#and something inherently tied to poverty and class

[fndmstrugglecomments]

Something I keep seeing in defenses for RT vis-a-vis Bumbleby is that RT issues are mostly labor issues and not homophobic ones. Not only is that not true(It haven't even been 6 months since Kdin's tweets), but worker's issues and LGBT issues are inherently tied. Queer people, especially trans people, are at a higher risk of living in poverty for example. I feel like as members of a marginalized class the least we can do is listen to the concerns of other marginalized classes, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" and all that.

[ecopunkbeginner]

LMAO at the like to dislike ratio. I can't speak for everyone who hit dislike, but for me it was the fact that they only grazed the surface of the real problem and ultimately reduced it to something that sounds much more trivial.

Idk if this channel usually keeps comments off, it would make sense for news, but I can't help but wonder....either way, that's why I'm babbling here.

TL;DR (bc y'all already know all the concepts I'm rambling about)

They kept acting as if the economy doing well was a fact, and whether that's accurate...depends on definitions. They kept referencing statistics like low unemployment and shrinkflation being marginally less bad than before.

People don't feel good about the economy because IT'S NOT SERVING THEM WELL, FUCKASS. Working is not automatically better than not working, because the sheer volume of people who live paycheck to paycheck indicates that it's not a truly functional system (functional for the general population, that is). Living paycheck to paycheck is living in constant anxiety. That's not even touching on things like people who SHOULDN'T be working being forced to work through necessity, because disability isn't enough to live on and all that. Your metrics don't mean shit if you don't add some quality of life measures. So if you were asking them if they thought the economy was getting good grades in capitalism, sure, you'd be right to say that it is (I'm assuming based on The Statistics they keep mentioning), but most people aren't gonna think hmm, how would I rate our country if I were doing an assignment in economics class? They're gonna think what is everyone experiencing, money-wise? And we all see that this huge chunk of people are struggling in that department. You think people, especially the struggling people, are gonna assume you're asking about The Statistics? Only if they've recently heard the news that The Statistics are doing well and it stuck in their brain, or if they majored in economics or some shit. That last bit is entirely an assumption on my part and kind of a joking projection about my own memory, but more importantly, even if you make it clear you're asking about concrete metrics like unemployment, they usually only have their own experiences to formulate a guess unless they happen to be knowledgeable in economics. So why the fuck would they guess that the numbers are high if everything they see irl and on the internet is people struggling?

So yeah, unemployment numbers being low isn't much consolation to anyone who isn't rich. At best there will be individuals glad they have a job because they need one to live.

Outside of the academic/analytical sphere, the economy is fucked. They're literally correct. Seems kinda out of touch to not consider *the human experience of actually not having enough* to be an important variable, but I shouldn't be surprised.

Anyway, another aspect was called "vibeflation", which is when the economy is technically doing well but no one feels like it is, and it was tied to...you'll never guess....politics. Apparently people consistently feel more optimistic when their party is "winning". The way they framed this, imo, implied that it was this inherent human quality that was a likely cause of the dissatisfaction for many/most people. They ended off mentioning vibes again. It felt very condescending, as if the silly peasants are ruled by their emotions and don't truly understand the economy.

They mentioned people in poverty existing but given that I can't even remember what was broadly said about them, I think I'm correct in my memory that it was pretty substanceless. It was definitely brief.

I wanted to leave a comment, bc this irritated me lmao. Shame on me for thinking maybe PBS would have a little more awareness.

#i did other stuff for like 10 mins and now my brain refuses to get back into it to make sure it makes sense and inevitably add more thoughts #so hopefully this is coherent. or not seen by anybody which is likely either way #oops. im back to this post later and i definitely added more. but i can't reread it all im not strong enough #chronicles #discussion #tbh im pleasantly surprised that i wrote all this even if it's disorganized as fuck. the bupropion dosage bump is kicking in

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

On August 21, 1831, Nat Turner, an enslaved American, led about 70 of his enslaved and free Black neighbors in a rebellion to awaken his white neighbors to the inherent brutality of slaveholding and the dangers it presented to their own safety. Turner and his friends traveled from house to house in their neighborhood in Southampton County, Virginia, freeing enslaved people and murdering about 60 of the white men, women, and children they encountered. Their goal, Turner later told an interviewer, was “to carry terror and devastation wherever we went.”

State militia put down the rebellion in a couple of days, and both the legal system and white vigilantes killed at least 200 Black Virginians, many of whom were not involved in Turner’s bid to end enslavement. Turner himself was captured in October, tried in November, sentenced to death, and hanged.

But white Virginians, and white folks in neighboring southern states, remained frightened. Turner had been, in their minds, a well-treated, educated enslaved man, who knew his Bible well and seemed the very last sort of person they would have expected to revolt. And so they responded to the rebellion in two ways. They turned against the idea that enslavement was a bad thing, and instead began to argue that human enslavement was a positive good.

And states across the South passed laws making it a crime to teach enslaved Americans to read and write.

Denying enslaved Black Americans access to education exiled them from a place in the nation. The Framers had quite explicitly organized the United States not on the principles of religion or tradition, but rather on the principles of the Enlightenment: the idea that, by applying knowledge and reasoning to the natural world, men could figure out the best way to order society. Someone excluded from access to education could not participate in that national project. Instead, that person was read out of society, doomed to be controlled by leaders who marshaled religion and propaganda to defend their dominance.

In 1858, South Carolina Senator James Henry Hammond explained that society needed “a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. That is, a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little skill.”

But when they organized in the 1850s to push back against the efforts of elite enslavers like Hammond to take over the national government, members of the fledgling Republican Party recognized the importance of education. In 1859, Illinois lawyer Abraham Lincoln explained that those who adhered to the “mud-sill” theory “assumed that labor and education are incompatible; and any practical combination of them impossible…. According to that theory, the education of laborers, is not only useless, but pernicious, and dangerous.”

Lincoln argued that workers were not simply drudges but rather were the heart of the economy. “The prudent, penniless beginner in the world, labors for wages awhile, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land, for himself; then labors on his own account another while, and at length hires another new beginner to help him.” He tied the political vision of the Framers to this economic vision. In order to prosper, he argued, men needed “book-learning,” and he called for universal education. An educated community, he said, “will be alike independent of crowned-kings, money-kings, and land-kings.”

When they were in control of the federal government in the 1860s, Republicans passed the Land Grant College Act, funding public universities so that men without wealthy fathers might have access to higher education. In the aftermath of the Civil War, Republicans also tried to use the federal government to fund public schools for poor Black and white Americans, dividing money up according to illiteracy rates. But President Andrew Johnson vetoed that bill on the grounds that the federal government had no business protecting Black education; that process, he said, belonged to the states—which for the next century denied Black people equal access to schools, excluding them from full participation in American society and condemning them to menial labor.

Then, in 1954, after decades of pressure from Black and brown Americans for equal access to public schools, the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren, a former Republican governor of California, unanimously agreed that separate schools were inherently unequal, and thus unconstitutional.

Immediately, white southerners lawmakers launched a campaign of what they called “massive resistance” to integration. Some Virginia counties closed their public schools. Others took funds from integrated public schools and used a grant system to redistribute those funds to segregated private schools. These segregation academies dovetailed neatly with Ronald Reagan’s rise to political power with a message that public employees had gotten too powerful and that public enterprises should be privatized.

After Reagan’s election, his Secretary of Education commissioned a study of the nation’s public schools, starting with the conviction that there was a "widespread public perception that something is seriously remiss in our educational system." The resulting report, titled “A Nation at Risk,” announced: “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”

Although a later study commissioned in 1990 by the Secretary of Energy found the data in the original report did not support the report’s conclusions, Reagan nonetheless used it to justify school privatization. He vowed after the report’s release that he would: “continue to work in the months ahead for passage of tuition tax credits, vouchers, educational savings accounts, voluntary school prayer, and abolishing the Department of Education. Our agenda is to restore quality to education by increasing competition and by strengthening parental choice and local control.”

The drive to push tax dollars from public schools to private academies through a voucher system has remained a top priority for Movement Conservatives eager to dismantle the federal government, although a recent study from Wisconsin shows that vouchers do not actually save tax dollars, and scholars do not believe they help students achieve better outcomes than they would have in public schools.

Calling education a civil rights issue—as President Barack Obama had done when calling for more funding for schools—former president Trump asked Congress to fund “school choice for disadvantaged youth, including millions of African-American and Latino children. These families should be free to choose the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home school that is right for them.” (In fact, most of those using vouchers are already enrolled in private schools.) His education secretary, Betsy DeVos, was a staunch supporter of school choice and the voucher system; she and her family gave $600,000 to promote school choice ballot laws in the decade before 2017.

The coronavirus pandemic sped up the push to defund public schools as Trump pushed hard to transfer funds from the closed public schools to private schools. In December 2020, he signed an executive order allowing states to use money from a federal anti-poverty program for vouchers, and as of mid-2021, at least 8 states had launched new voucher programs. A number of Republican governors are using federal funds from the bills designed to address the pandemic to push vouchers.

In 1831, lawmakers afraid of the equality that lies at the heart of our Declaration of Independence made sure Black Americans could not have equal access to education.

In 1971, when segregation academies were gaining ground, the achievement gap between white and Black 8th grade students in reading scores was 57 points. In 1988, the year of the nation’s highest level of school integration, that gap had fallen to 18 points. By 1992, it was back up to 30 points, and it has not dropped below 25 points since.

—-

Notes:

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3h500t.html

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/12/in-southern-towns-segregation-academies-are-still-going-strong/266207/

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/just-visiting/nation-risk-and-re-segregation-schools

https://progressive.org/magazine/private-school-vouchers-levin/

https://wisconsinexaminer.com/2021/05/07/tracking-the-growing-cost-to-taxpayers-of-private-school-vouchers/

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/governors-federal-virus-aid-expand-school-choice-79563407

https://www.news-herald.com/2021/08/08/ohio-public-schools-plan-lawsuit-to-challenge-edchoice-program/

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona-education/2021/08/17/arizona-gov-doug-ducey-offers-incentives-reject-mask-mandates/8169357002/

https://www.courthousenews.com/devos-family-donated-600k-school-choice-ballot-efforts/

https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/12/07/504451460/school-choice-101-what-it-is-how-it-works-and-does-it-work

https://www.npr.org/2017/02/28/516717981/watch-live-trump-addresses-joint-session-of-congress

https://edreform.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/A_Nation_At_Risk_1983.pdf

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/28/trump-private-schools-pandemic-451757

https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/12/07/504451460/school-choice-101-what-it-is-how-it-works-and-does-it-work

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/just-visiting/nation-risk-and-re-segregation-schools

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#history #slavery #education #the dismantling of the middle class in the USA #Reagan #Heather Cox Richardson #Letters From An American

[bookandcover]

What I miss most: “the liminal, magical space that is the live concert venue.” ~June 8, 2021

I’m so glad to have finally read this book after it was repeatedly recommended to me by several different friends. Hanif Abdurraqib has an absolute gift for crafting essays that braid his personal experiences with the (sometimes seemingly cosmic, and therefore daunting to explain or conceptualize) forces of racism, sexism, economic inequality, and nationalism in America. He also jumps seamlessly in scale and in scope, summarizing the heart of something hugely complex—a masterpiece album, a regional sound, a decades-long relationship—without reducing the irreducibly complex, without sacrificing specificity, without sounding trite. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book quite like this, although I haven’t read very much Creative Non-Fiction. Regardless, Hanif moves skillfully, masterfully. I love the collection’s confidence in narration, the love of language, the direct confrontation with that which makes us all deeply flawed (deeply human).

Each of these essays could stand alone. It’s a joy to read even one and Abdurraqib’s style shines through in just a couple pages. He crafts his stories with such dexterity. It’s clear that he comes from a background in poetry, as he celebrates language, builds vivid images, and thinks thematically. (I love the moments that are truly experimental—erasures of his own work, pieces without punctuation that flow on and on in one interlinked sequence). At the same time, he relies heavily on facts and content. Part of his conviction is born of research and depth of understanding. He knows his subject; yet, within this knowledge, he expresses personal preferences and sentimental love. I learned a ton from this book about music, about the history of particular musicians, about the relationship between racial inequality and self-expression within the field of music. Together, these essays form of complex tapestry of recent history in America seen through the lens of music. I absolutely loved the experience of coming to understand the interweaving of so many of our lives’ central questions and tensions through the history of music.

Art is inherently political, as many contemporary artists would agree (a viewpoint that counters the modernists before them who argued for the apolitical nature of art—art for art’s sake). Abdurraqib makes a very compelling argument for the deep integration of art with politics, social systems, economics, and trends. These things, however, are also deeply tied to the powerful forces of our choices, our identities, our love, and our compassion. It does not cheapen art of have it be so informed by, so shaped by political and social forces. In Abdurraqib’s worldview, art is the medium by which we reflect ourselves back to ourselves. And it’s also the medium by which we find freedom, by which we challenge ourselves to grow beyond the ways we understand ourselves to be. Race is the most central political and social theme that weaves throughout these essays, starting with the title of the book, which is introduced in the essay on Bruce Springsteen. “They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us” are the words that hang above Michael Brown’s memorial in Ferguson, Missouri. It might be hard to imagine an essay that weaves a Springsteen concert with a trip to Michael Brown’s resting place, a task that would certainly be daunting to any other writer, yet Abdurraqib navigates this with dexterity that seems natural, fundamental to how he thinks about the world.

Within the framework of race in America, some of the themes from these essays that I most appreciated and internalized included: Black joy (when it’s expressed and what it means), the markings of wealth (in the context of a journey out of poverty), and the policing of authenticity (or other forms of self-expression/emotion). Black joy is mentioned repeatedly in these essays, as something to be commented on for its rareness, while also positing the idea that music is a space that more boldly permits Black joy. Awareness of joy seems flow underneath these essays; it’s something not taken for granted, something treasured. I found this awareness of joy in the essay on Nina Simone’s Blackness and in the contrast between how she is portrayal by Hollywood and how she lives on in Abdurraqib’s childhood memories. I found this awareness of joy in the essay “Surviving Punk Rock Long Enough to Find Afropunk,” which focused on the exclusion of Black bodies from punk rock spaces (and the disregard for the handful of Black bodies that dared to enter anyway), while emphasizing the inherent survival in the African American experience that resonants deeply with punk rock’s values. A longing for a space that is joyful for Black people was addressed beautifully in the essay on Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson, in which Abdurraqib wishes for a home in the darkness of the photo of the two of them, where he sees “a small & black eternity.”

One of my favorite essays in the collection was the piece “Burning That Which Will Not Save You: Wipe Me Down and the Ballad of Baton Rouge,” which focuses on the rise of three Baton Rouge rappers—Foxx, Lil Boosie, and Webbie—in the years that followed Hurricane Katrina, which changed the outlook of Baton Rouge and its relationship to loud neighbor New Orleans. The essay breaks down the fundamental pieces of the rapper persona (circa mid-to-late 2000s): shoulders, chest, pants, shoes. For each of these elements, the essential nature of each is discussed, particularly as they relate to signaling both wealth and self-confidence: the dream realized. I loved this essay because it brilliantly articulated something I’ve always sensed (understood in myself in certain ways), but been unable to well-articulate, which is the power of “markings of wealth” in the life of someone who has survived through poverty, or an understanding of the proximity of poverty. For this person, the possession of wealth (things that show wealth, that communicate its presence to others, whether or not there is a real depth of wealth) feels and is different. Someone wears their wealth differently if they are conscious of it. This is a different look than that of the third-generation millionaire’s son for whom a real depth of security is so deeply ingrained as to limit the frame of imagination to always include it. I loved how this essay explained that wealth is not an universally proud/cocky look, but instead braggadocios, something that has a lot of context, a lot of nuance, a lot to do with environment and habit and understanding of temporary/permanent.

Sports, another space in which the economic and political forces of America come head-to-head with the personal and lived experiences of diverse Americans, also center several of these essays. Abdurraqib has a similar appreciation of sports—spaces of fandom, spaces of mass-appeal, spaces where the struggles and triumphs of a few become the struggles and triumphs of many—as he has of music. The social discussion around sports also holds a magnifying class to systemic racism, a process which Abdurraqib unpacks and examines. Serena Williams is discussed as an example of the policing of Black self-expression (policing how she expresses anger, how she expresses confidence, i.e. “too loudly” for the white Western world), topics also addressed in depth in “On Kindness.” “Black Life On Film” tackles the way violence is romanticized and compartmentalized as part of the Black experience, allowing an observation of violence for white viewers that is unhinged from a need to alleviate it, to address it. These same tensions and problems bubble forth in the dialogue around sports, as the eyes of the nation are turned to popular topics, which are filtered through (nearly exclusively, exhaustively) the same biased lenses.

As Abdurraqib develops these complex themes, he relies on a few central tools that are essential to his literary project. To point out these common tools is not to say that Abdurraqib only has a couple tricks up his sleeve. These aren’t “tricks” at all. Instead, these seem important to how he thinks about the world, things that are inseparable from his mode of observation.

His most central tool is the “parallel events” essay structure. With this approach, Abdurraqib details what happened for him personally as events occurred elsewhere that rocked the framework and landscape of America. A collapse of time collapses distance. Abdurraqib seems to have experienced many of these such moments of collapse, as he vividly recalls where he was and what he was doing as particular significant events unfolded. The eeriness of these experiences are not lost on a reader; we’ve all been there. To say that Abdurraqib has experienced many of these is to, perhaps, point out how much current events impact and rock him (as they always do those who belong to the groups that are, time and time again, targeted and destroyed in America). But it’s also, perhaps, to point out the precision of Abdurraqib’s memory. He holds onto details like a vice, capturing for us in painful and poignant specificity the situation in which he personally broke against the tragedy of the news (as the news breaks to us, we break against it, like waves). One of the delicate powers of Abdurraqib’s use of this essay structure is the way that his personal narrative is not cheapened, nor lessened when set up against the national event, the event we all remember. Instead, one is given the right urgency and the other given the right intimacy.

This technique for framing an essay (an experience, a life) begins in the essay “A Night in Bruce Springsteen’s America” in which a white older man at a Springsteen concert tells Abdurraqib he was at another Springsteen show on the evening Lennon was murdered. While this man wishes that “no one gets killed out there during the show this time,” there’s no world in which, for Abdurraqib, someone is not killed out there during this show. The cycle of loss that is stitched into Abdurraqib’s environment, his racial identity, is too great for him to ever hold that same hope. I think that this technique of parallel events (one personal and intimate, one tectonic and tragic) is best maximized in the short piece “August 9, 2014,” a poetic erasure of Abdurraqib’s own writing. In the main text, Abdurraqib recounts something that seems, on the surface, like an every day experience: another passenger complaining on the flight he’s boarding, a mother asking to switch seats so her son can look out the window. With the bulk of the text crossed out, the secondary narrative that emerges from the remaining words is of another mother asking for her son. The date in the title clarifies that this secondary mother-son narrative centers on the shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown. The longing, the seeking, the asking of both mothers exists in a poignant overly. Perhaps what the mother on the plane asks for is trivial, all things considered, but Abdurraqib never dismisses her impulse to shelter her son, from fear, but, at the same time, to let him see the world beyond the plane’s window. The personal and small that occurs in Abdurraqib’s unique experience takes on the sacredness, the elevation of the cosmic, the tectonic plate shifts of death/life, and also the heralding in of a new/old era in America with the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement.

My favorite, though, of all these essays was “Fall Out Boy Forever,” one of the most personal in the collection. Abdurraqib places the loss of his closest friend to suicide into the context of the rise, fall, and rebirth (as if from the ashes) of the band they both loved. Abdurraqib’s long-term fan following of Fall Out Boy works like pearls on a string, moments in time that span years, yet unite into a collective personal narrative. This narrative rang so, so true to me, as someone for whom the bulk of the past six years has been shaped by my relationship to a specific band. Their narrative contains my narrative; my narrative contains their narrative. Their concerts, their albums, their successes, their growth—these things exist like glowing points on the thread of my experience. I recall my life within this thread, anchored by it. I know the previous time I was able to see my grandparents, down to the exact date three years ago, because it followed on the heels of a particular BTS album that played in my ears over and over that week. I know when and where I traveled within the timeline of their music. I know when my friendships blossomed, pinned to the backdrop that is their musical evolution. I know the ways they challenged and changed me, changed my writing, grew my sense of myself. I know how inseparable I am from BTS, and I saw this so poignantly reflected in Abdurraqib’s journey with Fall Out Boy.

Like any true fan (the fan who is not self-interested, the fan who is there for the ups and downs, the fan who is there for the real story), Abdurraqib observes the members of Fall Out Boy with such astuteness (this made me go and listen to more Fall Out Boy songs than I ever had before). I loved the way he captures the dynamic between the band members. He’s great at this in general (his insights into the intra-band relationships in Fleetwood Mac and the production of the album Rumors was also so engaging), but there’s a different intimacy, a different kind of care with Fall Out Boy. Abdurraqib’s ability to so clearly reveal his own close relationship with Tyler in the context of Fall Out Boy’s inner life is striking and heart-breaking—from Patrick’s frantic internalization of his music (performed for himself, yet in front of a crowd) without Pete’s complimentary/conflicting (necessary) presence when Abdurraqib seems him perform solo in Austin, to Tyler’s DESTROY WHAT DESTROYS YOU patch that Abdurraqib casts into the pit at a concert after wearing it to shows for years. To me, Tyler leapt from these pages, alive in the space where Fall Out Boy and their audience come together, transcending his own life’s timeframe in the liminal, magical space that is the live concert venue. This essay made me feel less alone in my experience of life perceived through the lens of music. This essay was Abdurraqib’s project at its most intimate, where the perception that happens through the lens of music is, most fundamentally, that of one’s self.

#they can't kill us until they kill us #hanif abdurraqib #music criticism #important reading #race in the context of music #art is inherently political #writing about race #writing about music #rap #hip hop #pop music #creative nonfiction #popular culture #black lives matter #fall out boy forever

[qqueenofhades]

Question for you. When you have time. And if you want. I know things are busy for you. What do you mean by end stage capitalism? Thanks.

Aha. I am sorry that this has been sitting in my inbox for a while, since I’ve been busy and doing stressful things and not sure how to answer this in a way that wouldn’t immediately turn into a pages-long rant. Nothing to do with you, of course, but just because I have 800 things to say on this topic, none of them complimentary, which I’ll try to condense down briefly. Ish.

In sum, end-stage capitalism is at the root of everything that’s wrong with the world today, more or less. It’s the state of being that exists when the economic system of capitalism, i.e. the exchange of money for goods and services, has become so runaway, so unregulated, so elevated to the level of unchallengeable dogma in the Western world (especially after the Cold War and decades of hysteria about the “scourge of communism”) and so embedded on every level of the social and political fabric that it is no longer sustainable but also can’t be destroyed without taking everything else down. Nobody wants to be the actual generation that lives through the fall of capitalism, because it’s going to be cataclysmic on every level, but also… we can’t go on like this. So that’s a fun paradox. The current world order is so drastically, unimaginably, ridiculously and wildly unequal, privileging the tiny elite of the ultra-rich over the rest of the planet, because of hypercapitalism. This really got going in the early 1980s when Ronald Reagan, still generally worshiped as a political hero on both the left and right sides of the American political establishment (even liberals tiptoe around criticizing Saint Ronnie), set into motion a program of slashing business and environment regulations, reducing or eliminating taxes on the super wealthy, and introducing the concept of “trickle-down” or “supply-side” economics. In short, the principle holds that if you make it as easy as possible for rich people to become EVEN MORE RICH, and remove all irksome regulations or restrictions on the Church of the Free Market, they will benevolently redistribute this largess to the little people. To say the very least, this….does not happen. Ever.

Since the 1980s, in short, we have had thirty years of unrestricted, runaway capitalism that eventually propelled us into the financial crisis of 2008, after multiple smaller crises, where the full extent of this philosophy became apparent…. and nobody really did anything about it. You can google statistics about how the price of everything has skyrocketed since about the 1970s, when you could put yourself through college on one part-time job, graduate with no student debt, and be assured of a job for the next 30 years, and how baby boomers (who are responsible for wrecking the economy) insist that millennials are “just lazy” or “killing [insert x industry]”. This is because we have NO GODDAMN MONEY, graduate thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt (if we can even afford college in the first place), are lucky if we find a job that pays us more than $10 an hour, and often have to string together several part-time and frangible jobs that offer absolutely nothing in the way of security, benefits, or long-term saving potential. This is why millennials at large don’t have kids, buy houses, or have any savings (or any of the traditional “adult” milestones). We just don’t have the money for it.

Even more, capitalism has taken over our mindsets to the point where it is, as I said, at the root of everything that’s wrong with the world. Climate change? Won’t be fixed because the ruling classes are making money from the current system, and if you really want to give yourself an aneurysm, google the profiteers who can’t wait for the environment/society to collapse because they’ll make MORE money off it. This is known as “disaster capitalism” and is what the US has done to other countries for decades. (I also recommend The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein.) This obviously directly contributes to the War on Terror, the current global instability, the reason Dick Cheney, Halliburton, Blackwater, and other private-security contractors made a mint from blowing up Iraq and paying themselves to rebuild it, and then the resultant rise of al-Qaeda, ISIS, and other extremist reactionary groups. The bombing produces (often brown and Muslim) refugees and immigrants, Western countries won’t take them in, right-wing politicians make hay out of Threats To Our Way of Life ™, and the circle goes on. Gun control? Can’t happen because a) American white supremacy is too deeply tied to its paranoid right to have as many guns as it wants and to destroy the Other at any time, and b) the NRA pays senators by the gigabucks to make sure it doesn’t. (And we all know what an absolute goddamn CLUSTERFUCK the topic of big money and American politics is in the first place. It’s just… a nightmare in every direction.)

Meanwhile, end-stage capitalism has also systematically assigned value to society and to individuals depending entirely on their prospects for monetization. Someone who can’t work, or who doesn’t work the “right” job, is thus assigned less value as a human (see all the right-wing screaming about people who “don’t deserve” to have any kind of social and financial assistance or subsidized food and medicine if they won’t “help themselves”). This is how we get to situations where we have the ads that I kept seeing in London the other month: apps where you could share your leftover food, or rent out your own car, or collectively rent an apartment, or whatever else. Because apparently if you live in London in 2019, there is no expectation that you will be able to have your own food, car, or apartment. You have to crowdsource it. (See also: people having to beg strangers on the internet for money for food or medical bills, and strangers on the internet doing more to help that person than the whole system and/or the person’s employment or living situation.) There is nothing inherently wrong with capitalism as an economic theory. Exchanging money for goods and services is understandable and it works. But when it has run out of control to this degree, when the people who suffer the most under it fiercely defend it (see the working-class white people absolutely convinced that the reason for their problems is Those Damn Job Stealing Immigrants), when it only works for the interests of a few uber-privileged few and is actively killing everyone else… yeah.

Let’s put it this way. You will likely have heard of the two fatal crashes of Boeing 737 Max airplanes in recent months: the Lion Air crash in October 2018 and the Ethiopian Airlines crash in March 2019. Together, they killed 346 people. After these crashes, it turned out that the same malfunctioning system was responsible for both, and that Boeing had known of the problem before the Max went on the market. But because they needed to make (even more) money and compete with their rivals, Airbus, they had sent the planes ahead anyway, with unclear and confusing instruction to pilots about how to deal with it, and generally not acknowledging the problem and insisting (as they still do) that the plane was safe, even though it’s been grounded worldwide since March. There are also concerns that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is too deep in Boeing’s pocket to provide an impartial ruling (and America was the last country to ground the plane), and other countries’ aviation safety bodies have announced that they aren’t just going to take the FAA’s word for it whenever they decide that the Max is safe. This almost never happens, since usually international regulatory bodies, especially in aviation, will accept each other’s standards. But because of Boeing’s need for Even More Money, they put a plane on the market and into commercial passenger service that they knew had problems, and the FAA essentially let them do that and isn’t entirely trusted to ensure that they won’t do it again. Because…. value for the shareholders. Or something. This is the extreme example of what I mean when I say that end-stage capitalism is actively killing people.

It is also doing so on longer-term and more pernicious everyday levels. See above where people can’t afford their basic expenses even on several jobs, see the insulin price-gouging in the US (and the big pharma efforts in general to make drugs and healthcare as expensive as possible), see the way any kind of welfare or social assistance is framed as “lazy” or “bad” or “socialist,” see the way that people are basically only allowed to survive if they can pay for it, and the way that circle is becoming smaller and smaller. The American public is also fed enduring folk “wisdom” about “money doesn’t buy happiness,” the belief that poverty serves to build character or as an example of virtue, or so on, to make them feel proud of being poor/deprived/that they’re doing a good thing by actively supporting this system that is responsible for their own suffering. And yet for example, the Nordic countries (while obviously having other problems of their own) maintain the Scandinavian welfare model, which pays for college and healthcare, provides for individual stipends/basic income, allows generous leave for parenthood, emphasises a unionised workplace, and otherwise prescribes a mix of capitalism, social democracy, and social mobility. All the Nordic countries rank highly for human development, overall happiness, and other measurements of social success. But especially in America, any suggestion of “socialism” is treated like heresy, and unions are a dirty word. That is changing, but…slowly.

In short: the economic overlords have never done anything to give power, money, or anything at all to the working class without being repeatedly and explicitly forced, they have no good will or desire to treat the poor like humans (see: Amazon) or anything at all that doesn’t increase their already incomprehensible profit margins. The pursuit of more money that cannot possibly be spent in one human lifetime, that is accumulated, used to make laws for itself, and never paid in taxes to fund improvements or services for everyone else, lies at the root of pretty much every problem you can name in the world right now, is deeply, deeply evil, and I do not use that word lightly.

#politics for ts #rant #long post #that...wasn't super brief #but i could have gone on for a while longer #/drinks heavily and passes out #anonymous #ask

[swordoforion]

Orion Digest No. 7 - By the People, For the People

Society, from it's inception, was originally designed to be a system that caters to the needs of the people within it. After all, what other need would we have of it if not for our mutual benefit? As explored by psychologist Abraham Maslow, human beings have a set of needs that range from basic components of survival (food, water, shelter) to psychological needs (social interaction, validation and purpose). Given agriculture and food production was what organized civilization, and tribal life was directed around culture and relationships, we came together for our mutual physical and social benefit.

Even as we evolve what it means to live in a society, the structure of our world should reflect that purpose. Anything that exists above the people should be to help all who take part in it, not to take advantage of them. It is true that the perks of a civilization do require participation to the best of your ability (i.e. you must follow the rules of an organization to gain the rewards of being in one), but the balance between labor and compensation is a delicate one, and too much to one side causes an inherently flawed system.

Civilization is a finnicky human invention, and it changes constantly through internal and external factors, so the relationship between government, economy, and citizen will naturally have to evolve to suit the needs of the times. With that change can come imbalance and domination of one of the former two over the latter. Such has been the case with the post-Industrial Revolution societies in the case of the individual vs. the economy, and has been an ever-present debate in the case of the individual vs the government. The relationship between government and economy itself has spawned schools of thought that shaped the world over the last two centuries, and continue to dominate the realm of political thought.

But even as we evolve and change what civilization looks like, we must not forget that we created this vast machine that is society for the purpose of providing for the needs of humans, and the fact that we see people on the streets, starving and homeless, stands as proof that society has failed at it's most basic purpose. Any society, at any level of development, should provide for the needs of its citizens - a fact that defines the purpose of human civilization itself. Otherwise, we have a mechanism that serves itself, and has no reason to exist in the world.

For the two components outside of the individual, government and economy, there are many options thought of over the years that provide structure with various levels of community interaction. While there are crowds that favor their own type of theorem, a general consensus is that for both types, people prefer a system that lets them have input in decisions rather than a system controlled by a group separated from the rest of society, unknowledgeable in the concerns of the lower classes.

A degree of outside management is required in most systems of government - after all, if everyone is busy performing some function in society, people can't also always manage complex systems of bureaucracy, so some people make it their jobs specifically to govern. In the simplest and most ancient societies, tribes would have elders and leaders, the wisest among the people who most believed fit to represent and guide them. With more modern systems, however, as people wish for representation, we move to more democratic government, where everyone has some minimal level of involvement (voting), and selects people who summarize the people's wants (representatives) to run the government.

There are risks, of course, to representative government - someone who claims to be for one cause doesn't always have an obligation to follow up on that promise, and can simply follow their own agenda. The less representation you have, the more specific public opinions get diluted, but the more representation you have, the more complex and slow government can get. Whereas a single-entity government has a clear and forward moving direction, true democracy only makes progress when representatives tell the truth and get along with each other, which is not always the case.

However, even if progress is slower moving in a democracy, it's in a direction that the people choose for themselves, rather than having it chosen for them. For example, in a kingdom, a monarch could order the people to refurbish the roads of a city, regardless of whether the people wanted new roads or not. The work would likely get done much quicker if one person had the authority to make the decision, but the satisfaction of the people would be irrelevant. On the other hand, while the decision would take longer in a democracy, opinions on the state of the roads could be collected by citizens and the decision could be made after determining whether or not the people would prefer a refurbishment. The informed, democratic decision would require more effort, but make the people happier than a simple command, and in the end, that's the important part - giving everyone a say.

Regardless of how much a democratic system changes in policy from a more central form of government, it certainly can help morale and public opinion. If people think that they have more of a choice in matters, they will be more likely to be active in their community, as the idea that they can make a difference facilitates motivation to 'do their part'. If someone commands you to do something and it doesn't work, you might just blame those in charge for it's failure, but a community that makes a decision that fails might take the chance to learn more from their mistakes and improve upon the idea. It's a positive feedback loop that can lead to greater overall involvement, and more input that satisfies the people, as they feel that they contributed. This ties directly into the more social needs of Maslow's hierarchy, fulfilling a critical function of their lives.

On the other hand, economy is far closer to us in modern society, and is the subject of much more contentious debate. While the system of economic organization can vary from nation to nation, I'll go with a common structure - capitalism. In basic capitalist theory, people form hierarchal businesses that compete in an open market to sell goods and services to customers that, in return, become a part of businesses themselves. The higher you are in the structure of an individual business, the more money you make, and the more successful the business is, the greater resources it will have, and ideally, the more employers and employees alike can get paid. In return, customers, having money earned from their labor, must make decisions about which businesses to buy from, affecting the revenues of others in a constant domino chain system.

At its core, capitalism is about competition - workers have to compete to gain positions within a business, businesses and their owners have to compete to innovate and attract more customers, and anyone who earns a wage has to decide the proper balance of spending they must achieve to obtain fulfillment of their needs. The contentious part of this competition becomes clear when it is unbalanced - an economy where certain parties in these fights have a clear advantage, and the deck is stacked against the underdog. As a result, many are fighting an uphill battle in an unbalanced capitalist system, which has resulted in much backlash against the structure.

Many corporations, pre-established and owning many smaller companies, have a clear advantage over any business that enters the market. People are familiar with the brand, and are more likely to trust something they know when buying goods and services, while the smaller competitors require blind trust. Many allow themselves to accept the money offered by these corporate giants, and get bought up, becoming no longer an opponent but an asset. Having one entity in the marketplace does not automatically harm the customer - they can still pay and get paid, receiving the goods and services - but it means that there is nothing to stop the business from conducting itself however it chooses.

With government, democracy prevents decisions from being made that negatively impact the people, as the public at large has checks and balances. However, in the economy, an elitist business that has dominance over the marketplace is not subject to public authority, and in capitalism, only slightly regulated by the government, which means there is plenty of wiggle room with which to raise prices, decrease quality, and leave customers with no option but to shrink down into greater poverty. With multiple competitors, you will have the option to buy goods and services at low prices if you cannot afford higher value items, but as the pool of companies shrinks, you are left with little choice in the matter.

Other forms of government and economic structure supersede this by giving either government, worker, or both more control over the economy, most notably socialist nations. As inspired by the initial Marxist philosophy, socialism details an economy where the internal hierarchy of businesses is less pronounced, with working class citizens having democratic decision of how the business should operate, and as a result, the elitist structure that characterizes modern capitalism would be shed for one more considerate of the common citizen. As mentioned earlier, the more removed a commanding force is in any organization, the less they'll represent the desires of the rest of the organization, and socialism (or at least, democratic socialism) reflects that belief in allowing collective decisions by people affected by corporate decisions not only as workers, but as customers themselves.

As in a democratic government, a democratic workplace might not see as much overwhelming success, but it provides much more meaningful success than in a direction decided by an elite, removed class of society. Decisions made by democracy are those the people support and are responsible for, and if a business had trouble due to democratic decision making, the more likely people would learn from that mistake, take responsibility, and work to improve, resulting in a system that learned lessons collectively and improved over time.

Society was created for the people, and unless it is managed by the people, we risk having ruling parties lose sight of what average citizens go through, drifting off course until we have success of the few at the expense of the many. It is not a bad thing that some people should find success due to innovation and personal ingenuity, but it is unfortunate when others are not given the opportunity in the first place to achieve that success, or when those who become prosperous disadvantage others with their power. If society does not meet the needs of all those who live within it, then it has failed its core purpose, and must be fixed.

- DKTC FL

#capitalism #representation #capitalist #socialist #socialism #democratic socialism #democracy #democratic workplace #civilization #orion #orion digest #sword of orion #politics #political #political essay #society #human rights

[everydayducksoup]

Because I can finally post it: here’s my absolute shithouse off-my-ass this-is-secular-school-now-I-can-write-REAL-politics-into-my-work essay. “Who Gets Eaten and Who Gets to Eat: Morality and Socioeconomic Mobility in Aravind Adiga’s White Tiger and Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”

In a society where honest work just doesn’t cut it, there’s always murder- at least, for the protagonists of White Tiger and Sweeney Todd. Both works make use of fictional narratives and stylistic language to destabilize narratives of wealth as moral judgement and expose the forces in society which push individuals, especially amongst the lower class, into immoral action and emotional detachment in exchange for socioeconomic stability and advancement. With Adiga presenting the story of driver-turned-entrepreneur Balram Halwai, and Sondheim the Victorian English revenge drama of Sweeney Todd’s mass murder and cannibalistic enterprise, the ‘dark side’ of capitalism, justice, and class dynamics comes to light.

In his essay, “capitalism, caste and con-games in Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger”, Snehal Shingavi presents us with two common narratives about poverty- where it is either “overcome by virtue of moral fineness (so that to be rich is to deserve) or by moral corruption (so that any upward mobility marks ethical opprobrium)”(Shingavi 7). However, neither of the works presented adhere to this conflation of wealth with morality, because they take a different look at the way our society works. In Sweeney Todd,  it is constantly emphasized that vice and immorality are universal traits: in the song Epiphany, Todd sings “we all deserve to die/ even you Mrs. Lovett/ even I” (Sondheim 38), and similar judgements are made throughout the rest of the play. Meanwhile, The White Tiger expresses the opinion that goodwill is only an option for those with privilege- “here, if a man wants to be good, he can be good. In Laxamangarh, he doesn’t even have this choice.” (Adiga 262).

This decision to separate morality from the act of gaining capital does something incredibly important: it undermines the idea of the poor as apolitical or moralizing figures, establishing their autonomy. When we acknowledge this, we can more thoroughly experience the injustices that drive these characters to violent means. Both protagonists are literally denied justice- Todd is framed for a crime by Judge Turpin and sent to the penal colony as part of his plan to steal his wife, Lucy; and Balram is expected to take the blame for his master’s wife when she runs over a young child. The statues of law are shown to be ineffective within modern society due to class imbalance- the reality is, as Balram says, “the rule of the jungle”. Both protagonists take on cannibalism (one literally, the other figuratively) as their own brand of justice outside the system that has failed them. Sweeney and Lovett sing, in A Little Priest: “the history of the world my dear/…/is who gets eaten and who gets to eat”(Sondheim 48), while Balram expresses the new caste structure of postcolonial India as “there are just two castes: Men with Big Bellies, and Men with Small Bellies. And only two destinies: eat—or get eaten up.” (Adiga 54)

Rather than marking the distinction between rich and poor through morality, these works employ the binary of filth and cleanliness as a signifier of socioeconomic position. From the first, Todd describes the poor of London as “vermin” and claiming that the subjugation by the upper classes “(turn) beauty into filth and greed” (Sondheim 2). Similarly, Lovett’s introduction, The Worst Pies in London revolves entirely around the spectacle of how disgusting her situation is: “is that just revolting?” (Sondheim 9). This state of perpetual impurity is both a direct result of economic equality, and a contributing factor in its continuation. Adiga  demonstrates the impact of cleanliness over filth by showing Balram successfully “passing” in middle-class society by copying his master’s habits- he stops chewing paan, starts brushing his teeth, dresses simply, changes his posture, and he is suddenly unrecognizable as the poor driver he still is. The authority given to anyone who can present well enough within the expectations of their society strips yet another layer from the connection between ethics and wealth- through appearances, Lovett’s pie shop is successful despite selling its clients human flesh. However, this effect is not only felt through the common motif of a façade, as it also serves to prove that the currency of this society is necessarily aggressive.

The White Tiger presents this struggle through the metaphor of the rooster coop:

“hundreds of pale hens and brightly colored roosters, stuffed tightly into wire-mesh cages…pecking each other and shitting on each other, jostling for breathing space…on the wooden desk above this coop sits a grinning young butcher, showing off the flesh and organs of a recently chopped-up chicken… the roosters in the coop smell the blood from above… they know they’re next.” (Adiga 147)

This analogy presents the inherent violence in the situation: if you are a poor rooster, no matter how much you preen your feathers or how peacefully you stand, your neighbors will only continue to peck at you and try to climb over you, and you will still be in line for the slaughter. If you are the rich butcher, the only way you can survive is to continue killing chickens, because that is your trade, regardless of how nicely you treat them, and if you let them out of the cage you lose it all. In order to gain power in this society, Shingavi points out, one must forsake both their origins, their emotional ties; and their morality, their societal ties. For Balram, this is the killing and torture of his family by the state, which relieves him of his caste; and the murder of Mr. Ashok, which relieves him of his servitude. For Todd, it is the knowledge that “Lucy lies in ashes” and he’ll “never see Johanna” (Sondheim 44); as well as his plan to murder the Judge. The disconnection of morality and capital allows for a system wherein justice is obtained through violence, the truth revealed through con-games, and social mobility and betterment come at the cost of human lives.

However, the values of the system do not reflect directly on the people within it- Balram, Todd and Lovett are still emotional, human figures, who have the capacity for grief and empathy. Both protagonists harbor a young boy throughout the course of the story- Balram his nephew Dharam and Lovett and Todd their young employee Toby- neither of which are related to their grander schemes. Both openly grapple with the loss of their familial connections, with Balram commenting “I’ve got no family anymore. All I’ve got are chandeliers” (Adiga 97) and Todd addressing a monologue to his lost daughter in the song Johanna (Quartet): “Goodbye, Johanna/ You're gone, and yet you're mine… And though I'll think of you, I guess/Until the day I die.” (Sondheim 63) The biggest distinction between the two works comes through this aspect: Balram succeeds in separating his personal life from his business and channeling the cold methods of the system even in his charity- giving bribes in exchange for the life of a young boy killed by one of his employees- while Lovett and Todd let their emotions drive them to ruin.

In his essay, “Mayhem and Morality in Sweeney Todd”, Alfred Mollin points out the way Sondheim uses musical references to demonstrate Todd’s descent into righteous rage and madness. The use of the music of the Dies Irae from the Requiem Mass, a piece which is immediately recognizable to a western audience as representing a sort of divine “judgement of the wicked and the good”(Mollin 3), shows that his intentions lie directly outside of the give-and-take of the system around him. In this sense, Balram’s parallel in the play is more in the character of Mrs. Lovett, who acknowledges the entrepreneurial potential of their situation and acts almost exclusively out of “thrift”- almost, because she is also in love with Todd. This affection goes directly against the preestablished tenant of the system, emancipation from emotional ties, and thus leads to their downfall. It is only fitting that Shingavi would refer to this tenant as a “murder”, as it is literally the realization that Lucy is alive, brought about in the third act of the play, that sets off the eventual demise of Lovett and Todd.

These narratives present the worst faces of our modern, heavily unequal society- the failures of justice, of capitalism, and even of human empathy. Through them, we can see past the façades imposed on daily life, worn by rich and poor alike in their pursuit of self-betterment. They express a more nuanced story of class inequality and the forces that control our society, recognizing that bringing about a just and fair environment is not a matter of taking out the boogeymen of billionaires or capitalism, but rather a process of unlearning and replacing systems that value aggression as social capital. The authors acknowledge the autonomy and potential for both good and evil present in each member of society and analyze how the world around it undermines them. These works remind us that- regardless of our personal stance or our actions- we function within the same cannibalistic system. Like the chickens pecking each other in the rooster coop or the public eating Mrs. Lovett’s pies- if we are not working to change the system, we are accomplices in this cannibalism.

#my writing

[therealvagabird]

The Rebirth of Beggar Maru

A new short story, featuring the origin of one of my OCs. Beggar Maru is a Yuan-Ti warlock whose dark pact gave them a second shot at life - and the power to fulfill their every desire. Names featured in here are adjusted for a more homebrew flavor, rather than using anything proprietary to D&D.

Feel free to also give it a read, like, and comment over on WordPress.

It was a cold evening in Eregate. The damp air that wafted up from the oily river brought with it a creeping chill that went right through any amount of clothes. Maru always felt sluggish on days like these – as if they were lying at the bottom of an icy lake, pressed down by the dark. The ragged form of the city wretch peered down from the Ravenkey Bridge, the stone railings on the side coated with a thin layer of frost, though not enough to dissuade Maru from sitting with legs dangling over the rushing waters of the Noden.

The creature that was Beggar Maru was a haggard and pallid thing, all swathed in dark vagrant’s rags of cracked leather and sooty black. Though they’d never been a figure of grandeur, their current state of affairs was rather recent. A failed heist on a small beer-stand had been the last straw, and Maru had been late for the third time on paying rent. It wasn’t even rent in the traditional sense, but rather the extortive fee the wretch had been forced to hand over to Guy Roden, the boss of the Underport hideout. There was a time when Beggar could just manage to roll with the regulars – stealing, grifting, gambling, swindling and the like, as all the refuse of the city did to survive – but now their luck had run out, and not even the scum of scum had need of them.

They were an androgynous creature, though at just thirty years of age it was not the androgyny of some upper-class metropolitan, but that rough and sagging indistinguishability found in the elderly and the homeless. Black hair hung in greasy strands about their face, which was sallow and gaunt, with loose skin and eyes that peered from dark sockets. Perhaps the one undegraded thing about Beggar were their eyes, which were the same vibrant green they’d always been, though with a lifelessness behind them that could be caught at a passing glance. Their pale skin, where it could be seen, was dotted with patches of a strange rash – a condition for which there’d never been a treatment, and which had gotten worse from lack of bathing ever since Maru had been evicted from the gang den. The weight of misfortune and poverty made everyone look the same after a point – nobody might guess that the creature was one of the rare snakefolk of the East. Here, in the city, monster and man and elf could all be swallowed up by the underbelly.

Though it wasn’t as if being of a strange bloodline had helped Maru at all. Quite the contrary – they’d never once had the sense of “fitting in”, even amongst the delinquent. There was something about them, in every subtlety of the way they acted, that just seemed to repel people, despite their overall human appearance. More than that, it had always nagged at Beggar Maru that their kind were not meant for places like the cities of the North. The cold air, the food, the water – they’d been sickly since childhood, and Maru could never remember a time they’d not struggled against the frailty of their own body as much as the harshness of the world around them.

Some said that the snakefolk were wicked at heart. Beggar didn’t doubt that, however, and just wondered if the gods of this land were enacting their toll in vengeance. Regardless of what terrible things the wastrel had done in their life, for pleasure or profit, it wasn’t as if they’d been given much of a choice. Maybe Jack, god of thieves, didn’t care for outsiders either.

Maru rubbed their fingers together. Everything felt so greasy.

“Maybe a bath in the riva’?” They mused, the low-class Eregate accent still detectible through their hissing, raspy voice. It was a dark joke, of course. Nobody would ever touch the Noden and come away cleaner.

It was as the snakefolk sat there on that frosty ledge and contemplated with half-serious interest whether to hurl themselves into the water that they heard the sound of footsteps. Two sets, thumping away on the cobbles, coming closer. Beggar turned to spy two lumpen men in garb just margins better than the vagrant’s own. One had red hair and a patchy beard. Orman. The other had a close-shaved scalp and greyish skin. Jordy Martin.

“Not slinkin’ in tha Underport no more, Begga?” Jordy shouted ahead of the pair’s approach, in an already hostile tone.

“No more rent.” Maru rasped back, just sparing him a side-eye, “Nothin’ to collect, if that’s why you’re ‘ere.”

“We’re not ‘ere from Roden,” Jordy spat, “We’s on business from D.”

Derr the dwarf, or “D” as he was most often known. One of the many minor bosses of the city underworld. Though Maru couldn’t guess what business he’d hired these two louts for.

“What of it?” the snakefolk asked, hoisting their legs around to get back up onto the bridge. Before they could gain footing, a meaty hand clamped down on their collar.

“Don’ feckin’ play dumb wit’ us, ye nightcrawler.” Orman shouted into his face.

“D ‘eard ‘bout yer run on ‘is beer stand the ovva day.” Jordy went on, the two men now right up on either side of the vagrant, dwarfing them in terms of sheer bulk, “Don’ take kindly ta that kinda infraction.”

“Nope.” Orman huffed.

“Bollocks,” Maru shook their head, “Derr don’ keep any business this side of tha Noden. I woulda known if it was one of ‘is. It was jus’ some nobody.”

“Fat lot of diff’rence.” Jordy chuckled.

“Fuck you mean?” bright green eyes went narrow.

“I mean who gives a shite? I’d ‘ave put you down fer free.” The brute replied.

“We jus’ gonnae tell ‘em we was killin’ you fer D.” Orman’s grip tightened.

“On tha off chance anyone could even be arsed ta ask fer you.”

Before Beggar even had a chance to protest, to try and figure out why now, of all days, this pair of dregs had decided to kill them, a second set of hands grabbed at the wastrel’s shoulder, and in an instant of weightlessness they were hurtling down from the Ravenkey Bridge.

Maybe it was appropriate. It wasn’t as though there was much left to be lost. In some serene part of Maru’s brain, untouched by blind panic, they wondered how many nights on the frigid streets they’d have survived anyway.

The black surface of the river came rushing up, the icy chill of the Noden surrounded the damned soul, and death worked its fingers into Beggar Maru’s skull.

Noise was the first thing that came back to the unconscious wretch. Before sensation returned to their numb flesh, it was the sound of dripping water that pattered in Maru’s ears. There was little else to latch onto – the air was damp, and wherever they were, it was dark. Green eyes cracked open, and then widened to try and take in the misty shadows of the strange room they were lying in. A pool of water surrounded the drenched form of the snakefolk – they were half-submerged in some kind of pool. Cavernous walls bounded all sides of Maru’s vision but the front, in which yawned unbroken darkness.

Was this hell? One of the hells? It seemed about right, but something in their bones told them that they were not dead. What lent them that impression, they had no idea – it was even harder to tell, what with how hellish and grey their life had been already.

“Where am I?” Maru asked, as their whispering voice vibrated off the damp walls of the tiny cave. The vagrant hauled their soaked form up from the shallow pool – had they been washed up some kind of hidden pocket beneath the river? But then, the water didn’t smell as foul as that of the Noden.

With nowhere else to go, trepidatious steps sounded their way down the black corridor.

Maru wandered like that for a time, hands on either wall of the narrow passage, which seemed to be of smooth rock, not carved, but worn with shocking regularity. Even with the snakefolk’s inherent night-vision, almost nothing could be made of how far the tunnel ran. No indication of if it was slanted up or down, or if anything waited for the wanderer at its end.

It was when the walls on either side of Beggar fell away with a final step that they, with startled flailing at the unexpected outlet of the passage, pitched forward into a shadowed room.

Maru screamed at the pain of sudden light, when all about the walls torches of an unnatural red hue lit up, casting the room in shades of blood and flame. Stained hands guarded the miserable castoff’s face, anticipating something horrible.

Nothing happened. The room, though now illuminated by the mystic torches, was uninhabited. It was a small space, no more than fifteen feet across, and about as high, in the form of a rough circle with a domed ceiling. There were no other passages apart from the one Maru had come from. In the floor was set a raised dais – the one thing at first which stood out as artificial, besides the torches. In the center of the slight platform rose a small pillar, just a few feet tall. Along its sides were many subtle carvings; serpentine textures which caught Maru’s eye, before their gaze traced the weaving ridges down the base of the plinth, across the floor, and up the walls. What at first appeared to be bare stone now came alive with the hidden, snakelike carvings, giving the static surface a disconcerting and fluid appearance. The way the grey rock was painted in ruddy hues by the strange torches didn’t help curb the surrealness either.

Maru huddled there for a moment, unsure of what to do, before a faint glinting from the top of the plinth caught the snakefolk’s eye. With nowhere else to go, and fearful curiosity gripping at their chest, the ragged near-human crept towards the mysterious structure.

As they stepped up to the plinth, managing to catch sight of the diminutive object that lay on top of its sheared-off surface, the breath left Beggar’s lungs. Glinting in solitary beauty on the grey stone platform was a magnificent ring.

It was a finger ring, suited to a normal humanoid’s digit, and cast of bright silver. Though its edges looked plain at first, the closer Beggar got, the more the reflections in the smooth and polished surface seemed to distort and fragment, as the metal appeared to catch all light that hit it, breaking it in strange and subtle fractals. Despite this, the quality of the silver was of little interest when compared to the gem which crowned the piece of jewelry. It was a cat’s-eye, of a glorious golden color – subtle hues of amber, sunbeam, and flame interspersed with more subtle impurities of violent, maroon, crimson, emerald, and jade, all emanating out from the black little scar that split its center. Despite the red hue of the room’s lighting, the colors of the ring appeared untouched. Though the ring was overall of simple design, little more than a gem and a band, it was the magnificent complexity that revealed itself upon any close inspection that drew in Maru’s avaricious eyes.

The wastrel reached out and plucked the ring from its resting place.

Nothing happened, yet again, and so that made it all the more startling when Maru turned about, ring in hand, and came face-to-face with a demon.

The snakefolk’s scream of terror was cut short, though, at the realization that the creature was not very threatening at all.

It was an imp. As best could be described as an imp by somebody who knew nothing of demonology. It stood just under two feet tall and looked all the world like an emaciated child. Maybe even a gnome or a goblin, rare as those races were in Eregate for comparison. It had wide, reptilian eyes of a hue to match the jewel in the ring, along with smooth, scaled skin of a dark emerald color, with the texture of fine river pebbles. Its hands and feet were clawed, and vicious fangs could be seen peaking from its lolling mouth, while draconic wings twitched on its back, and slight horns crowned its head in a sparse forest of quills. The monster was almost cute, in a way. That same sort of disgusting cuteness that could be found in some insects or purebred noble dogs.

“H-h- yeah?” Maru hazarded some form of greeting, as the strange little thing stared up with unblinking interest.

“Ssserpent?” it asked back, and the mortal recoiled. The imp’s voice seemed to come from within their head more than from the creature’s mouth, which moved in different shapes than the words it spoke.

“W-what?” Beggar asked again.

“Ahh, ssso you are!” the imp perked up then, “I can sssmell the blood in you. Lady, what a poor thing you are! You should not be thisss far from your homeland, ssserpent.” It spoke.

Maru shook their head, pallid skin slick with sweat and grime, “What the ‘ell are you talkin’ about? Who are you?”

“Ahh, sssorry. How impolite. You firssst.” It smiled.

Maru thought for a moment, gaze unwavering from the little demon lest it jump up and attack without warning.

“You first.” The snakefolk shot back. It was bad luck to give a demon your name without having its own in return. The storybooks said that much, at least.

“Ahhh, clever.” It snickered, scaled tail wagging almost like a dog, “My name is Nssissllnnssaa,” it said, and the word came out more as a strange and unaccountable sound than a clear name, “but I don’t think we’ll be sssticking with that in the future.”

“Maru.” The mortal replied, somewhat relaxed at knowing the being’s name, despite its unintelligible nature, and the weird circumstance of all that surrounded them, “Beggar Maru.”

“I like it!” it jumped up then, prancing in place, “How fun! You are sssome kind of ssstreet tough then?” it paused, “No, far too ragged. You look a poor picture! Like the world has chewed up and ssspat you out. You don’t sssmell great either.” It muttered.

Beggar took some umbrage at that, “You try livin’ my life and comin’ out smelling of fuckin’ daisies, demon. It costs good money to not look like a sewer rat.”

“Or doesss it?” the creature replied then, tilting its head in a quizzical way, “You were not meant for thisss life, were you? Did you not feel as though you – misssed out?”

“Wha—?”

“Do you not feel as if you were meant for something greater?” the imp started prancing again, hopping from one foot to the other, “I think you were! I can sssee it in you. Underneath that grime. I can sssmell your desssire. Your lussst for thingsss you could never have.”

Maru’s eyes thinned in their pale face, “What could you do, then?”

“Not me,” the creature giggled, “but the Missstresss.”

“Who?”

“The Ssserpent Missstresss. Perhapsss you do not know of Her, as you were not brought up in the darkessst Eassst, but She sees you. And she would like to help you.”

Looking around, the vagrant’s air of suspicion returned, “Some kinda deal? Seems like a bad move, makin’ a deal wif a devil.”

“Demon.”

“What d’you want, then? Or what does ‘She’ want? My soul?”

“Well—” the imp tapped its fingers together, “What else would you have to give? And believe me, it’sss not ssso high a price.” Its enormous, lambent eyes gleamed with childlike glee, “You would merely take up Her ring, and She will grant you all that you desssire. Maybe more. Maybe lessss – there are some thingsss that will not come all at once. But all that you would have to do isss go on living – but for Her.”

The pitch was cryptic yet enticing in a way that any offer was enticing to someone with nothing left to lose.

“What d’you mean? What would I ‘ave to do?” Maru asked.

“Sssimply live. I know what isss in your heart. Pleasssure. Power. Your sssoul would be bound to the realm of the Missstresss, and ssso everything you do would be dedicated to Her divinity. Think of it asss a – tithe. You will repay it one day, but you will only fall afoul if you ssseek to – I don’t know – live a life of asssceticism.” It spat out the last word as if it were a rotten apple.

Maru tore their gaze from the demon, their emerald eyes glancing to the magnificent ring still held in their palm. All that their heart desired?

“Oh, and—” the creature spoke up once more, “You would have me as well. Asss a familiar, of sssorts. Bessst of friendsss!” it looked up at the snakefolk with glee, like some kind of deformed kitten.

“Sounds too good t’ be true,” Beggar muttered, “but then, s’not like what I ‘ave is worth keepin’, is it?” Their attention was drawn to the ambient feelings of pain that they always suppressed – the itching of their skin, the aches in their bones, the sickness in their organs.

Beggar Maru was looking at the ring, and so couldn’t see the look of unbridled and abject excitement that came from the little demon’s face. The snakefolk pushed the ring about their palm, taking in its every angle. It was heavy. Heavier than a ring of its size might have been. Its subtle curvature, band and gem, reflected untold streams of multicolored beauty from within its gold and silver depths. Something, though they didn’t know what, made Maru feel as though they were falling into the river again. That feeling of weightlessness. Of finality. A decision – to change, to end. Though this time the decision was theirs and theirs alone.

Maru put on the ring, and the room returned to black.

In the upstairs suite of a fine inn, in the uptown of that city known as Eregate, which squatted with sprawled, soot-blackened mass on the banks of the Noden, a youth awoke from their bed. It was a fine bed, feather-stuffed and made of hardwood – fitting for an inn as fine as the Crown Cockerel. Silk sheets fell away from the form of a person who was not much older than twenty years, if that. Their skin was like alabaster, their limbs of hale proportion, their shape more beautiful than could be laid on male or female. They were human, at least to the eye of the unperceptive, though they looked like no human youth that could be found in such a hardy land. Their hair, which grew in a well-trimmed fringe just down to their jaw, was of a pure and unnatural white. They were clad in nothing but a sleeping-shawl of emerald silk, though clothes they had forgotten hung in the closet – as immaculate and well-made as the simple garment they slept in.

The youth’s eyes opened. Green and gold, with the pupils of a snake.

Beggar Maru had been privy to strange and wonderful dreams. Dreams like those of being within a womb – someplace warm, and quiet, removed from the pains of the earth. Faded lights and muffled melodies had come to them in their sleep, and now upon waking they felt better than they ever had in their whole life. The softness around them was like alighting on a cloud – so unnatural to one who had slept on cobbles and splintered, damp palettes from youth to maturity. Then, with curious languor, their hands went to their own skin, finding it as smooth and supple as the silk of the bed beneath them. This was not this skin of a street-rat.

Maru lifted a hand to their face – so well-manicured. Whose hand was this? As they marveled, they noticed something upon one of the fingers of their other hand. A ring. A bejeweled and resplendent ring.

As the snakefolk took in the sight of the fated piece of jewelry on their finger, their eyes grew even wider as a corona began to coalesce about it. The pale skin of their ladylike hand was subsumed in a shower of glistening sparks of deep and vibrant hues – jade, violet, gold. There was a sound like tearing fabric, and a brief burst of light from the nimbus of magic, and then nothing.

“Sssuperb. A natural.” A voice came then, familiar, high and raspy, “We may both be lucky.”

The youth on the bed glanced to the windowsill to see the blue light of morning filtering about a squatting shape. Whip-thin, winged and horned, with all other details obscured by the light behind them – save for the luminous glint of their large, yellow eyes.

“Wake up, warlock.” It coaxed, as a broad and needle-toothed smile spread between its ears.

#fantasy #dungeons and dragons #d&d #5e #yuan ti #warlock #oc #my oc #short story #backstory #origin story

[queernuck]

something that impacted me in reading about the Futurists, thinking about both the potential that kineticism as a representative concept, the means by which motion and kinetic escalation is represented through aesthetic means, is paired with the aesthetics of war, militarism, industrialization, and in fact that there was socialist and anarchist involvement in Futurist art in addition to the obvious (and in many ways definitive) fascist character of the movement invites a great deal of questioning about the political nature of the aesthetic, the purpose of art, exactly that which is meant by art, the way that art takes on certain character, including class consciousness, or of course reversal thereof.

the corporate appropriation of art is often interesting even as an affect: the deconstruction of fashion present in Virgil Abloh’s work for Off White’s collaborations with Nike is effectively acting toward a kind of self-aware dual return to the process of creating the shoe: it is a creation of creation, the process by which work is generated itself part of the completed work, a kind of act of presenting the evidence of the process for evaluation. The way that this alludes to sample sales, works in progress, the way that one has a sense of pre-fashion, a kind of unready-for-wear in Off White’s clothing, is thusly drawn out by the way in which it mimics something akin to industrial pre-production, the process of industrialization behind custom clothing such as this made obvious through that very process itself.

in turn, we are at a moment akin to those which propelled many of the Futurists in relation to war: akin to the aimless and disaffected veterans which became the first fascists, the Vietnam Vets who started the militia movement and formed a reactionary backbone to the 90s resurgence in militias which itself made space for current white supremacist movements of various sorts, there is a way in which the “future” is being reappropriated by fascist ideology. the way in which a proliferation of a kind of hyperreal, futuristic post-postmodernity aesthetics have used the shock of violence, the distance that ironic reference to the abjection of fascism and its violence affords, the way that a humorous and satirical character that coupled itself with a great deal of early Vaporwave was appropriated by those who interpret Cyberpunk as a parable about how great it is to be a fucking rich parasite, how incredible it is to not only accept the violence of poverty but to in fact revel in it, use it as a means of obtaining targets, the endless remove of renaming and resignification found by an ever-changing lineup of memes and references that go far beyond the racial coding in the use of “Monday” as a racial slur and pushing believability even further, relying on a process of ironic distance and development of further second-order acts of signification to build up an entire vocabulary of violence around their various symbols and signals, there has been a kind of reproduction of the notion of process-as-work as well as a process-of-work-as-process such that in addition to classic signs of white supremacy and fascism (which can be deployed when the desire is to outwardly and obviously signal white supremacist affinities) there is an entire constellation, a wide assemblage of weighted and doubled words that stands in contrast to the obvious, such that it can be easily denied.

Fascination with the aesthetics of death, of violence and militarism, are not by any means inherently fascist. In fact, the militarism of the aesthetics at hand makes it such that looking at the real-world embodiment tied to it, the way in which images of either training for or exerting colonial violence figure heavily in these fascist aesthetics (militiamen, soldiers, special forces, police) leaves a great deal of room both for the same approach to leftist forces (as well as the questioning of imperialist hegemony through the introduction of nations considered anti-imperialist or at least making hegemony less stable, less totalizing, although in the case of nations such as Russia this is already employed by some fascists) and a kind of double resignification of the hegemonic forces such that the eye is on them as that of an insurgent, stealing the CIA’s copy of Mao’s guerilla tactics, a recognition of fascist creep and a kind of turnaround upon it. 

Indeed, there are induced bodies and processes that one can find in certain contemporary flows of musical and aesthetic generation. The well-armed Springfield XD toting war machines found in gangster rap with lean and LSD floating through their veins and AK-47s on the hip, organs of desire generated and deflated all at once by the eightball of executive-quality cocaine liberated from the pocket of a kidnapped businessman with his mouth duct taped shut, the ecstasy and agony of meth and ecstasy purchased at gay nightclubs once owned by the Mafia, the bleeding-edge of tumblrs with self-hating yandere anime girls surrounded by alprazolam and ketamine, how all of these aesthetics inform(ed) the vulture culture of vaporwave as well as its own self-reflective inquiry upon itself, the recognition of assholes proved to be as much by James Ferraro questioning what exactly vaporwave “is”, a strike upside the head to the NazBol irony posters who made one good mixtape exactly under the microgenre of Hardvapour before confusing themselves with Krokodil references when selling real heroin makes far more sense, a necessary bit of actual embryonic and transformative (as opposed to the fascist affected-obscurantist) psychedelica, so that one may substitute Terence McKenna for the Joe Rogan they currently entertain themselves mocking, one might move toward new means of militia-making, the recruitment for new war machines. Black and Lavender and White and Teal and Red Panthers collaborating against the police, anarchist banners flying from tanks and acting as unit emblems, circles of self-criticism with Maoists and Post-Leftists able to spend an entire half-hour talking without accusing the other of being a plant or liberal, a kind of combined-arms approach that acknowledges the opposite in the enemy, the embracing of supposedly degenerate cultural movements in their fascist forms, the roles of gay men and trans women and lesbian tradwives and cringeposting solipsistic subjectivities that excuse their own violence with the personal gain they see from it in the movements of nationalist, fascist, reactionary, and generally contemptible politics, one can indeed interpret movements in relation to study of shock, of development, of how the contemporary is informed by imagination of the past.

Questions regarding the place of Soviet Realism are best asked in a form of representation, the use of a wider act of questioning to gesture toward a kind of unsureness regarding exactly what the purpose of such art (or artlessness) functions as, a record for the ideal, of ideation in the present and realized through the reading of such artwork, the inclusion of certain events and bodies into a process of deep and concerted rectonition through this realist lens a reflection of their material consequence, one that affirms certain questions of what kind of memory “matters” when the subjective and immediate is seen as the basis of experience, the way in which the opposite, the abstract, holds a kind of power such that the ever-disappearing “present”, the disappearing “Real”, is best represented through paintings such as Guernica, the horror of fascist violence rendered as literal cat-and-mouse by Art Spiegelman, the means by which Eli Valley has taken on Spiegelman’s consciousness of fascist violence in the time of Trump (the sort of mainstream figure that the fascists adore) and represents it through a kind of grotesqueness that is at once genuinely revulsive and allegorical like the work of Junji Ito, the many means of representing provide experiences-of-experience of new orders. 

One must envision a militant Spring Breakers, the sort of unreality crafted toward a deeper “Real”, the horror of realizing exactly what is represented by that which one draws from coupled with a kind of earnest return only possible after ironic distancing, such that one confuses all senses of assessment until it is too late, the moment of revolution now at hand.

[cathkaesque]

Every now and then it is worth refreshing our understanding of our basic economic concepts. My aim with this piece is to reintroduce some of the building blocks of Marxist economics and show how these concepts can animate and explain some of the struggles that we face today. I hope that a discussion of these concepts and a demonstration of their relevance will pave the way for future discussions where we'll apply these concepts more concretely to struggles we're facing in Sheffield.

So, to start off, what is capitalism? Capitalism is a system of production for profit, characterised by private ownership of the means of production. Capitalism is not just buying or selling, or money and markets. These have existed for centuries, but the period that we call capitalism has only existed for the last 250-300 years. Capitalism instead is where money is spent in the pursuit of more money for its original owners. When money is invested in this manner, it is called capital, and its owners are known as capitalists.

So how do capitalists make their money? What trick do they perform to will more money into existence? We can answer that when we look at the commodity. A commodity is a thing, like a car, a house, or a pint of beer, which is bought and sold for money. It contains two parts - use value and exchange value. A use-value is simply that a commodity fills a need that people have. This is inherently subjective and can’t be quantified in the way exchange value can. Exchange value is, on the other hand, quantifiable and expressed as a price, and is the price a good could be exchanged for in a perfect equilibrium between supply and demand. According to the labour theory of value, this is determined by the average amount of labour necessary to produce the commodity, measured in time. Price is distinct from value, which is how value appears on the market, and is influenced by things like supply and demand.

Profit, or surplus value, is the difference between the new value that labour creates in the production process and the cost of the reproduction of that labour. Therefore profits, ultimately, represent the unpaid labour of workers appropriated by the capitalist class. To put it in more concrete terms, a production worker at Volkswagen needs to work for about 44 hours to produce value equivalent to his yearly wage – they will go on to work some 1,700 hours throughout the whole year. The difference between what the worker receives in wages and what the worker produces is the source of surplus value under capitalism, and the struggle over the length of the working day and wages earned for that day’s work at the heart of the struggle between the employing class and working class.

The Marxist focus on industrial production may seem a little out of place when looking at Britain’s post-industrial service economy. But the value that flows through Britain’s financial institutions is still tied to the exploitation of workers and the production of commodities. Capitalism has grown into an international system as corporate monopolies have outgrown their home countries. In order to recover from its last major crisis in the 1970s, capitalists in the imperial centres had to overcome an increasingly organised and conscious working class. To do this, capitalists fragmented their national industries and outsourced labour intensive tasks to third world countries, which had been opened up to capitalist exploitation following the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the UK, the manufacturing sector has declined by 2 thirds since the 1990s. 

Bourgeois economists in the World Bank often point to the industrialisation as the means for ‘developing countries’ to escape from poverty. However, today, industrial development of third world countries has become a lifeline for the decrepit capitalist economies of the first world. In The China Price, Tony Norfield recounts the story of a T-Shirt made in Bangladesh and sold in Germany by H&M at a price of 4 euros 95. H&M pays the Bangladeshi manufacturer 1.35 per T-Shirt, 28 percent of the final price. 40 cents covers the costs of raw cotton imported from the US, while shipping to Hamburg costs 6 cents per shirt. This means 95 cents of the price of this T-shirt remains in Bangladesh, to be shared between the factory owner, the workers, and the Bangladeshi government - the production of the T-Shirt therefore adds 95 cents to Bangladesh’s GDP. Meanwhile, the sale of this T-shirt in Germany expands Germany’s GDP by 3.54. 2.05 pays wholesalers, retailers, advertisers etc. H&M makes 60 cents profit, while the German state takes 72 cents through VAT. The Bangladeshi worker herself earns only 1 euro 36 for a 10-12 hour day, producing 250 shirts per hour. She receives an 18th of a cent of the final sale price.

The sale of a T-shirt made in Bangladesh in Germany adds more to Germany’s GDP than it does to Bangladesh’s. This transfer of value from South to North explains why imperialist countries such as Germany, and especially Britain, can sustain “post-industrial service economies” with huge shopping centres, advanced militaries, and rich banks and financial institutions with very little in the way of production. It also explains the enduring relevance of the Labour Theory of Value. Value is not a subjective thing, and the banks of Britain do not magic money out of thin air. In 2013, Britain had 1.8 trillion in foreign direct investments. It plays host to 34 of the world’s top 500 corporations. As a capitalist country it is second only to America in the international reach of its investments. Even in deindustrialised Britain, capitalism remains dependent on the exploitation of industrial labour, as out of sight and out of mind as it may appear today.

Here’s the text from the (updated) intro to Marxist economics talk I gave last night at the SP branch. It went down pretty well and injected some much needed Marxist analysis into the discussion (I’ll admit I have been frustrated lately at the dearth of Marxism in favour of the repetition of Labour Party talking points. I am worried the organisation is losing the independence from social democracy that attracted me to it in the first place). My hope is that this’ll open up opportunities for further discussions around the specific functioning in the future. It was also nice to write something again. Hope people find it useful!

#socialism #Marxism #capitalism #Socialist Party #trotting along

[scriptflorist]

Hi! Hope I submitted this correctly. Thanks for this and I appreciate your help!

Name: Harana “Ynaguinid” Amosin, Jericho “Barangao” Amosin (as a boy)

Nickname: Hara, Jeri (when she’s a guy)

Alternate identity: She have various identities, though the ones that she uses the most often is “Hikari Sensogami” or “Hikaru Sensogami” (when they go undercover in Japan) and “Haliya Ramos” or “Agwe Ramos” elsewhere.

Birthday: June 21st 

Zodiac: Cancer

Birthplace: The Philippines (known as Kapatiran in her dimension)

Dwelling place: A small mansion hidden within an enchanted forest, miles away from the city.

How do they live: Due to being renowned, honorable warriors for centuries, Harana’s family is wealthy, though not super wealthy (think middle-upper class). Hangs out with friends at school and hops between two families (their blood-related family and their guardians/godparents, who look after her training while they’re on their missions). 

Appearance: Medium-dark olive skin, short-medium length black hair (sometimes wears their hair in a waterfall braid when they’re a girl, and when in battle, has her hair tied in a ponytail; and as a boy, will sometimes tie his hair in a half-up); dark brown eyes, wears a few magic bracelets that are enchanted and can transform into weapons at her will, and a necklace with her deceased parents’ wedding rings and a key in between them. Also has another necklace that holds her mp3 player. Sometimes wears headphones around her neck. Has a magical tribal tattoo as well that signifies her Filipino-Polynesian heritage.

What’s in their bag/pockets: Swiss Army knife, some small daggers, a small first aid kit, a small flashlight, a magic tablet and charger, a journal, a pencil and pen, an eraser, her cell phone, some extra earphones, rope, a small book of contacts, a makeup kit (just in case), a wallet, a book on Caelistian religion (which she is required to carry around with her anyways), and her lunchbox.

Species: Caelistian. Caelistians are from an alternate universe in which history went wild and took a completely different turn (aliens invaded during the American Revolutionary War). They descend from humans and are incredibly technologically and spiritually advanced, using a mix of technology and magic. They worship the universe itself as a deity, and they protect and watch over the dimensions and keep it in balance.

Features of the species: Due to the alien invaders often experimenting on humans and creating new species, many centuries later, there is a wide variety of Caelistians in all shapes and sizes (even the ones that worship the Void look inherently different because of differing ancestry). However, they mostly look human or take on human form. 

Name of parents: Rafael and Mayumi Amosin

Name of siblings: Kidlat Amosin, Tala Amosin, Luntian Amosin (half-brother), Maria Dizon (half-sister), Orion and Sirius Callahan (adopted)

Others next of kin: Her guardians, who see her as their adopted child, and many of her godparents and godsiblings

Not-in-blood-but-in-bond-family: Orion and Sirius, whom they see as brothers, their fellow brigade members (too many to list here)

Family history: Harana has a large, but loving (though a bit quarrelsome) family; she has her grandfather, Losi, and her grandmother, Somilge. On her mother’s side, she has five aunts and three uncles, and on her father’s side, she has two aunts and six uncles. They have around eighteen cousins. Half of them are deceased, however, as a result of the war.

Favourite colour: Blue, indigo, silver

Favourite animal: Dragons, mermaids, birds, sharks, penguins

Favourite book: The entire Harry Potter series, the entire Lord of the Rings series, Jules Verne books (especially Journey to the Center of the Earth), A Wrinkle in Time, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Discworld, and a lot more

Favourite film/show/series: Zathura, Underworld, Doctor Who, and a lot more (too many to list)

Favourite genre: Action, fantasy, sci-fi, romance

Favourite food: Lumpia (Filipino egg rolls), pepperoni pizza, flan cake, cheesecake (any kind), chocolate chip cookies

Favourite place to be: The forest where she lives; she can sing as loud as she wants to while taking walks. She also enjoys being outside on the large balcony of the mansion, where she goes to watch the stars at night and relax while listening to some oldies or playing songs on her guitar.

Personality: Harana is a cool, level-headed individual. She has a sarcastic sense of humor and has a funny but kind demeanor. While she may seem calm, as a result of having been kidnapped and dealing with horrible foster parents before the war, her horrific childhood of being forced to enter a war as a child soldier a week after her birthday, and the death of many of her loved ones by the time the war ended, she has terrible anxiety and panic attacks (though they don’t occur as often as they used to). After many centuries of recovering, Harana has come out of her shell and has improved a lot since then, however, the scars still remain. She has a ‘fake it ‘til you make it’ sort of thinking when it comes to hiding her pain and insecurities (since she’s afraid that if she voices them, she’ll become a burden) and she’s become a master at it, to the point where only her closest friends and family can tell her true emotions at times. Harana was thrown into the army at a young age due to her incredible observation and logic skills (something which she got from her father and her grandfather, respectively), as well as her ability to lead and strategize. She is very experienced in the world and how the universe works due to having apprenticed under a great dimensional traveler who taught Harana the skills she has now, though unfortunately, he and his family died at the end of the war. While she does care deeply for others and is overall a good person, she can be very guile and sometimes manipulates and tricks people into doing things (though they aren’t terrible, necessarily). Harana overall acts obedient and follows the rules, but when the rules are too cruel and unjust or when the rules no longer fit the situation, she either bends the rules, finds a loophole, or throws them out the window.

Misc: Harana’s sixteen years old (in human years); she’s pansexual and genderfluid. She uses male and female pronouns, switching between them depending on what gender she feels like being for the day, though most of the time, she prefers to be a girl. Harana enjoys singing, dancing, and various other creative outlets as a way for her to calm herself and her emotions. Her main guardians are her father’s close friends, who are all happily married to each other and live in a rich neighborhood closer to the city. She used to be mute, though eventually, halfway through the war, she gets her voice back. She’s adept at various kinds of weapons and magic.

____

Hey there,

don't worry you did everything right!

Birthplace: The Philippines

The national flower of the Philippines is the Arabian jasmine, it doesn't have any meaning though.

Dwelling place: A small mansion hidden within an enchanted forest, miles away from the city

angelica – magic, inspiration

circaea – spell

enchanter's nightshade – spell, sorcery, witchcraft, fascination

fern – magic, sincerity, fascination, confidence, shelter

holly herb – enchantment

magnolia – love of nature, dignity, perseverance, nobility

persimon – bury me amid nature's beauties

rose (lavender) – enchantment

rose (purple) – enchantment

sycamore – woodland beauty, curiosity, reserve

vervain – enchantment, superstition

violet (blue) – enchantment, faithfulness, watchfulness, love

witch hazel – a spell

based on how they live

acacia – friendship, platonic love, secret love

acacia (rose) – friendship, elegance

apple blossom – fame speaks you/him great and good, preference, better things to come, good fortune

ash tree – grandeur

austurtium – splendour

bay tree – glory

bellflower (chimney)  – aspiring

chrysanthemum – wealth, abundance, cheerfulness, loveliness, truth, you're a wonderful friend

copihue – there is no unalloyed good

corn (cockle) – gentility

daphne – glory, immortality

freesia – lasting friendship, innocence, trust

geranium – true friend, stupidity, folly, envy, gentility

geranium (oak-leaved) – (true) friendship, lady deign to smile

gillyflower – bonds of affection, lasting beauty, enduring beauty

imbricata – uprightness, sentiments of honour

indian cress – resignation, warlike trophy

laurel – glory, treachery, virtue is beauty, success

laurel (mountain) – ambition

lily (tiger) – wealth, pride, prosperity

palm – victory

poppy (yellow) – wealth, success

based on species

cedar – spiritual strength, strength, I live for thee, think of me

cereus (creeping) – modest genius

cherry blossom – spiritual beauty, insincerity, impermanence

clematis – artifice, mental beauty, poverty, filial love,

eucalyptus – protection

flax (dried) – utility

geranium (pencilled) – ingenuity

heather (white) – protection, good luck, wishes will come true

hemp – fate

honeysuckle (coral) – the colour of my fate

juniper – protection, asylum, succour

julienne (white) – despair not, god is everywhere

leadwort – holy wishes

magnolia (laurel-leaved) – high souled, dignity

penstemon azureus – high-bred

pine (pitch) – time, philosophy

reed (flowering) – confidence in heaven

schinus – religious enthusiasm

favourite colour: blue

agapanthus – no meaning

cornflower – delicacy, refinement

forget-me-not – forget me not, true love, memories

gentian – virgin pride, intrinsic worth

gentian (closed) – sweet be thy dreams

gentian (fringed) – intrinsic worth, I look to heaven, autumn

geranium (silver-leaf) – recall

hydrangea – (a) boaster, heartlessness, you are cold, dispassion, frigidity, thank you for understanding

larkspur (delphinium) – big-hearted, fun

larkspur – lightness, ardent attachment, inconstancy, levity, flights of fancy, swiftness, an open heart

nigella – perplexity, you puzzle me

morning glory – affectation, coquetry

silver weed – simplicity

based on personality

abantia – fickleness

achillea millefolia – war

aconite (christmas) – wit

adonis (flos) – sad memories, painful recollections, sorrowful remembrance

agnus castus – coldness, indifference

allspice – compassion

almond (laurel) – perfidy

anemone – forsaken

apocynum – deceit

balsam (red) – touch me not, impatient resolve

basil – hate, hatred

berberry – sourness/sharpness of temper, petulance, sharpness, sourness

bird cherry – perfidy, hope

borage – bluntness, rudeness

box – stoicism, constancy

broom (prickly) – misanthropy

buckbean – quiet, repose, calmness, calm repose

bur – rudeness, you weary me

butterfly weed – let me go

camellia (red) – unpretending excellence, you're a flame in my heart

canary grass – perseverance

cardamine – paternal error

chamomile – energy in adversity

chestnut – justice, do me justice

cistus (gum) – I shall die tomorrow

clotbur – rudeness, pertinacity

columbine (purple) – resolved to win

columbine (red) – anxious and trembling

convolvulus (blue, minor) – repose, night

convolvulus (major) – extinguished hopes

cress – stability, power

cypress – despair, mourning, death

darnel – vice

date plum – resistance

euphorbia – persistence

evergreen thorn – solace in adversity

everlasting – never-ceasing remembrance, always remembered, never ceasing memory

fig marigold – coldness of heart, idleness

frog ophrys – disgust

goosefoot (grass-leaved) – I declare war against you

greek valerian – rupture

hand flower tree – warning

harebell – submission, grief

hazel – peace, reconciliation

helenium – tears

kennedia – intellectual beauty, mental beauty

lantana – rigour, sharpness

larch – audacity, boldness

laurel (mountain) – ambition

lint – I feel my obligations

liverwort – confidence

machineel – betrayal, falsehood, duplicity

marigold – grief, contempt, trouble, inquietude, chagrin, pain, cruelty, pretty love, sacred affection, caress, sorrow

marigold (garden) – uneasiness

meadow lychnis – wit

meadow sweet – uselessness

mignonette – moral an intellectual beauty, your qualities surpass your charms, “without pretension to beauty possesses qualities which command profound respect and affection”

milfoil – war

milk vetch – your presence softens my pain

mushroom – suspicion, I can't entirely trust you

nasturtium – a warlike trophy, patriotism, resignation, conquest, victory in battle

nettle – slander, cruelty, you are spiteful

ophrys (spider) – dexterity, skill

parsley – useful knowledge, festivity, feast

persicaria – restoration

petunia – your presence softens me, thou art less proud than they deem thee

pheasant's eye – painful/sorrowful remembrance, remembrance, sorrowful memories

pride of china – dissension

raspberry – remorse

rhododendron – danger, beware, I am dangerous

serpentine cactus – horror

snakesfoot – horror

straw (single, broken) – rupture of a contract, dissension, broken agreement

sultan (yellow) – contempt

sumach (venice) – splendour, intellectual excellence

tansy – resistance, I declare war against you

thistle – misanthropy, surliness, harshness, austerity, sternness, never forget,

thistle (scotch) – retaliation

tiger flower – cruelty, for once may pride befriend me

walnut – intellect, stratagem

weeping willow – mourning, forsaken, sadness, melancholy

wood anemone – sickness, forlornness

xanthium – rudeness, pertinacity

yarrow – war, to cure, a cure for the heartache, cure for a broken heart, cure for heartache

zinnia – absence, thoughts of absent friends, I mourn your absence

misc

acanthus – the (fine) arts, artifice

geranium (ivy) – your hand for the next dance, your hand for the next quadrille?, bridal favour

viscaria – will you dance with me?

- Mod Jana

Disclaimer

This blog is intended as writing advice only. This blog and its mods are not responsible for accidents, injuries or other consequences of using this advice for real world situations or in any way that said advice was not intended.

#flower language #victorian flower language #harana #jericho #flowers for characters #ask answered #mod jana #submission

[psychsounds]

I have spent the morning watching Howard’s End (1992). I am thinking back to my time at Manchester University and Sheila Rowbotham talking about this film and the genre of 90s Heritage films in a sociology of film class.  Be still my beating heart.  

All that exposure to studying and culture I had.  All this time on my hands, I need to be more productive.  I was talking with my sister about her choosing not to go to Uni.  I said although it was kind of bourgeois, and didn’t lead to a job, due to my passion for History, without any career plans, I wouldn’t like to erase that time and I would recommend that she at least consider the option of going.  During this time I was learning and living and growing so much as a person, and ambition and culture, even if directionless, is a great thing.

Observations on the film:-

There is some kind of point being made about German upper classes being romantic, philosophical - which I am intrigued by as this is somehow related to Bismarck and the unification of Germany and the two world wars, but I can’t quite remember how it all ties in.  I guess this is values based though as I appreciate the arts and think people tend to be more interesting if they do, which again is bourgeois etc.

The film:-

Mrs Wilcox, “Where would we be with the suffrage?” Anti-feminist sentiment.  “I’m only too thankful not to have the vote myself”.

“I’m too apt to brood”  Totally lifting this phrase.  I do like these spiky, but kind older women, who have these vibrant lives and contrary opinions.

“Landlords are horrible.  I can’t understand why anyone would choose to live in the flats”.

“Unlike Greece, England has no mythology”

Inherent tensions between the two ladies.  Vanessa Redgrave’s character feeling apprehension going to Howard’s End, but then turning up at St. Pancras station to meet with her.  Their friendship is growing,

Beautiful meadows, English countryside.

The family trying to hide the fact Mrs Wilcox character had left the house to Margaret Schlegel.  

Where did your people come from?  A subject the upper classes are fixated on. Good sorts n all.  

“it was ancestral voices calling you”.

“He’s so poor but he’s sensitive and intelligent”.  Och, is this film speaking to me?

Working class pride.  He thinks the bourgeoisie are making fun of him .  ‘We like you, that’s why, you noodle”.

“He’s got something in him.  He wants more than he has got.  It’s a sort of romantic ambition”.  

Fake smiles of the Wilcoxes.  ‘She looks like an old maid type/ “Oh how do you do?”

“I could scratch that women’s eyes out!”

“If i see them putting on airs, with their artistic beastliness”.  How the upper classes despise the middle classes (Link to Marx).

Delightful wee scene I could unpack for days.

“I grieve for your clerk, but it’s all part of the battle of life”.

“A man who is poor, is even poorer, due to our advice”.

“Don’t take a sentimental attitude towards the poor”.

“Why are you so bitter, darling”

“Because I am an old maid”.

Pictures of old 18th century nobility.  One woman with a baby clutching her breasts. Gross as it’s nobility but heart warming and intimate slightly also because of my appreciation for motherhood throughout the ages.

“What if Evie has a family?” Nobility constantly sizing up their share of the inheritance against their siblings.  Disgusting.

Awkward when Margaret’s sister marches the Basts to the wedding.   “Helen, you have less restraint now that you’re older”.  Keeping up appearances, wealthy want to be shielded by realities of poverty.

“If rich people fail at one profession they can just try another”.

“With us, if we lose a job before the age of 20, we are done for”.

“When people fail you there’s still music and meaning”.

“That’s for rich people to make them feel good after their dinner”.

Helen is with child, she doesn’t tell anyone.

‘I am to have the child by myself”.  Love children.  My family is full of tales and knowledge of women that have children by themselves called “love children” and the women don’t have any contact with the men, usually due to the men or a falling out.  Glorious and romantic feminism, but also sadness and despair and poverty but self-possession.  

“Will you forgive her, as you yourself have been forgiven”.  For your infidelity.  Meg is asking him to face up to his own hypocrisy.

[newstfionline]

An Orphanage That Doesn’t Seem Like An Orphanage

Jason Beaubien, NPR, August 9, 2018

Orphanages are falling out of favor.

Ever since the horrific conditions in Romanian orphanages were widely publicized in the 1990s--naked children tied to cribs in overcrowded wards--there’s been a movement in the international aid world to shut down orphanages completely.

But according to UNICEF, there are still 2.7 million children living in orphanages worldwide.

So what if someone tried to set up a good orphanage--a place where parentless kids could thrive? What would it look like? And what could it tell us about the basics of child rearing?

It might look like this: A dozen kids piled on a couch watching a soccer match on TV while kids from neighboring houses drop by to chat. Other kids are preparing dinner in the kitchen. The kids call the employees of the institution “mom” and “auntie” while the staff call them “mi amor”--my love.

The kids and the adults at the SOS Children’s Village, an orphanage in Tela, Honduras, interact like a big extended family. It’s a place where dozens of kids who’ve been separated from their biological parents for a variety of reasons now live. Some of the kids’ parents are dead. Some have left the country. Some lost custody of their children because they couldn’t afford to feed them. All the kids have been placed at the institution by court order.

The director of the facility, Carolina Maria Matute, says what these kids need most is love. “A lot of love,” she says. “A lot of affection.”

The resident social worker, Jenny Zelaya, also puts love at the top of her list. But it’s also important that the children feel that the staff have their backs, she says. “It’s not just a job,” she says about working at this institution. “We take a real interest in them [the kids] succeeding and being able to achieve their goals.”

SOS Children’s Villages is a nonprofit aid group founded at the end of World War II in Austria. The organization is remarkable now for the sheer number of children it has in its care. It’s one of the largest providers of residential care to orphaned, abandoned and neglected kids worldwide, with more than 80,000 youngsters living in nearly 600 orphanages. SOS operates in 135 countries, primarily low- and middle-income nations. But it also runs three villages in the United States.

There are six SOS Children’s Village in Honduras, one of the poorest countries in the Americas. On a per capita basis only people in Haiti earn less each year than Hondurans.

At the SOS Children’s Village in Tela, the “mom” in house #9 is 45-year-old Sandra Hernandez.

Hernandez describes herself as a sports fanatic. The house is known among the kids in the village as the place to go to watch soccer. Hernandez a die-hard supporter of the Spanish Futbol Club Barcelona. A blue and maroon Barca FC shield is pasted on the wall in the living room. But because Barcelona was eliminated from the Champions League tournament, Hernandez is rooting against Barcelona’s archrival Real Madrid.

The four teenagers in her house--three boys and a girl--refer to each other as brother and sister. Hernandez lives in the house full-time. When she takes her annual vacation an “SOS aunt” comes to stay with the kids for a week or two.

“It’s a family model,” Hernandez says. “It’s like a natural family.”

This SOS “village” is inside a large, fenced compound on the outskirts of the Caribbean coastal city of Tela. The 12 separate houses are connected by a footpath shaded by several giant mango trees. There’s an open field where the kids often play soccer. Chickens scurry amid the bushes.

Unlike some other orphanages, SOS doesn’t offer these kids for adoption to families in wealthier countries in North America or Europe. The goal is to make this village their home and to raise these kids in their own culture. Some kids do leave before reaching adulthood--but only to be placed with biological relatives or, if conditions have improved, to return to their parents.

The houses themselves are not fancy. They’re identical two-story, cinder block buildings with a kitchen and a living room on the ground floor and four bedrooms upstairs. Built in the mid-1970s they resemble bland public housing from that era.

The beige and brown paint outside many of them is peeling. The furniture inside is spartan and worn but Hernandez’s 15-year-old “daughter,” Naomi says her friends from school like coming over because she has such a nice house. (We’re calling her Naomi to shield her privacy and because she is a ward of the state.)

Naomi was placed at the SOS Children’s Village when she was 2 years old and has been living with Hernandez for the last eight years.

The SOS model, Hernandez says, provides a structure that gives the children natural social connections.

“It helps them a lot because they’re not isolated,” she says.

Hernandez says this not just because she’s worked here for ten years. She was placed at an SOS Village in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa when she was 3 and grew up there.

“I lived the same situation as them,” she says of the kids in the orphanage.

At Sandra Hernandez’s house the day starts early.

At 5:30 a.m. the youngest boy in the house who’s 15 is sweeping the back yard. Hernandez and Naomi are making breakfast. The two older boys stumble into the kitchen around 6:30. Hernandez is patting egg-size balls of dough into thick, traditional Honduran tortillas called baleadas.

Soon the children will go off to school--not in the children’s village but in the town. That’s part of the SOS strategy: to integrate the kids into the community so they can develop social connections that will help them find jobs and homes and spouses later in life.

One of the 16-year-old boys was just elected president of the student council, which is remarkable in part because he only returned to Tela a few months ago. He spent last year in a drug rehab program.

“They choose one student to represent the school in various activities,” Hernandez says. “And he’ll represent his school when they have meetings of all the schools in the city.”

She is extremely proud of him.

The daily routine at Hernandez’s house is a bit complicated because Naomi goes to the morning school session and the boys attend in the afternoon. On this day, the school, Instituto Triunfo de la Cruz, is celebrating its founding 69 years ago.

Naomi is one of a dozen contestants in what’s essentially a beauty pageant to see who will be crowned “Señorita Aniversario,” the queen of the anniversary festival.

As she walks confidently onto the stage the announcer declares that her hobby is studying and she hopes to become a medical doctor.

Naomi is one of three finalists--but doesn’t win the top prize.

Her 9th-grade math teacher, Jennifer Gamez, says Naomi is one of the best students in the school.

“You explain something once and she gets it,” Gamez says. “If she has a question or a doubt, she asks me about it. And her behavior is excellent.”

Gamez says many of her students live in poverty. Jobs are hard to come by in Honduras, but Gamez tells them that their situation in life doesn’t determine their future.

And Gamez says she’s been extremely impressed with students who’ve come from the SOS orphanage.

“I know a lot of them who’ve become professionals, they’re good people who come from this village,” she says. “I know a lot of people like that.”

There are also kids from the SOS Children’s Village who struggle. The youngest member of Hernandez’s household is one of them. One of his teachers says the 15-year-old doesn’t pay attention. He talks too much in class, doesn’t turn in his assignments. With a stern glare the teacher adds that he prefers to run around with his friends rather than do his work.

Hernandez says she’s aware of these problems and is trying to get him more focused.

The big question is: Would he fare any better if he were living with his biological parents?

Duke University professor Kathryn Whetten isn’t so sure. Whetten has researched residential care for kids who’ve been separated from their parents for various reasons and says that orphanages aren’t inherently bad.

“We see the same continuum of bad and good care in the group homes as we see in the family settings,” says Whetten.

For the last 12 years Whetten has been following 3,000 kids who were orphaned, abandoned or for some other reason separated from their biological parents. The professor of public policy and global health at Duke is conducting the study in five low- and middle-income countries. Half the kids are in institutions of some kind--government-run orphanages, private group homes. The other half have been placed with extended family members.

“What the kids really seem to need is a home-like environment,” Whetten says.

Regardless of whether they’re placed with extended family members or in institutions, the researchers found that the one thing the children need is a stable living situation. They don’t do well if they’re bounced from one place to another. Having consistent long-term caregivers and steady sibling-like connections to other kids is also important.

“So creating a family-like environment is what is really important,” Whetten says. “And that can happen in a family setting in a small home or it can happen in an orphanage slash institution slash group home like SOS.”

None of the SOS Children’s Villages are part of Whetten’s long-term study but she says the group has the right model of placing kids in small, stable units.

The worst residential care facilities for orphans, she says, tend to be government-run institutions where employees look after the children in shifts.

“They often come in in white coats as if they’re providing treatment. Usually there’s three [caregivers] per day who rotate in and out. By the very nature of what they’re doing they’re not as committed to each child,” Whetten says.

“And of course restraining the smaller kids, restraining them physically, is bad for them. We’ve seen very few of those [orphanages] that are really, really on the bad end and those are usually ones run by governments.”

Also places where shift workers care for the kids tend to have the wrong organizational structure.

For the SOS moms like Sandra Hernandez, there are no shifts. Hers is a 24-hour-a day job.

When Naomi gets home after the Señorita Aniversario pageant, Hernandez is waiting anxiously for her on the porch. She wants to hear all the details.

Naomi tells how she made it through the first three rounds and how the crowd was cheering as she walked out on stage. All her friends were sure she was going to win.

Hernandez beams with pride.

Later that evening Hernandez organizes kids from all 12 of the houses to help clean up an overgrown section of the village next to the soccer field.

As the sun fades the kids rake up piles of cut grass and leaves. They haul bushes and small tree limbs off to a pile by the outer fence. The kids also chase each other around. One teenage boy is keen to show that he can carry a bigger bag of leaves and dirt than anyone else.

Some of the younger girls practice a song. A young boy from a neighboring house keeps running over to hug Hernandez--for no particular reason. Eventually the work party turns into a soccer game.

Hernandez scores three goals but the kids insist she was offside. And what could be more fun than arguing about whether or not someone is cheating at backyard sports?

It feels a lot like a big family picnic.

#Honduras #Honduran orphanage #SOS Children’s Village

[bookandcover]

The September/October book for our family Anti-Racism Book Club, A Terrible Thing to Waste is a poignant and urgent examination of environmental racism in America. Environmental racism refers to all the ways that environmental circumstances—from climate change to environmental toxins to pollution and air quality—disproportionately negatively impact BIPOC in America. I didn’t know anything about this topic before reading this book, yet this concept seems so obvious, so essential, that I was shocked and horrified that this wasn’t something I’d read or thought about before. 

The book begins with an examination of the “IQ gap” in America, a scientifically-proven difference between the average IQ of white and Black Americans (somewhere between 10 and 15 IQ points, depending on the study). Studies showing this gap have long been used to justify racism in many forms, supported by an understanding of intelligence (measured by IQ) as something inherently innate, and not something dramatically impacted by our environments. Washington explains that IQ is, of course, an imperfect measurement and a strange over-simplification of what intelligence actually is. But it is not a meaningless measurement. IQ has been shown to correlate strongly to academic success, employment and career development, and long-term income and financial stability. The environments in which these kinds of successes occur are, of course, charged with systemic racism, classism, sexism, and ableism—some of the same -isms that make IQ a strange way to measure intelligence. But, Washington argues, that given the correlation between IQ and these measurements of success, IQ seems a worthwhile thing to discuss, especially when there is such a large gap in average IQ between white and Black Americans. The focus should be on closing this gap, while simultaneously understanding that IQ is not reflective of innate intelligence, but something shaped by environmental factors. The notable racial point difference is due to these different environmental factors for different races. And this is a difference we ought to care about, not only from a moral standpoint, but also from a practical one, as this difference lowers America’s overall IQ, while high overall IQs have allowed countries to compete in the global market. 

Washington provides a variety of evidence to show two key things: 1) that environmental factors (focusing on measurable and quantifiable toxins and pollutants as environmental factors) directly impact IQ, and 2) that the most significant variable indicating likelihood of exposure to environmental toxins is race not class. This first area of focus provides the parameters for Washington’s book. There are, of course, numerous aspects of our environments that shape us, and that shape our IQ more narrowly. The impact of exposure to toxins is well-studied and it’s a cut-and-dry correlation, as the presence of lead, asbestosis, and other toxins have dramatic impacts on humans and human development. The physical impacts—cancer, sickness, death—might be the first impacts that jump to mind when we think of the impact of toxins in living environments. But their impacts on intelligence, IQ, memory, learning and retention, speech, and other types of mental facilities are also well-documented. The second point is an equally important premise of this book, and the one that probably requires the most work on the part of the author to debunk many Americans’ current thinking about the relationship between race and class. I think that many Americans would assume exposure to environmental toxins correlates to poverty—if you live in an impoverished area, you’re more likely to be exposed to toxins. We assume that houses that are new, that are clean, that are pricey, are safe. We assume neighborhoods that we classify according to similar marks of economic prosperity are safe. 

I believe that many Americans would assume that, if there’s a racial aspect to environmental justice, it’s due to the fact that a higher percentage of Black Americans, and other BIPOC in America, live in poverty. Washington, however, demonstrates that Black Americans and white Americans, with the same income and an income that places them in the middle class and NOT in poverty, have notably different rates of exposure to environmental toxins. Black Americans with household incomes around 50K a year are exposed to toxins at the same rate as white Americans of the poorest demographic (households with incomes less than 10K a year). Waste dumping sites, power plants, chemical treatment facilities, manufacturing plants that emit airborne pollutants—these are all far more likely to be built and placed within communities of color. The communities that border any type of plant or facility likely to release environmental toxins—called fence-line communities—are overwhelmingly communities of color, and not the communities inhabited by even the poorest white Americans. 

The data and studies that support these facts revealed something to me that intuitively made sense. I assume that, when cases of acute environmental toxicity impact white communities, even the poorest ones, there is likely a higher level—with a distinctly alarmed tone—of media coverage, than when BIPOC communities are impacted. It also makes sense that, while acute cases like those in Flint, Michigan spark widespread media coverage, it’s the quiet and more pervasive impacts of environmental toxicity that are systematically hurting Black Americans. For example, lead poisoning often occurs at low levels of lead intake that don’t reveal immediate, physical affects. But lead poisoning has a dramatic impact on IQ. Washington demonstrates how the continued presence of lead paint in living environments—when it has been shown that exposure to lead AT ANY CONCENTRATION LEVEL is harmful—is the responsibility, and failure, of business that put profitability above human lives. The use of lead paint in houses has only been entirely restricted since 1978 (Congress banned its use in residential structures constructed by/with the federal government in 1971), and therefore it still exists in houses built before this date. While landlords are asked to bear responsibility for lead paint testing, they far too often do not, knowing they’ll still be able to rent untested apartments at low prices. And testing and repainting costs do drive up rents, making the cheapest and least safe options the ones that some renters need to select. 

Washington puts the onus for this terrible situation onto the companies that used lead paint, even before it was thoroughly tested and long after it was shown to be harmful. She points out how even the idea of a toxicity gradient and “safe levels” of toxins prioritizes the unethical practices of businesses over the lives of humans, when no level of these toxins is safe in most cases. All toxic exposure impacts us. Washington shows that the US government has historically held, and continues to hold, an “innocent until proven guilty” mindset when it comes to artificial products and chemicals—in food, in living spaces, in household cleaners, in everyday products. Companies can use what they want until something is proven to be harmful, and the bar for proof is high. The gradual reduction of lead paint usage until it was entirely stopped supports this argument. Even after lead paint was banned, the companies who had used it held no responsibility, letting the shock waves of this poisoning continue for decades through BIPOC communities while well-meaning landlords and individual families struggled to remove lead from their environments. 

This book has a comprehensive approach, which I very much appreciated. Washington covers a variety of types of environmental factors that disproportionately impact BIPOC communities in America. She shows how deep these problems run. These are problems that are linked to class, but not accounted for solely by class. These are problems that are connected to the relationship between businesses and ethics, but are not explained solely by the lack of accountability for businesses that are placing environmental toxins directly into living environments. Washington covers the significantly higher risk to babies and toddlers from environmental toxins that shape developing bodies and brains in lifelong ways. She covers air pollution, water pollution and how it impacts communities that rely on subsistence fishing, she covers toxins in living spaces and in baby foods, she covers the impact of locations of toxic waste dumping sites. She ends the book with a call to arms: a list of ways that readers can help work toward reducing these impacts in their own communities and holding businesses accountable. 

I was familiar with the expression “a mind is a terrible thing to waste,” but I didn’t know the origin of this phrase until my dad directed me to the series of PSAs run by the United Negro College Fund in the 1970s. These PSAs popularized this phrase. Therefore, this phrase, although in widespread use, has in its origins a clear link to race and to the value of the minds of Black Americans: minds which are wasted without equitable access to educational opportunities, but also wasted from the very beginning of some lives through repeated exposure to a variety of environmental toxins. This book’s examination of environmental racism shows how pervasive these issues are and how deeply these issues are tied to the chemical and product development systems that are given priority over human lives, as well as the deep racism apparent in the lesser value placed on the minds and bodies of Black Americans. 

[Note: I write these posts for myself as a way to process what I’ve read, but I put them on the internet and, therefore, into the world. If you read something here that you would like to discuss or correct, I would love it if you would feel comfortable reaching out to me. I cannot promise I’m not ignorant and short-sighted...I can promise that I want to listen.]

#a terrible thing to waste #harriet a. washington #important reading #environmental racism #environmental justice #anti-racism #awareness

[xhxhxhx]

Lowered Expectations

When I first read James T. Patterson’s Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945--1974 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), in the the Oxford History of the United States, I did not like it. 

It was incorrigibly banal. Here’s the opening chapter on American domestic life immediately after the war:

Almost everyone, men and women alike, wore hats outdoors. People still thought in small sums: annual per capita disposable income in current dollars was $1,074 in 1945. At that time it cost three cents to mail a letter and a nickel to buy a candy bar or a Coke.

I still find it remarkable that Patterson could write something that sounds so much like Abe Simpson:

So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. "Gimme five bees for a quarter," you'd say.

When Patterson was not banal, he was merely ridiculous. Here he is on domestic life in the 1950s:

Widely used words and phrases evoke the dynamism and quest for "fun" that pervaded the remarkably buoyant years of the mid-1950s, especially for the ever more numerous and steadily better-off middle classes. Hear a few: gung ho, cool jazz, hot rod, drag strip, ponytail, panty raid, sock hop, cookout, jet stream, windfall profit, discount house, split-level home, togetherness, hip, hula hoops, Formica, and (in 1959) Barbie Dolls.

He follows these lifeless lists with shapeless statistics:

The GNP rose in constant 1958 dollars from $355.3 billion in 1950 to $452.5 billion in 1957, an improvement of 27.4 percent, or nearly 4 percent per year. By 1960 it had increased to $487.7 billion, or 37 percent for the 1950s as a whole. By 1960 the median family income was $5,620, 30 percent higher in purchasing power than in 1950. A staggeringly high total of 61.9 percent of homes were owner-occupied in 1960, compared to 43.6 percent in 1940 and 55 percent in 1950.

There was little detail, dynamism, or structure in Patterson’s description of American life. There were only facts followed by banalities:

The whole world, many Americans seemed to think by 1957, was turning itself over to please the special, God-graced generation—and its children—that had triumphed over depression and fascism, that would sooner or later vanquish Communism, and that was destined to live happily ever after (well, almost) in a fairy tale of health, wealth, and happiness.

Not everyone, of course, had these grand expectations. Poverty and discrimination still afflicted millions, especially blacks, Mexican-Americans, and Indians.

It’s not that this description of American life was wrong. It’s right. It’s much closer to reality than the alternative, as I’ve said before. It’s that so much of Grand Expectations is boring. 

Patterson does not find the striking illustration or the surprising source. He finds the simple illustration and the obvious source. African American life in the 1940s is illustrated by manufacturing employment statistics, two Supreme Court decisions, and Invisible Man. Women’s life the 1950s is illustrated by The Feminine Mystique, the New Look, Benjamin Spock, The Honeymooners, and Lucille Ball. It is an unrelenting parade of clichés. 

It’s also non-discursive. Patterson is evenhanded about the Cold War, the Red Scare, the Vietnam War, and the decline of American liberalism, because he has little stake in the debate. He has an upbeat portrait of American society, but he makes remarkably few arguments.

I found the book nearly unreadable. Looking back now, though, I can only see the book as an immense achievement. 

Patterson was right about American life. He describes the American mainstream with sympathy and fairness. He describes the important parts of American life, from homeownership to television to home appliances. He describes radicalism, liberalism, and conservatism as an observer, without fear or favor. That’s remarkable. I cannot challenge an American history that covers so much that is so important, without few omissions, and few errors.

I say that because American postwar history is a hard terrain to master. There are few guides, and there were fewer still in 1996. There are many disparate topics, few good monographs, no inherent structure, and an enormous amount of detail. There are many important topics that have almost no systematic coverage. Patterson covered even those topics, from postwar reconstruction to middle class life. He mastered it all.

I have described Patterson as upbeat about the American mainstream, but I don’t want to leave you with the impression that he was indifferent to African Americans or women. He was sympathetic and detailed, starting in the first chapter:

All these policies helped to hasten the growth of large, institutional ghettos—cities within the central city—in some of the bigger urban areas of the North after 1945. Few such ghettos had existed before then. These areas became increasingly crowded, especially by contrast to white areas of these cities. In Chicago the number of white people declined slightly, by 0.1 percent between 1940 and 1950, yet the number of dwelling units occupied by whites increased by 9.4 percent. During the same years the number of black people in Chicago, a mecca for southern migrants, increased by 80.5 percent, but they occupied only 72.3 percent more dwelling units than in 1940. The percentage of non-whites in "overcrowded" accommodations (defined as more than 1.5 people per room) grew during that time from 19 percent to 24 percent. The number of dwelling units without private bath facilities increased by 36,248. Black residents complained of huge invasions of rats. Fires in Negro areas of Chicago killed 180 slum dwellers, including sixty-three children, between 1947 and 1953. For the dubious privilege of living in such crowded areas, blacks in Chicago, lacking market options, faced rents ranging between 10 and 25 percent higher than those paid by whites for comparable shelter.

The Negro writer Ann Petry wrote a novel, The Street (1946), that described this sort of living. It focused on West 116th Street in Harlem, a grim place that blighted the experiences of Lutie Johnson, a single, black, working mother, and of Bub, her eight-year-old son. Children, keysstrung around their necks, walked home to empty apartments and waited until their parents—too poor to afford a sitter—got home after work. Men with bottles of liquor in brown paper bags loitered about the stoops, waiting to prey on the unwary. "The men stood around and the women worked," Petry wrote.

“The men left the women and the women went on working and the kids were left alone. The kids burned lights all night because they were alone in small, dark rooms, and they were afraid. Alone. Always alone. . . . They should have been playing in wide stretches of green park and instead they were in the street. And the street reached out and sucked them up.”

With Patterson, however, no good history is unmarked by solecism, so of course this chapter is titled “Veterans, Ethnics, Blacks, Women,” and his African Americans are Negroes. Which was the style at the time.

I have a lengthy reading list on American postwar history. It’s still a hard terrain to master, and I never know what to read next. There were few good guides in 1996, and there are few now. Patterson is one of them. I know that if I ever have to write a general history of the United States between 1945 and 1974, I will turn to him again.

[rametarin]

If I had the ear of South America..

I would say, “Latinx is only the beginning.”

Yeah. It’s perceived as an anglo plot to colonize and imperialize the Spanish language, as it was born in the US thanks to a bunch of cultural marxist shitheads that are shamelessly trying to argue against gendered language on some futurist utopian transhumanist bullshit, white claiming it’s purely, “for diversity and inclusion of the transgendered and non-binary gendered people.”

But you aren’t going to stop or stem this tide of stupid by writing it off as some anglo plot. It just.. it won’t stop.

Here in the United States a guerilla cultural war went on. As a child I was exposed to radical feminists that took careful measures to engineer my experiences and get me to draw conclusions. That white people were evil, as individuals and as a group. That white people were destroying the world. That white people were soulless, cultureless imperialist monsters that just wanted to subvert all the innocent and harmless brown people and verifiably undeniably had enslaved everybody and everything.

That togetherness you enjoy under the label Hispanic and/or Latino? These people that formulated Latinx are working to subvert that, too. Here in the states, “I don’t see race” became controversial because the supposed progressives don’t like the egalitarian model that eliminates race and class from the equation to address if an individual is free or not based on their own personal merits, poverty level, education, etc. They DO like to ask, “Are these COMMUNITIES and MINORITY GROUPS (self identified) thriving and growing? If not, is it because the majority isn’t helping them grow at their own expense?”

In the United States, for the longest time, the narrative was that Spanish colonialism was irrelevant, at least in the US conversation about race and oppression, because, “Spanish speakers are marginalized and oppressed.” And also implied to be synonymous with being as different from white people as Asians and black Africans. So giving the Spanish the same stigma as they give, say, people descended from the English, or the French, or the Germans, was considered wrong.

But now that they’ve decided they want to cement more ties with drug cartels and guerillas across South America, the conversation and discourse has progressed. Now they want to kick up activity in Latin America to make society divisive and talk about how the black Latino is inherently oppressed by the white Latino. Rather than the discourse assume everybody south of the border is some big happy singular culture and family, it’s becoming clearer they don’t like white Spanish, and want the progressive and hip and cool kid view that white Spanish people, regardless of their origins or immigration status, are oppressors of people with different skin, solely on account of their, “privilege.”

This mentality that encouraged minority groups to militantly self-segregate and declare themselves separate cultures unto themselves, being oppressed by a white majority, is being used to sell social theories and scapegoat majorities for any and all problems being faced by a community .Exploiting the very real colorism and history of discrimination, but not for the ends of ending it, but for exploiting it to motivate division, discord and violence.

Feminism’s surface stated values and goals in and of themselves aren’t all bad. Obviously, there are backwards and exploitative or outright misogynistic views, values and social policy put in place to prevent women from living independent lives or progressing in work or business. The concept of a niche of interest that covers that WOULD be good, except it has been co-opted and platformed by these same marxist guerilla people for the purposes of selling dialectic materialistic views on what is unfair and what is unjust, and they’re harnessing that anger to create a culture that makes women feel oppressed as a class and under the auspices of what they’re learning from the Marxists.

They use and exploit this niche, this legitimate advocacy towards equality and advancement for women, the way a horror movie monster wiggles into the skin of a crewmate to characterize itself as something it is not while sabotaging the environment and exploiting the situation for its own ends. Infiltration. So female uprightedness and empowerment in and of itself is not the problem, but ‘feminism’ as a social organization is. The banner has been platformed and tained, and a lot of the literature mixed in with it is more of the same Critical Legal Theory crap that tells them certain things are true and absolute based on arbitrary theory.

It is important to not see this egalitarian undertone as the problem. It is not. The egalitarian element that is appropriated by these conspirators and guerillas is not the issue. The issue is the people that have exploited the conversation of female equality, are doing so to stick lenses over the eyes of the people with the only outlet of social organization they can see or know to do anything about it. And that’s how you get populist radical feminism as the only or biggest, loudest game in town for their organizing.

That’s how you get buzz cut self-proclaimed radfems rioting and attacking churches and other, “patriarchal organizations.” That’s how you get the same sort of woman taking the liberty of telling young girls (whom then go on to see young boys so dourly and poorly) that “society is corrupted and evil.”

It is so, so important going forwards to fight shit like Latinx in the correct way. If you make the wrong arguments, you won’t break through to your daughters or sons. They’re being told that white people (and this now includes Spanish-Latinos) are monsters. And they’re being told that men are shit. Little boys (like I was) are being cornered by their female age-group peers, their peers older sisters, aunts, mothers, other peers, that men by default are oppressive, woman-hating monsters by default and by society/culture.

You need to understand that the things these supposed progressives try to fight for, they do it solely to take the niche away from anybody else and DEFINE progressivism as what they want, and anything they do not, to be more of the same oppression by race, by sex, by religion, by culture, by money. It’s a propaganda game, and the more any of you try to preach about Jesus or the church knowing best, or ‘things are just naturally a certain way and you need to understand that,’ the more you play into their hands.

Your enemy is radical, and it is only secular on paper. But they’ll induct people to have “important conversations” with your children and community that appeal to what they only call science and logic, that are in fact only loosely that. And really just subjective opinion, philosophy. Social science. You try and appeal to religion to argue their stuff, they’ll beat you like a drum and you’ll just prove them right in the developing hearts and minds of a generation that is trying to not be stuck with the stigma of their parents or ancestors in the eyes of their friends.

This is not an enemy you can just sing a song about Jesus and Mary and defeat. These people will take and twist any real or even perceived and interpreted flaw in your society and those that suffer from the ills the most will internalize it, if what’s made to appeal to their sensibilities takes.

In America, that comes in the form of mixing racial separatism and supremacism with conflating it for the struggle for black freedom and equality. And I cannot imagine it being any different south of Mexico, whatsoever. They’ll work on the girls and tell them that to be born white-Latino is to be an oppressor, tell the girls they’re largely exempt from this because women are a marginalized and oppressed minority/demographic, and tell the misc. non-white groups across South America that they should organize against the hegemony of white people and “whiteness.”

They’ll do it while pretending their attempts and desire to spread disunity and hostility is “sticking up for the little guy.” They’ll do it while confronting overbearing actual patriarchal culture and binary gendered culture (so long as it’s white)  and write off ALL of Catholicism in South America as equal to the WORST of examples of bad Catholicism.

American conservatives continue to struggle dealing with these people because they see an opportunity to polarize and capitalize on the totalitarian nature of this polarization. They see it as a way to incentivize people to vote for more conservative, religious and similarthings, because if their alternative are literal communists and socialists, they can afford to ask for more.

Meanwhile they lose when it comes to hearts and minds of the young because their messages are just utterly worthless when as a 2-13 year old, you’re being told religious, old, white, capitalist people are oppressing everybody and destroying everything and trying to force everybody to live and society to work under the totalitarianism of religion.

When the angry political lesbian type corners you as a small child and explains that men are why women are so afraid of men, and you can’t even rebutt that it’s a feminist talking point without them talking about how that’s a Nazi/conservative propaganda view, and the young girls they’re grooming go with that interpretation of the world and events because it holds more romantic value for them, things they want to be true and things that they’ve been given just enough facts and reason to think are true, it doesn’t help when competitive arguments are either, “you’re too young to think about or talk about social issues or political discourse,” or, confirm every negative suspicion they now have with, “well they’re right, we are oppressing them, but we have every right to.”

The only way to truly beat these manipulative, lying, exploiting animals is to beat them at their own game.

They do not care about minority welfare or rights beyond their solutions on how to address any given injustice they can think of. Whether it be by making society respect the establishment of different racial communities again solely to provide financail welfare to people on the basis of race, or rules that say they’re free to discriminate against groups of people in the name of hiring and defending others. They care only about using those struggles to give the state more power over not just people, but groups, and even how communities are defined. Right down to trying to demand biological sex be marginalized in importance of terms like gender solely because less than .4% of the human population claims to not be defined by the biological sex/gender binary.

So the only way to defeat them is to address the problems in a way that route and solve them, while you still have power and the means by which to solve them the proper way. For if you don’t, the Marxist village idiots will.