#None of this reactionary bullshit

[gaymelie]

Once again saw someone yell on here about how "nobody is going to report this aaah the media is evil", closed this app and not even a minute later saw a report with that exact content on a major news platform. Ngl this phrasing is rapidly being added to the list of things i won't reblog on principle.

#Its always an argument as to why the post is more believable or more righteous #And its just a manipulation tactic whether deliberate or not #And I'm not doing that yall #Like either give me solid evidence its being hidden or discuss whatever issue you have in an actual factual manner #None of this reactionary bullshit #Like the amount of 'stories the news outlets aren't covering' where i found an article literally on the front page of the apo #Or with like a single basic search on their app if its a few days old #Like at this point you shouldn't be allowed to add this to your post unless you have googled the topic at least once #We can criticise HOW things are covered and when and by who etc but stop lying to make your point more dramatic

[timeisacephalopod]

The perils of loving true crime content but hating when it veers into either Tough On Crime right wing reactionary content or Weird Gratuitous Descriptions of Crimes territory. I find the first far more than the second and it drives me nuts that anyone could think prison will solve violence when prison in itself is a wildly violent place that obviously doesn't work. If it did the US would be Squeaky Clean Crimeless and that ain't true.

Seriously though I love true crime content but these days have such a hard time finding stuff that gives the facts of the story plainly without deciding to advocate for ridiculous prison sentences and a bunch of other copaganda adjacent shit is surprisingly difficult and frankly says a lot about the way we discuss, conceptualize, and react to crime. Especially when a lot of crime is literally just criminalizing addiction, a mental health problem, so fully defending and uncritically advocating for the prison and policing system especially when true crime stories are more often than not stories of police incompetence is just baffling. And no just because true crime tends to mean violent crime that does not mean prison will solve the problem any more than it would solve an addicts addiction and frankly I don't even want an ideological slant I just want the damn facts without right wing shit being evangelized to me. Wonder how many people even notice this shit, because its so ingrained in true crime content that it feels like the only ones who notice are insufferable blue hair pronoun using leftists like myself.

#winters ramblings #i fuckin hate right wing bullshit in true crime just tell me how shit played out and dont assume cops are always right #and that prison will solve the fucking worlds ills it wont if it did i think america wouldnt have a prison population like that #and the worst part is that this mentality DOESNT stop with child offenders!!! like are you KIDDING ME?? #any time someone advocates for charging a child as an adult i want to point out theyre presuming guilt over innocence #you know. that thing the justice system is never supposed to do. bc if you WERENT presuming guilt #youd have no reason to charge a minor as an adult for the sevarity of their crime. you CANNOT do that without assuming guilt #ill never forget reading yourube comments that said two TEN year olds should have gotten the death sentence #now they committed a VERY disturbing murder and it was very clear they were disturbed kids but EXECUTING CHILDREN?? #youd think you wouldnt have to tell grown adults how fucked up that is but apparently not #and none of them seemed to think thier advocating for the death of two ten year olds is about as disturbing as the crime #those kids committed. #i dont actually have blue hair for the record but still #also youd be ahocked at the amount of people who peoclaim themselves to be left wing amd IMMEDIATELY turn to right wing #reactionary nonsense basically instantly when discussing violent crime. like congrats you did not do the assignment

[misplacedgamer]

So this is going to be a very reactionary, emotional post, and I hope I’m proven wrong, but I need to talk about it.

I do not fucking understand what the point was of killing Bakugo if Deku is not the one that saves him.

And before anyone jumps down my throat, no it’s not because I’m a BKDK shopper or because I think Deku is the only person ALLOWED to save Bakugo. It’s because, unless Hori pulls some crazy ass bullshit, nothing narratively can top a pro hero literally sacrificing himself by folding into a heart to keep Bakugo alive.

The narrative has been set up from chapter 1 that Deku wants to save Bakugo with his own hands. Time and time again, Deku is either unsuccessful in rescuing Bakugo or has to have assistance (and yes I count chapter 1 as well, All Might saved them both from the sludge villain). This is the final arc, so logic would dictate that to fulfill this character arc, Deku would finally save Bakugo just like he tried to do all those years ago at the river. It sates Deku’s need to be a hero and also means Bakugo has grown enough as a person to let himself be rescued.

But now? What the fuck is gonna top this?

And why even do this now? There has to be something else going on, cause otherwise this is so frustrating. Bakugo would be miserable to find out another person essentially gave their life for him, and it would be super weird if he just walked around with Edgeshot as a heart from now on. Also, Bakugo just decided in 362 that he HAD to fight AFO even though he was injured. He basically died because the plot said so, and none of his friends were around to eve REACT to it

If THIS is all we get out of it then I’m gonna be majorly disappointed.

#bnha 364 #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #katsuki bakugo #katsuki bakugou #bakugo katsuki #bkdk #bakudeku #cause it’s kind of relevant #like I’m happy he’s gonna be alive #but I never believed he was actually gonna die #and I’d much rather he stay dead than this being how he comes back

[seat-safety-switch]

Ever since my editorial in the newspaper, people have been driving by my house, screaming obscenities. Morning, noon, and night. I'd close the window to muffle their profane entreaties, but one of the neighbourhood parents sent their kids by to smash out all the glass, and new sheets of plywood cost more than my car. It's enough to make a guy wish he hadn't written all that kook-ass bullshit in a public source of truth and then attached his real name to it.

Now, you have to understand. I'm not some sort of reactionary conspiracy-spewing nutjob. Everything I'm saying is meticulously backed up, word for word, by evidence. That's what's really got everyone's panties in a knot, metaphorical or otherwise. When confronted with an impossible fact, the human mind reels. Lashing out at the messenger is an understandable reaction, and I forgive those who trespass against me, even if my insurance adjuster is getting tired of it.

Still, I stand by my words. Last night, some dude came by in a misfiring Neon. I could barely hear what he was saying over all the exhaust noise. After listening to him circle the block twice, I stepped out onto the lawn, waiting to be struck down by a thrown can of expired luncheon meat. None arrived. In fact, the coward stepped on the gas to try and get away from me, his target that was now seemingly defending himself. The little Plymouth stalled, and then shat out about three pounds of oil and coolant from the muffler.

On the side of the road, I helped him change the blown head gasket, and hopefully he's gone back to his friends to tell him that the guy from the news, the pariah, isn't actually all that bad after all. Maybe he'll even come around to my way of thinking: everyone who loiters in the left lane should be forcibly exterminated by a highly-efficient government pogrom and their assets redistributed to worthy charities.

[haggishlyhagging]

We have arrived at our final point: the importation of clinical Freudianism to stem the flow of feminism. Girls in the twenties and thirties found themselves halfway in and halfway out of the traditional roles. Thus they were neither insulated and protected from the larger world as before, nor were they equipped to deal with it. Both their personal and work lives suffered. Their frustration often took hysterical forms, complicated by the fact that they were despised the world over for even the little false liberation they had achieved. Mass confusion sent them in droves to the psychoanalysts. And where had all the psychoanalysts come from? By this time a war was going on in Europe, and much of the German and Austrian intelligentsia had settled here in search of a practice. It was ideal: a whole class of suffering people awaited them. And it was not just a few bored, rich women who were sucked into the new religion. For America was undergoing serious cramps from withholding a sexual revolution already well beyond the beginning stages. Everyone suffered, men as well as women. Books came out with such titles as How to Live with a Neurotic (because that oppressed class is right there in your kitchen, whining and complaining and nagging). Soon men, too, were turning up at the psycho-analysts. Well-educated, responsible citizens, not just psychos. And children. Whole new fields were opened to deal with the influx: child psychology, clinical psychology, group therapy, marriage counseling services, any variation you can think of, name it and there it was. And none of it was enough. The demand multiplied faster than new departments could be opened up in colleges.

That these new departments were soon filled up with women is no wonder. Masses of searching women studied psychology with a passion in the hope of finding a solution to their "hangups." But women who had grown interested in psychology because its raw material touched them where they lived soon were spouting jargon about marital adjustment and sex-role responsibility. Psychology departments became halfway houses to send women scurrying back "adjusted" to their traditional roles as wives and mothers. Those women who persisted in demanding careers became in their turn instruments of the repressive educational system, their new-found psychological “insight”—that babble of Child Psych., Social Work 301 and El. Ed.—serving to keep a fresh generation of women and children down. Psychology became reactionary to its core, its potential as a serious discipline undermined by its usefulness to those in power.

And psychology was not the only new discipline to be corrupted. Education, social work, sociology, anthropology, all the related behavioral sciences, remained for years pseudo-sciences, overburdened with a double function: the indoctrination of women, as well as the study of "human" behavior. Reactionary schools of thought developed: social science became "functional," studying the operation of institutions only within the given value system, thus promoting acceptance of the status quo.

It is not surprising that these remained "women's fields." Men soon fled to (exclusively male) "pure" science; women, still only semi-educated, awed with their new entrance into academia, were left to be snowed with the pseudo-scientific bullshit. For, in addition to role indoctrination, the behavioral sciences served as a dike to keep the hordes of questing "nouveaux intellectuelles" from entering the "real" sciences—physics, engineering, biochemistry, etc., sciences that in a technological society bore an increasingly direct relation to control of that society.

As a result, even access to higher education, one of the few victories of the early W.R.M., was subverted. More average women went to college than ever before, with less effect. Often the only difference between the modern college-educated housewife and her traditional prototype was the jargon she used in describing her marital hell.

-Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution

#shulamith firestone #psychology #freudianism #feminism #female oppression #hard vs soft science

[licncourt]

Since you are the resident Louis expert, how is Louis with emotional intimacy? Is it something that comes easily to him or is he scares of it?

I think that's complicated. We all know that Louis has a lot of feelings OR absolutely none (which is kind of an emotion in itself), so I see him as being both very contradictory in one view, but ultimately very consistent. He exists in extremes, essentially.

Based on how he interacts with other characters, I think he's very selective about that kind of vulnerability. To be frank, I don't think he cares all that much about the average acquaintance, but then things take a turn of sorts.

We really only see him genuinely close with Lestat and Claudia (maybe implicitly Armand in the PL era, but I don't think we see enough on-page to analyze it). With Claudia, there was an obvious and immediate paternal connection, but I think his relationship with Lestat is more interesting and telling in this regard.

Louis is largely reactionary here when it comes to emotional intimacy. When Lestat genuinely reaches out or expresses vulnerability in IWTV (really in any way) Louis immediately draws closer. Clearly he wants that, he's such a lonely, isolated character.

Unfortunately for Lestat, it seems like his willingness to engage on that level is based almost entirely on reciprocity. When Lestat lashes out, Louis instantly shuts down and becomes very cold.

In TVL and onward, that shifts and we start to see how loyal Louis can really be once he feels like someone has earned his love by loving him back. That coldness from IWTV is largely gone, only returning briefly between QotD and during some of TotBT as what seems like a defense mechanism when Lestat is at his worst.

Besides that, Louis reaches out consistently, expressing his feelings and desires to Lestat repeatedly and even at risk of being hurt. Obviously closeness and connection with someone he genuinely loves is worth the potential pain of rejection or abandonment.

As much beef as I have with his late canon characterization, I do think it's consistent at least in this way. Even after everything Lestat has done for years, Louis still wants to rebuild that bond between them and agrees to come to France to try again. Once he's there and Lestat is finally ready, we don't really see any hesitation on Louis' part, only relief and happiness.

So yes, I do think he's scared of it, especially after the grief of losing Claudia that was only so intense because of his love for her and because of Lestat’s...bullshit. But I also think that his loneliness and how much it must have crushed him for so many years after the Interview era makes him very willing to take the plunge when he sets his mind on someone.

#drinking la croix tonight so i can actually get something accomplished ask-wise #answered #vc #meta #louis de pointe du lac

[pixeljade]

For those who dont know Pat Robertson was the father of the evangelical christian political movement. He basically singlehandedly made the GOP the party of the evangelicals. Without him thered be none of the reactionary bullshit we put up with from today. I hope that fucker felt nothing but pain and misery as he died

[chaos-event-horizon]

Toshinori: Things are getting better now, but in all honesty until I know that all of you buttmunchers can behave, anons are staying off. What happened yesterday was goddamn unacceptable, and absolutely none of the reactionaries in the community are free of sin right now. Who knows what the hell happened to cause so much fucking bullshit, but one thing is for sure: I have no problem pulling the plug on this blog to keep Rian safe. That level of harassment in a community that claims to be against such things is completely unforgivable. And the fact that you were attacking a goddamn trauma victim for doing nothing worse than saying his trauma exists, shows just how fucking full of it some of you are. I will not be saying this twice. Do not let it happen again.

#proship selfship #proship selfship discourse

[nadacwriter]

The amphibia discourse convinces me that none of you care about kids.

You wouldn't be blaming anime. Or Matt Braly. That's all reactionary bullshit.

There is one way to protect children from pedophiles; attack pedophiles.

Not their old bosses ortheir favorite TV shows or anything like that. If you want me or ANY victim to take your arguments in the discourse seriously, you have to stop maki g this a game. We know who's at fault. We know who did it.

Get your heads out of your asses and focus on the real problem.

#musings #amphibia #you can reblog but don't add anything.

[thiagodasilva]

no dont shut up. speak your truth plss youre the only one around here talking sense

oh girl.

all I’m going to say is this:

the idea that this was all entirely one sided on the club’s part, that they forced him out and he never ever wanted to leave feels sooo exaggerated? brazen? reactionary? I don’t know if I missed anything, I’m so serious, because what we’ve heard for months (leading up to these last few weeks) is that contract negotiations were going nowhere and he ended up wanting to leave in the end because of proposed deals or lack thereof and the club was willing to sell. And we heard that from reliable sources (I only follow fabrizio because he just reports what he hears that he can verify and consistently provides updates. I mean. Mans is famous for being THE most consistently accurate and not putting a spin on things); the other few things I’ve seen have changed the story plenty of times and can come off so biased that you just gotta take it with a grain of salt-I mean take ALL of it as such, it’s the internet, we don’t know everything.

and because we don’t know everything, I’m not going to sit there and definitely say that the club is a never ending evil for “treating” him this way and forcing him to move-if there’s other shit behind the scenes others somehow have heard/know about that I personally have no idea, enlighten me I guess. contract deals went to hell, we don’t know 100% what he turned down or what he was offered etc etc, so I’m personally not going to jump to conclusions. What we DO know for sure is that he’s going to Man U to earn a bunch more money on a five year deal.

And there’s definitely a good chunk of the fanbase saying the same thing about him, that he’s all evil or whatever, so everyone is all over the place picking a front on whose worse but it’s like….none of us knew what went down for real. I don’t care how many “sources” you’ve seen on Twitter and Instagram, we weren’t there, we’re not in his head, we’re not in the board’s heads. So we don’t know who or what is “totally” at fault which is also kind of a juvenile way of looking at things because omigod the world and so many of its issues are GREY.

This has been such a shit year for Chelsea, the board has fucked up, the players have been going through it on and off the pitch, we’re losing almost everyone that we’ve had a bit of a foundation with. Change is here, and it’s frustrating and weird but we’re just fans, not the capitalist billionaires that make the groundbreaking decisions. But all sides of this fandom are coming at throats in the weirdest ways.

You can be upset, sad, mad, heartbroken, frustrated, annoyed but omigod if you’re a chelsea fan and you’re either: 1) wishing the club you support to struggle again next season because your fave is gone and you’re convinced they ruined everything under the sun OR 2) sending past and present players genuine hate or whatever bullshit for the situations going on….what the hell are you even doing here lol.

He’s gone on to another club, his business with Chelsea is done and you can mourn what was and what will never be but it’s bold to assume any of us know what’s up. I’m annoyed about how it all went and it’s bittersweet but I’m not going to damn him or the club over it. (I’ve damned this club and others over more serious bullshit let’s be real). *

I know it’s “just” football and you can be and do whatever you want but omigod. just. THINK for a second.

*and I’m very aware I react to things emotionally/dramatically with football and non football related things alike (that’s how it’s always been? But I’m not about wish death and destruction sincerely over shit that could have easily just been what it is? A business negotiation?) but I always do my best to take a step back and take another look. that’s all I’m trying to say basically.

#this isn’t direct to anyone it’s just the conversation I’ve seen and I’m bored #yes it’s about mason but y’all are not about to come for me over this so no way am I tagging #the lead up has made it a more drama filled goodbye than it ever needed to be #anyway #ask #anonymous #chelsea fc

[nerdylilpeebee]

You are so painfully reactionary. Arguments based on nothing but racist dehumanization. LEAPING to antisemitism when people correctly tell you genetic testing doesn't undermine genocide. Like every reactionary racist before you, you continue the inflammatory bullshit. Congrats on the fascism

Wow. That's a lot of buzzwords. XD

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is proof that none of these fucking anons are actually reading what I'm saying. Not a single fucking word.

If they had, there'd be no way to get racist dehumanization from what I was saying. The antisemitism accusation is fucking funny considering you are the ones erasing Hamas' actions, ignoring that Israel has constantly warned and give chance to evacuate every single time they've retaliated (only being thwarted by Hamas refusing to let civilians evacuate so there would be guaranteed civilian casualties so idiots like you will gobble up their nonsense like Thanksgiving Dinner), and trying to paint them as genocidal despite there being no genocidal group in history that has EVER allowed the group they're trying to genocide evacuate before an attack.

Literally Hun, it's just pathetic how hard you're trying to twist this into ME being the bigot. XD

#israel #hamas #palestine #arab israeli conflict #tvp discourse #idiocy

[aronarchy]

still incredibly salty abt the repeated unaddressed microaggressions from Mouse i.e. ignoring & blocking me when I called them out for slandering (for the nth time) a marginalized person w/bigoted double standards, accusing me (a CSEM survivor) of “having a Twitter page posting CSEM” on zero evidence on basis of my identity alone and blocking me afterward, and more

Not to mention their 2019 thread on him, and their constant garbage bigoted takes (“uwu social media doesn’t have sufficient nuance to address that topic properly (but I can bc I’m Academic and Official and know everything uwu) 🥺🥺🥺”), and their attempt to (completely inaccurately) speak for Aggy with the exact assimilationist bigoted takes she was calling out in the first place, and their general treatment of paras and cluster B’s as fascinating freakshows to be stared at in a zoo/studied under a microscope and observed for their fucking grad thesis

I am never ever trusting a cracker lib ever again in discussions of the carceral-industrial complex, fuck your nice polite reformism, fuck your appeals to academic/institutional authority, fuck your fucking psych major course

And ofc none of their assimilationist “proship” buddies ever call them out on their bullshit bc they have the same motive of trying to deflect fascists’ attention from themselves by throwing us under the bus and joining in on the dogpiling and harassment

99% of the self-proclaimed proship community is utterly pathetic and worthless and will never go anywhere, not with that internalized reactionary bullshit and your constant need to suck up to oppressors

Seeing the difficult times come really helps you figure out who’s decent & who’s yet another lying grifter, those friends who abandon you and turn against you and take back everything they’ve said the moment the pressure on them becomes a little too hard for them

Stop trying to get us to be One Of The Good Ones. We owe you nothing, and we have no obligation to prove ourselves to you. Stay the fuck away and don’t mention us ever again until you’ve learned to be respectful.

#OP #vent #rant #adybpt

[lettherebemonsters]

Adam makes me think of that one guy who lost his first two wifes (to the same dude, what utter bullshit is that?) and then did some of the work and found an equally screwed up person to maintain a weirdly healthy in it's unhealthy ways relationship with.

Lucifer the depressed divorced dad yeah but Adam's living that weekend dad life with the new punk rock younger girlfriend who teaches step-kids to play smoke on the water on the guitar.

I love how true that is lol. Ironically, Lute and Adam balance each other out perfectly and that definitely helps them in their relationship.

Like he's reactionary and volatile, but able to think rationally. While Lute simmers a lot, wants to go in guns blazing, but is the voice of reason and literally the only one that can calm Adam down.

TBH Adam IS the father of humanity, and in scripture fathered 28-30 kids. And none of his kids showed up in heaven with him. So not only does he hate Lucifer for cucking him twice.....he hates him for basically killing off his kids too (though Lilith I believe is the one in apocryphal scripture that eats babies as a big 'fuck you' to Adam and Eve.....)

#call me dickmaster! (adam) #I do think Adam and Lucifer were best friends in the garden #which is what made the betrayal so intense for Adam #Imagine breaking the bro code twice on your bestie

[mingzisdrgongxuo]

Thinks being a fucking disease to other people's aethetics and design is going to destroy or dispell magic? Or just your individual person's superstition?

How does it work on your religion when I think your presentation is a threat to my interests?

There's this place you get taken to if you are ever taken into custody for being crazy under 5150.

They can keep you indefinitely. Legally. A LIFE SENTENCE. Until you pass all your psychiatric tests and evaluations after being declared ward of the state. Family has no claim to you anymore. The state is your parents now, and rules you according to United States Law, not religion or occultism.

If you refuse to stop hanging onto your criminal behavior, and dishonesty,

And you still demonstrate patterns of ritualistic behavior and/or your behavior changes according to things like extension numbers, or name, or color associations over a loudspeaker on the psychiatric ward's phone network,...

you aren't ever getting out, and you'll die in there and they'll throw you in the psychiatric hospital's morgue. It is still legal to lobotomize people in there, where the mentally ill are abandoned and forgotten by their family, like a dirty secret.

It's not the fault of the person locked up there. They are all births that resulted from birth defects like mental retardation/down syndrome (my younger brother had this before he died in his infancy), drug use, and/or incest and inbreeding.

They were abandoned at the orphanage basically.

How do you think that makes them feel inside? And they are in a prison that they will never get out of, and none of it was their fault or guilt to bear.

Never able to know what it's like to even visit a mc Donald's even once in their lives, much less know acceptance, or what it's like to be loved by anyone, or experience an intimate relationship for any length of time.

They are human cattle. A lesser species corralled and confined and imprisoned until the day they die.

Get over your grim reaper/angel of death/skull fetish bullshit.

Because it is bullshit. Animals don't obey or understand it, the human logic is never explained to them, it's just more human bullshit that doesn't matter to the rest of the animal kingdom.

You want to romanticize death? You get in bed with it and see how you like it, and tell me how cool you think it is to include this bullshit when your loved ones start getting taken away from you.

You think he's your friend? Or that it makes you exempt?

Go fuck your rationalizations or philosophies about it then.

I'm telling you no. If you don't like that I deny this grim reaper angel of death bullshit, then you can leave. Learn how to be strong enough and smart enough to adapt and evolve when somebody tells you no or things don't go your way. Evil, power-seeking dick.

The crows survive anyway, big man, why can't you without your bullshit?

While we are watching for changes in the weather, do we also need to keep your behavior on a split-screen to watch you for any changes in your behavior, activity, or routine, or what reactionary chess board strategies, phone calls or texts you make....?

You don't respect peace when it is given to you, faggot.

Straighten up, cunt.

[a-catgirl-cafe]

'Rich Men North of Richmond' is one big dog-whistle, not an anti-establishment anthem

"An overnight sensation" TikToker Oliver Anthony's sound and artistry can't be denied, but a few more things become undeniable as you dive into the lyrics of his break-out song. The elephant in the room is the title itself, but I would like to start with the first verse.

“I’ve been selling my soul Working all-day Overtime hours, bullshit pay So I can sit out here And waste my life away…”

Because this is what first falls into your ears and when I first heard it I was totally with it. The emotion and soul he sings these words with as well as the sentiment itself was something I was instantly in accord with.

If the message and tone stayed here, this would be a totally different review and I'd probably be an Oliver Anthony fan right now. But that's not how it went.

For a while I was paying more attention to the sound of his voice and instrument, which are captivating and stirring. I appreciate the old-school sound, the authenticity is a fresh contrast to the artificiality of mainstream music and contemporary country music specifically.

One line started to pull out the political analyst in me. He seemed to be blaming inflation on taxes? Oh, well. He's an artist not an economist. That doesn't detract much from his overall message…but the next line made me wonder, what is his message anyway?

He lost me completely in verse two which takes a decidedly reactionary turn with its first two lines:

“I wish politicians would look out for miners And not just minors on an island somewhere”

I had flashbacks to all the times people who were "definitely not racist, but…" wanted to "take care of our own" before we did anything for those people. It's such a trope and I really don't have to explain it. The only thing in Anthony's favour are the words "not just", implying we can walk and chew gum at the same time, and that's the weak defence my mind rushed to before concluding: if that's what you really meant, just drop these lines — they just make you look bad.

Also, just what are your plans for making miners lives better? What if we invested in more solar and banned coal-burning energy and did job training to get them better, safer work, perhaps in solar energy? Maybe establish a Universal Basic Income to catch people who fall between the cracks. Which brings me to the part where it all fell apart for me.

He pleads with us that there are people on the street who have nothing to eat. True enough. Thanks to gentrification more and more people are being priced out of their neighborhoods and becoming unhoused. Corporations are buying up property across the country at an alarming rate and hiking the prices, making housing unaffordable for more and more people.

And while food insecurity is bad enough in urban communities it's actually worse in rural areas were the job market is crap, transportation is needlessly difficult and even people who are starving can't qualify for assistance. Wait — that's not what we're talking about? The fat people are eating all their food? Really? That's your take? Social media told me this was an "anti-establishment" song and that's your take?

Yes, would-be working-class hero Oliver Anthony is warning us that the obese are "milking welfare".

I guess we found out that "people like me and people like you" doesn't include minors on islands and fat people on financial assistance. Neat.

He is under the false assumption that unfortunately many people accept, that obesity is a personal moral failing. That it's due to overindulgence or a lack of discipline. and we now KNOW that's bullshit. It's been disproved. There are many reasons people can't lose weight and you can't look at someone and know if they are working hard enough on themselves to "earn" welfare. And you can't know what someone's regular diet is based on a single purchase they made. And it's none of our fucking business anyway.

I'd love it if Americas stopped eating so much damn meat. We have too much protein in our diets, it's making us sick, it's torturing animals, destroying the environment. Until someone dies and make you Food Lord, let the fatty enjoy their treat in the relative peace they can find in our ever-worsening capitalist dystopia.

Also, in my opinion there is no such thing as "milking welfare" unless you are committing actual fraud or are a corporation getting corporate welfare which shouldn't be a thing and pales in comparison to anything the poor are taking. Take everything you qualify for. Money is fake, our labour is exploited. The poor don't set the policies, the rich do. The poor don't decide what is offered to us for free. If we did, we'd get hot meals. The fact that food-stamps cover fudge rounds and not a hot meal is because the rich have decided it's better for them and their interests.

Anyway, everything I've gone into so far is nothing compared to the elephant in the room I alluded to from the start, the title itself.

"Rich men north of Richmond". It's a nice turn-of-phrase. It's catchy, sounds good and it's a poetic way to refer to politicians in our nation's capital which, referencing a map, is north of, and in relative close proximity to the city of Richmond, capital of the commonwealth of Virginia and…former capital of…the Confederate States of America.

As a former neo-confederate, Civil War history buff and reenactor, this aspect was the first thing that hit me when I saw the title and it stuck with me as I listened to the track in full. And the more I thought about the song in its entirety, the more the dog-whistle interpretation made sense and the less the innocent artistic explanation made sense.

A user on Genius.com commented on these lines of the song and how the song can be seen through the lens of the pseudohistorical "Lost Cause" narrative of the Civil War in which the North as aggressor, ruined the (slave) economy of the South, taking "total control" from the government in Richmond. The lines that go:

“Lord, it's a damn shame what the world's gotten to For people like me and people like you Wish I could just wake up and it not be true But it is, oh, it is”

can be seen as a lament at the way the war ended, which the narrator blames for his current economic condition.

This insight does clarify some of the songs more (intentionally?) vague lines, for example "people like me and people like you" would then be a wink-and-a-nudge reference to white southerners. That seems to me to be the target audience and message of the song.

That's my opinion, I will include the links to the lyrics from Genius.com and I will include the annotations about the "Lost Cause" interpretation below. Read that and also read the lyrics in full and all the other annotations on the Genius.com page and make up your own mind.

Even if you don't ultimately come to the same conclusions, I hope you will see there are enough red-flags that concern is rational and valid and that Oliver Anthony should be viewed with caution and we should not be surprised if he turns out to be overtly problematic and reactionary.

Full lyrics with user-created annotations via Genius Lost Cause interpretation: "These rich men north of Richmond"

There are two viable explanations of the lyric. With Washington, DC being directly north of Richmond, Virginia, the lyric calls out leaders in both parties for presiding over an economic system that makes the rich richer on the backs of the rest of us. Seen another way, it is a not-so-subtle reference to the Civil War, when Richmond, VA, the capital of the slave states in rebellion, sat just below the Confederacy’s northern border and just south of Washington, DC. Richmond, the largest city in Virginia by far at the time, effectively formed the northernmost edge of the Confederacy. So, everything to the north of Richmond was enemy territory to the slave states. After the war, the defeated South adopted the “Lost Cause” narrative, which explained the loss in terms of a resource-rich North as the aggressor against a pastoral “Old South” whose enslaved humans were generally contented and well cared for.

"Lord knows they all just wanna have total control"

This continues the “Lost Cause” narrative of the title line. In the former slave states' Lost Cause explanation of the Civil War, it was not slavery but, instead, freedom that inspired the South’s rebellion against the United States. Preeminent historian of the Civil War James M. McPherson explains: "The theme of liberty, not slavery, as the cause for which the South fought became a mantra in the writings of old Confederates and has been taken up by neo-Confederates in our own time." While contemporaneous rhetoric of Confederate leaders made clear that the preservation of slavery is what provoked the Southern states to rebellion, the Lost Cause myth, developed after the South’s defeat, sought to revise history to insist that the North’s desire for control caused the war.

[cockringhoratio]

i really try not to be southern on main bc i know yall dont want to hear it, but the way people who arent from here and have never lived here talk about the south makes me so fucking angry i could cry

#smashy the cache #someone was interviewing stacey abrams #and the bitch had the fucking gall to be like 'wow that must be especially hard for you bc youre trying to do it ~in the south~' #like fuck off fuck the fuck off #i hope to fuck stacey wins #but i fucking know #i just fucking know that as soon as she does all these smug liberal fucks #are gonna come flocking trying to claim it as some victory for equality or fucking whatever #as if they played some fucking role in it happening #when all they fucking do is sit around and jack off to how woke they are cuz theyre ~better than the south~ #and when once shes elected shes gonna be the only fucking one #none of those fucking northern states are gonna nominate their own black women #theyre so wet to claim her but theyre not gonna do shit to actually push for the claims she represents #and i fucking hate it #all the hypocrisy and the bullshit #and other southern states arent gonna push those changes either #bc all the fucking reactionary conservatives #are gonna be so fucking outrages at all these smarmy fucking liberals sticking their shitty noses where they arent wanted #that theyre gonna make sure its wrinkly old white dudes for ages and ages #and thats why afaic anyone who isnt from the south better keep us the fuck out of their mouths #southern on main for ts #since some of yall will probs want to blacklist #for future indignations or whatever #im just so fucking tired