#I want to dismantle the systems that make people needy | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

montygatorshusband · 11 months

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Glamrocks X Reader Headcanons

This includes Bonnie and Foxy!

No one requested this I just really wanted to do this :>

Also so sorry this took a while :< I’ll be sure to do more faster 🩵

General Information

“Sleep mode” is basically like a human sleeping, and their new charging system.

They can do stuff like eat, sleep, drink, shower etc.

🧸Glamrock Freddy🎙️

We all know he’s a big sweetheart himbo.

I feel like he doesn’t like PDA, but does enjoy being around you. He just feels it’s very unprofessional!

But if you're upset, he’ll make an exception.

Oh, but if you're alone with him and his friends? He’ll probably just give you silent affection. Just stand behind you and nuzzle you.

When he’s on full battery, he’s a busy bee and often checks up on you before going back to work. If he’s on low battery though, he generally gets kind of sluggish and gets really tired. During those times, he just wants to cuddle you and is quite needy and clingy.

Loves it when you wear any Pizza Plex merch. Whether it be of his friends or himself.

He finds stars and space in general absolutely fascinating. Despite his wishes to not break rules… he’ll put that aside to go out to see the stars with you.

I feel like he loves retro games. Mario and Sonic and stuff. He finds newer ones a bit complicated, and his big hands make his gameplay clunky, but he’ll happily play any you sneak in.

If your having trouble sleeping or just had a bad day, he’ll sing you My Little Sunshine until you fall asleep… probably even afterwards.

He loves singing for you, and loves it even more when you sing with him. He finds your voice hypnotic and even if you think you're bad, he’s not shy to let you know how much he loves your voice.

Plant daddy. Change my mind.

Loves it when you get along with Gregory.

Giant bear boobies. Touch em.

CHUBBY. GLAMROCK. FREDDY. SUPREMACY!!

Loves baking with you. If you don’t know how, he’s happy to teach you!

One of his all time favorite activities to do with you is just cuddling and relaxing after a looong day… watching TV or YouTube or a Movie or whatever. He loves it.

Calls you honey bear.

If he was one of the Seven Deadly Sins, he’d be Envy. (Listen, I know it doesn’t fit. Like, at all. But, the way the rest of the Deady Sins fit with the other Glamrocks is perfect.)

🐊Montgomery Gator⛳️

He’s a complete blockhead. I love him, but he’s dumb. He’s a little stupid. A bit of a fool. Has a small amount of brain cells. Smooth brain. A himbo. A dumb jock. A-

He does have anger issues and destroys his room… but I see it as him being mad at Fazbear Entertainment. Bonnie promised him that when Monty finally got his part on stage, he and Bonnie would play together. Not replacing him. And now everyone sees him as a fame obsessed maniac who wants to dismantle Freddy. Sure, he’s very popular with people, probably one of the most popular, but… does that matter when the person you care about most is gone..?

He’s still a bit sad when Bonnie comes back, since he’s not up on stage with Monty.

Ok angst and stuff aside.

I am completely aware animatronics working out makes no sense but I really don’t care. Like I said, Monty is a Dumb Jock. (Don’t worry, he won’t bully you like the others. In fact he’ll beat ‘em up >:(

Yeah once Bonnie comes back his passion for pranks gets even worse.

A big prankster. Bonnie is his main target.

Flirty. And he’s not good at it.

When he’s confused or focusing really hard on something his tongue slips out of his snout. You got a picture of it and he threw a HISSY FIT. But he reluctantly let you keep it.

Oh dear Lordy. The way he gets oh so embarrassed when he sees you wearing his glasses…

He’s dragged you into the pools of Gator Golf on countless occasions. But after your initial shock, he likes just floating around in there with you.

He’ll happily teach you to swim and play golf. I mean, he’ll always beat you in golf, but the least he can do is give you a chance.

Y'know how people say Roxy is so sure of herself as a coping mechanism? Yeah Monty is like that except he’s just that confident. He thinks he’s the best, and while he doesn’t show off to the point of Roxy, he does crave praise and often boasts about himself to you, trying to impress you. Especially flexing for you.

MONTGOMERY GATOR STOP GETTING HIGH OFF MONTY MIX!

If he was one of the Seven Deadly Sins, he’d be Wrath.

🐓Glamrock Chica🍕

CHUBBY CHICA SUPREMACY!

Yes I’m completely aware her attraction is based around Fitness. I feel like part of her job is to teach kids being a bit more chubby than others is a-ok and comforts those who don’t feel confident for that reason.

So yeah if you're chubby she definitely comforts you if you're insecure about it better than anyone else.

She actually has some anxiety. But you generally make it better!

You're gonna have lots of lipstick on your face. She gets all pouty when you wipe it off.

Listen, if a guest is giving you a hard time, she WILL enter Mother Hen mode.

An absolute pop diva. She’s just swag like that. (Can we bring back swag? No? Oh. Ok :(

While she doesn’t have many songs where she sings, she has an absolutely beautiful voice.

I hope you can handle lots of affection, cause she’s a real affectionate chick!

Watching Soap Operas or Dramas while eating pizza and cuddling you is literally the best thing she’s ever been introduced to.

I hope you’ve got an appetite, cause she makes food that will make you want to gorge yourself! Believe it or not, she will be more than happy to share!

Eating is her coping mechanism, and when she’s very upset and doesn’t want to cook, she resorts to eating garbage. You have to be firm with her about it, but she appreciates you not letting her go to those extremes.

Your personal lil cheerleader.

Man, she soooooo wishes she could have social media! Too bad the higher ups are such party poopers…

Such a giggly lil thing.

If she was one of the Seven Deadly Sins, she’d be Gluttony.

🐺Roxanne Wolf🛞

She’s gotten used to praise for the smallest things, and just because she loves you doesn’t mean you're an exception!

Despite that she’s probably taller than you. (Buff Woman make my knees wobble 🫢)

Y’know those tight outfits race car drivers wear? Yeah, imagine Roxy in that.

Despite being the most popular, only behind Freddy, she has so many self esteem issues and doubts in herself. Many nights are spent consoling her as she cries and yells before wearing herself out and finally settling down and letting you hold her, brushing her hair and tail, cleaning any runny mascara and makeup.

Reluctantly lets you put ribbons on her tail. Might even keep them on.

I feel like Roxy doesn’t use that many nicknames. But, she might call you something every once and a while.

That anxiety of hers means she’s got comfort items, fidget toys, food, drinks, music etc in her room. She’ll add any stuff that helps you, regardless if you have anxiety or not.

Y’know how she compliments herself? Oh good GRIEF I hope you can handle compliments towards you. She CONSTANTLY praises you. But… it’s more so you don’t end up like her. An anxiety-depression ridden MESS. If you're already there though, she’ll help you the best she can. Which luckily, she is the best at!

Whether you be playing racing games, or be in Roxy Raceway, she WILL go all out. Yeah, Rip you.

Despite what you may think, she’s VERY open and VERY proud about her relationship with you. Carrying you around, your neck covered in bite marks and purple lipstick doesn’t leave much to the imagination…

She obsessively reads fan mail in the evening. Even the… ahem, weirder, mail doesn’t bother her. Well, as much as comments from people during the day do at least.

Just… don’t play Monopoly or UNO with her… or Monty. Or Chica. Yeah, just don’t play with anyone really.

If she was one of the Seven Deadly Sins, she’d be Pride.

☀️Sundrop🖍️

He’s a little hyperactive. Ok I lied he’s the most hyperactive.

So if you're quite a lazy person he’ll just be trying to encourage you to play with him and the kids. He genuinely does not realize if you're tired unless you tell him, or it’s SUPER obvious.

I feel like he strictly follows rules, yes, but he also likes pranks. Nothing that will make you upset, maybe just a lil annoyed.

Let’s you, and other kids, draw on him. Just know if you do, A. You have to clean it off and B. He’s not a still canvas. Will be moving the entire time.

Not really a romantic headcanon, but I feel like he and Chica are real good friends.

Wraps his arms around you several times over to hug you.

He hugs you. A lot.

He obviously loves cartoons.

🌑Moondrop💤

I dunno why people see him as a little feral touch starved gremlin. I see him as a constantly sleepy boi that loves cuddling. I mean, I’m sure he cuddles plenty of kids to sleep every day!

In other ways, SOFT MOONDROP SUPREMACY!!!!

Yes, I am aware of how he acts in SB, but I see that more of a side effect of the Glitchtrap Virus rather than his general personality.

He doesn’t enjoy not having a movable mouth. He wishes he could eat candy before bed…

If they were one of the Seven Deadly Sins, they’d be Sloth. (Moondrop more so, but I can see Sun being Sloth after a long day.)

Sorry Sun and Moon don’t have a lot, I don’t really know what to say about them.

🐰Glamrock Bonnie🎳

An absolute DILF of a bunny with that ever loving Aussie accent.

He generally has that energy where anyone will do anything he says. Intimidating and quite good at manipulation (ONLY for your best interests. And his.) (Inspired by : @theodorevg923, who generally also gives me inspiration for all of this, alongside many other Tumblrs :)

He couldn’t care less about not being in the band anymore. He comes out at night and hangs out with everyone. As far as he’s concerned, the stress is taken off of him and he gets more time teaching kids bowling.

Flirty. He’s really good at it.

Loves himself some P to the D to the A.

If someone tries making fun of you for him giving you those public displays of affection, he will tell them to F out of his bowling alley. In a bit of an… angrier way.

Loooves Ice Cream. His favorite way to relax is to eat Ice Cream and go bowling with you. He pretty much has a sweet tooth in general. The public will never find out though. He’s got too much of a public image.

But… kids melt that image. He’s got a real sweet spot for the little rascals.

Monty definitely had and still has a crush on him.

He calls you Clover. I know I know, how original.

If you put on a bit more of a… ahem, reavealing outfit, he will stutter and blush like a mess before going back to his usual calm and relaxed self.

And if you pet his ears? He will absolutely melt. You usually don’t see Soft Bonnie, so take your chance!

If he was one of the Seven Deadly Sins, he’d be Lust.

🦊Glamrock Foxy🏴‍☠️

He’s a small grumpy old man. Ok, I’m exaggerating but I see him as the oldest, and shortest, animatronic in the Pizza Plex (Not including general animatronics like S.T.A.F.F. Bots or the Robot Wet Floor Signs. And Chica, who between you and me, doesn’t realize she’s short.)

But he’s real sweet when he’s not a salty sea dog.

He’s got worse anger issues than Monty, but he doesn’t show it. You can still tell though. His nose and eye twitch. Don’t call him short either, that will get them WAY worse.

Oh yeah, the eyepatch isn't just for display. He only has one eye.

Has a taste for alcohol, specifically rum. Obviously, he can’t get drunk, but he’ll drink with ya, if you're of age and he will cut you off at your limit.

A Bloody Irish Pirate. I will hear nothing else.

He has to rest a lot. Don’t get me wrong, he’s fast, but after he runs or something he has to rest up a little.

Unlike Bonnie, he doesn’t know his place now he’s been shafted from the band. He doesn’t even know why he’s not in the band anymore… but considering you found him pretty much erased from history aside from the odd poster, no recollection of any animatronic even being a fox… he fears the worst.

Yeah you pretty much had to throw a FIT before Fazbear Entertainment fixed Foxy up. An even bigger fit was needed to reintroduce him to the public. An even BIGGER one for him to have his hook during work hours.

Man loves gold and money. He is a pirate.

And if you give him other gifts, he’ll cherish them just as equally.

He’s very jealous. A lonely pirate needs to keep his greatest treasure after all~

Nicknames : Sailor, Captain (Only when you’ve earned it. And only in private.), Sea Star, Pup

If he was one of the Seven Deadly Sins, he’d be Greed.

ALRIGHT ALRIGHT TIME TO WORK ON ACTUAL REQUESTS!

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glitterguts13 · 13 days

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Do you have any favourite of hcs (any kind) of aventurine?

Oh, I have so much to say about Aventurine it's not even funny, so here comes a jumbled mix of thoughts.

TW: topics of slavery, self-harm, sexual abuse, and suicidal ideation. Please read with caution!

Aventurine struggles with genuine physical and emotional intimacy. Having been used, abused, and tortured all this life, mentally, sexually, and physically, he's grown to learn that people are to be kept at arm's length the whole time.

Because of this, Aventurine became very hyper-sexual to deal with the trauma. To him, if he starts it and stays in control, he can't be hurt. This isn't true at all, but it's the only way he knows how to handle people who start getting touchy with him because saying 'no' never worked in the past.

If someone does manage to break down his walls and form a genuine emotional bond with him...he really doesn't know what to do. He showers his partners with gifts and money, is extremely sex driven, and doesn't have any consideration for his own well-being. He's so worried about losing them, that he gives too much.

Aventurine doesn't know how to ask for things he wants. In the sense, he doesn't know how to say "Please, just hold my hand." or "Will you brush my hair?" These simple little acts of love that he desperately craves, but can't ask for because he's worried he's being needy.

For fucks sake just hold this man and remind him that his worth isn't tied to his wealth or his body.

The hand that trembles, hold it tightly and press it to your lips. He'll fall to pieces.

Aventurine is torn between desperately wanting a family and being terrified of having one. He wants a partner, children, and a home to come back to that's filled with love, warmth, and laughter...but he knows how quickly he could lose it, and just how big a target is painted on his back. It keeps him up at night, debating back and forth on if he should pursue his desire or leave it to rot like the rest of his dreams.

Topaz is the closest thing to a 'friend' he has inside of the IPC. While they're hardly besties, she's at least someone he can relax around and share a few drinks with. She's not given him any reason to distrust her, but I don't think he would ever fully rely on her either.

Has played his fair share of Russian Roulette, and leaves disappointed each time he wins.

Also, are we all just going to ignore that little tidbit where they mention he was strapped to an electric chair?? I can't even begin to imagine how that fucked him up both mentally and physically.

That being said, Aventurine has a lot of self-harm and pain-seeking tendencies. I won't go into details, but when he gets low, his mind begins to spiral and he has to find something to snap him out of it or else it just gets worse and worse until he's ready to make sure that gun is fully loaded.

He's grown better about it over the years, but he will never fully be able to heal and recover. Especially not as long as he's in the hands of the IPC. Ratio is the only one who catches wind of Aventurine's self-harming tendencies, but he doesn't have a clue on how to help him, so he keeps quiet.

The brand on his neck is a source of contention. He has the money to have it removed and covered up. He hates to see it, but in the same breath, he's almost afraid to lose it. If he does, will he lose sight of his past? Where he came from? He isn't ashamed of his past, but he also doesn't like the very clear reminder of it either. Jade makes passion comments on it often, and it makes his stomach twist everytime.

Donates obscene amounts of money to children in need. He will never let a child suffer, and while he clearly can't dismantle the entire fucked up system set in place, he's bought the contracts of many child slaves and freed them anonymously. He wants to save them all, but it just isn't possible, and it's one more thing that keeps him awake at night.

#hsr #honkai star rail #aventurine #i am sick about this man #he hurts my heart so deeply

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popwasabi · 3 years

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“End of Evangelion” and the tempting nature of oblivion

(TW: Suicide, Self-harm, Pain, Depression, Mental Health, Death)

“End of Evangelion” is a perplexing movie to say the least.

Not that the original classic anime “Neon Genesis Evangelion” series ends on exactly the most conclusive note itself, but “End” takes everything that transpired in the series and literally destroys it.

The films ends with Earth experiencing the long foreshadowed Third Impact and all of the planet returning to the primordial “soup,” as fans call it, with its main protagonist Shinji Ikari and comrade Asuka Langley Soryu as the only remaining humans left. A pseudo, twisted rebeginning of Adam and Eve’s Genesis.

The film is fairly divisive among the fans to say the least. Some fans consider it a masterpiece for its nihilistic tone and mind-bending illustrations of body horror and others despised it for being too dark and confusing with no clear explanation of anything that happened in the film’s events. Hell, even the movie’s fans have a difficult time explaining what exactly happens in the narrative.

I was somewhat in the middle with it after I watched it the first time not super long ago. It was certainly abstract, and I like plenty of stories that don’t make it easy for me to understand. The animation is definitely the franchise’s best and I enjoyed the character moments between Shinji, Asuka, and Misato. But it was also, as stated before, dreadfully confusing and still to this day hard to makes heads or tails out of with its plot.

But, as with more than a few movies I have revisited this year, 2020 helped me contextualize one aspect I think the story is concretely trying to get across.

(We’ll save discussion of “Rebuild” for another day...)

At my lowest points not long ago, I had this frequent vision that would crawl across my mind.

I imagined being up in the clouds on a beautiful sunny day, but I wasn’t floating or flying. I was plummeting, falling like a bird without wings at a speed that would definitely kill me once I got to the ground. But I never imagined actually hitting the Earth like a meat-bagged, human sized asteroid. I only ever imagined the falling part. The wind reaching a terminal velocity and the air rushing past my body and you know what look I had on my face?

Happiness.

I was confused a bit by why I kept imagining this moribund fall into oblivion over and over again. I wasn’t suicidal, though I certainly have had thoughts of self-harm plenty of times before and general detachment from life. But why the fuck was I so happy? I’m about to die after all!

What I have come to realize in recent years, as I’ve developed a better understanding of my mental health and what makes me tick, it wasn’t that I wanted to die so much as I wanted the freedom that comes moments before it. The feeling of finally letting go and letting fate/gravity do the rest.

Years of my life failing at various aspects of societal expectations and career obligations from not being able to get the girls I wanted to date so badly, relationships ending poorly, not quite applying myself the way I should’ve in college, and working a plethora of unfulfilling jobs since graduation made me yearn for that release. Just that feeling of saying “fuck it all” and giving in to the void.

I wanted to stop feeling out of control. The way the world is structured often feels like you are on a wild, rapid river flowing in one very stark direction but you desperately want to go the other way. You keep fighting and fighting it and realize after a while you are just swimming in place, you tire out and either float where the river wants you to go or you drown. I wanted neither of those things, I just wanted control and unfortunately part of life is accepting that a very large percentage of it is beyond your power to alter.

2020 made this feeling starkly apparent once again as we were hit with a once in a lifetime global pandemic that has killed 2.21 million people and counting. As common people struggle to find ways to handle the loss of loved ones and the fallout from economic instability those tasked with protecting us have more or less ignored the cries of needy. Hell, they’re fucking miffed that we would even have the audacity to ask for $2000 of our own fucking tax dollars to put a band-aid on the situation. Combine this with an extremely volatile two-party system and late stage capitalism, we are about as out of control as ever in terms of how much we actually can course correct our destinies in a period like this.

It is why so many irony-pilled millennials and gen z-ers are posting dank memes about meteors colliding with the earth over the course of the year. We’ve lived through two recessions, two forever wars, and now a pandemic in our lifetimes while paying off our crippling debt with slave wages and yet boomers still wonder why we are near universally depressed as a generation.

(Seriously, everybody needs a fucking therapist right now...and also to dismantle the fucking system that’s making us depressed!)

This is what I feel is the real heart of “End of Evangelion.” The movie is a lot of things, obviously, but, after the events of this year and looking back on the more depressing parts of my life, I feel this film is about the tempting nature of oblivion. Giving up when things are clearly beyond your control so you can get that sweet but twisted, fleeting sense of freedom from it all.

Director Hideaki Anno didn’t feel too entirely different about the state of life when he made this series and certainly by the time he made “End” he was in a very dark place.

So, quick history lesson, “Neon Genesis Evangelion” debuted in 1994 and quickly became a classic among fans of anime and the giant mech vs monster genre. Critics loved it for its exploration of mental health and depression and of course plenty enjoyed the hell out of it for its giant monster/robot escapism as well. Fast forward to the conclusion of the series, critics and fans especially are far more polarized. I won’t try to explain exactly what happens in the ending and frankly I don’t think anyone can, but that confusion led to quite a bit of outcry by the fans.

Hideaki Anno, the series’ director, received tons of hate mail and death threats following the series conclusion. The fans hated how abstract it was, how it had an undecisive ending and chose to dive into the mind of Shinji instead of conclusively describing the events of the Third Impact with plenty going as far as to say he had “ruined” his own series for them. This made him unfortunately quite depressed himself over the ending he felt creatively fairly content with.

(I think it should be clear who Shinji is mostly likely a stand-in for in this anime...)

The fan reaction was toxic to say the least and all too familiar for many creatives who didn’t adequately satisfy the insatiable vapid needs of their fandom. Anno did not take this well to put it lightly. A man who was known as a delinquent in high school and expelled from the Osaka University of Arts much earlier in his life, and dealt plenty with his own bouts of depression, Anno had plenty of his own demons to sort out and quite clearly wanted to explore that mental state in “Neon Genesis Evangelion.”

I’ll be honest and say that I myself was not fond of the ending either when I watched it the first time as a freshman in college, and even went as far as to describe it as everything that was wrong with anime to friends in the years that followed for a while. I felt it was confusing and “fake deep,” existential for no reason other than because it just wanted to and people were “dumb” if they liked it.

When I rewatched it again as a much older adult when it came on Netflix last year, I found it much more fascinating and interesting. A sort of abstract introspective into the mind of a troubled teenager, who I had written off many years prior as a “whiny baby.” Though I wouldn’t say I completely understand it still, I get it much more now and I think it has a lot to say about depression and mental health.

Unfortunately, most fans did not have that reaction back then and as a result Anno made his true conclusion “End of Evangelion” as a response to that negativity.

(You’re welcome, nerds.)

As mentioned before, “End of Evangelion” is an extremely nihilistic film that seems to one up each dark moment as you traverse its spiraling narrative. It’s a film where things never get better. If you go into it blind expecting that big last minute heroic save the day moment, it’s always teased and never comes. Things just end very badly for everyone. Nobody gets a “happy ending.”

While the ending to the original series is strange for sure, it does end on a light note that can be interpreted in a number of different ways but ultimately positive. With the way fans reacted to it Anno decided to write a big “fuck you” to them by, in many ways, smashing his toys so no one could play with them again. He even went as far as to splice in the actual hate mail he received into the movie to quite clearly show to the audience, as their favorite characters met their grissly ends, that this was their fault.

(“Gee, I wonder what that was all about.” ~ a fan walking out of the theater back in 1997.)

In a way though, Anno created something strangely beautiful from that reaction. “End of Evangelion” is about giving up in some ways and accepting our inevitable doom. There are no easy answers, no workable solutions to achieve a happy ending because sometimes in life there isn’t one. Despite last ditch efforts by Misato, Shinji, and the crew of NERV the world still ends through the Third Impact. But tonally it’s not quite pessimistic; it’s actually positive, in a very twisted sense of course.

Set to the song “Komm Susser Tod” by ARIANNE, the film’s apocalypse can almost be described as a celebration. With people “popping” and turning into the primordial soup they all largely have smiles on their faces as they kind of get what they want whether it’s a desire to reunite with loved ones, to be with people they have crushes on, or happiness that they have sought for so long in the embrace of others. Everyone’s depressed! But now they are happy because it’s finally all over, they don’t have to give a shit anymore.

As the planet lights up like a Christmas tree, there are images of suicide and death that rapidly cross the screen in the form of the Angel’s final transformation but again, nobody is truly sad about it. They all have some kind of twisted smile or joy that they get from it. It’s a shocking film, if you’re not already prepared for what’s going to happen, and provocative to say the least.

youtube

(Can’t decide if I recommend watching this high or not...)

I had no idea what any of it meant at the time when I watched it several years ago (I watched it well after I had seen the original series), and to be fair there are many ways fans have interpreted what exactly took place in the film and have debated endlessly on its meaning for decades now. But at least in my interpretation, after everything we’ve been through this year, “End of Evangelion” to me is about the sweet release of not giving a fuck anymore.

Whether it’s about Anno feeling that way about his own life or the expectations of his fans or both, the film quite clearly doesn’t care about what people may or may not have wanted for Shinji and the NGE characters and is perfectly fine with the way it all comes “tumbling down.”

(He just wants to be with his boyfriend, guys.)

This past July 4th, city fireworks shows were prohibited in my area because they wanted to limit mass gatherings due to COVID but this didn’t stop people from buying plenty of their own to fire off. In what amounted to a collective “fuck you” to everything and 2020, beginning pretty much exactly at dusk people started firing off their at home lightshows like they were mortar gunners in World War I and did not let up until well past midnight. The entire Southern California night sky was lit up not to unlike the thousands of crosses that filled the screen during the Third Impact of “End of Evangelion” and though it could certainly be interpreted as a moment of people patriotically going “Yea, America!” that night, my head canon was much different. It felt like tens of thousands of people across the region just saying “Fuck it” into the night sky at everything; COVID, our horrendous government, police violence, pending World Wars, environmental disaster, and our collective impending doom from it all.

As these fireworks hit their zenith around 9pm I broke out my phone and started playing “Komm Susser Tod” from the movie and it felt perfect. Everyone just wanted to feel that freedom in the moment, that freedom of not giving a damn anymore. To be removed from expectations, from control, from hatred, from pain and it was kind of beautiful in a sick way.

And that’s what “End of Evangelion” feels like to me now; kind of beautiful in a sick way.

(Not saying the LA skyline looked like this exactly but it felt like it haha...)

There are still many ways to interpret Hideaki Anno’s cult classic, and it’s part of its charm but I think the take away fans should have is definitely not that suicide is ok but that we get it. We understand why people have those feelings and why it feels freeing to desire the void and oblivion. It’s a pity that the series most toxic fans didn’t get that clue through the original finale but Anno, not a person who likes being shoved around, clearly created perhaps the most twistedly beautiful “fuck you” to that in anime history.

As we enter 2021 all I can say is it’s ok to feel like this, it’s ok to desire freedom from the relentless gloom and doom of the world and people’s prying expectations of what they think you “should” be. No one blames you. At the end of the day, we’re all just trying to survive the apocalypse we have zero control over, so the least we can do is be a bit nicer and considerate of one another.

At least it’ll make the Third Impact more pleasant whenever it eventually comes...

Happy New Year, everyone!

Congratulations on surviving 2020! Have fun in 2021...

#neon genesis evangelion #end of evangelion #evangelion #hideaki anno #anime #japan #90s #vintage anime #2020 #apocalypse #covid #mental health #depression #sadness #horror #shinji #covid19 #quarantine

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doubleshotofsomething · 4 years

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Needy

[ This is my submission for @sourpatchkidsandacokecan ‘s Little Darlin’ Mystery AU challenge. It is a three part soulmate au, inspired by the song Needy by Ariana Grande.]

What happens when you meet the one you had been looking for your entire life, only to find you’re not what they were hoping for?

Summary: You try to move on. You really do. But life just won’t let you.

Pairings: Bucky x Reader, Thor x Reader, Sam x Reader[Purely platonic]

Prompt: soulmate au. song prompt

Warnings: mentions of smut (nothing really major, unless you use a microscope), tiny mentions of abuse(microscopic), panic attack mentions, fluff maybe? for like a second?, angst(i think im getting good at that but probably not), Bucky is an idiot, everyone is an idiot here folks. Proceed with caution.

Prologue

Part One: [I admit I’m a little messed up]

“—dizzy yet?” You looked up at Sam, his soft eyes assessing you. “Nauseous?”

You shook your head, lowering your eyes back to the drip attached to your left arm. He was the only one in the room with you. He was always the only in the room with you, willing to wait until you were well enough to leave. Willing to keep you company.

A part of you was thankful, the thought of being alone in the Bruce’s Lab was daunting. Not even the scientist himself was willing to be there throughout the entire process, unless it was absolutely necessary. Or maybe the thought of being alone with you was what kept him from staying every time.

You frowned at the thought, the likeliness of it was unsettling. You didn’t even see Steve as much, anymore.

“You know what would be funny—” Sam grinned, still leaning against the door as he had been for the past hour. “—if he died halfway through the transfusion.”

That would be funny. And you would have genuinely laughed, loud and unapologetic, if swallowing your own spit didn’t still seem like a challenge whenever your soulmate was around, if breathing didn’t seem so impossible. If you heart didn’t have that overwhelming ache that won’t seem to go away anymore.

You would have laughed, honestly, but nothing seemed funnier that your predicament anymore.

“Don’t give him any ideas,” you offer him a genuine smile, “he’d do that just to have the upper hand.”

Just to spite me, you thought bitterly.

Sam chuckled, shoving hands into his jean pockets as he wandered further into the room. He hated the situation just as much as you did, you knew that because he voiced it every time he had to pick you up. But he couldn’t do anything except offer his presence, keep you company until Bruce was done getting whatever he needed from you.

This time, just like the past last two times, he needed your blood.

As it turns out, your soulmate decided to be hero, as if he wasn’t already one, and used his body as a shield to protect his wife from sniper shot. He could have moved her out of the way, if he’s fast enough to get in the way then he’s fast enough to get her out of the way. But he’s an asshole.

He’s an asshole that could have just let her get shot at – she was wearing a bulletproof vest anywhere – but he didn’t, because he probably gets paid to make your life a living hell.

The previous time you had a tube attached to you, he had pushed Tony out of the way and ended up with a poisoned dart attached to his neck. Tony was in his iron man suit, so the dart would have just bounced off. But your mate is an asshole that got himself poisoned, so you had to be pulled out of your best friend’s wedding for a blood transfusion that ended up poisoning you.

Bruce claimed that the poison shouldn’t have been able to enter your bloodstream, that the antibodies in your system were strong enough to fight and render it harmless, that the injection he had given prior was supposed to make it impossible for the toxin to survive. You and Sam called bullshit, hydra base poison was hydra base poison and nothing to keep it from not being toxic, but that didn’t prevent you from being hospitalised for two weeks.

Because your soulmate is an asshole.

“They haven’t come back for more blood—” you frowned as you tried to look passed the lab doors, finding no movement outside of the glass. “—do you think he’s awake?”

Sam frowned at that, turning to face you fully.

You couldn’t feel him anymore, you haven’t been able to since the vows, and you hated yourself for finding some sort of comfort in that. In the fact that he, too, couldn’t feel you anymore.

Sam knew that. One look at the bruising around your neck and he knew that the ties that bind had been damaged for good. Which is why he hated this, more than he could ever put into words. He hated that they all ignored the signs, that they put you in danger, and still made you save his life every time.

“I hope so,” he said, his brown eyes gentle as they continued to watch you. “Because, honestly, you’re starting to look anaemic.”

At that, you grinned at him. “I was wondering why the room was starting to move.”

“Y/N—”

“It’s a joke, Wilson.” You chuckled, shaking your head as you finally removed the drip from your arm, having done so enough times to know what you need to do. “I think that’s enough blood for now, anyway.”

It wasn’t a joke. The room had been moving since you stepped into the Tower, but they needed blood and the thought of declining didn’t sit well with you. It continued to move as you made your way to the lab, your feet taking you there on instinct, as if going to the lab was as routine as going to bed. Even now, as your heart rate had finally calm down and Sam’s presence had eased your anxious stomach, it still moved at the thought of the idiot you’d let get under skin.

Assholes and idiots were truly your Achilles’ heel.

He was awake.

You found out an hour later, after Bruce had cleared you and Sam had successfully convinced you to stay the night. You were too dizzy to be trusted on your own, and you couldn’t find it in yourself to force Sam to take you back home. So, you gave in.

He was still recovering, too weak to leave his bed. A part of you silently hoped he remained that way for the rest of the night, while a part of Sam vocally hoped he didn’t make it through the night.

Everyone else laughed and took that as a joke.

You laughed because you knew it wasn’t.

Sam stayed in the living room with everyone else, while you chose to go to your designated room for the night. You had accepted a little while back that this - whatever friendship you were trying to form with the group - would never work. It would never - could never, be genuine.

You wanted a soulmate, your soulmate, and they wanted a peaceful living environment. Resentment made for a terrible working environment and your presence brought about a truck load of it. So, naturally, they couldn't side with you even if they wanted to.

You hadn't noticed at first, the shift in the room whenever you were around. You just assumed it was the result of your nerves, or their unfamiliarity with you. So, you tried to ease the tension, to make it bearable for everyone involved. They had dealt with people trying to dismantle them, turn them against each other, and you just needed them to understand that that wasn't who you were.

Then, as the trips to the lab became more frequent, and Sam remained the only constant, you realised what the problem really was - you.

It didn't matter how good of a person you thought you were. Or needed them to know you were. Bucky would marry Wanda, and they would do nothing to help you stop that.

Bruce entertained your small talk because he was just nice, not because he was your friend.

Steve remained by your side only when necessary, only after your fights with Bucky, as if to ensure that you wouldn't lash out. As if you were that kind of person.

Natasha and Clint, in the brief moments that you had shared with them, were polite but always quick to leave the room. According to Sam, your entire situation was scary to them.

Tony only ever greeted in, only ever in passing. You were almost certain that you had talked more with Jarvis, than you had with him.

Sam was the only one that actually bothered with you, which was a problem for the team. Bucky didn't trust him to have his back anymore - not when he would side with you at any chance he got - and that made it impossible to send them both into field together. You tried to avoid him, he was an Avenger before he was your anything, figuring that you were doing the both of you a favour.

Rather drift apart than lose his friendship in the worst way, you figured.

But he was persistent. And patient. And had terribly good taste in music, and a great humour. And you were lonely and weak, and in desperate need of a friend.

So, you stopped ignoring his call as much as before. Stopped ignoring him every time he showed up at your place. You stopped denying yourself his consistency and started accepting that he wasn't terrible company for someone who hated labs.

You knew where you stood with everyone, at least you no longer had to force things.

"You're not even gonna say bye?"

Blue eyes stared back at you, trapping you in his gaze as your hand remained frozen over the car door handle.

He shouldn't be awake. You were quiet. You had woken up an hour earlier than usual to avoid bumping into any one of them, but clearly you weren't quiet enough for the super soldier to not hear you.

Bucky shrugs, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants. "Figured you'd stay for breakfast, at least."

He says that so casually, so naturally, as if this was okay. As if what you two had - could have had, should have had - didn't fall apart at his hands. As if the marks on your neck would disappear within a couple of weeks, as if this was normal.

"I have things to do." Is your quiet response, neutral, as if your heart isn't beating painfully against your chest.

He frowns, taking a step forward, a step that has your eyes widening slightly at his movement.

"It's four a.m.," he states, eyebrows furrowing and face churning with a hint of disappointment. Disappointment with you, always you. "Calm down, doll, I can feel your heartbeat from here."

It's your turn to frown. He shouldn't be able to feel you, not anymore. Not after he chose her.

He seems to think that too, because he shrugs and lets out a sigh. "It's kinda hard to stay on bed rest when your anxiety is stronger than that coffee you drink."

You don't respond. You never do lately, and he understands that, knows that it's his fault. But you had moved to a different place, gotten a new number, changed workplaces, and he had to find all that out the hard way. With changed locks that his key no longer unlocks, sympathetic looks from the receptionist when she tells him that you quit over a month ago, and a different voice in the voicemails everytime he calls your old number. Despite both of your histories, you were still bonded to each other and you could at least talk to him.

You hate that he's doing this, to you, again. That he pushes you away, tells you he loves another woman, but still wants you to dance to the tune he's playing. You hate yourself even more for being too weak for this, too much for him.

His hair was still tousled and messy, his shirt wrinkled, and you hated seeing this part of him. Because this is the part that she gets, the part that should have been yours. The part of him that isn't fights and holes in walls and panic attacks in the middle of a shower.

This is the part that didn't have demons and freightcar and rusted and shattered glass every time you opened your mouth. This is the part that you don't get to have, because he could never give it to you, because Hydra was good, so damn good at making Winter Soldiers that the Soldat could never really leave Bucky.

Not while you're still alive.

"Breakfast?" he asks, after a moment of watching you. "Steve and I could drive you to work afterwards, I'm sure you still have some of your formal clothes here."

You shake your head at him, not able to find the words. Because this isn't how you pictured your relationship with your mate would be.

But this was the card you were dealt.

"Lunch?"

You frown.

"Come on, doll--" he runs his fingers - flesh, because metal is only ever reserved for you - through his hair, "--I'm trying to make up for everything."

"I have to go." You insist and get into your car before he can drag the conversation out, talk you into staying, into giving him parts of yourself he could never give back.

You leave and he lets you, for once. His chest heavy with the weight of your emotions, an ache for something he could never understand.

He couldn't be what you wanted, as much as he wishes he could. But he still wanted you to be happy. He'd give anything for you to be happy - almost anything.

Weren't you tired of being lonely?

You should have known who he was.

Who else could still stand after being hit by a car, at the speed you were driving?

But your vision was bleary, your stomach was cramping, and you weren't sure if your periods were early or if you were about to have another episode.

You should have known who he was. Who else could have been his height, had his strength and still asked if you were okay?

You don't usually cry when you first meet someone. But you cried when you met him.

You had rushed out of your car as soon as your actions registered in your head, practically stumbled your way to him, and wheezed as you fell on your knees in front of him.

"Are you alright?' His voice is deep, way too deep, as deep as the pit in your stomach it seemed.

You continued to wheeze, eyes wide with trepidation, struggling to find the strength to repeat his words to him.

You were having a panic attack; you were sure of it. You had left Bucky on an uncomfortable note and spent the entire day driving around in circles, avoiding your apartment. Scared that he had put a tracker, that he was following, that he would be waiting for you inside, vaguely aware that that line of thought wouldn't do you any good. Especially on your day off.

"Dead!" Is the first word that comes out of your mouth as your eyes frantically scan over him. "So dead! Oh, my, god--"

"Uh--"

"Gonna be attached to a tube in a prison cell--" your crawled closer to him, frantically feeling at him in search of any broken bones. "--I can't do prison. I couldn't-- I can't-- I'm not--oh, my, god!"

You couldn't calm down, not even as he assured you that he was fine, that he had survived far worse than a little bump.

Your car was dented where it had hit him, but he still got up without any difficulty. He helped you up as you gaped at him, still in shock and still rambling about things that neither of you understood.

He parked your car for you, took out your grocery bags - you didn't need to buy any of the things in them, but you were stalling so you bought whatever you thought you needed - and carried your things up the staircase with you.

You were still shaking and rambling and terrified. He took your keys and unlocked your door for you, letting you go in first.

You should have been terrified of him, he was a complete stranger and he could overpower you. He could do with you as he pleased.

But he told you a story about his brother pretending to be a snake when they were kids, and how his best friend would be proud to know that she wasn't the only one that could knock him off his feet.

Then he told you about his pet rabbit while extending his hand mid-air, caught an umbrella that flew in through the door and smiled at you.

Blue eyes crinkled at the corners as he watched you watch him, waiting.

You should have known who he was. What other human looked like him?

"Holy shit--" You cry again, harder than before, than earlier, because you hit an Avenger with your car and now, they knew where you lived.

Thor's smile disappeared slowly, then all at once. His eyebrows furrowed as he watched you back away from, his chest tightened when you started rambling about nearly killing him, and he was holding you before he even realised he had crossed the room.

He had been on Earth long enough to know that midgardian women had a habit of crying out of nowhere or for the oddest of reasons. They cried when they were happy, and sad, and angry, and holding them seemed to work every time.

So, he held you as you cried in the middle of your doorway, with the door wide open. He held you as you wheezed so hard, you passed out. Then he set you gently on your couch and waited for you to wake, to make sure you were alright.

You woke up to a dry throat, swollen eyes, a headache and the god of Thunder hovering over you, staring.

His smiles as you groan, eyes lighting up as you attempt to sit on your couch.

You used to have a couch big enough to fit two, comfortable enough for two to cuddle, because you were preparing for two. You sold that couch when you moved, you sold everything when you moved, and replaced it with furniture for one - and the annoyingly comfortable armchair for Sam, because why not.

You narrow your eyes at Thor, which entices his smile to widen as he leans back and sits upright on your coffee table.

"I made you something to eat." He's grinning proudly, and the cynic in you is almost certain that whatever it is, it's probably poisoned.

He made you cereal. He must have made it a while ago as well because it's swollen and soggy from the milk it absorbed, and it looks like it had been left out in the open the entire time. It probably has been.

You look between him and the bowl, then narrow your eyes at him further.

"Did you eat that?" You ask, your voice sounding croaky and disgusting to your ears.

He shakes his head, frowning at the bowl. "The milk smelled curiously funny. Is it flavoured?"

"It's rotten." You forgot to get milk while you were shopping, you also forgot to throw away the carton that was in the fridge.

"Thought as much." He hums, setting the bowl back on the floor. "Midgard does have peculiar things, so I just assumed this was another one of it."

You blink at him, his eyes startlingly warm, too warm for him to be an Avenger.

"Midgard is what we call Earth," he continues, taking your silence for confusion. "We, as in Asgardians."

You know. You had been to the Tower enough times to know.

He watches you, sky blue scanning over your frame, and you suppress the urge to shudder. You're hugging the thin blanket that had been thrown over you, assumingly by him, feet still stretched out on the couch as you subconsciously attempt to sink further into it.

His eyes fall at the cotton on your arm, an expression that you can't quite read cross his face.

He must have been so used to people welcoming him with open arms, that he didn't think this situation was odd.

"You know--" he scratches at his stubble, eyes still glued to your arm, "--the last time I got hit by a car, I ended up in a hospital and woke up to eat pop tarts."

You blame the headache. You're hearing things and seeing Avengers in your apartment because of the headache. Plus, you were low on blood at the moment, so it must be that as well.

"Are you--" you pause to swallow, suddenly aware of how achingly dry your throat is. He seems to notice and is handing you a bottle of water before you can finish.

You frown, sure that he poisoned it as well, but still drink the water because there are worse ways to go -- and you survived poisoned once, maybe you could again. Best two out of two.

You let out a relieved sigh, the water cool as it trickles down your chin and soothes your throat. You're about to use the back of your hand to wipe at the water, but his hand presses a napkin to you before you can even lift it.

"I'm not sick," you tell him, and he shushes you as he continues dabbing at your chin. "I can do that myself."

"I witnessed you drop your key three times in a row before I intervened, so I seriously doubt it."

He stayed until he was certain that you would be alright on your own.

He stayed until you were half-asleep on the couch and practically kicked him out.

Then he stayed the night when he had accidently walked in while you were in the middle of another panic attack.

He stayed until you started meeting each other during your lunchbreaks, at a cafe a few blocks from your work.

He stayed, with your hand in his hair and on his cheek, with his lips on yours and his arms around you.

He stayed, with his body on yours, connected in ways only lovers know. With his heat surrounding you, between you, within you. Chest to chest, lips to lips, he stayed.

He stayed, in your home, and then you woke up one morning to find him everywhere all at once. The toothbrush next to yours, shirts mixed up with his, beer next to the juice. He was in the warmth waiting for you on the couch and in your bed everyday - you, no longer shocked but expecting to find it every time.

He stayed, filling in the gaps, fixing the showerhead and the creak of your door and that window that wouldn't budge.

He stayed until you couldn't remember why you had cereal for dinner, while you waited for the food you ordered.

He stayed until he answered the door, and Bucky stood on the other side of it.

He stayed, until he didn't.

You should have known who he was. Who else could build you up and break you back down like an Avenger?

-----------

A/N: I stared at the word prologue so long, i dont think im spelling it right

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ernmark · 6 years

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oh my god this new episode holy shit

Okay, folks, spoilers under the cut.

But before that: if you have triggers, check the episode notes before you listen. I know it’s basically the same list of triggers as in most episodes, but this time it gets pretty intense.

Q) Why did I not see the proliferation of the THEIA coming?

A) Because it seemed so absurdly, prohibitively expensive that you could only realistically buy one or two of the bionic eyes.

And that would have been a problem, except 1) Ramses is richer than God, and 2) I think the bionic interface itself is the expensive bit, not necessarily the software. Once he had the THEIA developed (and you know he commissioned that shit), you know he just found a way to slap it on people. And we saw that foreshadowed expertly in the sewer bots.

I’ve said it before: good writing feels like a good riddle: when it happens it completely catches you by surprise, but when you go back and think about it it seems completely obvious.

Here’s the thing about really, really good foreshadowing: it doesn’t feel like foreshadowing. Every piece of foreshadowing feels like its own end, rather than a means to prepare us for something else.

The THEIA Spectrum? Was totally just a thing to persuade Juno to come to Ramses’ side, right?

The THEIA Bots? Totally to clear the sewers. I was expecting more robots like them, but not like that.

Overriding Juno’s nervous system to the point of making him shoot better, controlling his pulse, giving him trauma-specific nightmares, and freezing his whole body on command? Fucked up enough to be a thing to be defeated on its own.

But it’s not just that. Look at Ramses himself:

He was a micromanager to an obscene degree.

JUNO: What I’d like is two minutes to collect myself.Little needy of you to call me on the car ride to you. (Lesson Learned)

But within days made himself indispensable, filling in every gap in workflow he could find, learning every job that needed doing, and, most importantly, playing emotional translator to some of the more ‘gifted’ artists on staff. We called him a writer, but really he was always more editor or manager… (Long Way Home)

He was a master manipulator– of Sarah, of Juno, of Yasmin Swift, of the entire population of Hyperion City

But every so often something would go wrong. His grand plot to give Sarah the profits fell through when she refused his hush money– and as a result he filed for a restraining order. Jocelyn got impatient for him to write a decent version of Andromeda 3, and erupted into a truly alarming screaming rant. They want to use NorthStar’s funds to make something that’ll the profit the company instead of forcing mass layoffs of the rest of their staff, and he cuts and runs.

JACK: Damn the deadline! You’re exactly the problem, Jocelyn, focusing on the smallest issues when you should be solving the big ones, taking the solution now over the solution that works— DO NOT SPEAK while I am speaking! (Long Way Home)

And notice the common thread there: this is when he has a vision for a Big Master Plan, and somebody else doesn’t want to go along with it, so he gets absolutely furious with them– and then throws them away altogether.

So how do you save people? You make sure that they always agree with you and never even have the option to go against your Master Plan. After all, you know best, don’t you? And his plans were always meticulous and perfect, so long as everybody else always behaved exactly as he wanted them to.

Rita points out that even the THEIA isn’t a proper AI– it can’t learn or change and grow, it’s just a thousand copies of the exact same complex program. And one that is very flawed and vulnerable to viruses.

Funny that. Expect to see Rita bring down the whole system the minute she gets a chance.

On the subject of really good foreshadowing: Khan’s fixation with stun blasts and heart conditions, plus what we saw of Vespa being nearly killed by a stun blast when she was high up.

Not gonna lie, before Juno narrated what happened, I assumed that Mick was standing on the balcony and got blasted off the fourteenth story. Thank god that wasn’t what happened, because there’s no bringing somebody back from that kind of fall.

I knew Mick would be the one they go to. I knew Mick would be the prime target that sends Juno over the edge. But God, I wasn’t expecting this. The whole sequence made my skin crawl.

And even when we were in Mick’s apartment, I didn’t see it coming. I honest to god thought it was the tea– that there are nanites in the water or something (to be fair, I just got done playing We Happy Few, where the water is drugged to fuck and back).

So I have feelings about Mick Mercury.

All this time, he’s been “setting the record for going nowhere fast”. People think of him as a loser, and a lot of times he thinks of himself as one.

And then comes the THEIA, and suddenly he’s put together, and refined, and capable of superhuman feats, and he makes tea and everything.

How’s he going to feel about giving that up? Will he be relieved to be rid of it, or will a part of him still miss what it made him?

I want to point out how very sick Ramses sounds here. I keep coming back to the theory that he’s dying, but I’m serious: He’s on death’s door.

“Time. Time. Just give me time. This will work. It has to.”

It speaks to Matthew Zahnzinger’s skill as a voice actor that Ramses actually starts to sound more lively when he’s with Juno, and then even more when he’s absolutely furious– and when he calms down he sounds even sicker than before. He’s got so little life left in him. I’d really feel for the guy if I didn’t want to beat his skull in with a tennis racket.

It’s not just confidence that has him offering to completely capitulate to Juno’s demands after 24 hours– I don’t think he has much more than that left to him, and who the hell cares where his money goes when he’s dead?

On that note, the THEIA is pre-programmed to be self-replicating.

“Only Newtown residents and certain select guests can enter Newtown until the city adjusts to our idea”. By which he means the Newtown residents will leave the city, infect other people, and those people will be ‘select guests’.

Once it’s stable and well-seated in Newtown’s populace, the people already infected with the THEIA Soul will make more and infect the rest of Hyperion City, and after that we’ve pretty much got a Borg situation.

As for Ramses’ conversation with Juno:

God, that was hard to listen to.

In the first eight minutes or so, Ramses is surprisingly endearing. We know enough by now to realize it’s a smokescreen, but it sounds sympathetic and real, because that’s how he works. He makes himself the good guy.

But then Juno shuts him down, cuts him off, assures him that he’s never going to forgive him, and Ramses switches tack. He showers Juno with facts– incomplete facts, facts that only show one very sketchy and incomplete version of the truth, but facts that Juno can’t refute and doesn’t have enough information to argue against.

And then he backs up his facts with emotional triggers– he’s “recycling” equipment from the police force that robbed Sarah blind all those years ago, and then he slips in the idea that that’s what drove her to abuse her kids, rather than his own actions.

Smoke and mirrors. Fucking smoke and mirrors.

But once again, Juno cuts him off and refuses to be baited, but his ire is up. Ramses is already under his skin and in his head, even if he isn’t entirely pulling the strings yet.

And then Ramses turns it around and starts asking him questions that Juno can’t answer. Now Juno feels stupid and unprepared, and Ramses knows it. And while Juno is struggling to put his thoughts into words, Ramses starts absolutely steamrolling him with emotionally loaded facts and ideas too quickly for Juno to argue with, and you can see Juno start to crumple under the onslaught.

And he plays with this insidious premise that what he’s already done is irrelevant, and only future action matters– ignoring the fact that he did all of this in secret specifically so he wouldn’t be stopped, and that he’s got even more of this plan up his sleeve in ways that Juno couldn’t possibly predict. And he spins it all in such a way that Juno can’t argue, because he puts all the burden of proof on Juno and writes off anything Juno says as too emotional.

The whole thing is so slimy it made me want to take a shower.

And Juno still holds on.

And he legitimately lands blow after blow that Ramses can’t deflect: He brings up the rabbits. He points out that Ramses keeps discarding his ideas out of hand. He dismantles Ramses’ narrative that Juno was “saving Ben” by letting Jack into Sarah’s office. And he takes Ramses’ attempts to use his feelings about Sarah against him, but he turns them about.

I’m so fucking proud of him for it.

If this is a verbal boxing match, Juno starts off strong, falls behind, and then hits Ramses with wallop after wallop until Ramses has to pull out entirely and find another way to beat him– by which he means sending him out into New Town to get himself infected with yet another THEIA.

Motherfucker.

So… Juno has money.

Just from Ramses, or has he been having lots of money coming in for a while now?

I mean, it’s not like he’s been spending it on anything except booze, has he?

#Anonymous #the penumbra podcast #100

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patriotsnet · 3 years

Text

Why Do Republicans Want Lower Taxes

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-do-republicans-want-lower-taxes/

Why Do Republicans Want Lower Taxes

Democrats Vs Republicans On Taxes

Why Do People Think Lower Taxes Help the Economy?

While Republicans believe in balancing spending cuts with tax cuts across the board, Democrats believe in cutting taxes for the middle and lower class, while raising them for the upper class. They believe in a higher marginal rate, with income tax being higher for those who make more, as opposed to the Republican views that taxes should be equal percentages for all income levels. In the 2012 Party Platform, 56% of republicans opposed raising taxes on those who earned over $250,000. This isnt to say that Republicans do not believe in focusing relief on the middle and lower classes; they do, however, believe in relief for all Americans, and not in raising taxes on the upper classes.

What Do Republicans Believe In

Do all Republicans believe the same things? Of course not. Rarely do members of a single political group agree on all issues. Even among Republicans, there are differences of opinion. As a group, they do not agree on every issue.

Some folks vote Republican because of fiscal concerns. Often, that trumps concerns they may have about social issues. Others are less interested in the fiscal position of the party. They vote they way they do because of religion. They believe Republicans are the party of morality. Some simply want less government. They believe only Republicans can solve the problem of big government. Republicans spend less . They lower taxes: some people vote for that alone.

However, the Republican Party does stand for certain things. So I’m answering with regard to the party as a whole. Call it a platform. Call them core beliefs. The vast majority of Republicans adhere to certain ideas.

So what do Republicans believe? Here are their basic tenets:

Conservatives Dont Hate Socialism They Hate Equality

They want to take away your hamburgers, former Trump aide Sebastian Gorka in February. This is what Stalin dreamt about America will never be a socialist country! The Conservative Political Action Conference audience cheered. The video played on my phone as I waved at Danny, the homeless man who begs for food every morning at the Newark Penn Station, where scores of poor people sleep in wheelchairs or lean on crutches or stand by the delis to ask for change.

These folks need more than hamburgers. They need jobs and homes. Yet, as the 2020 election season starts, Trump has branded progressives as socialists who will steal property and bring tyranny. The presidents fearmongering contrasts with the actual Green New Deal that some Democrats support but failed to pass in the GOP-controlled Senate. Its a fear driven by ideology. Republicans paint the poor as undeserving, marked by cultural or personal character flaws. Whereas Democratic Socialists believe people have the ability to run the economy and society to meet their needs. Why this difference in perception? It is because Republicans arent afraid of socialism they are afraid of equality with people they see as inferior.

Read Also: How Many Democrats And Republicans Are In The House

To Fund The $35 Trillion Budget Plan Democrats Aim To Undo Trump Tax Cuts

To Fund The $3.5 Trillion Budget Plan, Democrats Aim To Undo Trump Tax Cuts

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The 10% cuts were “across the board,” as he liked to say, implying they were of equal value to all. The dollar value of the cuts was, of course, far larger for those with larger incomes. Moreover, the tax law changes that accompanied the rate cuts made it easier for individuals and corporations to “write off” various forms of income and spending to lower their tax bills further. The tax rate for capital gains, money made from successful investing, would come down from 28% to 20%.

Reagan did not get everything he sought in this initial foray against high taxes and progressivity. The Senate trimmed the third year of the tax cut from 10% to 5%, and it would take a second bill, the Tax Reform Act of 1986, to pull the marginal top rate all the way down to 28%.

But Reagan’s tax cuts in 1981 constituted the strongest move away from progressivity in the income tax since the tax was initiated in the Civil War.

They were the culmination of rising anti-tax sentiment in the late 1970s, when some states adopted tax limitations by popular referendum. That spirit was kept alive in the decades to come by groups such as Americans for Tax Reform, led by activist Grover Norquist. Starting in 1986, Norquist has challenged candidates for office to sign his “taxpayer protection pledge” not to raise taxes. The great majority of Republicans have signed.

Reagan Pared Back Progressivity

Reagan was able to reverse what had been a decades-long commitment to at least the look of progressivity. He could do it in part because his 1980 election coattails enabled his party to capture control of the Senate for the first time in a quarter century. Moreover, while Democrats still had a House majority, their ranks included scores of members from Southern and Midwestern districts that had also voted for Reagan.

When the budget resolution passed in that summer of 1981, 63 House Democrats joined all 190 Republicans in backing it. And when the tax package came to its critical votes in July, dozens of Democrats sided with Reagan and the Republicans rather than their own leadership.

In 1982, Democrats added to their majority in the House and negotiated some revenue increases with the Senate and the White House. And in Reagan’s second term, momentum built quickly for a tax overhaul that would combine still lower marginal rates with new business taxes and a paring back of tax preferences and other “loopholes.” The new overhaul’s main appeal to Democrats was that it exempted far more middle- and lower-income earners from the income tax altogether.

Career anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist, here in 2018, called the Trump administration’s 2017 tax cut “Reaganite” the ultimate compliment from the founder of Americans for Tax Reform.hide caption

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Gop Real Estate Owners Make Out Big

Besides the laws benefits to real estate pass-throughs, real estate in general was hugely favored by the tax law, allowing property exchanges to avoid taxation, the deduction of new capital expenses in just one year versus longer depreciation schedules, and an exemption from limits on interest deductions.;

If you are a real estate developer, you never pay tax, said Ed Kleinbard, a former head of Congresss Joint Committee on Taxation.;

Members of Congress own a lot of real estate. Public Integritys review of financial disclosures found that 29 of the 47 GOP members of the committees responsible for the tax bill hold interests in real estate, including small rental businesses, LLCs, and massive real estate investment trusts , which pay dividends to investors. The tax bill allows REIT investors to deduct 20 percent from their dividends for tax purposes.;

Who We Are

The Center for Public Integrity is an independent, investigative newsroom that exposes betrayals of the public trust by powerful interests.

Its Not Easy Being Green

Democratic socialism is not a Marxist fever dream; its a call for help. Its less socialism than humanitarian aid for a people in crisis. Millions of Americans are in dead-end jobs, slipping behind on bills, deep in debt and scared of climate change.

Something is wrong with capitalism, Martin Luther King Jr. told his staff in 1966. There must be better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism. Saying the economic system causes pain means moving beyond the conservative image of the poor as flawed, personally or culturally, or the liberal image of them as unlucky victims of a more or less functioning meritocracy. To honor our human potential, capitalism must be dismantled, its pieces taken apart and recombined into a new world.

Climate change is one of the biggest existential threats to our way of life, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez said at the rollout of the Green New Deal. To combat that threat, we need to be as ambitious and innovative as possible. In its 14 pages, the plan envisions a World War II-scale mobilization of millions of workers. They will repair roads and bridges, build smart grids, upgrade industry to be zero carbon, build green public transit, remove carbon from the air, clean up waste sites, and clean up the poisoned land and waterways. When they come home, those workers can rest in new, green housing, and if sick or injured, they can go see a doctor, using a Medicare for All card.

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Most Welfare Recipients Are Makers Not Takers

The first myth, that people who receive public benefits are takers rather than makers, is flatly untrue for the vast majority of working-age recipients.

Consider Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, formerly known as food stamps, which currently serve about 42 million Americans. At least one adult in more than half of SNAP-recipient households are working. And the average SNAP subsidy is $125 per month, or $1.40 per meal hardly enough to justify quitting a job.

As for Medicaid, nearly 80 percent of adults receiving Medicaid live in families where someone works, and more than half are working themselves.

In early December, House Speaker Paul Ryan said, We have a welfare system thats trapping people in poverty and effectively paying people not to work.

Not true. Welfare officially called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families has required work as a condition of eligibility since then-President Bill Clinton signed welfare reform into law in 1996. And the earned income tax credit, a tax credit for low- and moderate-income workers, by definition, supports only people who work.

Workers apply for public benefits because they need assistance to make ends meet. American workers are among the most productive in the world, but over the last 40 years the bottom half of income earners have seen no income growth. As a result, since 1973, worker productivity has grown almost six times faster than wages.

Religion And The Belief In God Is Vital To A Strong Nation

Lower Taxes, Higher Revenue

Republicans are generally accepting only of the Judeo-Christian belief system. For most Republicans, religion is absolutely vital in their political beliefs and the two cannot be separated. Therefore, separation of church and state is not that important to them. In fact, they believe that much of what is wrong has been caused by too much secularism.

Those are the four basic Republican tenets: small government, local control, the power of free markets, and Christian authority. Below are other things they believe that derive from those four ideas.

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Orrin Hatch Tom Coburn And Richard Burr On Health Care

More recently, senators Orrin Hatch of Utah, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, and Richard Burr of North Carolina have headed up the Republican fight on health care. Their proposal was named the Patient Choice, Affordability, Responsibility and Empowerment Act, and is based upon the principle of providing more flexibility and purchasing power to the individual. It shares some important similarities with the Affordable Care Act, such as the requirement to allow dependent coverage through the age of 26, and the inability of insurance companies to provide lifetime limits. When the three senators released their proposal, Burr stated The American people have found out what is in ObamaCare broken promises in the form of increased health care costs, costly mandates and government bureaucracy. We can lower costs and expand access to quality coverage and care by empowering individuals and their families to make their own health care decisions, rather than empowering the government to make those decisions for them.;The group stated that their proposal is designed to be roughly budget neutral over the first 10 years, leaving the financial burden on the American people at nothing. Coburn commented that they created this proposal because Its critical we chart another path forward. Our health care system wasnt working well before ObamaCare and it is worse after ObamaCare.

What The Needy Deserve

The second myth is that low-income Americans do not deserve a helping hand.

This idea derives from our belief that the U.S. is a meritocracy where the most deserving rise to the top. Yet where a person ends up on the income ladder is tied to where they started out.

Indeed, America is not nearly as socially mobile as we like to think. Forty percent of Americans born into the bottom-income quintile the poorest 20 percent will stay there. And the same stickiness exists in the top quintile.

As for people born into the middle class, only 20 percent will ascend to the top quintile in their lifetimes.

The third myth is that government assistance is a waste of money and doesnt accomplish its goals.

In fact, poverty rates would double without the safety net, to say nothing of human suffering. Last year, the safety net lifted 38 million people, including 8 million children, out of poverty.

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An Exhaustive Lobbying Campaign

Almost immediately after Mr. Trump signed the bill, companies and their lobbyists including G.E.s Mr. Brown began a full-court pressure campaign to try to shield themselves from the BEAT and GILTI.

The Treasury Department had to figure out how to carry out the hastily written law, which lacked crucial details.

Chip Harter was the Treasury official in charge of writing the rules for the BEAT and GILTI. He had spent decades at PwC and the law firm Baker McKenzie, counseling companies on the same sorts of tax-avoidance arrangements that the new law was supposed to discourage.

Starting in January 2018, he and his colleagues found themselves in nonstop meetings roughly 10 a week at times with lobbyists for companies and industry groups.

The Organization for International Investment a powerful trade group for foreign multinationals like the Swiss food company Nestlé and the Dutch chemical maker LyondellBasell objected to a Treasury proposal that would have prevented companies from using a complex currency-accounting maneuver to avoid the BEAT.

The groups lobbyists were from PwC and Baker McKenzie, Mr. Harters former firms, according to public lobbying disclosures. One of them, Pam Olson, was the top Treasury tax official in the George W. Bush administration.

This month, the Treasury issued the final version of some of the BEAT regulations. The Organization for International Investment got what it wanted.

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How Democrats And Republicans Differ On Matters Of Wealth And Equality

A protester wears a T-shirt in support of Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who is part of … a group of Democrats looking to beat Trump in 2020. Photographer: John Taggart/Bloomberg

If youre a rich Democrat, you wake up each day with self-loathing, wondering how you can make the world more egalitarian. Please tax me more, you say to your elected officials. Until then, the next thing you do is call your financial advisor to inquire about tax shelters.

If youre a poor Republican, however, you have more in common with the Democratic Party than the traditional Wall Street, big business base of the Republican Party, according to a survey by the Voter Study Group, a two-year-old consortium made up of academics and think tank scholars from across the political spectrum. That means the mostly conservative American Enterprise Institute and Cato were also on board with professors from Stanford and Georgetown universities when conducting this study, released this month.

The fact that lower-income Republicans, largely known as the basket of deplorables, support more social spending and taxing the rich was a key takeaway from this years report, says Lee Drutman, senior fellow on the political reform program at New America, a Washington D.C.-based think tank.

Across party lines, only 37% of respondents said they supported government getting active in reducing differences in income, close to the 39% who opposed it outright. Some 24% had no opinion on the subject.

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Us House Democrats Seek To Roll Back Trump Tax Cuts For Wealthy Corporations

WASHINGTON, Sept 13 – Leading Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives on Monday proposed a substantial roll-back of former President Donald Trump’s tax cuts, including raising the top tax rate on corporations to 26.5% from the current 21%.

Democrats on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee said they will debate legislation this week that would achieve the changes as part of their broader, $3.5 trillion domestic investment plan.

In an attempt to finance the new spending, the Democratic-led committee will debate a proposal to raise $2.9 trillion in revenue over 10 years, according to a document circulated among members of the panel.

Besides increasing corporate taxes, wealthy individuals would see a jump in their income taxes as well as higher capital gains and estate taxes.

Even if the legislation as proposed passes Congress and is signed by Democratic President Joe Biden, corporate taxes would still be lower than they were before the enactment of the tax cuts pushed through by Republicans in 2017. But the top individual income tax rate would revert to its pre-2017 level.

The tax-writing Ways and Means Committee has scheduled work sessions for Tuesday and Wednesday to debate tax policy and other matters under its jurisdiction to be included in the $3.5 trillion “reconciliation” bill, which would require a simple majority to be passed in the Senate.

REPUBLICANS OPPOSED

Republican Senators Push Social Security Medicare And Medicaid Cuts After Supporting Ineffective Tax Cuts

Republicans Target Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid

getty

The economy is recovering from the depths of the pandemic in large part due to the massive relief packages that Congress passed in 2020 and 2021. Just in time for this recovery, Senate Republicans are pushing for cuts to vital programs. According to news reports, five GOP senators are proposing a commission that would come up with proposals to balance the federal budget within a decade. Given that four of the five sponsors of this idea have signed on to the tax pledge to never, ever under any circumstances raise taxes, they are looking for programs to cut. They consequently take aim mainly at cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

These targeted programs are already and will continue to prove crucial to the financial and physical health of millions of Americans that have suffered from the pandemic. Many workers, especially older ones, have lost their jobs permanently and will move into early retirement with permanently lower benefits and little or no savings outside of those benefits. Millions of Americans, again particularly among older ones, experience long-term consequences from COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel virus. Those hardest hit by pandemic will need strong, expanded retirement and health benefits, not cuts to an already basic system.

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lu-cameron · 6 years

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Final Essay: Bjork's All is Full of Love meets a Cyborg Manifesto

Is all full of love, even humanoid robots? Directed by Chris Cunningham, 1997, Bjork’s All is Full of Love music video is a visual and technical sensation. Extremely cutting-edge, the video uses engineering, CGI, computer graphics, and industrial robotics to create a mechanical and erotic world.

By watching Bjork’s music video and by reading Donna Hanaway’s A Cyborg Manifesto, we can dismantle preconceived ideas of AI and imagine a more dynamic future of robotics as it becomes increasingly more tangible. Guided by Chris Cunningham’s visuals and Hanaway’s words, we can inject elements of post-humanism into our daily lives; the works push us to question our realities and what is means to be “human” and to feel love.

When I think of the title of bjorks song: All is full of love.... it puts immense power on the word "All." She means every thing, living and non living creatures. I think she is talking about a life force, an energy that runs through everything, that "all" is exploding with love. 13 years before Bjork’s video, A Cyborg Manifesto was written by Donna Haraway in 1984. It is an exploration of socialist feminism and the ways cyborgs are more common in our lives than we think. “A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction” (291). “The cyborg is a condensed image of both imagination and material reality . . . the relation between organism and machine has been a border war” (293). I am interested in the relation between organism and machine, between mechanical and “human.” The very human and guttural, choral, soft yet chaotic melodies of Bjork’s voice contrasts with the sharp mechanical simplicity and clinical sterility of the video.

The viewer is presented with a set and two characters. The colors are white and black, with quiet blue and purples hues and stark lighting. Unlike many music videos today, where dramatic costume and scene changes take place, whipping you from one storyboard to another, as though the director crammed his eight ideas into 2 minutes, Chris Cunningham keeps us in one environment. I did some research on the making of this video, and the director had been obsessed with robotics as a teenager. He worked with technicians to build the female android, and then they used computer graphics in post production to generate the machines that look like something you see at the dentists, or at NASA's JPL. In A Cyborg Manifesto, Hanaway writes about the power of electronics in modern world: “Microelectronics mediate the translations of labour into robotics, sex into genetic engineering and reproductive technologies, and mind into artificial intelligence” (303).

The video reminds me of our class discussions of virtual reality, artificial intelligence, post humanism, technoparanoia, and the ever developing cosmos of digital technology. It combines two things I'm interested in: science and art. Clearly, magic happens when these two domains collide. The video can also be tied to Westworld, a show we watched about a futuristic, capitalist world where robots seem so “real” because they express human emotion and deep comprehension of feeling.

In the video, an erotic connection happens. In the primary shots of the video, we see an android alone. Yet soon, a second android appears and extends her hand in a friendly way. She smiles. In A Cyborg Manifesto, Hanaway explores cyborg sexuality: “the cyborg does not expect its father to save it through the fabrication of a heterosexual mate. Cyborgs are needy for connection . . . the main trouble with cyborgs, of course, is that they are illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism.” The two female androids, either Bjork’s mirrored self or a separate being, embrace, underscoring Hanaway’s argument that they are needy for connection. It’s as if the bots move from frozen to melting... from a still, solid body lying on its side to a fluid, kinetic interaction. “A coupling between organism and machine, each conceived as coded devices, in an intimacy and with a power that was not generated in the history of sexuality. Cyborg ‘sex’ restores some of the lovely replicative baroque of ferns and invertebrates (such nice organic prophylactics against heterosexism)” (292). Since it is two females kissing, this coupling moves against heterosexism.

I thought briefly about the sexualization of the female body here, especially since it's directed by a man. I thought about why there was a choice to accentuate the robots hips and breasts.In the video, aside from touching each other’s derrieres, we see the female android on the right reach her hand slowly and tenderly into the crotch area of her partner, a subtle and tender movement occurs to suggest vaginal stimulation. I thought briefly about the kinky obsession with sex dolls and mechanical sex toys and robotic sexual partners. I thought about people's sexual digital interactions through avatars on games like Second Life and the Sims. I thought about how many modern electronic sex toys turn us into cyborgs when we use them. The definition of a cyborg is “a person whose physical abilities are extended beyond normal human limitations by mechanical elements built into the body.” When devices are inserted into or applied to the body for sexual pleasure, we take on a mechanical element that allows us to achieve orgasm beyond the normal human limitation.

Fluid is an important image in the video. When the two androids connect, a milky water streams through the machines and pours into the previously dry, sterile environment. The uncontrollable liquid opposes the tight grid of the set. “People are nowhere near so fluid, being both material and opaque. Cyborgs are there, quintessence” (297). Hanaways argues that cyborgs are fluid beings, and as material and opaque as the milky liquid in the video. The first time we see the fluid, it is flowing in reverse up from the white floor and around the android’s navel. This milky water gives a sense of cleansing, of motion, of the one element crucial to human survival. When we think of electronics and water, the two don’t mix well usually. We are taught to keep plugged-in appliances far away from the bath, and we learn about electrocution at a young age. We also know that if we spill water on our computers or drop our phones in the pool, they are ruined. Yet the liquid in this video does not interfere with the electronics. It flows beautifully, like the multiple mechanical hands of the two black robots. The constantly moving machines caress the android’s bodies. They tinker, drill, screw, and tickle. Are they building her? Repairing her? They touch her without ceasing. “The new technologies affect the social relations of both sexuality and of reproduction. The close ties of sexuality and instrumentality, of views of the body as a kind of private satisfaction and utility-maximizing machine depend on a high-tech view of the body as a biotic component or cybernetic communications system” (308).

Furthermore, since Bjork’s partner bot is a mirror image of her, I thought about self love; is it Bjork’s way of telling us to love ourselves? Or is it a lesbian robot? A bisexual robot? A queer robot? The conscious choice to make it two females, and not the age-old binary fairytale of a male and female, is wonderfully boundary-pushing. “Many women’s lives have been structured around employment in electronics, and their intimate realities include serial heterosexual monogamy” (304). This video moves away from serial heterosexual monogamy, yet we can’t assume that the android is necessarily homosexual. The video goes beyond labels and sexual classification. I don't want to get strangled by terminology. A nude body isn't always sexual or shocking. Futuristic technology isn't evil or frightening. It is joyful, sex should be. The video transcends our culture’s obsession with theoretical terminology, and sometimes all-consuming/confusing/distracting/navel-gazing talks of gender and feminism (especially in college.) The video also goes beyond our society's obsession with sex. If we can watch this video without constant definition, we can see much more. We can simply feel and let the visuals arise without getting wrapped up and ultimately lost in defining or questioning. It is a immaculately made video about love and the first time I saw it, I felt immense warmth.

Is it a visual prophecy? As the modern news talks more and more about AI, we feel as though there is a lost sense of human connection and tactile warmth with the growth of technology. Yet Bjork’s video dispels this myth and shows a world of flaming tender connection between two androids. It doesn’t matter who we are, or what we are made out of. We are all made of love. We are titillated and enthralled by the kissing robots as Bjork’s voice escalates into full expression. It's is other worldly. We do not see the creator of the robot, the people behind the machines. The video makes us think of robots differently. AI doesn't have to be distant and cold. It doesn't have to be frightening and mechanical. It doesn't have to be emotionless and monotonous. As Hanaway puts it, “Why should our bodies end at the skin? Machines can be animated –– given ghostly souls to make them speak or move. Machines can be prosthetic devices, intimate components, friendly selves” (314). All sort of looks like AI.... AI is full of love?

Sterility / Coldness / Blue light / Eerie / Computers / Clinical / Operation / Robot / Sharp / Angular / Calculated / Machines

Female body / Sensuality / Emotion / Passion / Desire / Post human / Unpredictable / Shocking / Shadow / Light / Woman / Embrace

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjI2J2SQ528

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bluewatsons · 7 years

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Rebecca J. Lester, Lessons from the borderline: Anthropology, psychiatry, and the risks of being human, 23 Feminism & Psychology 70 (2013)

Susanna: I didn’t try to kill myself.

Dr. Potts: What were you trying to do?

Susanna: I was trying to make the shit stop.

Girl, Interrupted (1999)

As an anthropologist, I study western psychiatric categories and practices as historically specific technologies of moral (and, often, gendered) personhood. I am also a practicing psychotherapist. Along with other concerns, many of my clients meet the DSM diagnostic criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). I have clients who cut themselves with glass, binge and purge, starve themselves into numb oblivion, burn words into their stomachs, have difficulty sustaining interpersonal relationships, dissociate, and regularly feel overwhelmed by strong emotions. The academic and clinical aspects of my work, coming as they do from distinct analytic positions, situate me uniquely in relationship to questions of gender, culture, and mental illness in general, and BPD in particular.

Clinicians generally detest working with borderline patients.1 These clients can present as unpredictable, needy, hostile, overly dramatic, and emotionally draining. As McGlashan (1993: 241) observes: ‘Officially, ‘borderline’ is a diagnostic label. Unofficially, in clinical parlance, it is synonymous with ‘anathema.’’ Gabbard (1997: 26) elaborates: ‘A significant number of professionals within the industry regard borderline patients with contempt.’ And as one psychiatrist told anthropologist Tanya Lurhmann (2000: 113), you look for the ‘meat grinder’ sensation: if you are talking to a patient and it feels like your internal organs are being turned into hamburger meat, she’s probably borderline.

My academic colleagues also find borderline personality disorder ‘anathema,’ but for entirely different reasons. For many, BPD represents the worst of psychiatry as a mechanism of regulatory control that is historically and culturally predisposed to find women defective and sick (Becker, 1997, 2000; Potter, 2009; Shaw and Proctor, 2005; Wirth-Cauchon, 2001). Women, they observe, are diagnosed with BPD far more often than men (Becker and Lamb, 1994), with the vague diagnostic criteria easily extendable to anyone doctors find inscrutable, provocative, or even merely annoying (Potter, 2006). BPD is arguably a go-to diagnosis within a medical system that disproportionately interprets strong emotions in women as symptoms of pathology (Skodol and Bender, 2003).

Here, I discuss some of my own views on borderline personality disorder from the perspective of a clinician-anthropologist. I highlight some key aspects of the dominant feminist critiques of BPD that inadvertently undermine vital components of their own agendas. I then offer an alternative reading that addresses these concerns.

BPD, psychiatric epistemology, and the ‘real’

I know what it’s like to want to die. How it hurts to smile. How you try to fit in but you can’t. How you hurt yourself on the outside to try to kill the thing on the inside. Susanna, Girl, Interrupted (1999)

The current diagnostic parameters for BPD (American Psychiatric Association, 2000) define it as a personality disorder characterized by fears of abandonment, relationships where others are alternately idealized or demonized, an unstable sense of self, impulsivity, suicidal behavior, mood swings, feelings of emptiness, over- whelming anger, and stress-related paranoia or dissociative symptoms. Critics of the diagnosis point out that many of these characteristics are consistent with historically ‘feminine’ predispositions such as emotionality, dependency, and instability, while others lend themselves to differential interpretations based on gender norms and expectations. Casual sexual activity is more likely to be labeled ‘impulsive’ in women than men, for example, for whom such encounters are often socially normalized if not valorized. Terms such as ‘frantic’ or ‘inappropriate’ as qualifiers likewise entail judgments about appropriate ways to respond to abandonment or express anger that implicitly hold individualized rational self-mastery as the ideal (Gaines, 1992).

Given all of this, harsh critiques of BPD make a great deal of sense. But they only tell part of the story. The diagnostic parameters of BPD are often deeply resonant with clients’ daily lived experiences. In addition to their regulatory propensities, BPD diagnostic criteria capture a cluster of dispositions, emotions, behaviors, and experiences that hang together in discernable patterns, under certain conditions, for certain people, in certain historical and cultural circumstances. The overwhelming majority of these individuals are women.

My insistence that there is a ‘there’ there in BPD, and that it might disproportionately manifest in women, undoubtedly will raise eyebrows among some feminists. Yet I put it forth as a grounded feminist claim. Viewed from the level of cultural critique, BPD pathologizes and reinscribes ‘feminine’ emotionality and irrationality. Yet viewed from the underside, as experiential realities for clients, the characteristics of BPD can take on entirely different meanings. They indicate enormous resilience, adaptation, creativity, and a struggle to survive environments that have been invalidating, abusive, or erasing. Feminist critiques of BPD, by focusing primarily on the clinical discourses that shape regulatory processes, have tended to miss this vital component. Yet when we consider the characteristics of BPD as survival strategies – brilliant ones – for navigating negative early environments that disproportionately affect women (e.g. early sexual abuse), we are called to reconsider the rejection of BPD as necessarily anti-woman, and may even find within it leverage points for feminist claims.

Illness expressions and the cultural semiotics of morality

“Then what’s wrong with me, huh? What the fuck is going on inside my head? Tell me, Dr. Val. What’s your diag-nonsense?” Susanna, Girl, Interrupted (1999)

Diagnostic categories provide explanatory models through which people can narrate their experiences and make sense of their behaviors. They also enable forms of regulatory control through which individuals may be constrained within prescribed forms of being deemed morally acceptable. It is well-trod ground in the social sciences, and particularly within medical/psychological anthropology, that people enact illness and distress in culturally patterned ways and according to social conventions and expectations. It is similarly widely accepted that diagnosticians generally find what they are looking for and miss what they are not. Over time and across cultures, illness categories and explanatory models vary widely, reflecting prevailing beliefs, values, and anxieties about proper moral persons.

Such observations have led many theorists to view illness categories, especially psychiatric ones, as products of social discourse with little, if any, stable grounding. Because something like melancholy is less readily observed than something like a broken arm, it is arguably more easily manipulated within epistemologies of regulation. And because many psychiatric conditions are entangled with issues of moral personhood, they are especially powerful mechanisms for curtailing forms of being deemed undesirable by majority standards.

Yet the fact that illness expressions are culturally patterned does not necessarily mean that what diagnostic and criteria describe is an entirely post hoc conjugation. Nor does it mean that expressions of suffering invariably conform to clinical expectations or available idioms of distress (if that were the case, the DSM would not need the pervasive NOS categories).

In engaging with BPD as a cultural phenomenon, then, it is not enough to identify a self-referential semiotic system whereby people manifest the characteristics of BPD because they are induced to live under the description of the disorder. In addition to assuming a relatively consistent mapping of symptoms and diagnosis (which is rarely the case), such an argument presumes that, just as there are motivations for clinicians to interpret women’s symptoms as BPD, there are motivations for women to adopt BPD-like forms of illness expression and to seek BPD as an explanatory model. Yet the diagnosis of BPD is hardly something to which people aspire. It is a highly stigmatized label. When we examine inducements for acting under the description of any condition, then, we must also consider the moral valence of this condition within local economies of engagement.

This leaves us in a challenging epistemological space. Do the characteristics of BPD constitute a culturally elaborated idiom of distress? Or is BPD a clinical fiction? In either case, feminist critiques have tended to work from the top down; that is, to consider how psychiatric discourses lead clinicians to read women’s behavior in certain pejorative ways. What tends to drop out of such analyses is the possibility that many women really do struggle with the behaviors and experiences associated with BPD, and that this can be as much a source of feminist critique as dismantling the diagnostic encrustations that surround it.

Undermining deconstructions

How we think about these issues matters critically for how we respond to individuals who are perceived to meet the DSM criteria for BPD. Here, I find theoretical physicist Dirac’s (1930) descriptions of quantum theories of light to be useful. When we ask a wave-like question, he observed, we get a wave-like answer. When we ask a particle-like question, we get a particle-like answer. We cannot ask both questions at the same time, yet holding both together is critical for under- standing the qualities and behavior of light.

Cultural critiques of psychiatric diagnosis entail asking wave-like questions and getting wave-like answers. The diagnosis of BPD is not infrequently invoked for reasons of gender bias, clinical incompetence, staff frustration, or any number of other reasons that have little to do with the client herself. Without a doubt, BPD is a social construction whose deployment is patterned along gendered lines. When we ask how BPD functions as a regulatory mechanism via its invocation of gendered cultural assumptions, then, we get answers at that level of analysis. And these are critically important.

At the same time, it is a mistake to therefore assume that all instances of the diagnosis are without basis; and certainly, few theorists would go so far as to make such a claim. If we allow that, at least in some cases there is some basis for the diagnosis of BPD, we have to then ask what that basis is. This is where the particle-like questions become important. If the diagnosis is not entirely fabricated out of thin air, it is incumbent upon us feminist theorists to attend to the conditions upon which it rests, to theorize the connections between such conditions and the symptoms associated with BPD, and to do so with as much commitment and vigor as we have deconstructed the symptom criteria and category themselves.

BPD and the challenges of non-existence

I understand BPD somewhat differently than my clinical colleagues who see it as a dysfunction of personality and my academic colleagues who see it as a mechanism of social regulation. In my view, BPD does not reside within the individual person; a person stranded alone on a desert island cannot have BPD. Nor does it reside within diagnostic taxa; if we eliminated BPD from the DSM, people would still struggle with the cluster of issues captured in the diagnosis. Rather, BPD resides – and only resides – in relationship. BPD is a disorder of relationship, not of personality. And it is only a ‘disorder’ because, as I explain below, it extends an entirely adaptive skill set into contexts where those skills are less adaptive and may cause a great deal of difficulty. Yet due to the contexts in which the skills were developed, the person has a great deal of trouble amending them (Linehan, 1993). Since BPD resides in relationship, BPD can also be attenuated through relationship: it is not a life-sentence, and it is not even necessarily problematic if managed constructively.

What does it mean to say BPD is a disorder of relationship? Most people diagnosed with BPD grew up in situations where their very existence as a person with independent thoughts and feelings was invalidated (Minzenberg et al., 2003). Sometimes, this entailed chronic abuse, either physical or sexual. Sometimes it was more of a grinding parental indifference. People diagnosed with BPD overwhelmingly experienced their early lives as involving constant messages that they do not – and should not – fully exist. Here, of course, gender becomes relevant in terms of how children are treated by caregivers and the culturally appropriate strategies available managing developmental challenges.

It makes perfect sense that a girl growing up in a context where her physical existence, psychological existence, or both felt constantly threatened might become fearful of being left alone and unprotected. Developing a finely tuned radar for others’ emotional states while also knowing that the person who cares for her one minute might hurt her the next might easily lead to fluctuating attachments and difficulty developing a stable sense of self. Perhaps in an attempt to derive some sense of her material imprint in the world or to manage strong affect that was disallowed or invalidated, she might engage in behaviors associated with either intense pleasure or pain. Paranoid ideation and even dissociation could be entirely adaptive skills in a context where damage was not only possible, but likely. In short, all of the symptoms associated with BPD could be viewed as adaptive responses to an environment that tells a child she is forbidden to exist as her own person and that she will encounter grave consequences should she try.

What becomes problematic is that, as this girl becomes an adolescent and then an adult, such survival strategies are often misread (for many of the reasons critics of BPD have pointed out) as communicating things quite the opposite of what she intends and a looping effect comes into play. If a person with such strategies happens come into a clinical setting, she is likely to find that her skills not only do not translate; they become her undoing (Aviram et al., 2006). What were once survival skills are now deemed ‘frantic’ or ‘inappropriate’ or ‘manipulative,’ or ‘paranoid.’ When a person is continuously misunderstood by others (especially those, like therapists or doctors, whose job it is to understand her), when her experiences and attempts to connect are continuously viewed as scheming or inauthentic, it is perhaps not surprising that rage and despair and feelings of emptiness become entrenched. And she fares little better in the world of academic critique where her struggles are deconstructed as artifacts of psychiatric discourse. She is caught, yet again, in a paradox of existence where to ‘be’ in any form, from any angle, renders her inauthentic.

Lessons from the borderline: Anthropology, psychiatry, and the risks of being human

“Crazy isn’t being broken, or swallowing a dark secret. It’s you, or me, amplified.” Susanna, Girl, Interrupted (1999)

Anthropologists have long been interested in the cultures of illness and healing. One of the most useful contributions of this work is the recognition that such cultures can and do change, despite their rootedness in regimes of knowledge that naturalize them as truth. The vitality of the debate about BPD from many disciplinary positions, as well as from individuals diagnosed with BPD themselves, signals that we are in the midst of such a shift (e.g. Johnson, 2010; Pershall, 2012; Reiland, 2004; Van Gelder, 2010). This is enormously exciting. Through challenging embedded bias, honoring the testimonies of individuals, questioning of our own motivations, and renewing a commitment to reduce injustice, silencing, and suffering, our intellectual, clinical, and human potentialities are being stretched and, if we are fortunate, will continue to grow.

What I find most compelling about my clients with ‘borderline’ symptoms is that they are still struggling to exist despite the deep conviction that they do not deserve to do so. And they are still struggling to connect with others, despite being told again and again that they are manipulative and controlling and difficult. Far from being inauthentic, then, these individuals are reaching out into the world in the most honest, direct, vulnerable ways they possibly can, all the while bracing for the invalidation and hostility that they know is likely to follow. They cannot help but reach for connection, and to hold out faith, however dim, that they will find it. I find this incredibly inspiring; it puts front-and-center the impulse for growth and health that I believe exists in all of us, no matter how encrusted with despair, dysfunction, hopelessness, or defeat.

I learn from these clients every single day. Their struggles and their resilience humble me. They remind me that intellectual critique is but one piece of a much larger puzzle, and that they have experiences that deserve to be heard and validated, even when (perhaps especially when) they challenge our interpretations. They push me to become a better scholar, a better clinician, and, I hope, in the end, a better human being. Those who resist working with these clients therapeutically or deny their existence epistemologically elide the incredible strength, resilience, creativity, and integrity of many of these people. The work is raw. It is challenging. But it is real. And above all, it is human.

Note

I am mindful of the linguistic and social distinctions entailed in the appellations ‘borderlines’ or ‘borderline patients’ versus ‘people with BPD’ or ‘people diagnosed with BPD’. I use each of these terms in a manner consistent with the context I am discussing.

References

American Psychiatric Association (2000) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-IV-TR, 4th ed. (text rev). Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association.

Aviram RB, Brodsky BS and Stanley B (2006) Borderline personality disorder, stigma, and treatment implications. Harvard Review of Psychiatry 14(5): 249–256.

Becker D (1997) Through the Looking Glass: Women and Borderline Personality Disorder. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Becker D (2000) When she was bad: Borderline personality disorder in a posttraumatic age. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 70(4): 422–432.

Becker D and Lamb S (1994) Sex bias in the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder. Professional Psychology 25(1): 55–61.

Dirac P (1930) The Principles of Quantum Mechanics. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Gabbard GO (1997) Borderline personality disorder and rational managed care policy. Psychoanalytic Inquiry 17(sup001): 17–28.

Gaines AD (1992) From DSM-I to III-R; Voices of self, mastery and the other: A cultural constructivist reading of U.S. psychiatric classification. Social Science and Medicine 35(1): 3–24.

Johnson ML (2010) Girl in Need of a Tourniquet: Memoir of a Borderline Personality. Berkeley: Seal Press.

Luhrmann TM (2000) Of Two Minds. New York: Knopf.

Mangold J (1999) Girl, Interrupted. United States: Columbia Pictures.

McGlashen TH (1993) Implications of outcome research for the treatment of borderline personality disorder. In: Paris J (ed.) Borderline Personality Disorder: Etiology and Treatment. Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Publishing, pp. 235–260.

Pershall S (2012) Loud in the House of Myself: Memoir of a Strange Girl. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

Potter N (2006) What is manipulative behavior, anyway? Journal of Personality Disorders 20(2): 139–159.

Potter N (2009) Mapping the Edges and the In-between: A Critical Analysis of Borderline Personality Disorder. New York: Oxford University Press.

Reiland R (1997) Get Me Out of Here: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder. Center City, MN: Hazelden Publishing.

Shaw C and Proctor G (2005) Women at the margins: A critique of the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. Feminism & Psychology 15(4): 483–490.

Skodol AE and Bender DS (2003) Why are women diagnosed borderline more than men? Psychiatric Quarterly 74(4): 349–360.

Van Gelder K (2010) The Buddha and the Borderline. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications.

Wirth-Cauchon J (2001) Women and Borderline Personality Disorder: Symptoms and Stories. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

#critique #sexism #feminism #psychology #misogyny #borderline personality disorder #behavior #psychiatry #oppression #prejudice #patriarchy #controversy #anthropology

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dinafbrownil · 4 years

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Must-Reads Of The Week From Brianna Labuskes

The Friday Breeze

Newsletter editor Brianna Labuskes, who reads everything on health care to compile our daily Morning Briefing, offers the best and most provocative stories for the weekend.

Happy Friday! Tis the season of getting wretched colds, and I blame daylight savings as any reasonable person would. So, we’re going to make this short and sweet as I clutch my tissues and tea. Buckle up!

Election results in Kentucky (and Virginia, really) added to the ever-deepening narrative that health care can be a big political winner for Dems and an Achilles’ heel for Republicans these days. Although the GOP talking point is that Gov. Matt Bevin (who technically hasn’t conceded yet) was extremely unpopular, it’s hard to miss that Medicaid expansion was a top issue in the race. Andy Beshear, who claimed victory on Tuesday, has vowed to rescind all of Bevin’s plans for Medicaid work requirements when he takes office.

In Virginia, many lawmakers ran on health care as well (like promising to protect preexisting conditions coverage and tackling gun control regulations), helping the Dems secure the Legislature for the first time in decades.

But health care isn’t always enough to boost Dems to a win, it seems. Democrat Jim Hood failed to upset Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican, despite Hood’s promises to expand Medicaid to about 300,000 of the state’s most needy residents.

Curiously, attacks over abortion did not seem to hurt Democrats in either Virginia or Kentucky, even though the issue loomed large in both states.

CNN: Kentucky, Virginia And Mississippi Elections: 3 Takeaways

Politico: Why Democrats Keep Winning On Health Care

In a quick sidenote on Medicaid in the Deep South: Georgia’s governor has released a long-awaited health care plan that includes a limited Medicaid expansion with work requirements. As the requirements falter elsewhere, it will be interesting to test case to watch.

The Associated Press: Georgia Governor Unveils Medicaid Plan With Work Requirement

The Friday Breeze

Want a roundup of the must-read stories this week chosen by KHN Newsletter Editor Brianna Labuskes? Sign up for The Friday Breeze today.

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Now over to the presidential primary race: As predicted, lots of pundits, rivals, and others have had lots of thoughts on Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s plan to pay for “Medicare for All,” mostly landing on: It’s just not realistic. For her numbers to add up (which they do), everything pretty much has to fall into place perfectly. Which… in a nation’s capitol known more for its bitter partisan gridlock and deference to deep-pocketed lobby interests than for its smooth roads and sunny skies, well… no one is holding their breath that this would pass.

The Washington Post Fact Checker: Warren’s Plan To Pay For Medicare-For-All: Does It Add Up?

The New York Times: Elizabeth Warren’s ‘Medicare For All’ Math

Elsewhere on the election trail, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) released an ambitious plan to tack the immigration crisis. Among other things, he would scrap President Donald Trump’s “public charge” rule and ensure that anyone in the country regardless of immigration status was covered by his health system.

Boston Globe: Bernie Sanders Unveils Ambitious Immigration Plan That Offer A Path For Citizenship And Dismantles ICE

Tension over patents came to a head this week as the Trump administration sued Gilead over its HIV prevention drug, the development of which relied heavily on taxpayer-funded research. This fight has been bubbling up because Gilead has been raking in billions from the drug and yet hasn’t paid the CDC any royalties.

The Washington Post: U.S. Sues Drugmaker Gilead Sciences Over Patent On Truvada For HIV Prevention

And in case you’re interested in the background of it all (you should be! It’s a fascinating case), the Post did a deep-dive back in March.

The Washington Post: An HIV Treatment Cost Taxpayers Millions. The Government Patented It. But A Pharma Giant Is Making Billions.

Speaking of news from the administration, there was so much of it this week!

Let’s start with the court decision to block its expanded “conscience rule” for health care personnel who don’t want to participate in certain care due to moral reasons. The judge denounced the rule, saying it was arbitrary and unconstitutionally coercive. He also wrote that the “stated justification for undertaking rule making in the first place — a purported ‘significant increase’ in civilian complaints relating to the conscience provisions — was factually untrue.”

The New York Times: Judge Voids Trump-Backed ‘Conscience Rule’ For Health Workers

That wasn’t the only legal blow the administration suffered: elsewhere, a judge placed a temporary restraining order on a Trump rule that would have required visa-seekers to prove they can pay for health coverage before they’re allowed to live in the country.

The Associated Press: US Judge Blocks Trump’s Health Insurance Rule For Immigrants

In a separate court decision, a federal judge ruled that the U.S. government must provide mental health services to migrant families who may have been traumatized by being separated under the zero tolerance policy. The judge referred to previous federal cases that found that governments can be held liable when with “deliberate indifference” they place people in dangerous situations. This bit from The New York Times is interesting: In the past, the “state-created danger” doctrine has been applied when a police officer ejected a person from a bar late at night in very cold weather, or when a public employer failed to address toxic mold that caused workers to fall ill.

The New York Times: U.S. Must Provide Mental Health Services To Families Separated At Border

From news outside the courts, HHS is seeking to roll back Obama-era protections that keep foster care and adoption services from discriminating against LGBTQ families.

The New York Times: Adoption Groups Could Turn Away L.G.B.T. Families Under Proposed Rule

And in the midst of several public health crises, Trump has picked his choice to head the FDA: Dr. Stephen Hahn of the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas. If confirmed, Hahn will almost immediately have his hands full with the vaping epidemic, as well as continued fallout from the opioid crisis, not to mention public outrage over the high cost of drugs.

The Associated Press: Trump Picks Cancer Specialist From Texas Hospital To Run FDA

In case you missed it: Stat did one of the more interesting profiles on Hahn a bit ago, if you want to read up on his background.

Stat: Frontrunner To Lead FDA, Dogged By Controversies, Has Developed Knack For Confronting Them

On the topic of FDA, a look at how a controversy over a chemical that sterilizes medical equipment became a prime example of just how wrong things can go when agencies operate as silo-ed bureaucracies.

Politico: How The FDA And EPA’s Failure To Communicate Could Put Patients In Danger

Ahead of an anticipated federal ban on e-cigarettes, Juul has announced that it will end the sale of mint flavored pods. A study came out this week that found that the mint flavored ones have become more and more popular among young vapers.

The New York Times: Juul Ends E-Cigarette Sales Of Mint-Flavored Pods

Often times, when studying a disease it can be the people who don’t get it that hold the answers. That might be true with one woman who should have gotten early onset Alzheimer’s but didn’t start showing symptoms until decades later. Researchers say a mutation that the woman had protected her from the devastating disease. Learning how it did that could help scientists replicate the process for those who don’t have the mutation.

The New York Times: Why Didn’t She Get Alzheimer’s? The Answer Could Hold A Key To Fighting The Disease

It’s not always the memory that goes first. For those with frontotemporal dementia, it’s often the areas of the brain that control personality that are affected first. The resulting behavior changes can be heartbreaking.

The New York Times: The Loneliness Of Frontotemporal Dementia

And in the miscellaneous file for the week:

Documents show how Walgreens was in a unique position to raise giant red flags about the opioid epidemic at its height. But the company failed to do so.

The Washington Post: At Height Of Crisis, Walgreens Handled One In Five Of The Most Addictive Opioids

When one woman’s baby was born three months prematurely, she’d thought she’d taken care of everything that was needed to get her daughter covered under her insurance. Turns out, that wasn’t the case, and by the time she got the $898,984 bill, it was too late to fix it.

ProPublica: How One Employer Stuck A New Mom With A $898,984 Bill For Her Premature Baby

We often think of breath tests as being infallible ways to prevent drunken driving. But many of the machines that are stocked in police stations across the country are calibrated incorrectly. For some, that can change the whole course of their future.

The New York Times: These Machines Can Put You In Jail. Don’t Trust Them.

That’s it from me! Everyone stay healthy and don’t forget to get your flu shot.

from Updates By Dina https://khn.org/news/must-reads-of-the-week-from-brianna-labuskes-29/

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huchizhengfa · 6 years

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SUCH IS THE INNATE CHARACTER OF HIS HOLINESS THE BUDDHA

President Donald Trump, First Lady Melania Trump and several senior congressional members congratulated H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III for His birthday in honor of His status as the supreme leader of all Buddhism and selfless contributions.

LOS ANGELES, CA, August 04, 2018 / On June 24, 2018, the flag of the United States was raised over Holy Heavenly Lake in California. That flag was not bought from the street. Rather, it was the very flag that on May 15th was fluttering in the sky above the United States Congress in Washington, D.C.. The same flag was later delivered to the Office of H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III. The raising of that national flag at the Capitol was inspired by the Buddha-character of H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III.

May 15th is the birthday of H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III. That national flag was raised at Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. specifically for the birthday of H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III. The flag-raising document stated, “This flag was flown in honor of H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III, supreme leader of all Buddhism, on the occasion of his birthday.”

In their message congratulating H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III on His birthday, United States President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump stated, “His Holiness Dorje Chang Buddha III, Pasadena, California. Your Holiness, we are pleased to join your family and friends in wishing you a happy birthday! As you celebrate this special occasion, we pray your year ahead is filled with good health, happiness, and the many blessings of our great Nation. With very best wishes.” A number of senior congressional members from both the House and the Senate also sent letters to congratulate H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III on His birthday, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Ed Royce, former Chairperson of the Senate Intelligence Committee Dianne Feinstein, the Ranking member of the Senate Committee on Appropriations Patrick Leahy, and others.

Additionally, the United States Postal Service authorized the issuance of a first-day cover to commemorate this significant day of raising the national flag in Washington, D.C. to celebrate the birthday of H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III.

On June 24, 2018 when that flag of the United States was flying above Holy Heavenly Lake in California, several thousand Buddhist figures from all over the world voluntarily congregated at Holy Heavenly Lake. Most of them are dharma masters and religious teachers within Buddhism. The “Celebrating the Birthday of H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III” Grand Dharma Assembly was held there. Buddhists knelt on the ground with khatas in their hands, waiting for the holy presence of H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III. At around 5:00 in the afternoon, H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III arrived. Guarded and protected by multiple-layers of police officers and S.W.A.T. crews, His Holiness the Buddha walked onto the red carpet. All Buddhists kept chanting loudly, “Namo H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III!”

Venerable Mozhi, the person in charge of World Buddhism Association Headquarters in the United States, announced at the dharma assembly that a Buddhist city will be built at Holy Heavenly Lake in California. This Buddhist city will be similar to the Vatican, where the Pope of Catholicism resides. The “True Dharma Temple,” where H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III will reside, will also be built there. Holy Heavenly Lake is a Buddhist treasure-land. Beneath it is a huge underground crystal lake. Below the lakeside of Holy Heavenly Lake, there is also an underground river which is one of the two great underground rivers in the world that flows from south to north. That place is truly auspicious! The Buddhist city will accommodate temple clusters, businesses, tourism, hotels, rivers and ferry boats, all threaded together into an aquatic city by nautical waterways. Most important of all, the Ancient Buddha True Dharma Temple—the holy site for spreading true Buddha-dharma—will become the most authentic holy site in the world for propagating true Buddha-dharma!

Who is H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III? Why is His Holiness given such importance by our nation and respected so broadly by the public?

In December of 2002, H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III was awarded the Gold Medal issued by President George W. Bush to honor His Holiness’ noble ethics and morality, accomplishments in artistry, and outstanding contributions to humanity. In 2010, H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III was awarded the World Peace Prize – Top Honor Prize. In 2011, H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III was awarded the distinguished Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Legacy Award for International Service and Leadership. In 2018, the status of H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III as the supreme leader of the entirety of Buddhism was once again confirmed!

As early as in 2012, the United States Senate passed Resolution No. 614, formally designating H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III with the honorific title “His Holiness” (abbreviated as H.H.). Such a title indicated recognition of the highest level, unexcelled and most treasured status. This resolution officially placed the status of H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III at the highest level. I had the good fortune to ask H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III, “I heard that Your Holiness has the status of the Pope of Buddhism and that Your Holiness has received the Buddhist Papal Scepter.” H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III said, “Is there any meaning in that? The true Buddhist scepter is to be enlightened and then enlighten others.”

The status of H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III was conclusively established according to the system of Buddhist recognition in a manner similar to how the Penchen Lama, Karmapa, and others were recognized. Such status is not self-conferred but determined by the system. According to the Buddhist system of recognition, it only takes two rinpoches or lamas to issue a recognition. The recognition is then considered formally established. In the entire history of formal recognitions within Buddhism, H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III is the one who has received the largest number of recognitions. No one has ever gotten even one-fifth of the recognitions that H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III has received. This establishment of the position of H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III based on conclusive evidence cannot be affected in any way by anybody’s endorsement or veto. Rather, it is a systemic and ironclad conclusion.

It has been twenty years since H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III came to the United States from China. Since it is His vow of conduct not to accept any offerings, His Holiness makes his living mainly from income generated from His paintings and sculptures. His Holiness lives a very simple life yet vigorously supports matters of justice, deeds of benevolence, charity to the needy, and the benefiting of others. His Holiness even sold paintings specifically to cover the expenses of temples and the livelihoods of monastics.

In the early years when H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III was in Chengdu, China, living supplies were scarce and people lived on rations. Whenever His Holiness was home, patients with all kinds of illnesses came in an endless stream to seek treatment. Three hundred people registered to seek treatment from Him each day. His Holiness the Buddha always treated patients with no conditions attached and without accepting even one cent. When encountering poor patients who could not afford their medicine, H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III even gave His own limited rationed living supplies to those poor and sick patients. Even when His Holiness had nothing to eat and was about to faint, He still refused to accept the food offered by His patients. In His teenage years, H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III used the iambic format of “Nian Nu Jiao” to compose the verse “Immediate Entry into the Universe,” in which He wrote, “Three thousand patients come to my door. Day and night, I apply herbal medicine to do wonders.” That was a depiction of the situation then.

Recently, in the Grand Hall of the Buddha at the Holy Miracles Temple in the United States, Ms. Judy Kuan, who is the younger sister of an important high-level political figure in Taiwan, revealed a deeply hidden secret that people did not know for many years about H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III. Her reading of the factual account was hosted by dharma masters. Following the beating of the drum and the striking of the bell, in front of the statue of Sakyamuni Buddha and the congregation, she made a grave vow to tell the truth. Such truth astounded everyone in the audience.

She mentioned that the elderly Mr. Pan Shiao Rui, the ship-dismantling king who was a disciple of H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III, wanted to present offerings to H.H. the Buddha many times. Ms. Kuan was always the contact person for him. Mr. Pan Shiao Rui told her that he and Dharma Master Hsing Yun went to Taiwan together in the early years. At that time, Mr. Pan sponsored all the expenses of Dharma Master Hsing Yun as well as the living expenses of his monastic followers. He was also the sponsor and supervisor of the International Buddha’s Light Association. The affiliated Hsi Lai Temple in the United States was also built mainly from his donations.

In 1999, shortly after H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III came to the United States, Mr. Pan invited H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III to San Francisco to look at a piece of land that he wanted to present as an offering. Real estate in San Francisco was priced like gold! Mr. Pan first invited H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III to look at a piece of land in the suburbs of San Francisco that was more than 2,000 acres. H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III declined his offering, using the pretext that the land was too big. Mr. Pan then found another thirty-seven-acre (approximately 201 Chinese mu) piece of land in the city of San Francisco. H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III again declined, using a different reason. Then Mr. Pan found and offered a seven-story Spanish-style building of 65,000 square feet in Oakland, which was again declined by H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III. Having no way to make his offerings, Mr. Pan resorted to presenting monetary offerings each year in huge sums of over US$1,000,000. H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III did not accept even one of them. His Holiness always told Judy Kuan to give Mr. Pan the bank account number of either a Buddhist organization or a temple. However, what you cannot imagine is that H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III was not even a member of those temples or organizations.

In 2013, the elderly Mr. Pan came for the last time to America to pay respect to H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III. He said that he had reached an advanced age and was preparing to leave this world. He had come that time to present a large amount of gold as an offering. Mr. Pan was once the deputy chief of staff to Dai Li, who was a senior official in the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party). Mr. Pan was responsible for managing some business and financial affairs for Dai Li. At that time, Mr. Pan bought a large amount of gold, which was put away in a Hong Kong treasury. The gold bars weighed two kilograms to five kilograms apiece, and there was a huge quantity. He wanted to present all the gold to H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III as an offering. He even discussed with Judy Kuan whether to transport the gold by plane or ship. You can imagine the vast quantity! H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III immediately refused the entire offering and did not even allow him to mention the word “gold” again. To stop the elderly Mr. Pan, H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III told him not to mention making an offering again; otherwise, his karmic connection with the dharma would be damaged.

Other people would use all possible methods to arouse their followers to make offerings, yet H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III rejected such enormous offerings! Is this something an ordinary person could do? Who can have such selfless, greedless character of holy purity! Think about this: If one were given free of charge such an enormous amount of land, buildings, cash, or gold, if one were given such glittering money and wealth with no strings attached, who could remain unmoved? H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III was not only unmoved, He graciously declined all of those offerings!

H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III came to the United States in 1999. Actually, His life in the United States has always been very arduous, but He has never minded that. All that His Holiness thinks about are the interests of the public. His Holiness serves as a model for others, teaching cultivators with His own words and conduct. For the past twenty years until now, His Holiness has always lived a hard and simple life. I often go to the home office of H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III. Mentioning that office may elicit laughter. It is in a corridor right outside a bathroom. With all kinds of books and other things piled up there, the remaining space is at most only four square meters. When someone is coming through the corridor, those sitting there have to get up to let that person through.

You cannot even imagine that in the twenty years during which H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III has lived in the United States, His Holiness has not even had a dining table. He always eats His meals at the kitchen counter. Many Buddhist eminent monastics and greatly virtuous ones have eaten meals with H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III. They, too, stood beside the kitchen counter just like H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III did. Almost all of the space inside the home of H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III is taken up by the storage of Buddhist objects and His Holiness’ accomplishments in the Five Vidyas. I once personally saw H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III sewing and mending His own clothes. His Holiness said with a smile, “Too bad, I accidentally slit it!” How could an ordinary person fathom the holy purity and greatness of H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III?

When one is rich, perhaps one can be indifferent toward donations from others. However, what about when one is poor, in need of money, and is presented with a huge sum of money with no strings attached? Only H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III can remain unmoved in such circumstances! In this society, everybody wants to become rich. They dream of becoming rich. When someone else is perfectly willing to give away a huge amount of money and assets with no strings attached, this is everyone’s get-rich dream coming true. H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III did not even take a look at those offerings and simply refused them with ease. Where else in the world is there a person who does not enjoy what he is able to enjoy, who gives up wealth, and who keeps hardships for himself? Who can attain such virtuous conduct? Perhaps only Sakyamuni Buddha and H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III can do so.

Before the true identity of H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III was known to the world, His Holiness the Buddha was already world-famous for having attained the pinnacle of accomplishment in the Five Vidyas. Just in painting alone, His Holiness single-handedly founded sixteen painting styles used in both Chinese and Western painting. The subject matter of those paintings include people, birds, insects, fishes, nature, still life, mountains, water, and landscape. The brushwork includes realistic fine brushstrokes and freehand brushstrokes, and the techniques include abstract, realist, and impressionist techniques. Each work of art is an accomplishment that is unparalleled. His Holiness’ paintings, calligraphy, and sculptures are collected by the International Art Museum of America. The H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III Cultural and Art Museum is dedicated to permanently exhibiting artworks created by His Holiness.

This year, senior officials from the White House were guests at the home of His Holiness. One of them asked His Holiness, “Seeing your artistic accomplishments, there is a puzzle that none of us can figure out. Do you spend twenty-four hours every day to create art? Even if you spent twenty-four hours a day, you still could not possibly have created so many artworks!” H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III replied, “I am very ashamed. I am immersed in Buddhist matters every day. I spend so very little time creating art.” That senior official from the White House then asked, “We have seen your artworks. There is one piece that you could not have possibly finished even if you worked on it every day for several decades. That is what we are unable to understand. How did it come into being?” The person in charge of the Office of H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III replied, “The piece you saw is only one percent of the artworks created by His Holiness the Buddha.” Upon hearing that, everyone was even more astounded and puzzled. This truly is a fact that cannot be explained through ordinary human thinking.

In fact, be it the zither, chess, calligraphy, painting, sculpture, landscape design, literature, poetry, iambic verses, odes, songs, maxims of philosophy, singing, and other disciplines, H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III has distinguished expertise in all of them. H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III can indiscriminately take into his hands any musical instrument and play it. His Holiness is exceptionally accomplished even in scientific research and culinary skills. The physical strength of H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III is also quite extraordinary. This year, His Holiness effortlessly picked up with one hand an Earth Vajra weighing 220 pounds and put it on the offering table. More than 2,000 people have tried to pick up the same Earth Vajra, including a gym-trainer of extraordinary strength who is in his twenties and weighs over 200 pounds. However, until now, nobody has been able to lift that Earth Vajra off the ground with one hand.

It has been twenty years since H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III came to America. Throughout all these years, His Holiness has been voluntarily serving the public. Although there are designated people who prepare the meals for His Holiness from another work area, whenever the cooks ask H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III what He would like to eat, He always relies, “I eat whatever you prepare. Something simple and in a small amount is fine.” For twenty years, H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III has never specified the food that He wanted to eat. Those people are cooks in His Holiness’ own kitchen, yet His Holiness has never had any craving for the joy of food throughout these decades!

The innate character of H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III cannot be fathomed by common people. H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III never reveals His true state of Buddhahood to the world. When evil masters slandered His Holiness by saying He is not a Buddha, He did not mind in the least and never manifested His holy realization to prove that He is a Buddha. Last year, some people of evil spirit brought on demonic forces to damage the wisdom-lifeblood of numerous Buddhist disciples. When someone openly raised questions about that, H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III reluctantly manifested the true appearance of Buddha in order to save living beings. White thin hairs instantly emerged between His Holiness’ eyebrows. At the time, some people saw one white hair, while others saw a large tuft of white hairs. Some saw white spiraling hairs intertwined like pearls. Some saw the hairs radiating and standing like steel needles, emitting white light. During the same time, what each person saw was different. A Caucasian who was a high government official said that he did not see the white hairs but did see two completely different visages of H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III within one minute! When H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III manifested His sambhogakaya appearance as a Buddha, His entire face became the bright and beautiful color of red coral. Moreover, the two sides of His face emitted strong light, like that of the sun, causing some people to be unable to open their eyes. His Holiness also manifested the even-teeth appearance, which is one of the thirty-two marks of a Buddha!

H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III truly is an ancient-Buddha Tathagata. No wonder His Holiness has reached the unmatched pinnacle of accomplishment in the Five Vidyas. No wonder His Holiness is perfectly proficient in the sutras and treatises, can do that which is difficult to do, and can endure that which is difficult to endure. No wonder His Holiness has no greed, has no anger, and has not even the slightest mental attachment. His great wisdom is limitless, and His compassion is boundless. All of these qualities are due to the innate character of a Buddha.

Since being recognized as H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III by the leaders of each of the major Buddhist sects and schools, His Holiness has been even more fully occupied with dharma matters. His Holiness no longer creates any paintings. As always, His Holiness voluntarily serves the public, transmitting dharma and expounding dharma for an average of eight to twelve hours a day. His Holiness often grants audiences to disciples until 2:00 or 3:00 in the wee hours of the night. Even though His Holiness has arduously served others on a voluntary basis over such a long period of time, He nonetheless has never accepted any offerings. It seems that there has never been another person in this world who is so selfless, who always puts benefiting others above all else, and who always serves the interests of others without a care for himself. This is truly quite inconceivable!

In this world, people of talent are not necessarily virtuous. Moreover, they are usually talented in one particular discipline. People of virtue may not necessarily be talented. Moreover, the virtue they possess is often ordinary. However, H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III possess perfect and flawless virtue along with talent that has reached the apex of accomplishment. Furthermore, what the world respects and admires most is that H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III saves living beings out of loving compassion. His Holiness has no anger or hatred at all, even toward those who harmed, deceived, or slandered Him. His Holiness even often prays for those people, wishing them happiness.

For example, many years ago H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III was falsely persecuted, which led to the launch of a special investigation by INTERPOL. That was three full years of tribulation. Yet, just as real gold fears no fire, a man of integrity can stand severe tests. The case against His Holiness was dismissed during the 72nd session of the Commission for the Control of Interpol’s Files. Official written notification was subsequently issued to all member countries of INTERPOL, informing them that they cannot detain H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III. China also submitted a report stating that H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III did not commit any crime, and China requested that INTERPOL withdrawal the case against Him. INTERPOL even specially issued a document to H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III regarding the conclusion of the case. After His Holiness received that document dismissing His case and clearing Him of all the smearing targeted against Him, His Holiness did not agree to show it on the internet. When asked why not, H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III said, “If my name is cleared, then the names of those who harmed me will not be cleared.” His Holiness the Buddha does not bear any anger or hatred toward those who harmed Him. His Holiness would rather be misunderstood by the world than have those who slandered and harmed Him experience suffering or dreadful consequences. What selfless, compassionate, and magnificent Buddha-character this is!

This is the way H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III is, personally applying His Buddha-virtue to teach and transform people, inspiring others to be good people, to abstain from all evil, to do all deeds of goodness, to be cultivators, and to be people who benefit others. This is the supreme and unconditioned Buddha-virtue.

Buddha-character comes from the state of Buddha-enlightenment that perfectly integrates Buddha-wisdom, Buddha-merit, and Buddha-virtue. The wisdom of H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III, His world-astounding accomplishments in the Five Vidyas, and His numerous achievements that are at the highest level are openly witnessed by the world. The holy realization of H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III can be seen when His Holiness manifests His sambhogakaya appearance, when His Holiness teaches the dharma of the Tathagata, successfully invokes the presence of Amitabha Buddha, causes holy holy nectar (amrita) to descend to earth, and saves countless living beings. The Buddha-virtue of H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III entails great compassion and forbearance. It is free of greed, anger, and attachment. It is completely devoid of selfishness, and is totally dedicated to benefiting others. Such purity and nobility exceeds even the brightness and purity of the sun and moon! When we see such inner character of a Buddha in H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III, what can we who are ordinary beings say?

All I can say is that I ask everyone to reflect a bit on the following few questions:

Presented with offerings of a huge amount of gold, land, and wealth, His Holiness was completely without greed and remained unaffected. Who can do that?

Holding a document from INTERPOL that cleared Him of all the accusations fabricated against Him, His Holiness simply locked the document into a safe without making any use of it. Who can do that?

Having made the lifetime vow of not accepting any offerings, His Holiness is continuously busy expounding dharma to people and serving the public from early morning till late at night, even up to 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, without receiving even one cent in return. Who can do that?

The truth is, probably only Sakyamuni Buddha, all Buddhas in the ten directions, and H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III can do so!

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thedeadshotnetwork · 6 years

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The GOP war on college Since 1980, conservatives have used their institutional power to smash one pillar of liberal power and influence at a time. Federalist Society legal automatons have waged a 30-year siege on the federal court system, and are one Supreme Court retirement away from total conquest. The assault on organized labor launched by Ronald Reagan has cut the number of private-sector union members nearly in half since 1983, with Wisconsin's Scott Walker leading the war against public-sector unions. Now it is the university's turn. The execrable GOP tax bills that got jammed through the House and Senate should be thought of as an airstrike designed to soften up collegiate targets prior to the all-out ground assault. While it's not clear which education-smashing provisions will make it out of the conference and into the final legislation, make no mistake: The invasion is coming. Republicans have long dreamed of drastically decreasing the number of people with access to affordable, reputable higher education, and this might be their last chance to pull it off. Contemporary conservatives believe students are getting a terrible deal by going to college, and worse, that they are being tormented and brainwashed by out-of-control liberal professors intent on transforming their children into a million little Bernies. Fox News and Breitbart obsessively report every minor speech scuffle on every campus, blowing trivial news items into threats to the republic. In the right-wing imagination, most universities are authoritarian hellscapes run by a cartel of Marxist students, Maoist professors, and Stalinist administrators. While it is true that Americans with college degrees are more consistently liberal in their political orientation than those without , that is less because of indoctrination than because prolonged encounters with deeply researched realities tend to make it difficult to believe the idea that, for example, climate change is a hoax perpetrated by avaricious scientists and Chinese manufacturers. But for contemporary Republicans and their Manichean approach to public policy, that fact alone makes colleges and universities an enemy to be vanquished. That's why the GOP tax bills treat the idea of going to college like some municipalities now regard plastic bags and soda. On one end, the House bill targets undergraduates, by eliminating the tax deduction for interest on student loans (this was left out of the Senate version). For most people this might be mostly offset by the proposed increase in the standard deduction to $12,000, but it creates an important precedent: The state no longer considers financing higher education a laudable enough goal to be part of the tax code. The bill is therefore the first step in reversing all meaningful incentives for individuals to go to college, and will reportedly be paired with caps on student loans and the elimination of a variety of federal grant programs, including one for students who plan to teach in high-need areas after graduation and another that forgives loans for people who go into public service . Both the House and Senate tax bills included provisions that would tax the endowments of certain colleges and universities, which those (mostly elite) schools sometimes use to give needy students a free ride. It's not hard to imagine a future Republican Congress simply eliminating federal student loans altogether and crippling hundreds of public and private universities in the process. At the other end of the pipeline, the House tax bill shafts graduate students by taxing their tuition waivers as income . Had this provision been in place when I got my Ph.D., I would have graduated with tens of thousands of dollars in debt. This law alone would have been sufficient to discourage me from ever going to graduate school in the first place. The GOP's fresh assault on higher education comes on the heels of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos reversing Obama-era regulations that prioritized helping borrowers manage debt rather than helping predatory companies collect it, and that forgave loans for students victimized by the for-profit education industry. It follows decades of decreasing federal aid to state university systems, forcing such institutions to raise tuition and exclude more and more young people from the affordable educations so effortlessly enjoyed by the middle-aged and elderly people currently dismantling the opportunities that made their prosperity possible in the first place. And of course, this assault is taking place in tandem with right-wing governors like Scott Walker deliberately torpedoing their own public higher education systems and treating them like a vanquished campaign opponent. No wonder that just 49 percent of Americans now believe college is worth the cost . Yet very little of the productive work in academia is performed by the kind of radicals that the War on Christmas crowd fears and loathes. Most professors in the humanities and social sciences bend over backwards to be fair to their conservative students, balance their syllabi with competing ideas, and have no interest in conducting mind erasure on a bunch of 18-year-olds. They mostly do the difficult work of teaching young people how to think critically, perform research, learn second languages, and cultivate a healthy skepticism about the world around them. At research universities public and private, scientists create incredible value for society at large by researching new medicines, technologies, and innovations. Large, land-grant university systems like the ones in Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, and Michigan are unambiguous boons for otherwise struggling Midwestern economies , employing tens of thousands of people and serving as regional economic anchors. If conservatives succeed in destroying or undermining higher education, they will eventually realize that they have reaped a very bitter harvest indeed. Ironically, well-regarded public university systems are one of the few ways that states like Wisconsin have of convincing young people to stay and settle in-state after college in the first place, or of attracting people from other regions. And thousands of public and private universities are the only thing propping up rural economies in places like Cullowhee, North Carolina, and State College, Pennsylvania. Without their colleges and universities, these towns would be transformed into depressed craters like the Pennsylvania hellhole visited by a Politico Trump whisperer last month , full of marginalized people living desperate, hardscrabble existences, casting about for someone to blame for their misfortunes. Some further irony: By reducing the aggregate number of Americans with college degrees, Republicans will succeed in making America look more like the Northern European societies they so revile. The United States, in fact, has one of the highest rates of college degree holders in the entire world, far outpacing most of our European counterparts, which mostly lack the dense network of private universities to complement state-run systems. A college degree remains one of the few ways that Americans can move up the class ladder — another thing that horrifies Republicans who increasingly want to lock in the stratified status quo. This is not to say that all is well with America's system of higher education, whose cost is now out of reach for too many families. The system of loading 18-year-olds up with mortgage-sized amounts of debt is something that desperately needs to be revisited by high-minded policymakers. But like all Republican solutions for pressing public problems, the tax bill will make things worse, rather than better, for individuals seeking higher education, for the colleges and universities that they attend, and for society as a whole. One of America's two major political parties wants to radically decrease the number of Americans who graduate from college, eliminate ways to pay for it, and instead funnel those social resources to the predatory for-profit education sector or just directly into the pockets of the wealthy. The philosophy of these Republicans is to find any group of people who voted against them and instead of persuading or helping them, destroy them and their livelihoods for sport. December 11, 2017 at 02:28PM

#Blogger

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alwaysspringers · 7 years

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Too funny, but who wants a letter signed by #trump anyway? If I had a foreign boyfriend, or husband, I'd be saying "Let's get the hell out of #America as soon as humanly possible". Especially if he was English. After all, unlike America, the #UK is still part of the #DevelopedWorld. #America is now nothing more than a #ThirdWorld #BananaRepublic complete with horrendous #IncomeInequality; an openly corrupt president and #Congress; #government posts for sale to the highest bidder; rampant theft of public resources by government officials and their cronies; a president selling his favours and our resources to world #dictators; the arrest and incarceration of peaceful protesters; a #LawEnforcement system in which the killing of people of colour, just for the hell of it, is encouraged; and in which the leading law enforcement official, the #USAG, advocates arresting as many people of colour as possible so he can collect an even bigger pay check from the #PrivatePrison lobby. As further proof of America being the biggest, not just Western ThirdWorld country, but also the West's largest BananaRepublic there is: the presidential #nepotism; the efforts to deny #AmericanCitizens any rights the current #GOPCongress and the so-called, illigitimate #USpresident find irksome; the very fact that the #USpresidency was helped along, if not orchestrated, by a foreign power; the impeachable and illegal activites committed by the so-called president's circle; the illigitimate #ExecutiveOrders by the real behind-the-scenes #PresidentBannon, not the senile, mentally ill figurehead foisted on the American majority by less than half of #AmericanVoters; the move to make America an #EvangelicalFundamentalist #Christian (the selfish, callous, greedy kind of christian that is) #theocracy, with Congress and the #WhiteHouse acting much as the Taliban did in #Afghanistan; the move towards becoming the Western #SaudiArabia; the new authoritian trend; the attempt to delegitimatize the media; the constant and obvious lies by the #figurehead president which are much in the same vein as #NorthKorea's #KimJungUn; the incredible number of #EthicsViolations... Well, you get it I think. Why on earth would anyone, let alone someone from a Deveopled, Western country want to become a citizen of the Western version of a #nuclear #Zimbawe? I am sorry but that makes no sense at all. Furthermore #America is a country with one of the western world's worst #EducationSystems (soon to be made even worse by an uber rich, holy crusader who forked over millions of dollars to buy a government position where she could pursue her agenda of removing science from schools and replace it with religious dogma; deprive poor kids of free school lunches; and make average Americans even more uninformed and incapable of critical thinking than they already are). Why become a citizen of a country where the ruling class, and greedy, corrupt political class, are trying to kill citizens who are elderly, sick, poor or disabled by stripping them of any dignity or humanitarian help such as food stamps; the minimal healthcare currently provided them; their social security (pensions having long been stripped from them so the money could remain in the hands of the resource owners, the uber rich, ruling class); the #MealsOnWheels program that helps feed seniors and the free #SchoolLunches for needy kids? These elite and politicians would take disability benefits for those who cannot survive otherwise, except perhaps by begging; are dismantling any worker or safety protections; are working on destroying the basic human rights of #CleanAir and #CleanWater. In addition to all of the above actions... designed to legally murder those less well-off and destroy the working/lower middle class, they are trying to kill as many young rural poor as possible by using them as cannon fodder in wars to steal resources from other less militarized and poor countries while enriching themselves even further. Forgive me if I find the idea of anyone who has an opportunity to live in a country that may provide some form of emergency blanket for it's less well off citizens or a country that does not try to incarcerate, or even have it's law enforcement agencies murder, as many of it's minority citizens as possible, a place someone would choose willingly to become a citzen of. It boggles my mind really. Only fear of being persecuted or murdered at home; an absolute lack of opportunity to provide for your family elsewhere while being unable to live in any other Western country; a longing to live in an authoritarian theocracy; a desire to live in a cooler version of the #MiddleEast or certain parts of #Africa; or being a member of the class that will benefit in a BananaRepublic, would seem to provide a rationale for choosing to become an American Citizen (or even a legal resident). I cannot imagine wanting to study in, visit or live in this America. Not given free will and any sort of choice. #trump #Obama, #USA #resist @NYTimes, @SeattleTimes @derspeigel @latimes @bbcworld @bbc

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doubleshotofsomething · 4 years

Text

Publicity Stunt

Part Four

[Part One<-- Find here]

Warnings: Swearing as usual. Trigger warnings??( just to prepare you, so be prepared). I think thats it??

Pairings: Bucky x Reader

Summary: Reader is a fixer/Pr and longtime friend of Pepper. Post-endgame.

PS: Thank you guys for the support and feedback, your kind words are music to my ears(eyes bc i read them) and i cant explain how much it means to me. Thank you all so very much xxxxxxx

Scroll to the bottom for the next part

You stood on the tarmac as the Quinjet landed. Your personal assistant, Jonah, had arrived a few hours earlier and met the Avengers at the Senate hearing. You weren’t a fan of court procedures, any more than you were of politicians, so you sent Jonah – along with the lawyers you trusted – to the courthouse to ensure everything ran smoothly. Clint was a bit anxious when you told him your assistant was replacing you, Wanda refused to leave unless you were going with them, and Bucky spent the entire time asking about your male assistant.

“You planned this whole thing but you’re not showing up?” Clint argued, eyes flashing with betrayal.

Wanda agreed with him. “This is your thing! If anyone can convince people to do anything they don’t wanna, it’s you!”

“I’m not one for damselling—” Sam stopped pacing and took a breath- “but you’re turning me into one right about now.”

“This, Noah, person you were telling me about—” Bucky practically shoved the laptop in your face, a picture of your security’s supervisor stared back at you, “—he looks like a registered sex offender.”

You rolled your eyes, fixed the search, and pulled a picture of your assistant. You turned the laptop back to him and faced everyone else. “Jonah is a qualified attorney, and the team of attorneys that will be representing you are the best DC has to offer. You are in great hands.” You tried to reassure them, but your absence was clearly something that they weren’t okay with.

“Noah looks like Rumlow.” Bucky scowled, staring too closely at the screen. “He looks like Rumlow’s Hulk brother.”

“Looks like Drax’s long lost brother,” Sam added, peering over Bucky’s shoulder.

Clint joined in, clicking a few buttons and nodded. “He looks like he eats Senators for breakfast.”

“You work around Rumlow?” Bucky looked back at you, eyebrows furrowed. “Every single day, you spend time with this guy?”

“Jonah.” You corrected.

“He looks like a registered sex offender.”

“That’s not what sex offenders look like,” you scoffed, “you’d be surprised how many suits and ties are actual sex offenders.”

“Rumlow Noah is wearing a suit and tie.”

“Bucky, his name is Jonah,” you looked at him pointedly, “and it would do you justice if you remembered that. He’s a nice kid—”

“-registered sex offender—”

“—and he’s really good at what he does.” You glared at him for a moment longer before looking at everyone else, “I wouldn’t trust this part of the job on anyone else. He’s good. He’s great, and his team of attorneys are sharks. You—”

“Why do we need attorneys?” Clint asked, looking away from the laptop. “I thought this was a senate hearing.”

“While you’re at it, ask her about the security team of registered criminals she has on speed dial.” Bucky muttered, scrolling through more pictures of Jonah.

“What?” Wanda practically cried; eyes wide with panic.

“Oh, for fuck sake—” You inhaled deeply, “—the attorneys are for back up and the security is for the attorneys.”

Bucky, because he’s Bucky and his natural instinct is to make things difficult for you, scoffed. “It’s to get us out of there in case this is a trap.”

“A trap?!”

“Barnes!”

“Did you know Rumlow Noah had the third highest grade score in his class?”

It took far longer than expected, than necessary, to get them onto the Quinjet and to the hearing. Bucky was still attached to the laptop when he boarded, Clint was satisfied that you weren’t sending an intern with no experience, and Wanda was contemplating using her abilities on you. But, eventually, they departed for the city and left you with enough time to do your job, make a couple of phone calls and listen in on the senate hearings.

You weren’t a rookie, you had Jonah wear one of his bugged suits. This was the senate, after all, and you had to be ready for anything they could pull.

Jonah was a large man. His build caused controversy in the courtroom, juries thought him intimidating and witnesses found him unapproachable. His voice was far too deep, his face was far too intense, his looks were too menacing. His presence alone had scared witnesses into committing perjury, a few simple objections had caused him fines from contempt, juries ruled against his clients because of his daunting appearance.

Jonah was a very large man, but where others saw a beast, you saw brains. He was far younger than you, he had graduated from high school and law school far too early, and he was ready to make a difference. He could recite every word in the constitution, poke holes in the most ironclad of nondisclosure agreements, he could tell you all about each crime and how to elude being charged with it. The kid could get away with a Presidential assassination in broad daylight if he wanted to. But he looked like a Mafioso and appearance is everything in DC. So, when he lost a case – a case he should have won – you walked up to him and offered him a job.

Personal Assistant is what you both called his title, but he was much more than that. He was the reason you were good at your job.

“I’m guessing it all went well?” You raised an eyebrow at Jonah, the rest following suit.

Jonah simply shrugged, handing you a folder. “That shouldn’t even be a question.”

“Shit hit the fan.” Clint sighed.

“I’m making a list.” Bucky grumbled, idling a few steps away as he continued with his face shoved against the laptop.

“He pissed everyone off!” Wanda glared at him, “how is that not supposed to be a question?”

“Jesus—” Jonah rolled his eyes, dark brown glaring down at Wanda. “—you really think that was supposed to end well? It’s a senate hearing, with a bunch of powerful that were in the room with, arguably, people that are far more powerful than them. Your abilities, your avenging, everything about you already pisses them off.”

“What was the point of all that then?” Sam questioned, staring at Jonah like a lion ready to pounce on its prey.

“To piss them off,” Bucky added, shoving the laptop at you. “This is Rumlow’s classmate. She’s married, graduated top of her class and lectures at an Ivy League law school.”

You took the laptop and closed it shut. “The point of all this was to prove to everyone that the whole case is biased, that the entire senate – along with the accords – was based on the simple fact that they are biased.” You said, handing the laptop to Jonah’s anticipating hands and walking back inside.

“If we could prove bias to the general public,” Jonah continued as they all followed, “we could dismantle the entire case against you.”

“Sounds like a sex offender thing to say,” Bucky grouched, earning a warning look from you.

You placed the laptop on the kitchen counter, telling Jarvis to seal off every entrance to anyone without residential clearance. The rebuilt Compound was larger, but with less floors, the design was a unique mixture of every Avenger’s taste, except it was more of an armoury than it was a home. Each room had a secret compartment of weapons, and an exit route that led to either the garage or the woods, and the security system seemed to be engineered to withstand a nuclear war.

You had already set up a seating arrangement for them, their absence helped in getting a couple of things done, and you waited as everyone took a seat.

“Everything, from here on out, is gonna be war.” You looked at all of them, hating the next words that were about to leave your mouth. “The whole media stint where I had you kissing babies and walking dogs, helping the needy, all that was just for the cameras. All that was just the first phase of what’s to come next. We can’t win against the Accords, we can’t win against a hundred and seventeen nations. But the people can.”

“This was never about public image.” Wanda stated, bitterness coating her words.

You shook your head solemnly. “You pissed off a lot of powerful people. They don’t care about who you are or how good your intentions—”

“They care about controlling you.” Jonah interjected. “The accords are the perfect example of that, and that’s why I had to piss them off.”

“You didn’t have to do anything.” Bucky growled at him.

“The UN ordered you shot on sight,” Jonah fired back, glaring at him, “that’s illegal and the exact opposite of what they’re supposed to be doing—”

“—Jonah had to rile them up, I told him to do so. Senate hearings are televised and public record, we needed it to have the highest ratings possible.” You added, “because, now, the senate hearing is going to turn into an International court case, where your charges will be presented before you and the court. Testimonials and all that jazz, basically the same bullshit that the Accords doesn’t afford you—”

“—which is illegal and violates a shit load of rights.” Jonah interrupted.

“From that moment forth, we present our case to the world.” You completed, eyes lingering a bit on Wanda for a moment longer.

“We’re gonna lose and go back to the raft.” She said, too sure of herself for your liking.

“The people won’t let us.” Bruce chuckled softly, shaking his head at you. The wheels were turning in his head and the pieces were finally fitting together perfectly. “That’s why you spent so much time on our public image, why you started an uproar in a senate hearing.”

Sam’s shoulders dropped at the realisation, the picture finally becoming clearer. “You’re evil.”

“I’m efficient.” You corrected, “and I don’t like losing. I don’t like it when good people are wronged, and I really hate the government enough to defame it.”

“The economy is gonna suffer, international relations are gon—” Bruce started, but you were not having any of it.

You scoffed. “The accords are a pretty way of saying slavery, so I don’t care.”

“Uh—” Bucky raised his hand slowly, “—call me old fashioned, but I’m really confused here.”

“We’re going to lose to the UN,” Wanda said, turning to face him, arms folded and face twisted in spite. “But she’s going to start a civil war within all nations, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it because people love us, and she made them think the government is evil.”

“You’re evil.” Clint mimicked Sam’s words. “You’re worse than the government.”

“Someone has to be.” You acknowledged, unashamed and unbothered.

You knew what the job description was when you signed up, and you knew the kind of soulless monster you were going to have to be when Pepper called. You left DC behind, a town of vultures, to defend people that weren’t accustomed to those vultures. It wasn’t just DC’s most elite politicians you were going against; it was the entire country; it was the entire world – nations with resources to the disposal that you couldn’t even begin to fathom. First world countries, with the means to make you disappear without a trace, second world countries with the power to make your death seem natural, third world countries that had lost far too much to care about moral code.

To win, your only weapon was to start a world war.

To succeed, your only strategy was to make the people fight it for you.

You weren’t dumb enough to think you could win against world nations. But you were smart enough to know where to hit for fatal damage.

“We’re about to face the world and call their leaders a bunch of criminals,” You finally said. “Clint, I had Happy fetch your wife and kids, they’ll be here in a few hours. Scott will be here as well, with his kid. The compound is the safest place they could be, right now. Until this is all over. Until—”

“—until they’re no longer at risk of being held, by the government, indefinitely.” Jonah added for you, “because we’re not idiots to think they’re safe in their own country. They can and they will be used against you.”

“You’re saying our government would arrest minors for crimes they didn’t commit?” Rhodes, for the first time since he sat in the room, spoke – disbelief cloaking his face.

“I’m saying they arrested Wanda, Clint, Scott and Sam for not signing a contract.” Jonah, a man you trusted with your very life, fired back without missing a beat. “Because that’s what this—” he waved the accords in the air, “—this sad excuse of a law that will never stand, is. A contract. Not a law that has been enforced, not an amendment, and definitely not legal. So, yes, I do strongly believe that a government capable of forcing an Army experiment, which resulted in the Abomination – the same government that violated Bruce Banner’s constitutional right; by illegally searching all his belongings without a warrant – is capable of arresting minors for shit they didn’t do.”

“He can tell you all about the rights and laws that the existence of the raft violates,” you said, “but that’s gonna require a shit load of coffee and a lot of ‘I told you so’s’ from Ol’ man Rogers. And that’s not something we’re all ready for.”

Wanda sat up quickly, gaining everyone’s attention. “Wait,” she examined you, something finally clicking in her head. “Those rights apply to Americans and I’m Sokovian."

You shrugged. “I pulled some strings—”

“—made an argument that you couldn’t be eligible for death penalty for treason, in this country, if you weren’t a citizen—” Jonah added.

“—because then that’s gonna be a whole international dispute, and you would be handed over to your own country for the trial—” You nodded.

“—and, man, do we hate not having blood for blood.” Jonah sighed, shaking his head. “I could name a couple of states that want your pretty little neck attached to the adios syringe—"

“—and no country is a fan of those international disputes. So—,” you pushed the green file, you had placed on the table, towards her. “—you became a citizen the moment I walked onto the compound.”

“Which makes you eligible for the same protection as everyone in this room.”

“Pure evil.” Rhodes gaped at you, completely awed.

“We can’t stop the Accords from happening, but we can sure as hell change it. From this day forward, you guys must do everything I tell you, word for word. You’re a team, what you do and how you act will affect all of us. I know what I’m doing, and I need you to trust that; trust that I can, and I will, get you through all of this. You don’t have to trust me, but you can rest easy knowing that I don’t start wars I can’t win.

“I may be evil,” you breathed, straightening your posture and making sure to look every one of them in eye. “But I’m the kind of evil you need, right now.”

There was pregnant pause, an eerie silence encompassing the entire room. “’Til the end of the line.” Bucky voiced softly, his ocean blues capturing yours in a gentleness you’ve never known.

“We’ve come this far,” Bruce said, nodding in agreement to Bucky’s declaration.

Sam shook his head. “We’re so screwed,” he whispered to Clint.

Pepper didn’t know your plan.

The whole thing was going to be hard enough as it was. You had arranged the empty rooms into guest bedrooms, Jarvis was rather helpful in that department, you had him direct the Avengers’ loved ones to their designated rooms. You made a list of things for Jarvis to inform them of – the basics of the compound and the PG rated reason they were there – and made sure to stock the place with every single necessity you could think, that they would need.

She would disapprove of it.

Asgard was already on standby, in the unlikely case that the Compound was compromised. You had asked their current leader, Valkyrie, for the assistance and she was more than ready to help. The Avengers were dear to Thor’s heart, so taking in their loved ones for protection was something Asgardians were more than happy to do.

She would hate you for it.

Wakanda was on standby for extraction as well. In the event that the Avengers would need an escape route, Nakia – a woman that was very pleased to know about your plan – had promised to help in any way possible. She, too, was not a fan of politicians imposing their agendas under the false pretence of enforcing the law.

“Woah, woah, woah—” Bucky gripped onto your arm, pulling you into a slow jog then a stop, “—slow down there, doll.”

You were struggling to catch your breath as you pulled your arm out of his grasp, wiping your forehead free of sweat with the sleeve of your shirt. You fanned your face, trying to find something to lean against, someplace to sit, somewhere to breathe. Because, damn it all to hell, you couldn’t breathe. You couldn’t breathe and you couldn’t think, and it was freaking you out.

“Y/N…” Bucky called out, gripping both of your shoulders and turning you to face him, “Y/N, come on, look at me.”

It’s too hot. Dammit, why is it so hot?

You tried to push him away, worming your way out of his hold, but that only succeeded in him tightened his grip.

Let go.

Molars grinding, hands fisted, you ducked out of what felt like an ironclad grip and backed away from him. You just needed to think, that’s why you went for a late afternoon jog alone, to think. The compound was too crowded; too many voices for you to focus, too many smells, too many distractions. Your room was no better, it was big enough to be a master bedroom, but it felt small – why did it feel so small?

When did it get so dark?

You tried sitting outside, thinking that fresh air would do the trick. But Bruce and Clint and Jonah were outside, talking about something… you were close enough to hear, you think you even made a comment… What were they talking about?

“Come on, sweetheart, look at m—hey, hey, I need you to look at me.”

Go away!

You just needed to think. You rubbed your throat, continuing down your path – it was your path, right? – and tried to swallow down the dryness. You must have been jogging for a while, it was getting difficult for you to see or focus on where you were going. You tried blinking, alternating between rubbing your eyes and your throat, hating that you didn’t bring a water bottle with you.

What were you missing?

“Y/N—”

Why was he still here?

You just needed a second. You just needed to look at things clearly, for his sake, for their sake. Just a second. That’s all you needed.

Safehouses were sorted, because you could never be too safe. Black folders were ready, because you could never trust the other team to play clean. Everyone’s loved ones were accounted for. So, what were you missing?

Think about Morgan.

That annoying little twinge snapped at you, in you, spreading across the left side of your chest. You didn’t even like children, so that shouldn’t even be a thought. It shouldn’t have been a thought coated in Pepper’s voice.

This is exactly why, you thought, this is exactly why I don’t mix work with friendship.

You stopped walking when you could no longer see where you were going, reaching out to find the nearest tree. You couldn’t even hear your own footsteps as you did that, you couldn’t hear anything except the loud thrumming in your ears.

There was something in the distance, some sort of movement maybe – couldn’t be sure, you chose to pass it off as nature and focused on catching your breath. Your muscles felt tense, you blamed it on the jog – because you’re a walker, not a jogger. Your lungs were aching and each gasp for air seemed to not be enough, every deep breath you tried to take felt like it was twisting your chest.

You felt something crawl up your arm, an unwelcome heat that you recoiled away from, moving away from whatever it is. You mind shouted spider and you didn’t hesitate to speed walk away from the pest, but it wouldn’t stop clinging to you, pulling at you, dragging you back with its callous clutch.

You went to flick it away with your other hand, dread settling into the pit of your stomach. “Get off me,” you couldn’t recognise your own voice, drenched in trepidation as your hand tried to swat away at the thick-skinned creature.

Another one gripped at your hand, pressing it to your chest as you began to heave in an unadulterated panic. The iron grip on your arm moved to your back, unconcerned by the fight you were putting, and you were forced into something hard.

“Shhh,” Bucky soothed, wrapping an arm around your writhing figure whilst moving his other to stroke your head, “it’s okay, just breathe.”

This wasn’t you. This couldn’t be you. His shark, his girl, his little darling, his sweetheart couldn’t be the one that tried to fight him off. You couldn’t be this shivering wreck in his arms. No… it couldn’t be you.

But it was you. He could tell it was you just by the sound of your footsteps, so he followed the sound through the trees until he found you, taking a path he knew you’d never been on before.

His shark was shaking in his arms; he could pick you out in a dark room by your smell alone, and your disorientated steps struck an intrusive feeling in him, the kind he’d felt after the snow.

His girl, in the dark and alone, too scared to even let him hold her. This couldn’t be the woman he fell in love with, could it?

“Focus on my voice, I know it’s difficult, but—” he took a breath as he tightened his grip, “—you just need to breathe. Okay? Breathe with me, doll, in and out, slowly—”

He felt you tense, felt as your thrashing turned to uncoordinated twitching, felt as you tried to focus on what he was telling you to do. It took a while before you could mimic his breathing, he didn’t blame you – figured you were just realising what was happening, and even then, your breathing was off.

“That’s it,” he praised, “that’s my girl. You’re doing so good, darling, just keep focusing on my voice—”

You could barely make out his voice, the cloud in your head was too much, but the quick thuds that were drumming against your hand – each one strong as the other – pierced through the disarray. You moved away your hand, having been placed there from your attempt to push him away, and pressed your forehead against the area, forcing yourself to focus on at least that.

This wasn’t you. This didn’t happen to you. But here you were, in Bucky’s arms, hating yourself for letting this happen.

One sense at a time, your own voice rang in your head, that’s how you’ll get back control.

You shut your eyes, tapping your finger to beat of his heart, choosing to focus on your sense of touch first – not that it was a choice. Your first instinct was supposed to be listening, but your disarrayed mind ignored his voice, and went straight for the feel of his heart against your hand. The muscle beating against his chest, something you couldn’t hear, was the only thing you were capable of recognizing in that moment.

The thrumming managed to soothe away the ache in your chest and your feet, the feel of something soft and damp pressing against the crown of your head repeatedly managed to help cool you down, all that was left was for the slight stinging on your throat to disappear – but water could fix that.

You can’t do it all at once, Stark. You remember telling Tony, his panic attack had rendered him speechless, the first of the few that had. Divide and conquer, just like I taught you.

He had listened, focused on your instructions as you helped pull him out of the deep, then pretended he had it all under control – that he could have managed just fine without your interference. You laughed, accustomed to his humour, knowing it was only a defence mechanism, then told him about how it wasn’t something to be ashamed of. You told him that it was a normal thing, a reasonable reaction, to the horrors he had seen. You told him, insisted, that it wasn’t something to be embarrassed about because it happened to the best of us.

You didn’t think you’d have to tell yourself that.

Best of us, never included you.

You were the one that got people through them; helped them cope, taught them the little techniques that they benefited from.

You never thought you would have to use them on yourself.

Next Part

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patriotsnet · 3 years

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Why Do Republicans Want Lower Taxes

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-do-republicans-want-lower-taxes/

Why Do Republicans Want Lower Taxes

Democrats Vs Republicans On Taxes

Why Do People Think Lower Taxes Help the Economy?

What Do Republicans Believe In

So what do Republicans believe? Here are their basic tenets:

Conservatives Dont Hate Socialism They Hate Equality

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To Fund The $35 Trillion Budget Plan Democrats Aim To Undo Trump Tax Cuts

To Fund The $3.5 Trillion Budget Plan, Democrats Aim To Undo Trump Tax Cuts

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But Reagan’s tax cuts in 1981 constituted the strongest move away from progressivity in the income tax since the tax was initiated in the Civil War.

Reagan Pared Back Progressivity

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If you are a real estate developer, you never pay tax, said Ed Kleinbard, a former head of Congresss Joint Committee on Taxation.;

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Its Not Easy Being Green

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Most Welfare Recipients Are Makers Not Takers

The first myth, that people who receive public benefits are takers rather than makers, is flatly untrue for the vast majority of working-age recipients.

As for Medicaid, nearly 80 percent of adults receiving Medicaid live in families where someone works, and more than half are working themselves.

In early December, House Speaker Paul Ryan said, We have a welfare system thats trapping people in poverty and effectively paying people not to work.

Religion And The Belief In God Is Vital To A Strong Nation

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What The Needy Deserve

The second myth is that low-income Americans do not deserve a helping hand.

This idea derives from our belief that the U.S. is a meritocracy where the most deserving rise to the top. Yet where a person ends up on the income ladder is tied to where they started out.

As for people born into the middle class, only 20 percent will ascend to the top quintile in their lifetimes.

The third myth is that government assistance is a waste of money and doesnt accomplish its goals.

In fact, poverty rates would double without the safety net, to say nothing of human suffering. Last year, the safety net lifted 38 million people, including 8 million children, out of poverty.

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An Exhaustive Lobbying Campaign

Almost immediately after Mr. Trump signed the bill, companies and their lobbyists including G.E.s Mr. Brown began a full-court pressure campaign to try to shield themselves from the BEAT and GILTI.

The Treasury Department had to figure out how to carry out the hastily written law, which lacked crucial details.

Starting in January 2018, he and his colleagues found themselves in nonstop meetings roughly 10 a week at times with lobbyists for companies and industry groups.

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bluewatsons · 5 years

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Rebecca J. Lester, Lessons from the borderline: Anthropology, psychiatry, and the risks of being human, 23 Feminism & Psychology 70 (2013)

Susanna: I didn’t try to kill myself.

Dr. Potts: What were you trying to do?

Susanna: I was trying to make the shit stop.

--Girl, Interrupted (1999)

BPD, psychiatric epistemology, and the ‘real’

I know what it’s like to want to die. How it hurts to smile. How you try to fit in but you can’t. How you hurt yourself on the outside to try to kill the thing on the inside.

--Susanna, Girl, Interrupted (1999)

The current diagnostic parameters for BPD (American Psychiatric Association, 2000) define it as a personality disorder characterized by fears of abandonment, relationships where others are alternately idealized or demonized, an unstable sense of self, impulsivity, suicidal behavior, mood swings, feelings of emptiness, overwhelming anger, and stress-related paranoia or dissociative symptoms. Critics of the diagnosis point out that many of these characteristics are consistent with historically ‘feminine’ predispositions such as emotionality, dependency, and instability, while others lend themselves to differential interpretations based on gender norms and expectations. Casual sexual activity is more likely to be labeled ‘impulsive’ in women than men, for example, for whom such encounters are often socially normalized if not valorized. Terms such as ‘frantic’ or ‘inappropriate’ as qualifiers likewise entail judgments about appropriate ways to respond to abandonment or express anger that implicitly hold individualized rational self-mastery as the ideal (Gaines, 1992).

Illness expressions and the cultural semiotics of morality

Then what’s wrong with me, huh? What the fuck is going on inside my head? Tell me, Dr. Val. What’s your diag-nonsense?

--Susanna, Girl, Interrupted (1999)

Undermining deconstructions

BPD and the challenges of non-existence

Lessons from the borderline: Anthropology, psychiatry, and the risks of being human

Crazy isn’t being broken, or swallowing a dark secret. It’s you, or me, amplified.