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winterpinetrees · 3 months

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The Gap Years - June 11th

The road trip kids wake up on the first real day of their adventure. Plans are considered, elf society is rightfully mocked, but mostly I just infodump. :)

i am beating back the cringe emotions with a stick. this is the cringe website. let me post about my homegrown blorbos, brain.

June 11th 2019

Lakeport, California

The realization of where he is and what is going on hits Brian in waves.

He’s a good sleeper (he travels enough that he has to be), but this doesn’t seem to be his room. Brian lifts his head and his chest hurts, and it’s not a falling off of a dirt bike/surfboard into a tree/sandbar at a frighteningly fast velocity type of hurt either. He winces, and his arm hits something else.

Ah. The second realization. He’s sharing a bed. Contrary to popular belief, he does not do this very often. Light is already pouring in through the curtains, so it doesn’t take Brian long to realize that the other person is Clay. He still looks asleep. That makes sense. Brian has always been an early riser. He sits up in bed and looks around. Cheap curtains, beige walls, a blurry photo of a lake? They must be in a motel. Yes. He’s just graduated high school and now he’s going on a road trip with his friends. Brian swings his feet onto the ground and stands. He walks to the bathroom, but sees something else on the ground between the two twin beds. A pile of clothes? He approaches. It’s a person under a blanket. That’s when he remembers the magic, the sword slash, and the blood that might still be under his fingernails because he refused to spend half an hour washing it off like Lady Macbeth. The person on the floor is a prince. Brian is responsible for his safety and by extension the fate of the world. How the hell did he get here? (He enthusiastically volunteered, that’s how.)

Over the next few minutes, Brian cautiously wakes up both of his friends. They have some things to discuss that they don’t want Marin to overhear. They move to the other side of the small room and gather in an awkward huddle.

“We are harboring an alien prince,” Clay types out onto his cell phone. He guessed that elves had very good hearing, and convinced everyone else to do the same. “We need some plan for if he turns on us. He can control our minds”.

They’d asked Marin last night if there was any visible sign that someone had been charmed. He said yes, but only if the charmed person was aware of it, which never happened unless the attacker was overconfident or rushing. Not very reassuring.

“Like what? There’s very little we can do about that”. Sierra replies. She is typing on that infamous computer, and doing it very quickly.

“Maybe we agree to talk to each other and call out weird stuff? S, we've already been doing that“. The girl nods. Clay was taking forever to type anyway.

Brian understands. He's the only one who's trusted Marin at all. “So the plan is to be skeptical of everything”.

“That way we'll be aware of anything that is changed”. Clay wears glasses that are a little too big and stubbornly refuses to do anything with his long brown hair. He looks perfectly ordinary, a bit disheveled, and it’s entirely on purpose. He puts the phone down and starts speaking. Apparently, this bit isn’t classified. “What do we know so far?”

Among other things, they know that Prince Marin Sondaica is 86 years old, stuck in between physical adulthood at 81 and full social adulthood at 108. (Just like how they’re all old enough to vote and drive but not drink or be considered separate from their parents). The elf world is parallel to theirs, with the capital existing in the same place as San Francisco. It’s a single global dictatorship with two associations of noble families fighting for control. Marin's family was reasonable enough, but Gens Mercuralis did a coup and is trying to take over the world. They should have a year or two until elves become common knowledge and the status quo collapses.

Then Sierra adds what she knows from years of university lab internships and overheard conversations. If you see a flash of color, especially green, prepare to run or fight or die. Magic is enough like radiation that a modified geiger counter can tell you if danger is near. Elves seem to avoid fighting underground. They’re very careful to not get caught on camera.

Brian turns his head and sees a cat’s eye glow in the dark. Their new friend is awake. Sierra and Clay seem to think there isn’t anything special about Marin, but he knows better. Brian is very familiar with how people move, and Marin is just a bit too quick. More than that, he moves very quietly. It reminds him of how he’s heard friends talk about parkour (land quietly, work with your body, reduce the impact on your joints), and he wonders again just how fragile elves are.

The prince approaches the group and they talk. They need a plan to stay alive, and they’re kind of a mess. Marin explains that they shouldn’t be attacked unless they are either alone, or somewhere elves can plan an ambush and keep things secret. It’s counterintuitive, but they need a human shield. Marin also has some ideas about elven settlements in the human world that might be sympathetic to them. Elves who love wild humanity will probably oppose the new government’s plan. Unfortunately, that means that Ishtar has probably sent soldiers to subdue them. Every visit will be a gamble. They might find allies, but they could also very easily get killed. Maybe it would be better if they traveled on their own for a bit.

...

So they get in the car and drive again. They eat breakfast at the most crowded place they can find and drive towards a hardware store where Sierra can buy a geiger counter. They come up with a system. Brian drives, Clay rides shotgun with the concussion rifle under his seat, Sierra googles things and tinkers with the geiger counter, and Marin tries his best to cast a more permanent illusion over the car. They listen to music from whatever radio stations they’re driving by, pester Marin with questions about his past, and plot a jagged course up California.

“Who else was in the human world when the coup happened? If you can switch between worlds so easily, there must have been some other people who got away”. Brian is a student of history. He knows a bit about how coups go, but mostly he's just curious about the magical society next door.

Marin stares out the window at miles and miles of farmland. “I can’t be sure. Genus Sondaica had over twenty people in it before the coup, and four of them were about my age. Those are the ones that were most likely to escape. We’re old enough to defend ourselves, but not influential enough to be primary targets”. His voice is very level. “But our genus also has allies. Each of those has even more people, but there’s no way of knowing who’s… left.”

A few seconds pass before Sierra speaks. “Yeah, but who was here before the coup? You didn’t know anything had happened, remember? You just brainwashed us for fun. Who else would do that?”

“The only one I'm certain of is Zerada Adust, my betrothed”.

Woah. Hold on a second. Brian knows that the elves have a hereditary noble class, but his betrothed? “You're betrothed to someone?”

“Ah. That’s not a Western concept anymore, is it? Most of the high nobility are betrothed to someone. It is important for keeping the nobility strong”.

Brian blinks. “Arranging marriages to try and keep an elite class 'strong' has caused some pretty big problems on earth”. Like, the fall of several dynasties.

Sierra rolls her eyes. "Marin, if you're using how messed up your society is to avoid talking about your girlfriend, it's working".

He looks around at the car. “Magical power is mostly genetic,” he adds as if that makes the statement more acceptable instead of less.

“And that's eugenics. That is also not good. Clay, are you still in favor of the elves taking over the world?” Brian adds. He does not know what to do with this information.

She laughs. “And they’re a monarchy too, remember that?”

“I was under a lot of stress!” Clay replies. "Between that and proposing a quest, I think what I said was a lot more normal".

Brian laughs to clear the air, but it sounds fake. Despite his family history, He doesn't believe in taking the easy way out. There's nothing wrong with choosing to stay and fight. They can't afford to be fighting now though, so he lets the conversation continue and keeps his eyes on the road.

#by me #my oc stuff #the gap years #writing that *is*#the road trip

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achilleanfemme · 2 years

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To Win Trans/Queer Freedom, There Are No Shortcuts

The clout chasing has already begun. After any mass tragedy, like yesterday’s shooting at Club Q, a queer nightclub in Colorado Spring, there’s a move to politicize the events from the liberal center of US-American politics. I would argue that amongst no marginalized community is this push towards liberal assimilation, and movement co-optation, worse than amongst LGBTQ people. I have already seen the tweets of liberal politicians asking for liberal LGBTQ “organizers” (campaign workers) to “drop their venmos/cash-apps/zelles/etc” so that “they can get paid in the wake of such a tragedy”. The level of unapologetic clout chasing is honestly galling. Bodies are not even in the ground and they’re already asking for people to give money to LGBTQ Democratic candidates. It’s disgusting.

Liberal assimilationist forces in the LGBTQ movement have been around for a very long time. Timothy Stewart-Winter’s Queer Clout: Chicago and the Rise of Gay Politics well documents the neoliberal turn of white gay men in Chicago towards Democratic Party politics and away from street action and mass organizing, as a means of assimilating into the liberal status quo, instead of challenging it. This turn continues to contemporarely benefit a small minority of LGBTQ people, especially (but not exclusively) gays and lesbians, while the rest of us trans and queer people are hung out to dry. Civil rights victories like same-sex marriage, which itself represented an assimilationist turn in trans and queer politics, have not ushered in a wave of continued mass organizing for expanded civil and social rights for LGBTQ people. As many trans organizers and scholars have pointed out, the “marriage equality” victory in 2015 represented the collapse of organizing infrastructure and the end of lesbian and gay politics being done on a national scale.

Liberal politicians, social media influencers, and journalists, both queer and non-queer, love to point out that trans and queer people of color were the ones who “threw the first brick at Stonewall”. Every June there are endless articles about “10 Ways to Support Trans Women of Color” and “50 LGBTQ People that Lead the Way for Equality” yet the radical politics of folks like Sylvia Rivera and Lorraine Hansberry are rarely acknowledged, and the contemporary movement implications of their work are never acknowledged. This is because the forces of assimilation in LGBTQ liberalism would be called into question if these implications were put to the forefront of public discussions of politics amongst trans and queer people.

The contemporary radical implications of our queer ancestors and foreparents are clear. It is time for that we build a radical trans and queer movement in the United States of America rooted in Black feminism, PIC abolition, trans liberation, and economic justice. Events like yesterday’s mass killing at Club Q and the Trans Day of Rememberance are not going to become less frequent while trans and queer people hold no political power in society outside of the Democratic Party establishment. We need to organize to pass the Equality Act and fight beyond it. We need to fight to free all trans and queer immigrants and asylum seekers locked in cages for seeking safety outside of their countries of origin. We need to fight to free all trans and queer people from prison. We need to fight to end the prosecution of trans women of color for acting in self-defense against violent men. We need to fight for housing for all, trans-inclusive medicare for all, free abortion on demand without apology, jobs for all, food for all, and disability benefits that are easily accessible and paid at a thriveable level. We need to fight for a globally just, decolonial, anti-militarist Green New Deal that divests from death-making institutions and invests in live-giving institutions so that trans and queer peoples of the Global Majority have the ability to stay and thrive in their places of origin without fear of US-backed coups, imperial wars, or climate catastrophe destabilizing their countries of origin, leading to violence that harms them the most.

The legacy of our trans and queer foreparents is a legacy of radical resistance to the World as it is and a radical reimagining of the World as it could be. If we continue to let liberal LGBTQ clout chasers who want to run for office, be social media influencers, or head non-profit organizations lead us down the path of assimilation, many more of us will die. If we let ultra-left anonymous twitter accounts lead us away from mass politics and towards focusing exclusively on armed self-defense and mutual aid, many more of us will die. To paraphrase Jane McAlevey, to win Trans/Queer freedom in our lifetimes, there are no shortcuts.

#trans #transgender #trans liberation #trans freedom #trans rights #queer #queer community #queer politics #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtqia #gay pride #gay #social justice #socialism #economic justice #feminism #abolition

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fleurdumal117 · 2 years

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Barcelona, ecofeminism and me

CW: climate change, societal collapse, hipsters.

I went to Spain recently for a long weekend to visit some flatmates from years ago. Stefanie now lives in Stockholm and has a successful career at multinational conglomerate. Isa doesn’t work and squats in an abandoned building just outside of Barcelona with thirty other people. I’m the one that makes sure we get together at least once every four years. We’re a mismatched bunch.

Barcelona has always had a tough time with its cultural identity, but COVID-19 and the global rise of populism seem not to have helped much since the last time I visited the city in 2016. On this most recent visit, a general strike and various demonstrations were set to take place in protest against new draconian labour laws. Well, it was January and still a bit too cold for the beach, so we attended a couple of public lectures on various topical subjects. It seemed like the thing to do.

I looked around at the other audience members - edgy, young, covered head-to-toe in tattoos and piercings. There are some spaces where I can pass for ‘alternative’. Barcelona is not one of them.

We sat through a talk on ecofeminism by a woman from Andalucía who lived quasi off-the-grid. She began the talk by saying how, since we’d all sat and listened to academics for ages, she would begin her lecture by playing a short piece of music over the speakers and improvise an interpretative dance “to embody the concepts of eco-feminism and eco-socialism”. She invited the audience members to do the same if they wished.

The music played and the lecturer began to move her body freely before us. I noticed others in the audience stand up and start to move, too.

To my left, I hear Isa wanting to join in – “¿Y si nos ponemos de pie y nos cogemos de la mano?” – British and embarrassed, I complied. We three stood up, too, and held hands as a show of solidarity with… Feminism? Mother Earth? The talk hadn’t actually started yet, so I didn’t know.

The speaker continued her movements. Then all of a sudden she crouched down to her haunches and started screaming.

The talk itself that followed this strange interval was actually pretty good. I learnt that ecofeminism is a rich web of factions, all with competing ideas and priorities, but who ultimately all believe that unfettered capitalism steered by systemic patriarchy are Bad ThingsTM, and that women and the Earth are among those most negatively impacted. The proposed solutions? Economic ‘degrowth’, less consumption, and greater respect for natural resources. I’m sure I’m oversimplifying it, but that appeared to be the gist.

Oh, and the developed world is apparently headed towards some sort of mass societal collapse. Or rather, “estamos en ello” – it’s already started – which I heard again and again, and so it’s not a bad idea to start preparing for massive changes to our way of life. It was all quite alarming. The Russian invasion of Ukraine hadn’t happened yet, but the cost of living was already going up across Europe and it was clear how much Barcelona, long known for its booming tourism industry, was hurting from Covid.

What did it all mean? The dancing, the screaming, the discussing of the ways in which we would all adjust to el colapso? I think overall that “consume less of what you don’t need” is prudent advice, and that greedily harvesting the Earth’s finite resources was always going to bite us in the arse one day. But are we really headed towards global catastrophe?

Before COVID-19 happened, before Brexit, Trump and Russia-Ukraine, I think I would have been sceptical of that idea. But then again, I also wouldn’t have rated our society’s chances of weathering a global pandemic, either. And we did come through it… sort of. The quality of governmental responses to the crisis will be fuel for furious op-eds for generations to come (and rightly so). But as individuals I think that many of us were compelled to find a strength within us that we didn’t know we had.

Maybe that will happen again. Maybe geo-engineering will allow us to avoid the worst of climate change. Maybe Isa had it right and we should all hold hands and sing Kumbaya to defeat populism and late-stage capitalism and the creeping influence of fascism in the West.

I don’t know. And I’m scared of what’s coming. I hope we’re equal to it.

#barcelona #spain #covid #ukraine #russia #trump #brexit #late stage capitalism #climate change #climate catastrophe #degrowth #ecofeminism #ecosocialism #pandemic #collapse #geoengineering #feminism

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dritaphoto · 2 years

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If the u s defaults on its debt

#If the u s defaults on its debt series

And (2) the leadership in place appears to have some bold plans in place to set America on a path to be more profitable, both internally, and on the international front. So, to come back around to the worrisome headline regarding the possibility of the government defaulting on their debts, I am inclined to think that (1) Inasmuch as it has never happened yet, no matter how bad things have gotten, it is not likely to happen now. Similarly, during a conversation with Yahoo Finance Live on Monday, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg laid out next steps once the "ink is dry" on the bill to get that money out, and how he's “making sure the American people see the most possible impact.” Diving into exactly what that means, Buttigieg gave people a sense of what to expect: “In practical terms, part of that means routing new dollars through old plumbing, so to speak.” The new $1T infrastructure legislation signed by President Biden on the 15th, sets aside $65 billion for America’s spotty broadband system, the culmination of a years-long effort to make changes to how Americans get online. The Bipartisan Policy Center is also keeping a close watch on this matter, as everyone recognizes that the matter is inextricably tied into the infrastructure investments that are desperately needed (and already earmarked) for the future of the US economy. But the transfer would count against the debt ceiling, as the funds would be invested in non-marketable Treasury securities. 15, a month after President Joe Biden's signing of a sweeping infrastructure bill on Monday. She said the Treasury would be able to make a $118 billion transfer to the Highway Trust Fund required on Dec. 3, giving Congress more time to raise the federal debt ceiling as lawmakers also consider a massive social spending and climate bill. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Tuesday extended a deadline for a potential U.S. dollar as a global unit of account.”ĭays after that, the BBC chimed in similarly: “No one really knows exactly what would happen, but the likelihood is that markets around the world would plunge and global interest rates would rise.” BUT - they added: “Has the US defaulted before?

#If the u s defaults on its debt series

default would set off a series of events, including a depreciating dollar and surging inflation, that I believe would likely lead to the abandonment of the U.S. economy would most likely sink back into recession… A U.S. The dollar’s value could collapse, and the U.S. Tens of millions of Americans and thousands of companies that depend on government support could suffer. Their worst case scenario goes like this: “Investors such as pension funds and banks holding U.S. They cited the instance of political ambitions between the two parties in August 2011 leading to “an unprecedented downgrade of the United States’ credit rating, which caused markets to plunge.” sovereign debt generally has been considered the safest and most liquid to own in the world, and all kinds of financial market products and processes have been pegged to the orderly functioning of the nearly $21 trillion Treasury market.”Ī mere week later, The Conversation chose to go with an alarmist headline: “If the US defaults on debt, expect the dollar to fall – and with it, Americans’ standard of living”. Treasury will run out of money to pay its bills, including bondholders, let alone what would happen next. Market Watch gave a solid response to these questions just two days before Forbes ruffled so many feathers: “It’s important to note that no one knows precisely when the U.S. So, it begs the questions: Can it really happen? When would it happen? And, what next? Some would blame the Democrats or Republicans, but all politics aside, “ the national debt has risen regardless of which party is in control.” Small business loans will become costlier as private lenders are forced to increase their interest rates.” Well, we all know that headlines can be a bit click-baity, so let’s begin by making sure we are all referencing the same dictionary here: running searches under “what would actually happen if the us defaulted on its debt”īack in October (yes, this has been going back and forth for a while) Forbes declared that it would be catastrophic for small businesses.įorbes offered the following as a very brief summary of what would really happen if the US government defaulted on its debt: “Defaulting on the debt would lead to an automatic downgrade of the country's credit rating, driving up interest rates for all Americans. Starting with the headline from Yahoo Finance 06:16, “US government could default ‘as soon as mid-December’ without action: Analysts”

#If the u s defaults on its debt

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tonkitour · 2 years

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Equation maker using points

#Equation maker using points series#

This logic undermines the elements that are most needed to survive disasters: care, social trust, and mutual aid. As the already vulnerable suffer from climate catastrophes, those who are protected and already powerful will increase their domination, especially if they do so under the guise of the “benevolent patriarch” that promises to protect us from disorder. Thus, the climate crisis is more likely to lead to the intensification of current power structures, globally and within nations. Drawing upon Iris Marion Young’s “logic of masculinist protection” I argue that the fear of social collapse tends to make us seek protection by giving more power to those in charge of the political system, while we lose trust in each other. The current climate crisis is terrifying, but what we should fear is not the collapse of social order as we know it but its continuation. This lecture argues that this fear might be misguided. Social collapse is also a prevalent theme in in contemporary culture and popular entertainment. For some scholars, the collapse of human civilisation and even human extinction are real possibilities. We are already seeing the disastrous consequences of the climate crisis around the planet, and as global carbon emissions keep rising the future is uncertain.

#Equation maker using points series#

Just enter you own examples above and they will be calculated immediately step-by-step.Ole Martin Sandberg is the first lecturer of the RIKK and GRÓ-GEST Lecture Series for Spring 2020 with a lecture entitled “Climate Crisis and “the Logic of Masculinist Protection.”” The lecture will be held Thursday 23 January, 12:00-13:00, at the Lecture Hall of the National Museum. To find the equation of the function, you have to insert a point and get an equation which gives the y-axis intercept. To calculate the slope m, use the formulaĪs we can see, the slope was calculated first. This means: You calculate the difference of the y-coordinates and divide it by the difference of the x-coordinates. How to calculate the equation of a linear function from two given points?įirst, we have to calculate the slope m by inserting the x- and y- coordinates of the points into the formula. Therefore, the equation of the function is General form of the linear function: f(x)=mx+b Here is an example: Lets assume we know that our function has slope and goes through (-2|5).Ĭalculate the y-axis intercept b by inserting: the one coordinate for x and the other one for f(x). You have to insert the point into the equation, i.e. How to calculate the equation of the line from a point and the slope? If you take a look on the function graphs, you see that intersects the y-axis at intersects the y-axis at. As the name says, it says where the function cuts the y-axis. The y-line intercept is the number at the end of the function. What is the y-line intercept of a linear function? This means whenever we go one square to the right, we have to go three squares down to be on the graph again. If we go one square to the right of any point on the graph, we have to go two squares up to be on the graph again.Īnother example, this time with negative slope: It says how may units you have to go up / down if you go one unit to the right. The slope of a linear function corresponds to the number in front of the x. The graph of a linear function is always a line.Ī similar word to linear function is linear correlation. Here is an example:ĭein Browser unterstützt den HTML-Canvas-Tag nicht. The general form of a linear function is, where m is the slope and b is the y-axis intercept. A linear function is a function whose graph is a line.

#Equation maker using points

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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 years

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Taxes are for the little people

If you wanna do crimes, make them incredibly complicated and technical. Like the hustlers that came into the bookstore I worked at and spun these long-ass stories about why they needed money for a Greyhound ticket home.

Those guys shoulda studied the private equity sector.

Private equity's playbook is to borrow giant sums by putting up other peoples' companies as collateral (yes, really). Then they use that money to buy the company they mortgaged, and pay themselves a huge dividend.

Then they sell off the company's assets and pay themselves even more money. That leaves the company in a state of precarity - assets they once owned, like their buildings, they now rent. If the rent goes up, they have to find the money to cover it.

All of this forms a pretense for mass layoffs, defaulting on pension obligations, lowering product quality, stiffing suppliers and borrowing more money. If the company doesn't go bust, the PE looters can flip it to *another* PE company, that does it again.

Whenever you see something really terrible happening to a business that once offered useful products and services and paid decent wages, it's a safe bet that PE is behind it. Toys R Us, Sears, your local hospital - and that memestock favorite, AMC.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/12/mammon-worshippers/#silver-lake-partners

Private equity goons make their money in two ways: the first is by pocketing 20% of these special dividends and other extractive policies that hollow out business.

This is money at PE managers get paid for spending their investors' money. It's a wage, in other words.

But thanks to the "carried interest" loophole (a hangover from 16th-century sea captains that has nothing to do with "interest" on loans), they get to treat these wages as "capital gains" and pay far less tax on them.

The fact that we give preferential tax treatment to capital gains (money derived from gambling), while taxing wages (money derived from doing useful work) at higher rates really tells you everything you need to know about our economic priorities.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/29/writers-must-be-paid/#carried-interest

The carried interest loophole lets PE crooks treat their salaries as capital gains, are taxed at a much lower rate than the wages of the workers whose lives they're destroying.

On top of the 20% profit-share that PE bosses get every year, they also pocket a 2% "management fee" for all the "value" they add to the companies they've taken over.

This is *definitely* a wage. The 20% profit-share at least has an element of risk, but that 2% is guaranteed.

But PE bosses have spent more than a decade booking that 2% wage as a capital gain, using a tax-fraud tactic called "fee waivers." The details of how a fee waiver don't matter because it's all bullshit, like the tale of the needful Greyhound ticket.

All that matters is that a legal fiction allows people earning *eight- or nine-figure salaries* to treat *all* of those wages as capital gains and pay lower rates of tax on them than the janitors who clean their toilets or the workers whose jobs they will annihilate.

Now, the IRS knows all about this. Whistleblowers came forward in 2011 to warn them about it. The Treasury even struck a committee to come up with new rules to fix it.

But Obama failed to make those rules stick, and then Trump put a former tax-cheat enabler in charge of redrafting them. The cheater-friendly rules became law on Jan 5, and handed PE bosses hundreds of millions in savings every year.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/12/business/private-equity-taxes.html

The New York Times report on "fee waivers" goes through the rulemaking history, the technical details of the scam, and the gutting of the IRS, which can no longer afford to audit rich people and now makes its quotas by preferentially auditing low earners who can't afford lawyers.

But former securities lawyer Jerri-Lynn Scofield's breakdown of the Times piece on Naked Capitalism really connects the dots:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/06/private-inequity-nyt-examines-how-the-private-equity-industry-avoids-taxes.html

As Scofield and Yves Smith point out, if Biden wanted to do one thing for tax justice, he could abolish preferential treatment for capital gains. If we want a society of makers and doers instead of owners and gamblers, we shouldn't penalize wages and reward rents.

There's an especial urgency to this right now. As the PE bosses themselves admit, they went on a buying spree during the pandemic (they call it "saving American businesses"). Larger and larger swathes of the productive economy are going into the PE meat-grinder.

Worse still, the PE industry has revived its most destructive tactic, the "club deal," whereby PE firms collaborate to take out whole economic sectors in one go:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/14/billionaire-class-solidarity/#club-deals

We're at an historic crossroads for tax justice. On the one hand, you have the blockbuster Propublica report on leaked IRS files that revealed that the net tax rate paid by America's billionaires is close to zero.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/08/leona-helmsley-was-a-pioneer/#eat-the-rich

This has left the Bootlicker-Industrial Complex in the bizarre position of arguing that anyone who suggests someone who amasses billions of dollars should pay more than $0 in tax is a radical socialist (so far, the go-to tactic is to make performative noises about privacy).

At the same time, the G7 has agreed to an historical tax deal that will see businesses taxed at least 15% on the revenue they make in each country, irrespective of the accounting fictions they use to claim that the profits are being earned in the middle of the Irish Sea.

That deal is historical, but the fact that it's being hailed as curbing corporate power reveals just how distorted our discourse about corporate taxes has become.

As Thomas Piketty writes, self-employed people pay 20-50% tax in countries that will tax the world's wealthiest companies a mere 15%: "For SMEs as well as for the working and middle classes, it is impossible to create a subsidiary to relocate its profits to a tax haven."

Piketty, like Gabriel Zucman, says that EU nations should charge multinationals a minimum of 25%, and like Zucman, he reminds us that the G7 deal does nothing to help the poorest countries in the Global South.

https://www.lemonde.fr/blog/piketty/2021/06/15/the-g7-legalizes-the-right-to-defraud/

These countries and the EU have something in common: they aren't "monetarily sovereign" (that is, they don't issue their own currencies *and* borrow in the currencies they issue).

Sovereign currency issuers (US, UK, Japan, Canada, Australia, etc) don't need to tax in order to pay for programs - first they spend new money into the economy and then they tax it back out again.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/10/compton-cowboys/#the-deficit-myth

These countries can run out of stuff to buy in their currency, but they can't run out of the currency itself. Monetarily sovereign countries don't tax to fund their operations.

Rather, they tax to fight inflation (if you spend money into the economy every year but don't take some of it out again through taxation, more and more money will chase the same goods and services and prices will go up).

And just as importantly, monetary sovereigns tax to reduce the spending power - and hence the political power - of the wealthy. The fact that PE bosses had billions of tax-free dollars at their disposal let them spend millions to distort tax policy to legalize fee waivers.

Taxing the money - and hence the power - of wage earners at higher rates than gamblers creates politics that value gambling above work, because gamblers get to spend the winnings they retain on political influence, including campaigns to rig the casino in their favor.

This discredits the whole system, shatters social cohesion and makes it hard to even imagine that we can build a better world - or avert the climate-wracked dystopia on the horizon.

But for Eurozone countries (whose monetary supply is controlled by technocrats at the ECB) and countries of the Global South (whom the IMF has forced into massive debts owed in US dollars, which they can only get by selling their national products), tax is even more urgent.

The US could fund its infrastructure needs just by creating money at the central bank.

EU and post-colonial lands can only fund programs with taxes, so for them, billionaires don't just distort their priorities and corrupt their system - they also starve their societies.

But that doesn't mean that monetary sovereigns can tolerate billionaires and their policy distortions. The UK is monetarily sovereign, in the G7, and its finance minister is briefing to have the City of London's banks exempted from the new tax deal.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-08/u-k-pushes-for-city-of-london-exemption-from-global-tax-deal

Now, the City of London is one of the world's great financial crime-scenes, and its banks are responsible for an appreciable portion of the planet-destabilizing frauds of the past 100 years.

During the Great Financial Crisis AIG used its London subsidiary to commit crimes its US branch couldn't get away with. The City of London was the epicenter of the LIBOR fraud, the Greensill collapse - it's the Zelig of finance crime, the heart of every fraud.

UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak claims banks are already paying high global tax and can't afford to be part of the G7 tax deal. If that was true, it wouldn't change the fact that these banks are too big to jail and anything that shrinks them is a net benefit.

But it's not true.

As the tax justice campaigner Richard Murphy points out, the risk to banks like Barclays adds up to 0.8% of global turnover: "The big deal is that the 15% global minimum tax rate is much too low. Suinak has yet again spectacularly missed the point."

https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2021/06/09/how-big-is-the-tax-hit-on-banks-from-the-g7-tax-deal-that-sunak-fears-really-going-to-be/

Image: Joshua Doubek (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IRS_Sign.JPG

CC BY-SA: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

#pluralistic

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cappucino-commie · 3 years

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Isn't climate change irreversible? Even if we make drastic changes now, it's much too late. We as a species should've taken action decades ago, no?

What is true: we should have taken action decades ago

What is not true: it is "too late"

The latter is a very expensive lie brought to you by Exxon Mobile®. It is not too late to avert the suffering of millions of people, it is not too late to move towards sustainable, planned degrowth economies, it is not even too late to curb some of the warming we are already experiencing.

Even in the short term, pop-sci understanding of climate change perspective, there are direct actions we can take to avert the suffering of hundreds of millions of people. We can prepare for climate migrants, build climate-resistant & sustainable cities, adjust global crop systems to resist drought & heat waves, and embrace economic degrowth. At an individual level, you can get involved with socialist parties and help organize to make this happen, and participate in direct action to build material systems of support for folks.

But there is a longer term, more scientifically informed perspective on this as well to help reverse these "irreversible" changes.

Without getting too far into the scientific weeds, our planet does naturally change its temperature, mostly through a process known as the carbon cycle. Our planet has always had a warming blanket of carbon dioxide, which made the Earth warm enough for us to evolve, and the level of carbon in the atmosphere fluctuates- not just on a geologic timescale, but even seasonally with the bloom & death of plant life. This system can help us sequester carbon- and that is already happening! If the carbon cycle didn't exist, the amount of carbon we have emitted would have already baked us all to death. The existing system has some "slack" in it, meaning the majority of humanity's carbon emissions actually haven't ended up in the atmosphere.

Humanity is not separate from these ecological systems, and they can be turned to our benefit to curb the worst of these consequences and repair our planet. The work is not easy, but it can be done: Repairing damaged rainforests, coastal mangroves, ocean sea grass, and so on. By using thousands of years of ecological expertise and scientific knowledge, we can help these systems work to sequester carbon and curb some of the worst effects of these emissions. Eventually, in the timescale of just a few thousand years and with a lot of work, the planet can be returned to a preindustrial state.

That is not an excuse to procrastinate on change, but a reminder that our fate is not set in stone. Regardless of what we will do, there are consequences for our existing emissions, you can see them already. But it is not "too late" to make a difference. In fact, just going to carbon zero will allow these systems to begin absorbing atmospheric carbon and curbing some of the warming. The faster we do so, the more we can take advantage of these existing mechanisms.

This will require revolutionary change. It is easy to read "if we just go to carbon zero and live in harmony with nature, things will eventually be ok" and think it is idealist dreaming. But even if we do nothing, life will be radically different in a few decades. Our only real choice is changing for better (sustainable socialist economies) or worse (ecological fascism or collapse). We must believe this change is possible, we must have revolutionary faith & discipline as Marxists.

(And if you do not consider yourself a Marxist- you should reconsider it. It seems radical, and radical is needed. Socialism is the only path humanity has towards an ecologically sustainable, equitable future.)

#climate change #political ramblings #this is the much shorter and less well-sourced version of the essay I was thinking of writing #this is the Trust Me Bro version #you can do your own reading on this starting with the carbon cycle wikipedia page #and reading about natural carbon sequestration and how societies have lived in harmony with ecological systems #The Quechua (who cultivated the potato) are a great example #also cities like Tenochtitlan which harnessed hydroponics to sustain a large population

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qqueenofhades · 3 years

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So I’ve been thinking about the end of empires lately, the way they behave, the patterns that emerge, things like that. Yes, I know. What a lovely topic. Lol. My brain likes punishment. Shhh. Anyway, I was wondering what we have learned from past ended empires that could help us understand today’s world? Do you have thoughts? Any book refs on this? Thanks qqueen!

Aha, okay, I'll give this a crack. I'll try not to get bogged down in too much pedagogical woolgathering about how it is defined, determined, decided, or otherwise applied as an analytical concept, but we'll say that an "empire" is a geographical, political and territorial unit that comprises multiple countries/regions, is united under one relatively centralised administration, ruled either by one all-powerful figure or a small circle of powerful elites (usually technically answerable to the former), and held together by military, financial, and ideological methods. The basic model, as established by the Romans: take their sons to serve in the army, make them pay their taxes to you, and worship Roma, the patron goddess of the city, alongside their own preferred religion. Simple, straightforward, and lasted for five hundred years (almost a thousand if you count the Roman Republic which preceded it). We hear a lot in Western history classes about the "Fall of Rome," which is usually presented in popular narratives as the moment when everything went to pot before the "Dark Ages." Is this true? (No.) If so, did it happen because, as is often claimed, "barbarians/savages were attacking Rome and overthrew it?" (No.)

The collapse of the Western Roman Empire is way more than we can get into in the course of one ask, and there are other fallen empires to consider: for example, the Aztec, Ashanti, Russian, and British ones. It's a subject of debate as to whether modern-day America should be termed an empire: it fits most, if not all, of the historical criteria, but is an empire only an empire when it declares itself to be one? The long and sordid history of American imperialism, whether it's a rose by any other name or otherwise, is covered in American Empire: A Global History by A.G. Hopkins, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States by Daniel Immerwahr, and A People's History of American Empire by Howard Zinn. All are worth looking into.

Overall, I think the basic similarities for what makes an empire fall would include:

it geographically overextends itself (Roman, British)

it is attacked by foreign rivals and internal enemies (Roman, Aztec, Ashanti)

it becomes massively financially indebted and deeply politically unstable (Roman, Russian)

it resorts to heavy-handed attempts to punish dissatisfaction among its people, spurring popular resistance (Aztec, Roman, British, Russian)

it is emerging from a period of long war internationally and internally that has strained it militarily (Roman, British, Russian)

it simply gets devastatingly unlucky thanks to a combination of unforeseeable external factors (Aztec, Ashanti)

And so on. Basically, the administrative bureaucracy gets too big to manage itself, the ever-increasing financial exactions can't pay for the necessary wars to maintain and expand its borders, people become dissatisfied both outside and inside the imperial system, and since no human institution or nation-state lasts forever, down it comes. However, I would caution against too much insistence on a total or categorical end of any of these societies. You've probably heard of Jared Diamond, who wrote uber-popular bestsellers including Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse, focusing on how human societies survive, or not, from an eco-scientific perspective. However, Diamond is not a trained anthropologist, archaeologist, or historian, despite writing extensively about these subjects (he's a professor of geography at UCLA) and a whole bunch of eminent historians and anthropologists got together to write "You're Full of Shit, Jared Diamond," also known as Questioning Collapse: Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability, and the Aftermath of Empire.

This book basically blasts Diamond (as he deserves, frankly) for removing all social/cultural factors from his analysis in Collapse and only focusing on ecology/science/environment. Geographical determinism can shed light on some things, but it's very far from being a total explanation for everything, completely divorced from the human societies that interact with these places. For example, did the Easter Island society of Rapa Nui collapse because the Polynesian people "recklessly" overexploited the environment (Diamond) or the impact of European diseases, colonialism, slave trade, and other direct crises, combined with the introduction of the non-native rat to the islands? (Spoiler alert: The latter. You simply can't write about these societies as if they're just places where things somehow happened thanks to natural processes, entirely outside of human agency and cultural/social/political needs.)

Anyway, the silver-lining upside, especially in an incredibly gloomy political milieu where the current American system was nearly overthrown by the last president and hordes of his fascist sympathisers (as they were talking about on Capitol Hill today, incidentally), is that the usual story of human societies is resilience rather than disappearance. None of the empires listed above, with the exception of the Aztecs (conquered by the Spanish, decimated by smallpox, and resisted by internal indigenous enemies) totally vanished. Their structures and ethos often just got a change of paint and name and carried on. For all the ballyhoo about the "Collapse of Rome," the Western Roman Empire had been an almost entirely ineffective political entity for years and the capital had already been transferred to Ravenna well before 476. There were outsider attacks, but Rome had weakened itself by a constant succession of military coups, palace intrigue, too-heavy taxes, and a simply too-vast area to effectively control. The Eastern Roman Empire, however (aka the Byzantine Empire) carried on being a major political player straight through the medieval period and only ended in 1453, with the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II's conquest of Constantinople.

Even the Ashanti Empire still exists today, as a small independent kingdom within the modern African country of Ghana. The Russian and British empires no longer exist under that name, but few would deny that those countries still retain considerable influence in similar ways. When people talk about the "collapse" of societies, especially non-Western societies, it also produces the impression that they did in fact just disappear into thin air, often as no fault of the invading Westerners. (Sidenote: I suggest reading "Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native" by Patrick Wolfe in the Journal of Genocide Research. The whole thing is online and free.) How many times have we heard that, say, the Mayans/Mayan Empire "vanished," when there are up to seven million Mayan speakers in modern Mexico? If you're insisting that they're gone, of course it's easier to act like they are.

Anyway. I think what I'm trying to say here is that in terms of lessons for the modern world:

empires always (always) fall;

this comes about as some combination of the above-mentioned factors;

however, the societies previously organised as empires almost never disappear, so the end of an empire does not necessarily mean the end of its attendant society, culture, countries, etc;

empires often re-organise as essentially similar political units with different names and can maintain most of their former status;

empire is an inherently unequal and exploitative system that often relies on taxonomies of race, gender, power, and class, with the usual suspects at the top and everyone else at the bottom;

empire is usually, though not always, related to active colonialism and military expansion, and as soon as it cannot sustain this model, it's in big trouble;

the idea that human societies just disappear solely as a result of inadequately correct economic choices and/or ecological determinism is a lot of shit;

And so on. The end of an empire isn't necessarily anything to fear, though it can, obviously, be incredibly disruptive for those living within the country/countries affected. And until we learn how to move, as a species, permanently away from political and ideological systems that give so many resources to so few people and nothing to so many others, we're going to continue to experience this cycle.

#history #history of empire #history of racism #flynnanimal #ask

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marcias-meme-blog · 3 years

Note

What are your thoughts on the Media bez wyboru ? People are having two different opinions, mostly "They wanna silence us!" or "Don't be an idiot it's just taxation not restriction!"

That’s one hardcore question to receive.

From what I know, it’s a taxation imposed on ad income in all sorts of media, the internet, newspapers, radio and even cinemas. This means that a chunk of platforms’ income instead of going back towards fuelling those institutions will go to the government.

The main gripe imo is this: many platforms will simply not survive this. The taxation will be a solid blow to the smaller, often independent/neutral platforms who rely on that money to continue operating. Ultimately they’ll either collapse because of the lack of income or have to start relying on other methods of staying afloat eg. paywalls (and I REALLY hope we’re all aware how paywalls and subscription models contribute to inaccessibility to goods, and specifically here news and articles, on a global scale).

While some might say “it is what it is, that’s how taxes work babey” we MUST consider all pieces on this board. Because you know who will not feel this blow? Who will not have to worry about putting their stuff behind paywalls? Who will not have to worry about staying afloat?

Government sponsored media.

I hope it’s clicking for everyone that that is literally the ABCs of propaganda, a really short way to monopolise the market of information, and an indirect attempt (we can debate whether intended or unintended) to control the public opinion in the long run.

Government media is NOT objective or trying to stay neutral. It presents you with content & news filtered through a very specific, and in this case, very VERY conservative lense, that paints the ruling party in a holy light while smearing their opposition in shit.

“Opposition“ may seem like an abstract political concept but here’s a quick rundown of topics that are in opposition to the agenda being pushed by the current political leaders and would effectively be dipped in shit:

- LGBT as a concept, - rights/suited medical help for trans people, - gay marriage, - abortion/planned parenthood, - sex education in schools, - immigrants, - climate change/global warming, - carbon footprint of the environmental destruction that is the mining industry and so on.

The current Polish leaders are IN LOVE with the status quo and the current division of the country. They are especially big fans of presenting everything as a us vs. them narrative. The gays are an attack on polish families and christian values. Abortion is an attack on polish children. Climate change is a made up propaganda to destroy the mining industry and put the good polish people out of their jobs. And immigrants? Oh boy.

And this narrative heavily speaks to the current generations of people of age 40+; the generations that still remember communism, generations intimately aware of our history as a country where the other, the oppressor came and destroyed everything that was us, taking Poland off of the maps for over a fucking century, and how long it took for us to stand on our two legs again as an independent nation.

And all the topics that I listed above? Are used to scare those people by the leading party. To reach deep within and push that emotional button, that knee-jerk reaction that something is waiting, again, to destroy us and who we are as people, as a nation. And this emotional manipulation with fear is very incredibly effective. And I in turn fear that the limited number of accessible journalistic platforms will only contribute to the exponential growth of this sad phenomenon.

And you know what is the worst thing if all of this? The theatre of absurd that is the way the government is trying to pass these controversial laws. Because those laws are never a stand alone thing. They are always dressed up in a narrative, wrapped up in an entire cushy bill that is going towards something objectively good. They did that many times in the past: most recent thing that I can remember are bills that were supposed to help out single parents but they simultaneously had one or two anti-LGBT laws right next to them, in the same package.

So to put the issue simply, by opposing one aspect of the bill, you’re automatically seen as a shithead trying to prevent a major improvement to the country’s structure. And that goes back to the whole us vs. them narrative I talked about. It’s a circle.

The bill they’re trying to pass right now is not a “new taxation on Ads” bill - it’s marketed as a bill going towards the growth of NFZ (national healthcare), the preservation of Polish history & culture via NFOZ (mostly monuments, old historically important buildings and landmarks etc.) & the creation of a new institution: FWKDN the goal of which would be the creation of projects and platforms focused on promoting polish heritage & culture in the digital age.

Those are objectively good things, especially rn money for national healthcare would be godsend.

So here comes the ultimate dilemma: Should we introduce the new tax, the money from which will in theory help the people of our country, even if it means sacrificing independent media platforms which effectively means the beginning of the government’s monopol on news and journalism?

And that is a very loaded problem with no easy solution.

Personally I am against that bill and I support the strike that’s going on. The money gathered via this tax will be but a droplet in the sea of needs when it comes to our public healthcare system. Whatever the money could accomplish (which assumes the government that I already don’t trust won’t put the money towards something completely different), the long term social consequences of news platform reduction far outweigh the potential good, in my books anyway. I do believe there are other solutions to this problem, but we could talk about the changes to the national budget all day and not get anywhere.

TL;DR: It’s a loaded issue, but having seen certain worrying patterns within the actions and motivations of the current political party I am unwilling to risk letting them take control of journalism nationwide.

#media bez wyboru #uh oh sorry for the essay

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frumfrumfroo · 3 years

Note

Can "masculine" and "feminine" Fandom ever truly coexist or are they always destined for conflict? Everything I've seen indicates that even if it only happens in a passive-aggressive way,, they will always fight until one pushes out or marginalizes the other (and the creators will probably take sides).

I think they do co-exist all the time. For example Star Trek and DBZ both have huge fandoms of both temperaments, despite the common stereotype that they're ploty techy manly franchises for boys and only male nerds like them. TOS invented shipping fandom as we know it. Nor is there usually much tension between the two camps. It's just that the streams don't really cross; fic/meta/shipping fandom is over here and speculation/powerlevels/trivia fandom is over there. You can be in both, but you do them separately and usually one is way more 'mainstream' as the face of fans than the other. Doctor Who is the rare case where it's equally infamous for its no-romo anoraks and its die-hard shippers.

The fact that those are ancient, venerable fandoms is probably a factor, because fandom as a whole used to be more compartmentalised. You only hung out in the part that interested you and could engage for years without interacting with anything outside that bubble. Things like zines and webrings and livejournal groups were split up by topic. Although people say the days of mailing lists were more like now because it was a niche and everyone had to scroll past everything. I wasn't there, so these are speculations.

But what's definitely different now is that the fourth wall has been completely demolished and whining on SM can change the direction of multi-billion dollar franchises, so the old need to 'win' fandom and feel like the loudest voice has become something with real stakes. If bullying the 'wrong' audience out of fandom results in your faction being catered to, that incentivises aggressive gatekeeping. Which people already did even back when it was totally delusional to think the creators knew or cared what fandom thought, so having it actually work is going to make it ten thousand time worse. Franchise writing by angry twitter committee is probably going to continue and this will lead to many more pieces of Extruded Movie Product dreck while Disney and Amazon buy up the entire global entertainment industry until the inevitable collapse of mega-budget Branded Content which can’t come soon enough.

Do I expect shipping and emotional analysis fandom will continue to get the shorter end of the stick and be mocked for caring even as being a massive anorak who's memorised every meaningless stat in every issue of Captain Bland's Monotonous Adventure becomes ever more mainstream and acceptable? Yep. But this has never succeeded in pushing shipping out of fandom and while certain kinds of ‘nerdiness’ have become ‘cool’ (much like it’s socially acceptable to obsess about sports but not Magic: the Gathering tournaments), the genuine weirdos still have far more in common with people who write fanfic than they do with the casual audience who are the true target demographic of any big budget film. A lot of the pressure which causes fandom infighting is being exerted from outside and when trends change, the need to guard your terf so that senpai notices you lessens significantly.

Although I should probably take issue with the idea that it’s a ‘both sides’ thing, because I know of no example, ever, of a ‘feminine’ fandom rejecting or trying to drive out ‘masculine’ interests. If you want to talk about who would win in a fight in a shoujo manga or discuss the worldbuilding logic of Labyrinth from a non-metaphorical perspective, absolutely no one in the fandom will have a problem with that. I knew a guy who was super into the ‘lore’ and non-romance plot of Twilight (how? idk), and he got no shit whatsoever for ‘doing it wrong’ from the fans because they did not feel threatened by his perspective.

A lot of these ‘boys club’ fandoms do feel threatened by shippers or literary analysis (because icky lady cooties mostly) and that’s what it comes down to. Same with antis and any other ‘you’re doing fandom wrong!’ group. They are afraid of not being exclusively catered to if they aren’t the overwhelming majority. That’s the only reason there’s conflict. If they weren’t worried about not being the default and not having their worldview constantly validated, they wouldn’t care about us.

#fandom #watch independent cinema I'm just saying #anyway I'm sorry I feel like I wandered around and didn't address what you were asking about much at all #I keep starting posts and then losing all confidence I've written anything worth posting

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sondepoch · 3 years

Text

Chapter 3

Hearts on Three (Satan x Reader)

The athlete and the nerd. The rich kid and the scholarship student. The girl who will constantly joke about breaking your knee caps and the boy who will actually do it. There are so many ways to describe your relationship with Satan. Too many, if you’re being honest. He’s your best friend. The smartest tutor you’ve ever had. He also spends thousands of dollars for you at the drop of a hat and holds your hand when you’re feeling down. And in the beginning, that's okay. Neither of you let yourselves get bogged down by labels, both of you content to just savor this newfound friendship. But deeper feelings always have a way of complicating things. And for better or for worse, you and Satan are no exception.

01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | ✎

MASTERLIST

A small part of you scoffed when Satan told you he'd be tutoring you while helping out with your volleyball practice. He may be the smartest guy you know, but the idea honestly seemed stupid. How did he expect you to pay attention to the ball in front of you and the words coming out of his mouth at the same time? It didn't seem possible; it didn't seem practical. You went along with the plan because he promised he'd help out with your practice, not because he claimed it would help his tutoring.

You should have known better than to doubt someone like Satan, though.

This may just be the best tutoring session you've had yet.

"It's important to note that the primary reason why Americans didn't want to join WWII was that the Nye Committee spread lies about America's purpose for entering the first world war," Satan explains, continuing to explain the chapter of history you're on while helping you stretch. "The Nye Committee essentially stated that America's purpose was purely economic, and that arms manufacturers encouraged the government to enter the war so they could increase production and raise profit."

You nod your head, grunting lightly as Satan coaxes your body lower while you continue to reach for your left leg. He's surprisingly good at this; not just the helping you stretch part, but also the whole summarizing the relevant parts of the chapter while cutting out the unnecessary information part.

You almost feel bad for having ignored him this past week during all his normal tutoring sessions.

"Do you remember the senator for which the Nye Committee was named?" Satan asks you when you finally pull out of your stretch and begin reaching for the other toe. "We discussed this earlier."

You frown. You certainly do remember Satan telling you something about the Nye Committee, but you can't remember what.

"Um…"

There's an exasperated sigh from above you as Satan's palm stops pushing your back lower and he groans to himself, but the sound seems to stir your memory. You abruptly recall him making that same groan of frustration just half an hour earlier when you first arrived at the student gym, when you interrupted his explanation of the Nye Committee to set a volleyball straight in the air to him, only for it to bounce perfectly off his head.

"Gerald Nye!" You exclaim, withdrawing from your stretch to beam at Satan. "You said it was named after Gerald Nye!"

There's a flicker of hope on his face, a moment of silent pride because this is perhaps the first time you've successfully answered one of his questions without requiring hints.

"Good job," He blurts, surprised. He clears his throat immediately after, quickly continuing his explanation of the global state of affairs during WWII, but you can hear the smile in his voice.

A peaceful grin crosses your face as you continue to stretch.

There's something therapeutic about having someone talk to you while you go through your preparatory routine. Having your body occupied with warmups actually makes it easier to focus on Satan's words. This is definitely something you could get used to, a form of tutoring you'd happily partake in because it's genuinely enjoyable.

"Alright," You interrupt once you've finished stretching your legs and are now just casually flexing your arms. "Let's move on."

"To what?" Satan glances at the textbook that's still open. There are a couple pages left in the history chapter, and you need to get through this material by tomorrow for your reading check quiz. "Can't you stretch a little longer so I can finish explaining the chapter?"

"I guess," You shrug. "But I have to do a warmup jog before I can actually get started anyway, so why don't you just keep explaining stuff while I run?"

Satan shoots you an unconvinced look.

"You expect me," He mumbles under his breath, shaking his head. "To believe that you'll actually pay attention if I read to you while you're running laps?"

"Eight of them!" You exclaim, nodding eagerly.

"I don't think that's—"

"Okay, I'm starting!"

You don't bother waiting for Satan's approval before jogging over to the red line that borders the student gym. You know he could easily catch up to you if he wants. All your efforts as an athlete have failed to make you a particularly impressive runner, and you're definitely among the slower side of your team. Of course, that's never set you back, given that you'll readily dive for a ball without a second thought if you know you're too slow to sprint there on time, but it still surprises you when Satan doesn't tackle you as soon as you begin to run your laps.

You understand why in a moment.

"Woah, you really are slow."

Your eyes widen when you see Satan jogging next to you, fists lose at his side. Somehow, he's maintaining your pace effortlessly, not a hair out of place as he moves his legs in what looks more like a brisk walk than your stuttering jog.

"How are you—" You have to cut yourself off to breathe, a bubble of frustration rising when you see how easily Satan jogs at your side.

"Alright. Back to our lesson."

The blonde barely takes any time to breathe as he continues to educate you on how Nazi Germany channeled success within athleticism into socialism in an attempt to make their regime seem more prosperous, easily continuing on to explain how the development of the radio only further strengthened Hitler's influence. He maintains the same tone he would have if he were merely walking, utterly undisturbed by the fact that you're jogging and now struggling to keep up with his pace.

"Slow down," You gasp at him when you're on your fifth lap. Satan had unintentionally picked up the pace to turn it into what looks like a real jog for him (which coincidentally ended up being your sprint), and you're not sure what's suffering more: your heart rate or your ego.

"Oh, my bad."

It's almost shameful when Satan drops his pace to yours, abruptly making your jog seem like a snail's pace as compared to the rapid speed he'd been pushing earlier. At the back of your mind, you consider trying to pick up the pace, trying to sprint faster, but the memory of Satan's untroubled lecturing even as you were struggling to keep up with him tells you that he's the last person you want to challenge.

Eight laps cannot be over soon enough.

You all but collapse on the ground when you finish, nowhere near as excited as Satan about the fact that he managed to time it so that his explanation of the chapter ended the moment you completed the last lap. All you can think about is the awful fact that your nerd of a tutor who quit track three years ago is still somehow better at running than you.

And yes, it hurts your ego substantially.

"How are you so fast?" You whine as you try to regain your breath on the floor, trying not to look up at Satan because you already know that he'll look nowhere near as disheveled as you.

"Born that way," He says with a grin, walking over to your duffel bag to grab your water bottle. He takes a sip before he gives it to you. "Sorry. All that talking made my throat a little dry."

You can't help but pout at that. Your mile-run was so slow that not only was Satan able to finish a whole history lesson during it—but it wasn't even the physical exertion that wore him out. It was the talking.

"Hey, don't feel bad." He frowns when he sees your pouty expression. "You're still miles better at volleyball than I could ever hope to be. No, really. Miles."

The thought does little to console you.

"Satan. Please," You begin, taking a long sip of your water and pulling yourself to your feet only so that you can clasp Satan's hands in yours. "Teach me your ways. I want to be as fast as you."

"Let go," Satan blurts as he pulls his hands free of yours, his nose scrunching up. "You have sweaty palms."

"Satan!"

The boy laughs, a rich sound that fills the empty gym. His grin is broad when he faces you next, pride decorating his features. "You're not that slow, I promise. I'm just…"

Ridiculously fast, you think to yourself.

"A little better at running than the average person. That's all. It's stupid for you to compare yourself to me when it comes to running, just like it's stupid for me to compare myself to you when it comes to volleyball."

"It's not stupid," You grumble to yourself, taking another sip of water before tossing the bottle back into your volleyball bag. "You still haven't told me why you quit track."

"And I'll never tell you unless you start getting better grades," Satan interrupts, briskly transitioning into his tutor-mode.

You open your mouth to retort, to shoot him a mischievous comment and maybe pull him back into a longwinded conversation, but the moment the blonde walks over to your volleyball cart, it's just head-empty, and all you can think about is practice.

There's a brief transition period where Satan specifically asks you what you want him to do, because "this is supposed to help you in both your tutoring and volleyball," so he "may as well do exercises that are actually helpful." It's how you finally manage to worm him into a downball exercise, which wounds up being pretty effective because Satan seems to be sufficiently muscular such that every ball flies to the ground with impressive force but also sufficiently terrible at volleyball such that every ball is several feet away from you, making for an excellent simulation of a real game environment.

There are, of course, the questions that Satan insists on asking you in between every downball. He's moved on to explaining physics to you, now, and you don't bother asking him how he somehow has all this information memorized, merely leaving the explanations to him because they do sound an awful lot like what your teacher has been explaining in the past week.

But somehow, the practice remains enjoyable.

Every now and then, the two of you need to take a pause so you can collect the balls from the ground. Satan only brought one cart over, so the two of you do have limited resources; but the overall experience is surprisingly smooth. So smooth, in fact, that the two of you end up moving on from physics to English, English to computer science, computer science to art appreciation, and you're about to tackle another subject when the doors to the gym abruptly open and you see the familiar faces of your teammates.

"It's time for practice!" You exclaim eagerly, your face lighting up. "Satan, I gotta go!"

The blonde raises an eyebrow. "Are you sure? You've already practiced with me for nearly two hours."

"That wasn't practicing, Satan. That was studying. You made us stop for so many questions that I could barely even get my heart rate up."

The blonde shoots you another concerned look, still hesitant. "Maybe you should sit this practice out. Or at least take a short break. I don't want to be the reason for you getting injured."

"Aw, what a sweet sentiment~" You coo, slinging an arm over Satan's shoulder. Your grin is bright as you tug him toward the bleachers, towards where you dumped your volleyball bag. "I'll be fine, don't worry. I'll have to practice much longer when our actual training season starts up, anyway."

You can see Satan frown at that, his lips curving downward as he doubtlessly wonders what you mean by the 'actual training season,' but he doesn't press the issue, merely nodding his head.

"Is there anything I can do to help out?" You see his fingers flex at his side, the boy eager to do something to appease his guilt for keeping you so long but clearly not sure what.

"I usually refill my water bottle before practice, so…"

"Let me," Satan interrupts firmly, taking the metal bottle from your hands. "And sit down, at least until I return. Try to rest, even if it's only for a little."

A soft smile spreads across your face at that. Satan might have been a Varsity runner in his freshman year, but it's clear that he's forgotten just how hard athletes at your school train. Still, it's endearing how concerned he is. You nod your head at him with a smile as you take a seat atop the bleachers. The action seems to pacify him, and he quickly jogs off in the direction of the water cart, easily slipping into a pace that would surpass all of your sprints.

"So~" A voice calls from next to you, oh so mischievous and oh so familiar. "What were you doing with our student president?"

"He's my tutor!" You respond brightly, smiling at your co-captain as she takes a seat next to you. "He brought me here because apparently, I wasn't responding very well to his normal teaching attempts, so he decided to throw volleyball into the mix. It's actually working out pretty well!"

"Oh?" The setter chuckles. "No surprise there. I can't really imagine you sitting at a desk and actually learning anything."

"Hey!" You smack the girl in mock offense, clicking your tongue in annoyance as you roll your eyes. "I'm not that bad. My grades have been improving, thanks to him."

"Is that so?" The girl grins, her eyes darting down as she doubtlessly checks Satan out. "And have they been improving because he's a good teacher or because he makes for such great eye candy?"

You snort. It's not like you haven't recognized by now that Satan is one of the most attractive people in your grade, but you find it hard to pay attention to that when there's so much else going on in his personality.

"He's a good teacher. Nothing else."

"So you don't want to maybe date him one day?"

"No," You deadpan. "I don't want to maybe date him one day."

The setter by your side deflates, leaning against you with an angry mumble about how unfair it is that she never gets to tease you about liking any boys. "So frustrating," She mumbles, doubtlessly in reference to you. "He's so cute, too. And smart. And popular. And rich. And perfect boyfriend material, from what I've heard."

"He's just a friend."

Satan has reached the athletic cart on the other side of the gym, already in front of the giant water cooler. He catches your gaze, shooting you his usual, broad smile as he continues to fill your water bottle.

Keep resting, he mouths to you, gesturing for you to remain seated when you attempt to stand.

"A good friend," You correct yourself.

Satan is a firm believer that there is beauty in simplicity. It is how he has approached life and it is how he has approached tutoring you: finding the simplest route and executing it with maximum precision.

In the present moment, this has translated to Satan's agreement with you: one correct answer, one toss. One piece of evidence that you're actually improving in your classes, and one chance to improve on your volleyball hitting form. One nod at academia, one nod toward athletics.

It's an ingenious agreement, simple as it is beautiful.

The execution, though, is anything but.

"You have to toss higher," You hiss, catching your ball in midair and throwing it back to Satan before your feet have even touched the ground. "The ball needs to reach my hand at the peak of my jump, not my head."

Satan scowls at your admonishment, grumbling under his breath before tossing the ball to you again, lifting it higher.

It's been precisely four days of this volleyball-meets-tutoring agreement, and Satan's hands have already begun to cramp from the hundreds of sets per day he's been tossing you. The manicure Asmo gave him right before he left the House of Lamentation has begun to chip off, the bright green nail polish now cracked and uneven. The blonde even has a bruise on the side of his torso from getting hit by one of your jump serves two days prior, just another battle wound in his war to make you pass your classes.

The only positive to this whole arrangement is that you really are beginning to improve.

"What were Caesar's last words?" Satan asks, consciously picking a straightforward question that he expects you won't remember the answer to.

"Et tu, Brute?" You smirk, quietly beaming because you know you're right.

Satan suppresses a sigh, ignoring the ache in his palms as he tosses the ball into the air and sets it to you, making sure the ball arches unnecessarily high because you jump like a goddamn frog.

"That's better!" You cheer as your palm slams into the ball with inhuman force, hitting it to the ground and letting the sound echo through the gymnasium.

Satan shudders, thinking about the bruise he's sporting on his torso from your serve the other day. He doesn't want to imagine how much pain he'd be in if he'd been on the receiving end of that spike you just delivered.

"Again," You demand, already backing up in anticipation for another serve as Satan brainstorms up another question to ask you for your cumulative Shakespeare test tomorrow.

The truth is that he thinks you're ready. A statement he never would have imagined one week ago, but it has become reality. By combining volleyball practice and academics into one, it's as if your brain is unable to differentiate between the two and you simply have to use your full energy on both, resulting in an impressive amount of progress.

"Why is Romeo banished?"

"For killing...Mercutio? No, wait! For killing Tybalt!" A triumphant grin spreads across your face, proud and happy.

Satan tosses you another ball.

He's genuinely impressed with the level of focus you've been able to retain during these past few tutoring sessions. When you first asked him to read you the plays from your literature class, the boy was skeptical. Particularly so because you wanted him to read to you as you cycled through your conditioning exercises, and Satan doubted that reciting Hamlet's infamous monologues while you did burpees would help you learn. The blonde was pleased to discover that he was wrong, though. By the end of the day, he had found that while there's nothing you seem to loathe more than properly sitting down to read a book, you actually enjoy being read to. It's helped him teach you material in nearly every subject.

"Explain why Cordelia was disowned."

"Cordelia...Cordelia...who?"

Ah, there it is.

Whenever Satan grows a little too proud of you, you always seem to dash his hopes.

"Cordelia," The blonde mutters, already sensing what your next words are going to be. "From King Lear, the book you were supposed to finish on your own yesterday."

"Oh, that." You hide your hands behind your back, smiling sheepishly. "I, um, didn't."

Satan sighs, letting the volleyball in his hands bounce back into the cart he picked it up from.

"Wait!" You cry, trying to stop him. "Just a few more tosses, please! I've been trying out this new hitting technique where I try to hit the ball straight down instead of with an angle and I'm finally getting good at—"

"Too bad," Satan blurts, crossing his arms and interrupting you. "If you wanted me to help you practice, you should have done the reading I assigned you. That was our agreement."

"But it was a whole play! How was I supposed to read all that in one night? That's just cruel!"

"What's cruel is you choosing to ignore that play for so long. You had weeks to read King Lear. You chose to make it difficult for yourself."

Satan grabs the volleyball out of your hands and drops it in the wheeled cart, already moving to the other side of the net to pick up the remaining balls from your hits.

"But Satan!" You continue to whine, still trying to tug him backward. For the first time, though, he manages to fight your grip, internally thanking his six brothers for having taught him the art of pushing people away.

He doesn't pay you much mind when you groan and flop backwards onto the gym floor, spreading your limbs out like a starfish. The sight only makes the edges of his lips quirk up in amusement because, really, as nice as it is to see you energized and full of life, it's still nicer to be reminded that even you have your physical limits.

"Come on," He mumbles, nudging your shoe with his own. "Let's go."

"Don't wanna," You mumble in response, closing your eyes. "Tired."

You emphasize the sentiment with a yawn, and Satan would almost believe that it was genuine if not for the sneaky smile that you have to fight off your lips.

He rolls his eyes.

The boy leaves you be while he cleans up the rest of the gym, picking up all the balls from your practice and depositing them in the cart before dragging it over to the room it's supposed to be stored in overnight.

The blonde is unfamiliar with the whole action of putting athletic equipment away, not having done any sports since his freshman year of high school, but he offers every time. The small amount of time it takes him to clean everything up is virtually the only break you seem to take, and while you don't appear to notice the way your legs have begun to tremble with overexertion at the end of every day, Satan notices. And he will not hesitate to clean up the entire gym if it means you'll take these few minutes of rest.

"We still need to do math," Satan says when he grabs your volleyball bag and sits down next to you. It's the one subject that the two of you can't do over volleyball practice, the one subject that you actually need to sit down and do yourself.

"I'll do it in the morning."

"You always say that, and you never end up doing it."

"There's a first time for everything, isn't there?"

Satan doesn't bother hiding how he rolls his eyes as he pulls your water bottle out of your volleyball bag and shoves it into your hands.

"Drink," He tells you, already getting out your day shoes so you can take your volleyball shoes off and get ready to go home.

"Don't wanna sit up," You drawl, your body still lying on the ground.

"Drink, or I'll make you do math the minute we get back to the dorm."

Satan has never seen you shoot up faster, a small smile gracing his lips when he sees you pop the lid off your bottle and begin chugging it down instantly.

"Ah," You mumble after you've drunk the whole thing. "That felt surprisingly good."

Satan bites back a quiet I told you so, instead opting to gesture for you to switch your sneakers.

He ignores your quiet complaint that he's such a slave driver, that it's unfair he's making you do all this. The truth of the matter is simple: you have a cumulative Shakespeare test in less than twelve hours, and you still haven't read one of the assigned texts.

Time, unfortunately, isn't something either of you have in abundance today.

"Up," Satan demands, grabbing your hand and tugging you to your feet before he drags you out the door.

The entire walk back, you're leaning on him for support, and the blonde staggers more than once as he tries to balance the weight of your volleyball bag in one hand and you in the other. The picture is one that's graced this sidewalk more than once in these past few days, but Satan can't bring himself to care as he internally frets over how he's going to get you to pass this test when you're clearly too tired to properly have a full-on tutoring session. If your nonstop yawning weren't sufficient, the way you practically fall asleep on Satan in the elevator is proof enough that you really are exhausted.

"Take a shower," Is what his final decision is when the two of you arrive back at the dorm, at the little hallway that separates the 665 of your room and the 666 of Satan's. "It'll wake you up."

"I don't want to be woken up," You argue, trying to push against Satan to flop onto your bed.

You clearly don't care about the test tomorrow, but Satan does.

"Either take a shower or wake up some other way," The blond hisses, glaring at you. "But you are not going to bed until you've finished reading King Lear. And unlike yesterday, I will personally be supervising you to make sure you don't fall asleep in the middle again."

You scowl at that, your earlier pout turning into a harsh glare as you realize that Satan has essentially left you with no choice.

"Fine." You blurt. "I'll shower."

It's only once you've gathered your clothes and toiletries and are gone from the room that Satan realizes just how in-character it would be for you to simply choose to sleep in the shower stalls.

The blonde instantly begins to panic.

He's pacing back and forth in your room by the time you've returned, trying not to bite his nails with his book discarded on the bed because he knows that there's no way he'll be able to get you out of the bathroom if you choose to do so, and that if you really do try to hide out in the shower stalls, it's almost certain that you'll fail your test.

When his eyes catch sight of you, the tension in his body visibly disappears.

"Why were you pacing?" You ask, a teasing laugh slipping from your lips as you dump your other clothes in the hamper. "What, did you think I'd just hide from you in the bathroom?"

"Yes." Satan doesn't bother hiding the truth. "And I'm quite surprised that you didn't."

You open your mouth to speak, but the way you avoid his eyes and fidget with the edge of your T-shirt speaks louder than your refusal to deny his words.

"You did, didn't you?" Satan accuses. "You actually tried to sleep in the shower stalls."

"Madam Scream caught me." You explain quietly, refusing to meet Satan's eyes. "She told me to go sleep in my own bed, and when I tried to tell her I was trying to hide from you, she just got even madder."

A warm laugh spills from Satan's lips. He'll make sure to thank the dormitory administrator when he next sees her.

"Wonderful." He grins. "Now, sit. We have to get through this whole play, and I doubt you've even read the beginning."

"I don't want to, Satan," You plead, your hands flying together in a loose imitation of prayer. "Please, please, please don't make me read it all. I can't. I'll die. My brain will explode."

The blonde sighs. No doubt, you're being unnecessarily melodramatic, but he can see the tones of desperation coloring your eyes. That, and he's been tutoring you long enough to know that you really do loathe reading, enough to make you request to do math instead if that's what it takes to get you out of it.

"Alright," Satan mumbles, picking the book up himself. "I'll read it to you. How does that sound?"

You still look hesitant, and Satan can tell that this wasn't the compromise you were hoping for. Even after your shower, the pull of sleep looks strong, and he can practically feel your bodily exhaustion through the droop of your shoulders. Still, this is all the leeway Satan can give you.

"Fine."

Satan smiles, pulling out a chair and gesturing for you to sit next to him.

"No." Your expression is unchanging as you blink at him. "Bed."

You all but throw yourself onto the mattress, patting the spot next to you expectantly with an impish grin.

"This isn't a bedtime story," Satan hisses, trying to get you to take this seriously. "You need to actively listen to the play. You can't just—"

"I can't hear you if you're not on the bed."

The blonde is impressed with himself when he manages not facepalm.

As usual, Satan is forced to give in to your whims, and he awkwardly slots himself next to you on the bed with a scowl on his face, not bothering to be gentle as he pushes you closer to the wall to make room for himself.

"You have to stay awake," He tells you, voice even. "This is not a bedtime story."

"Yeah, yeah. Just get on with it."

And so he finally does get on with it, awkwardly resting his back against the bed frame while you fiddle with the throw blanket on your lap and listen. It still feels awkward, reading a play out like this where he has to specify the character speaking at the beginning of every new line, but this isn't the first thing Satan has read to you and it certainly won't be the last, so he grows comfortable with the material easily.

The only issue is that you keep squirming your way down to rest your head on the pillow.

"Up," Satan snaps at you when you try to do it while he's in the middle of one of Edmund's Thou Nature monologue. "You have to stay awake."

It works to snap you out of your daze, and Satan resumes reading from a few lines earlier, occasionally glancing your way to make sure you're paying attention.

Of course, this only lasts so long. Satan is only on the second act when you lean your head back on the pillow, and he just barely resists the urge to flick you on the forehead to wake you up.

"Come on," He grunts, pulling you back up into a seated position next to him. "This will all be worth it tomorrow when you get a good grade on your test."

You grunt in response.

Satan doesn't know how long this goes on for—him shaking you awake and you quietly trying to fall asleep again—but you eventually seem to have had enough, because by the time Satan is halfway through Act III, you rest your head on his shoulder.

"What are you doing?" The blonde instantly snaps, his eyebrows furrowing. Your hair is still wet from your shower, and you're getting his shirt wet.

"Just try'na read better," You slur drowsily.

Sure enough, your eyes are open and you do seem to be gazing at the words on the page, but Satan is doubtful of your true intentions. After staring at you skeptically for a few moments longer, though, it's clear that you're not going to be moving unless he explicitly asks for it, so the blonde merely continues to read.

It's better this way, he thinks to himself, feeling your warm breath tickle his neck. I can at least tell if she's awake.

He tries to pay attention to the rate of your breathing at the back of his mind as he reads through the remainder of the act, gently shaking his shoulder every time he feels the rise and fall of your breaths grow a little too steady.

"Stop moving," You grumble when he shakes you awake again.

"Stop trying to sleep" is Satan's snarky response.

In the fourth act, though, Satan can't help but redirect the attention he was allotting you towards the book at hand. From Edgar's compelling narrative to Cordelia's analysis-worthy decisions, the blonde can't help but forget the outside world as he delves into the play, no longer reading out the lines but softly mumbling them under his breath as his mind lights up with visualizations of every scene. It's truly not Satan's fault that he doesn't notice when your body abruptly feels heavier, your weight no longer shifted away from him but gracelessly deposited onto him, even the gentle rise and fall of your chest against his arm only serving to further lull him into the depths of the play where nothing exists but the characters and their deeds.

Satan only realizes that you're dead asleep when the act ends, when he turns to ask you what you think and you're peacefully laying on his shoulder, long asleep and long gone.

"Hey, wake…" The boy cuts himself off before he can try to shake you awake, a surge of guilt washing over him.

You really do look exhausted.

Which is understandable, given that you had regular practice today and then some with your training-tutoring session with Satan.

He can't blame you for wanting to sleep.

The blonde sighs reluctantly as he closes the book in his hands and awkwardly tries to maneuver you off his shoulder and onto his pillow. You try to cling to his warmth the whole time, but your sleep-addled hands are useless next to Satan's cautious fingers, and within seconds, he's got you under your blankets and atop your pillow.

He'll wake you up early tomorrow, the blonde decides. And he'll finish the play with you, and he'll make sure you pass this test.

But right now, he'll let you get some sleep first.

A good decision, because Satan doesn't think he'd be able to bring himself to wake you even if he wanted to.

MASTERLIST

Word count: 5.6k

01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | ✎

Notes: okay so i’m trying to change my writing style so apologies if the flow of this chapter was awkward; i’m really trying to step away from some of my bad habits (while building some new ones!) so i hope that didn’t take away too much from this chapter

Comment & Like

Thank you for reading <3

I do not own the rights to Obey Me! or any of the characters within it.

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agiar2000 · 3 years

Text

Resistance to Violence

I just saw this video, and I found it very intriguing and impactful, intellectually. It actually did get me thinking differently about the main issue therein. https://youtu.be/YJSehRlU34w

When this video was published, I was probably already quite convinced of the virtue of non-violent resistance.

In recent years, however, I have seen more and more of how non-violent protesters have not only been subjected to oppressive violence in retaliation, but have also been publicly blamed for the violence being done to and around them, so that the corrupt media has successfully managed to redirect the sympathy that ought to be conferred on those who are bravely and peacefully standing in the face of violence and oppression, and twist it into even more support for the oppressive system. I have seen how violent regimes are perfectly willing to brutalize peaceful people just to assert and demonstrate their dominance, and then I see them getting praise from large swaths of the population who support that oppression.

On the other hand, I have also been thinking more about situations where violence was the catalyst to finally make progress for equality and justice. The Confederate States of America, the Nazis of Germany, and the various unconscionable horrors they wrought were not stopped by people protesting peacefully, by seeking common ground, by seeking to understand them better and make them comfortable. They were stopped by a sufficient opposing army slaughtering them until they ceased to be willing and able to pose a continuing threat to humanity.

It's also helpful, I think to contrast the end of the Confederacy with the end of the Nazis. Starting with the Confederacy: While slavery and white supremacy were certainly overtly stated goals of the Confederacy's rebellion, the Union was (and still is) hardly an anti-racist country, and it has been noted that their goal in fighting the Confederacy was more about retaining the Union than about ending slavery. In the end, when the Confederacy surrendered, there was an attempt by the victors to ease the feelings of the erstwhile rebels, to allow them to retain a great deal of "Southern pride". For that, we get the Daughters of the Confederacy whitewashing and rewriting history, the Ku Klux Klan continuing to wage terror across the country, and many of the various monuments and other dedications to honor Confederate leaders. The meaning of these symbols is clearly white supremacy, and not merely "Southern pride", as evidenced by how they're used. Many of these monuments were erected in the former Confederacy as part of the backlash against the civil rights movement in the 20th century, and some people even outside of America proudly wave the Confederacy's navy jack flag. Why would non-Americans wave that flag? Because they want to wave a flag for white supremacy, and they can't legally wave the flag of the Nazis.

The Nazis, by contrast, were obliterated. They were not allowed to retain "Nazi pride" after the fall of their heinous regime. The symbols of their monstrosity were banned. A standard of basic human decency was granted greater priority than the "freedom" of terrible people to do horrible things. Nazism was destroyed, not simply because it opposed other powers that wanted to control them, but because they were evil, and they needed to be stopped for the good of the world. The result is that now, less than 8 decades after the fall of the Nazis, Germany is a far more decent, pro-social democracy than the former Confederate states, which continue to stand for right-wing oppression, even over 15 decades after the surrender of the Confederacy.

Another example, though less of a dramatic one, is that of the Stonewall riot. The LGBTQ community did not start gaining rights and freedom from a horrifically oppressive regime because they were kind, nice, and peaceful, gently appealing to the better angels of their murderers and oppressors, making the effort to try to understand them and to meet them in the middle. What kicked off their victories at this time was Black trans women of color throwing bricks at police.

Considering all that, I found Chenoweth's presentation difficult to reconcile. When the oppressive regime has control over the media, when they make every peaceful protester look like a violent, dangerous terrorist, and they convince large portions of the population to be willing to fight for fascism, convincing them that it is actually "freedom", and that efforts for justice are actually an attack on their very identity, how can one possibly proceed? When those in power do murder peaceful protesters, do you keep showing up to protest peacefully? If you see someone going around shooting people left and right, do you stand there and demand verbally that the shooter stop?

So, what to do? We live in a violent society that has normalized routine violence against the poor, minorities, people of color, and all of the most marginalized and vulnerable in society. We only need 3.5% of the population to actively resist? Already 5.8% of the American population is in deep poverty, with 9.2% in poverty, generally. Globally, these numbers are even more horrifying, with 9.2% in deep poverty and nearly 17% in a state of being "multidimensionally poor", and nearly half living on less than the equivalent of US$5.50 per day. Couldn't we count on those people, at the very least, to oppose their own oppression? No, we cannot, partly because part of being so oppressed is being kept so weak and powerless that you don't have the energy to resist and being provided just enough that you're terrified to lose what little you have by daring to stand up, but also because so many of them have been brainwashed and corrupted into voting against their own interests and being willing to fight against the people who are trying to help them, and blame the even more marginalized among them or phantoms of foreign powers for all of their problems. Maybe if they knew what was really going on, we would have won long before now.

Now, regarding the topic of the video, the success of non-violent resistance, I very much appreciate that Chenoweth's presentation relied on statistical data from studies of hundreds of events rather than the mere anecdotes that were foremost in my mind when I started watching, and I also appreciate that she started by talking about the mindset from which she started, which closely resembled my own, including good examples of violent revolutions that ended corrupt regimes. I don't know exactly how the data she used to reach her conclusion were gathered and classified, and I retain some skepticism, but I would very much like to believe that her data are, in fact, representative, accurate, and actionable. I would very much like to believe that we can, in fact, win freedom and justice through peaceful means, though I have a hard time really being confident in it. I want to believe that she's right because otherwise, I see very little hope at all. We are very close to a point at which total environmental collapse is inevitable, with the majority of global power still putting the pedal to the metal to drive us off that cliff as fast as possible. The most aggressive policy proposals to save the planet involve easing up on the gas slightly, far too little far too late, and even those are being defeated by the regressive death cult of neoliberals, conservatives, and fascists. At this point, it is hard to see how any future can exist that does not involve tremendous destruction. Either the forces of evil win outright and destroy everything, or the forces that oppose them are forced to wreak so much destruction in order to stop them that they might as well have lost anyway. It's hard to imagine sometimes that we have not already completely lost, that the world is not already completely doomed, and all that is left is to watch as the monsters responsible for it just keep making things worse until the very end.

I guess the answer is just to have faith and to do whatever we can to give humanity the best possible chance, and that means two main strategic goals: 1. Motivate and influence enough people to reach that 3.5% threshold to actually resist for the change that we all need. 2. Determine an actual action plan for those people to carry out that will have the desired effect with a minimum of collateral damage and harmful side effects.

Sadly, I have no idea how to do either of those things, and anything I can think of still feels either depressingly small and insufficient or worrying for its potential to cause unintended harm.

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