent Republican women 15 whove won House contests. And its also because of how well Republican women did in tight races. The table below shows the Republican women who ran in Democratic-held House districts that were at least potentially competitive,1 according to FiveThirtyEights forecast. As of this writing, seven of them have won.

GOP women have flipped several Democratic seats

Republican women running for potentially competitive Democratic-held House seats and the status of their race as of 4:30 p.m Eastern on Nov. 11

District D+22.1

Results are unofficial. Races are counted as projected only if the projection comes from ABC News. Excludes races in which the Republican candidate has either a less than 1 in 100 chance or greater than 99 in 100 chance of winning.

Possible 2010 Or 2014 Midterm Repeat

Big bets on policy also don’t necessarily pay off at the ballot box, a lesson Democrats learned a decade ago when they passed the Affordable Care Act. President Barack Obama’s domestic policy achievement also helped decimate congressional Democratic majorities in the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections.

It’s just one reason why Republicans feel good about their chances in 2022, along with structural advantages like the redistricting process, where House districts are redrawn every decade to reflect population changes. Republicans control the process in more states and are better positioned to gain seats.

“This deck is already stacked, because they’ve been gerrymandering these districts,” Maloney says. “And now they’re trying to do even more of it and add to that with these Jim Crow-style voter suppression laws throughout the country.”

He maintains that efforts among Republican-led state legislatures to enact more voting restrictions show the party has a losing policy hand for the midterm elections.

Also Check: What Are The Republicans Saying About Impeachment

United States House Of Representatives Elections 2020

U.S. House Republican Party primaries, 2020

Democrats maintained a majority in the U.S. House as a result of the 2020 elections, winning 222 seats to Republicans 213. Democrats flipped three seats and Republicans flipped 15, including one held by a Libertarian in 2020.

Heading into the November 3, 2020, election, Democrats held a 232-197 advantage in the U.S. House. Libertarians held one seat, and five seats were vacant. All 435 seats were up for election, with Republicans needing to gain a net 21 seats to win a majority in the chamber.

In 2018, Democrats gained a net 40 seats to win a majority. Republicans had held a majority in the chamber since 2010.

Ballotpedia tracked 41 districts as battleground races: 20 held by Democrats heading into the election, 20 held by Republicans, and one held by a Libertarian. Democrats defended 30 seats that President Trump carried in 2016, while Republicans defended five seats that Hillary Clinton carried that year.

In 2020, 49 U.S. House seats were open, meaning the incumbent was not running for re-election. Thirty-six of those seats were open because the incumbent did not run for re-election, eight were open because the incumbent was defeated in a primary or party convention, and five were open due to a vacancy.

On this page, you will find:

The number of filed candidates by political party

A list of districts that changed party hands in 2018

The Houses Balance Of Power Is Tipped Toward Democrats

The Democrats;have a narrow six-member margin in the current House of Representatives, meaning if just a handful of seats flip, Republicans can regain control of the House.

Democrats;advantage;will grow to seven when Troy Carter is sworn in;to fill a seat in Louisianas delegation left vacant;by Cedric Richmond, who left the House to join the Biden administration as the director of the White House Office of Public Engagement.;

Recommended Reading: Why Do Republicans Really Want To Repeal Obamacare

Opinion: House Republicans Have Two Critical Advantages In 2022

Democrats hold the balance of power in Washington, D.C., but their margin is wafer-thin: Joe Biden is president, and the party controls both houses of Congress only very narrowly. Theyve already enacted $1.9 trillion of economic stimulus. Theyre haggling with Republicans over the size of a bipartisan infrastructure bill. And theyre keen to pass a new voting rights law, although moderate Sen. Joe Manchin III might scuttle the effort.

Still, their time in the majority might be limited. We live in an era of bitter, closely divided elections. And in 2022, Republicans have two advantages that might soon give them the edge in the House.

The Republicans first advantage: The other party holds the White House. If Biden follows the path of other recent presidents, hell spend political capital, navigate crises and lose supporters in the process.

Barack Obama summarized this dynamic two years into his presidency: In the rush of activity, sometimes we lose track of the ways that we connected with folks that got us here in the first place. This is true of nearly every recent president. Ronald Reagan lost supporters as the 1981-82 recession tore through the economy. Obama alienated swing voters and energized tea party activists as he tried to advance the Affordable Care Act in Congress. And Bill Clinton lost voters when he attempted to pass a health-care reform bill of his own.

The GOPs second advantage: It draws the lines.

Comparison To The Senate

Democrats take House, Republicans keep Senate in historic midterms

As a check on the regional, popular, and rapidly changing politics of the House, the Senate has several distinct powers. For example, the “advice and consent” powers are a sole Senate privilege. The House, however, has the exclusive power to initiate bills for raising revenue, to impeach officials, and to choose the president if a presidential candidate fails to get a majority of the Electoral College votes. The Senate and House are further differentiated by term lengths and the number of districts represented: the Senate has longer terms of six years, fewer members , and larger constituencies per member. The Senate is referred to as the “upper” house, and the House of Representatives as the “lower” house.

Recommended Reading: Who Raises More Money Democrats Or Republicans

Republicans Win Fewer Votes But More Seats Than Democrats

Republicans controlled the post2010 redistricting process in the four states, and drew new lines that helped the GOP win the bulk of the House delegation in each. Republicans captured 13 of 18 seats in Pennsylvania, 12 of 16 in Ohio, nine of 14 in Michigan, and five of eight in Wisconsin. Added together, that was 39 seats for the Republicans and 17 seats for the Democrats in the four proObama states.

The key to GOP congressional success was to cluster the Democratic vote into a handful of districts, while spreading out the Republican vote elsewhere. In Pennsylvania, for example, Republicans won nine of their 13 House seats with less than 60% of the vote, while Democrats carried three of their five with more than 75%.

One of the latter was the Philadelphiabased 2nd District, where 356,386 votes for Congress were tallied. Not only was it the highest number of ballots cast in any district in the state, but Democratic Rep. Chaka Fattah won 318,176 of the votes. It was the largest number received by any House candidate in the country in 2012, Democrat or Republican. If some of these Democratic votes had been unclustered and distributed to other districts nearby, the party might have won a couple more seats in the Philadelphia area alone.

The Closest House Races of 2012

NARROW DEMOCRATIC WINNERS

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A Side By Side Comparison of Nicholas Sarwark & Joshua Smith

Coming off the most successful Libertarian Party presidential campaign since 1980, interparty conflict and controversy have been the name of the game over the last two years. The success of the Johnson/Weld ticket has placed Libertarians in a unique situation full of potential for membership growth and increasing the spread of the idea of liberty.

Because of the divide of opinions on how the LP can progress, the Libertarian National Committee positions have been hotly contested between those who believe something needs to drastically change within in the party and those who believe the current leadership have been excellent.

The 2016 presidential election left many criticizing the nomination of Bill Weld as Vice President, as Weld’s Republican record included many controversial decisions any libertarian would find appalling, and this culminated into a bigger issue after Weld appeared to have endorsed Hillary Clinton only days before the election was to take place.

Others felt that Weld was a positive force for the party due to his ability to fundraise and the name recognition he brought with him, which they felt played a significant role to the most successful presidential campaign in the party’s history.

The issue of the Weld nomination went on to create a large divide between the more pragmatic Libertarians focusing on electoral success, and those who wanted bolder, highly principled messaging.

In the extended aftermath, there are many Libertarians who feel that the Party leadership is preventing progress and withholding a brighter future for the Libertarian party, which has led to a Libertarian National Committee Chairman race as fiery and contentious as the 2016 election itself.

Frontrunners Nicholas Sarwark, incumbent Chair and candidate for Mayor of Phoenix, AZ, and Joshua Smith, Washington Libertarian and Think Liberty cofounder, have been at the center of the conspiracy and drama that has plagued this race.

This article seeks to compare the two candidates and document the many controversies that each has endured throughout the race.

Nicholas Sarwark

Background

Nicholas Sarwark is the Vice President of his family-owned used car dealership and was a public defender in Colorado. The incumbent also has experience in computer consulting and sales. He is married and has four children.

In 1999, he joined the Libertarian party where over the years he served as the Vice Chairman of the Colorado Libertarian Party and later the Chairman of the Libertarian Party of Maryland. During his term in Maryland “he played a key role in recruiting the state’s 42 Libertarian candidates for 2014, as well as supporting the passage of Colorado’s historic marijuana legalization initiative in 2012.”

Sarwark was elected as Chairman of the Libertarian National Committee in 2014 defeating the previous incumbent in the first ballot by 6% and 13% in the second ballot. He was reelected in 2016 with 64.7% of the vote.

The Chairman is currently also running for Mayor of Phoenix.

Platform

Due to having to perform the duties of Chair, Sarwark has not been campaigning heavily until this month.

From his website he states:

“Since my re-election in 2016 at the national convention in Orlando, the Libertarian Party has achieved historic success. Our Presidential ticket tripled previous records, our party has ballot access in more states after a Presidential election than ever before, and we’re getting ballot access back in places like Ohio. We’ve added staff to improve development, media relations, and candidate recruitment and support, in addition to the affiliate support efforts started during my first term as Chair. More elected officials from the old parties are defecting to the Libertarian Party than we’ve seen in over a decade. It would be my honor if you would re-elect me to continue growing our party at the national convention in New Orleans.”

For the future Sarwark intends to have “Over 1,000 candidates across the country, more than we’ve had in over 15 years” as well as “50 state + DC ballot access in back-to-back Presidential elections for the first time since the mid-1990s, Providing tools and support to state affiliates to empower them to organize and move public policy in a Libertarian direction at the state and local level,” and “Developing issue campaigns and other efforts to prospect to people who are not Libertarian yet.”

On his Facebook page he released a video on making the Libertarian Party more welcoming.

He has also explained the importance of a candidate’s relations to donors stating “If you are a candidate, you have a duty to your donors and supporters to use their resources wisely.

If you hide things from them, they will feel betrayed when the truth comes out.

Manage expectations, have a plan to deal with negativity and attacks, and be honest.

Good stewardship is more important than good ideas, nice clothes, or a great speaking voice.”

Controversies

Many have accused Sarwark of potentially alienating prominent libertarians and certain groups interested in becoming party members.

The first instance of this was when the Chair claimed in February 2017 that Milo Yiannopolous was going to “publicly name undocumented students in hopes that they would be reported to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and be deported from this country,” at his speech in Berkeley continuing to state that “He reportedly intended to use his platform to out others to hurt them in an attempt to get attention. This is despicable behavior. It helps explain why others made the choice to use violence to try to stop or disrupt his speech.”

Sarwark’s casual big-tent statements have caused some members to accuse of him of supporting Antifa and espousing left-leaning sympathies, including Libertarian Heathen founder and Regional 4 representative of the LP Florida Ryan Ramsey who claimed “Any question as to whether Mr. Sarwark was a lover of liberty, or a Cultural Marxist attempting to hold back the advance of the Libertarian Party, were (sic) answered when he made national news repeating lies about Milo Yiannopoulos, subject of the violence in Berkley, when he insinuated bloodshed to stop free speech was ‘understandable.’”

Counter to these allegations, Sarwark had included in his statement that violence intended to halt speech was “despicable” and that the real travesty was that we have a country that removes citizens “because they were born on the wrong side of an imaginary line.”

Part of this controversy also derives from his making a comment on Twitter “TFW all you learned from Murray Rothbard was his worst political strategy ever,” towards Mises Institute contributor Tom Woods in August 2017, and after many slews between the two, he ultimately stated this:

In February 2018, a text conversation between LP convention chairman Daniel Hayes and LP Mises Caucus leader Michael Heise stating that Ron Paul would not be considered for a speaker at the convention. Heise had offered to pay for Paul’s speaking fee, though it was revealed by libertarian social media outlet Dankertarians that the funds had yet to be obtained and that negotiations for the potential speech were still in progress. The Mises Caucus leader had hoped that by selling their cause that the former US Congressman would waive his fee.

The notable spat between Sarwark and Tom Woods led to criticism that the Libertarian Party leadership no longer represented the Liberty Movement. Ron Paul himself chimed in, asking rhetorically if this meant the Libertarian Party would be refunding him a gold coin he had previously donated that had paid his way into lifetime membership in the Party. Nicholas Sarwark stated on Twitter that the former LP presidential candidate would be more than welcome to speak if he were to attend the convention.

The concern surrounding the question of whether Ron Paul would be allowed to speak at the 2018 Convention was primarily twisted from the underlying outrage that Paul had simply not been invited.

The internal controversies surrounding Sarwark later peaked the interest of unaffiliated, and previously uninterested, groups. The Free Thought Project released an article in March suggesting that Nicholas Sarwark could potentially be an informant to the “Shadow CIA” intelligence group Stratfor due to his named being found on Wikileaks’ “Global Intelligence Files.”

Sarwark explained that he had received a gift membership to Stratfor’s publication, which matched Stratfor’s statement in 2011 when they were hacked by Wikileaks.

Joshua Smith

Background

Joshua Smith has been an active member of the Liberty Movement since 2008, contributing to Dankertarians and later cofounding the libertarian publication Think Liberty whose stated goal is to “[promote] individualism, peace, and freedom.”

Smith currently serves the Libertarian Party of Washington as their Region 5 Representative and has been rigorously working to set up new county affiliates.

After the 9/11 attacks, Joshua Smith joined the Navy where he saw “a lot of wasteful spending and loss of lives.” After hearing Ron Paul speak sometime after 2005, he realized that libertarian views matched what he was thinking during this period and decided to campaign for Paul’s presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012.

He briefly joined the Libertarian Party in 2010, but discontinued donating to do his own activism. In 2016, he moved to Washington and became a member of the party again, where he became region rep at his first state convention.

Platform

Smith announced his platform originally in September 2017:

“Enable local leaders: County and state chairs should have all the resources necessary to grow the party effectively. Infrastructure should be arranged in a way that allows us to put these leaders through educational systems to gain the tools they need to properly lead and grow their local affiliates and state parties in a principled fashion. Those in leadership should be passing on educational information about how to create successful digital and social marketing campaigns, and hold successful events. We must offer more support to state and local candidates. We have more Libertarian candidates running nationwide than ever before, and there have been several that could have been more successful with a little more promotion from the LNC.

Clean up the party: We need to reaffirm our principles as a party and let all who refuse to accept them know that in this time of growth, they have no place at the table. This is short and sweet, and while it shouldn’t be something we have to debate, we have come to a point where it needs to be yelled from the rooftops. Violent collectivists wishing to twist our platforms to fit their agendas are not welcome

Focus on retention and amplification of donations and memberships: When I became a member of the Libertarian Party, it took me five months to get my card, and it took me weeks to finally find the person I needed to speak with to become involved with my local affiliate. This will be a thing of the past. Every new member will receive an onboarding kit full of materials for education on outreach, including brochures they can give to others who are interested in learning more about our ideas. We need to be inspiring and enabling new members of the party with the contacts, and tools they need to move forward in their fight for liberty. We can’t expect new members to be enthusiastic about spreading the ideals of liberty if we don’t act as though we’re happy to have them.

Effective and efficient marketing: We need marketing campaigns and outreach that 1. Members of the party don’t quit the party over and 2. Help build the party. What National does right should be getting passed on to state and county entities as well. We will grow and improve together through our sharing of methods and strategies. If there is a county affiliate struggling with outreach, there should be information and channels of support quickly available for these individuals to help them solve the problems they face.”

Controversies

Smith has been under much scrutiny for associating with individuals (Party members and otherwise) who have been accused of having nationalist and alt-right views. His early endorsement by the LP Mises Caucus signaled to some that he has ties to paleolibertarian and nationalist sects of the Liberty Movement, many of which are typically deemed problematic.

During an online debate between the Chair candidate and the Libertarian Anti-fascist committee, Smith was allegedly calling associates in the American Guard, a group labeled as white nationalists by the Anti-Defamation League (and which identifies as a group of nationalists that promote freedom of association, discipline, and law as methods to secure freedom, according to their website) to vouch for his character.

“The exchange which took place on our page the other day directly disproves these denials, and shows that Joshua is more than just ‘associated’ with these people but in fact that he has them in close orbit. Mr Smith was able to trigger an infestation of prominent organizers with just a single tag, who promptly showed up to vouch for him and be vouched for in return,” stated the Libertarian Anti-fascist Committee in their post.

Smith has addressed this controversy claiming that he does not support white nationalism or the alt-right, and citing a speech he gave after the Charlottesville riots. He has also denied any admiration of the eccentric far-right activist Augustus Invictus when he visited the LP of Florida.

Sexual harassment allegations also emerged in April in which Smith was accused of participating in inappropriate commentary towards Tinisha Paschal, Montana Libertarian and spouse to Joe Paschal (who was running for Vice Chairman at the time). Smith claimed that the accusations were false and that Alicia Dearn had used the story to defame him.

“I am well aware that sexual harassment is a problem within the Libertarian Party, and it is my goal to be a part of the solution. As any member of the Think Liberty Community can tell you, I have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to this topic. I am also aware that our party has a problem with members making false accusations against other members in an effort to sway public opinion when they can’t win on principle. I can assure you that, as Chairman of the Libertarian National Committee, you will never see me use rumor, innuendo, or outright lies and deceit to advance myself or harm others, for that is not the appropriate way to handle ANY situation — not by me or by anyone seeking leadership in the Libertarian Party,” responded Smith.

Controversy hasn’t slowed down since this, as leaked court documents appear to show Smith owing tens of thousands of dollars in child support. The impropriety is magnified by the alleged character assassination of his ex, which was published by the Trigger Report (and later taken down). Most recently, Chairman candidate and Dankertarians founder Matt Kuehnel shared an e-mail where Smith was threatening to sue the him for $80,000 for alleged blackmail

Conclusion

Though it may seem discouraging that the Libertarian Party is having an identity crisis between being the pragmatic types and those who believe the way to move forward is through promoting more radical candidates, the fact that so many have become involved in a race for the LNC’s Chariman should bring hope for an active body of Libertarians for 2020.

Nicholas Sarwark and Joshua Smith have encouraged more and more people to become involved in the inner workings of the Libertarian machine. A plethora of ideas can bring much conflict, but it also allows for collaboration and the creation of new and better ones for the future.

Regardless of who wins the Chairman position, the Party can be assured that many have been reinvigorated to become involved, and that the races of 2020 will be both bolder and brighter.

The post A Side By Side Comparison of Nicholas Sarwark & Joshua Smith appeared first on Being Libertarian.

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