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tellthemeerkatsitsfine · 1 year

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So, I was thinking today of how annoying it is that I recently re-listened to what used to be one of my favourite songs and found it’s chock full of racist dogwhistles. I loved this one as a teenager and in my early twenties – I think I vaguely knew at the time that it was a bit edgy, that in order to enjoy it I had to overlook some less-than-ideal undertones, but only vaguely. I heard it recently, and… yeah, it’s pretty much a Confederate anthem. That’s the whole message.

(Look, I don’t want to link to the song or anything, but I do want to clarify that the dogwhistles I missed were things like the lines “It’s a certain kind of living, it’s a certain kind of style”, put too close to the line “This one’s for the South”. Not… really explicitly racist stuff. I wasn’t listening to the Toby Keith song that describes lynchings and then says they’re a good thing or anything, I promise I have always hated Toby Keith.)

Most of the music I like best is country and/or folk. Musically, those are very similar. There is so much overlap that there are lots of songs that can’t be categorized easily as one or the other, and just get labelled as “country/folk”. There are debates every year about whether certain bands that get invited to folk festivals belong there – ie. rock acts that might have a vaguely hippie-ish feel, and may or may not therefore cross over with folk enough to justify their invitation. But I have never seen anyone suggest that any country band – even the most purely country band, that isn’t country/folk but is just country – doesn’t belong at a folk festival. They’re crossover genres, country and folk. They both belong where the other does.

Most of my folk music is Canadian, and most of my country music is American (many exceptions, of course, if you think all country music is American then please look up great Canadians like Ian Tyson, Corb Lund, The Divorcees, and Fred Eaglesmith). Folk is a leftie genre; it can pretty well always be assumed to be left-wing, unless proven otherwise in some strange exception to the rule. Folk music has its roots among the hippies and the activists. Country music, on the other hand, needs to be assumed to be right-wing until proven otherwise. Sometimes I forget this, because I’m so used to so much of my music coming from hippie folk festivals, so when I get into something new, I forget to stop and check if it might be, for example, a thinly veiled Confederate anthem (it’s Not Everybody Likes Us by Hank III, grandson of Hank Williams Sr., that’s the song I used to really like, it’s pretty bad).

So, thinking about that got me thinking of my favourite country artists/albums/songs that clearly break this mold. Not just ones that might be all right, but ones that are explicitly left-wing. And not just vaguely country-like folk songs, but ones that are very clearly and specifically in the country genre. So I’ve made a list.

Top Five Favourite Left-Wing Country Music Albums:

James McMurtry – Just Us Kids (2008)

Okay, this album isn’t entirely political. But enough of it is to count, I think. There’s a song called The Governor, about the importance of boating regulations, and I respect anyone who gets that specific in their political protest songs. I’m making it sound worse than it is – it’s also about a fisherman who died due to unenforced regulations and the way bribery in the justice system let rich people get away with it.

Fire Line Road is about having compassion for addicts. Ruins of the Realm is pretty well what it sounds like, about America falling apart and the pro-Confederacy movement destroying everything.

I think my favourite explicitly political song on there is Cheney’s Toy, partly because it’s just a really good song, but also because I have a soft spot for specifically anti-George Bush protest stuff. It seemed like such a simpler time back then, when that was the prevailing political movement in America. And I don’t want to get too nostalgic for it; I hate when people say having Trump for comparison has made it clear that really, George Bush was no problem, he’s just a silly old man who paints pictures. That sort of framing seems rather disrespectful to the many, many Americans, Iraqis, and people of other nationalities who died in Bush’s war. But still. It did feel simpler. Being a pacifist at the beginning of the Iraq war felt like such a clear, sensible, coherent, political position, as compared to today, when the only reasonable political stance is “Fucking hell it’s all fucked and we need to burn it all down!” I genuinely don’t know how much of this sense I have is because I was a teenager then, watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report every night, seeing the world through younger and clearer eyes; versus how much is because the world is genuinely more fucked up now than it was then. I suspect it’s a bit of both.

Anyway, I do like a political song that gets specific instead of just a general “good things are good, bad things are bad” message. And a song with the lyrics: “Come on, show them what you’re made of/You’re no longer daddy’s boy/You’re the man that they’re all afraid of/But you’re only Cheney’s Toy” is really quite specific. I think it’s quite clear what they think about George Bush, specifically, as a person.

Having said all that, my favourite song off this album is You’d A Thought (Leonard Cohen Must Die), which can only be considered political in the vaguest possible terms. It’s still good, though. “It’s not that I’m not threatened/It’s just that I’m not surprised/Good for the gander/Said the old folks but they lied” are lyrics that stay stuck in my head all day after I hear them. And those lines certainly can’t be called apolitical, even if they’re not as explicitly political as some.

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Two Cow Garage – Brand New Flag (2016)

2016/2017 were big years for American political albums, for extremely obvious reasons. Two Cow Garage let everyone know where they stand with this one. This Little Light is a song about a man realizing he’d been lied to by religion (invoking the song This Little Light of Mine that I sang in Sunday school as a child) when he was robbed at gunpoint and came away with PTSD. I’d argue that this one is an explicitly political song, because religion is so deeply and inherently political. Taking lines from a Sunday school song and using them in a horror-genre song about near-murder definitely counts as a political act.

They do get more overtly political than that, though. Let the Boys Be Girls is a song about taxpayer-funded farm subsidies. Just kidding, it’s about the struggle to exercise our inalienable right to be who we want even in an oppressive system. For some reason it just struck me as hilarious to imagine as song titled “Let the Boys Be Girls” that’s about farm subsidies. My music collection does actually contain multiple songs about farm subsidies, it’s rather common topic in country music, but none of them are on this album.

Anyway, as I wrote this post I realized I hadn’t Let the Boys Be Girls in a while so maybe it’s not as clearly political as I’m remembering. So I’ve just played the song, heard the lines, “And then we found out God was a knock knock joke/And when we answered the door, there was nobody home/Aren’t you glad I didn’t tell you the nonsense they fed me, all about forbidden fruit?/And then they sent us off to schools, and factories, and wars/Teach us it’s okay to die, as long as we’re poor/And then you tell me not to tread on you/In the land of the free and the home of the depraved” – and yep, I think it’s fair to call this one political. Maybe a tiny bit teenage rebel-style edgelord-y, but with an entirely sound message of unlearning bullshit you were taught in your youth. Sometimes, the world could use a few more anti-oppressive teenage rebel-style edgelords. It’s better than the other kind of edgelord.

A few other songs on this album cover political stuff. A Lullaby of Sorts is about the failures of the mental health treatment system for people with severe problems. The title track Brand New Flag is another one for people who are left out by the rhetoric around patriotism and religion.

My favourite explicitly political song on this album is History Now. A song for the Greta Tunebergs, about not ignoring crises because they’re hard to tackle. Not just about the environment, though; they namecheck school shootings and a few other things. “Every single song on your radio, playing soft and low/Says baby, don’t you worry about the things you can’t control/But I am fucking worried/Because we were all left in control/And we are all that is in control/What if it is up to us?/I know it’s difficult to think about it now/What if it is up to us to figure out how the future all turns out?/It’s history now.” The world could always use more songs like that.

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Drive-By Truckers – American Band (2016)

This is the first purely political album on this list, nearly every song on it is explicitly political. The album art is an American flag lowered to half mast. The release date is September 30th, 2016. That still gets to me. They wrote this album to try to capture the darkness they felt their country was falling into, and they wrote it at a time when most people were still pretty sure Donald Trump would lose the general election. Things were this bad even before Donald Trump won. This album is so fucking dark, and just after it came out everything got wildly worse.

The opening track is called Ramon Casiano, which is the name of a Mexican teenager who was shot to death in 1931 by a man who wasn’t held accountable for it, and that man went on to be significantly involved with the NRA. They wrote that story into their song, and tied it to modern racism, how many people in today’s America still believe shooting people in general, especially if they’re Mexican teenagers, is acceptable (“Killing’s been the bullet’s business/Since back in 1931/Someone killed Ramon Casiano/And Ramon still ain’t dead enough”).

Next up is Darkened Flags on the Cusp of Dawn, a protest song about the way the state of South Carolina left their Confederate flag up at the top of the mast, even while every other flag went to half mast after the white supremacist shooting in a black church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015. That is a fucking horrifying collection of words that I’ve just written, and Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers wrote a song that tried to capture just a little of that horror.

Surrender Under Protest is an old Confederate slogan, as well as the title of the next song. Drive-By Truckers used this right-wing cry in their song to support the people who protest against white supremacist violence, which was on the rise in the Southern United States. This song was specifically in support of the activists who fought to remove Confederate flags from state buildings.

The next song, Guns of Umpqua, is about the 2015 mass shooting at Umpqua Community College. The view of the artist is that he’s not in favour of it.

Filthy and Fried is a brief break from the extreme darkness, though not exactly light. It’s about the way racial and gender roles have changed since the artist was a kid. It supports the general idea that progress is a good thing, but also has compassion for people who struggle to keep up with it. It also has some of my favourite lyrics of the album: “Everyone claims that the times are a changin’ as theirs pass them by/And everyone’s right.”

Next up is Sun Don’t Shine, which is why I had to say that only “nearly” every song on this album is explicitly political. This one is about being sad after what was presumably a breakup, and walking in the rain about it. It’s unusually simple subject matter for Drive-By Truckers, but I really like this song anyway.

Next is Kinky Hypocrite, another fun one that’s a break from the darkness of most of the album, even though it’s also not exactly a positive subject. It’s about how often when “family values” right-wing politicians try to curtail everyone else’s right to have fun in their personal lives, they end up getting caught in sex and/or drug scandals themselves. “It’s a tricky navigation from the wanting to the having/All the needs of a kinky hypocrite/The greatest separators of fools from their money/Party harder than they’d like to admit.”

Ever South gets serious again, but not quite as dark, there’s a surprising amount of hope in this one. It’s a protest song about the massive anti-immigration sentiment and rhetoric sweeping across America, but it’s more of a celebration of immigration than a focus on the hatred for it. It’s about how the singer’s own ancestors came to America with nothing from Ireland ages ago, and were able to make a good life there, even though there was anti-Irish prejudice. It connects that to people who are against immigration in America today.

I realize it’s not ideal when white people compare some historic prejudice against white immigrants to racism today. Irish people have absolutely been the victims of racism and horrifying oppression, but that doesn’t justify that scene in Bend it Like Beckham in which the brown girl told her coach he was too white to understand what it’s like to be called [racial slur that’s an abbreviation of “Pakistani”], and he replied that he does know what it’s like, because he’s Irish. That’s not a great thing to say, and the concept from the song Ever South could have slipped into saying something along those lines, but I think it was executed in a way that did not actually do that.

This song says that so many American white supremacists justify their ideology by claiming they’re fighting the battles of their forefathers, like those who support the Confederacy because it’s their “heritage”. They might do well to remember, Patterson Hood says, that many of those forefathers were also immigrants, and the battles they fought were against people who didn’t want immigrants in America. So you being anti-immigration does not mean your ancestors would be proud of you.

Underlying all of it, though, this song has compassion for everyone who’s struggling to make a life somewhere. They have other songs that clearly condemn the racists and their views, but this one does try to understand them, at least a bit. And to appeal to the part of them that’s struggling to do right by their history, and to ask them to understand that hating newer immigrants than themselves isn’t he way to do it. The reference to graveyards always gets to me, the idea that those ancestors everyone’s trying to honour are right below the ground where they’re fighting, and everyone’s getting it wrong.

“And my Christian Southern brethren will tell you all what for/To keep your heathen ways up in you, and your shoes outside the door/Take your stand for noble causes ‘til you just can’t stand no more/And surrender to some saviour, praise the Lord/But despite our best intentions, it pains me to report/We keep swinging for the fences, coming up a little short/We sure can get it wrong, for someone so devout/I hear you whistling past the graveyard, looking down/Ever Southern in my carriage, ever Southern in my stance/In the Irish of my complexion, in the Scottish in my dance/In the way I bang my head against my daily circumstance/Let this blue-eyed Southern devil take you out upon the prowl/With decadence and charm we’ll take it into town/Tell you stories of our fathers and the glories of our house/Always told a little slower, ever south.”

Next song is What It Means, and that’s the flagship song of the album. It’s about the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager who was murdered by a cop. That cop shot him in the back while he was running away, in Fergeson, Missouri, in 2014. I remember this happening. I know how massively ignorant it is for me to say this, given that I was 23 years old at the time, but it was the first time that I became aware of the horrifying epidemic of police violence against black people in the States (and then I quickly learned that Canada likes to call it an American problem, but it happens here all the time too). Shootings like this happened long before this one, but this one was the first one in my lifetime that ignited mass protests, first in Fergeson and then in solidarity across the States and into Canada. It was huge, entire cities were shut down by rightfully furious protesters.

At this point, I should mention that the band Drive-By Truckers is made up of people from both Georgia and Alabama. A huge proportion of their fans are from there too. They are white male country singers from the Southern United States, singing mainly for audience of white male country music fans from the Southern United States, and before this album, they didn’t make much political music.

When they released the song What It Means, there was a huge backlash, of people who’d loved them for years accusing them of being anti-cop, anti-white racists. They lost a huge number of fans – this wasn’t some controversy that Drive-By Truckers manufactured so they could benefit from the attention. They didn’t get nearly enough mainstream attention to make up for how much of their core fanbase they lost, and they must have known that would happen. They wrote and released this song anyway.

I remember at the time that there was a lot of “both sides” rhetoric, because in some cases the protests were violent (justifiably, in my opinion, but I also know it’s easy for me to say that because no one burned or looted anything in my city), they shut things down, they caused problems. So even people who weren’t straight-up Confederate sympathizers said things like of course racism and violence in policing is a problem, but so are these protests, so both sides just need to listen to each other and come to and understanding. Which is, of course, bullshit, given that one side has been dominating the conversation for centuries, and the other side had to burn shit down just to be heard.

Anyway, the first couple of verses of What It Means suggests that this song might be going in the direction, encouraging “healthy dialogue” on “both sides” to find points where they agree and come to a peaceful resolution: “He was running down the street when they shot him in his tracks/About the only thing agreed upon is he ain’t coming back/There won’t be any trial so the air it won't be cleared/There’s just two sides calling names out of anger, out of fear.” It sounds like it might be saying that. And then they hit you with the next lines: “If you say it wasn’t racial when they shot him in his tracks/I guess that means that you ain’t black, it means that you ain’t black/I mean Barack Obama won, and you can choose where to eat/But you don’t see too many white kids lying bleeding on the street.” And that would be the part where huge swaths of their white Southern fans lost their minds. Because they make it very fucking clear that they are putting the blame on one side and not the other.

They continue to make this chillingly clear throughout the song: “In some town in Missouri/But it could be anywhere/It could be right here on Ruth Street/In fact, it's happened here/And it happened where you're sitting/Wherever that might be/And it happened last weekend/And it will happen again next week.”

They then get into straight-up racial sociological theory, a level of it that one doesn’t normally see in a country song: “Then I guess there was protesting, and some looting in some stores/And someone was reminded that they ain’t called colored folks no more/I mean we try to be politically correct when we call names/But what's the point of post-racial/When old prejudice remains?” The guy who wrote that line has read some books on this subject.

They then call out George Zimmerman, who murdered black teenager Trayvon Martin in 2012, and not only was not convicted due to Florida’s horrific Stand Your Ground law, but wasn’t even put on any sort of registry that stopped him from buying more guns, which he bragged about on social media after he did legally buy a gun, and was then arrested for domestic violence: “And that guy who killed that kid, down in Florida, standing ground/Is free to beat up on his girlfriend, and wave his brand-new gun around/While some kid is dead and buried, and laying in the ground/With a pocket full of skittles.”

I’ve already quoted most of the song anyway, so I may as well quote my favourite part, which is the ending, that always sends chills down my spine: “And we’re standing on the precipice of prejudice and fear/We trust science just as long as it tells us what we want to hear/We want our truths all fair and balanced as long as our notions lie within it/There’s no sunlight in our asses and our heads are stuck up in it/And our heroes may be rapists who watch us while we dream/But don’t look to me for answers ‘cause I don't know what it means.” My instinct is to make a joke about this because it’s so sincere, but I am going to resist that, and say that’s genuinely powerful. One time in 2017, I stood in an arena and watched a guy who’s sexually assaulted multiple teenage girls receive an award for his outstanding contributions to our sport, and it was so wrong that I didn’t even have the energy to be angry, I just felt helpless and confused, and the words “Our heroes may be rapists, who watch us while we dream, but don’t look to me for answers ‘cause I don’t know what it means” echoed in my head, and they could not have captured that sentiment better.

Okay, only a couple more songs on this album. Once They Banned Imagine is about the American domestic reaction to 9/11. It compares it to McCarthyism, saying that America had been a relatively free country since the Red Scare days, until 9/11 happened, and then they were right back to those levels of oppression. They cracked down on free speech and on all kinds of autonomy, justifying it by saying these measures were needed to protect the country from terrorism. The example Drive-By Truckers used to symbolize all this was that the government banned radio stations from playing John Lennon’s song Imagine, with the idea that the song would stoke anti-war sentiment and undermine public support for the invasion of Afghanistan.

Again, Drive-By Truckers invoked a slogan from the “other side”. There’s that famous question that people got asked during the McCarthyism era: “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party of the United States?” This song’s lyrics turned that into: “Are you now or have you ever been in cahoots with the notion that people can change?/When history happens again if you do or you did you'll be blamed/From baseless inquiry to no knocking entry becoming the law of the land/To half cocked excuses for bullet abuse regarding anything browner than tan/‘Cause once they banned Imagine it became the same old war it’s always been/Once they banned Imagine it became the war it was when we were kids.”

And finally, the last song on the album is called Baggage, which is about Robin Williams’ suicide. Quite an apolitical song compared to most of this album, even though obviously it’s partly about the way society fails people with mental health problems, and that’s very much a political issue.

“Some asswipe on TV said that you should be ashamed, for your cowardice in facing down your flaws/I’m not sure what makes me sadder: all that talent up in flames, or the lack of understanding that it wrought/Tossing off the baggage that is pulling down on me, toss it in the river and be free/Move so close together, only inches separate you from all the darkness in me/I’m not seeking explanations for this thing that you did, a thin line separates the laughter from despair/And I’ve had my own depression since I was just a kid, but been blessed with the means to repair.”

Drive-By Truckers – The Unraveling (2020)

Normally when I do album lists, I try not to have more than one by the same artist. But both of these Drive-By Truckers albums were so good that I couldn’t leave one out. This was the next album they made after American Band, and it’s pretty much a continuation.

The liner notes for this album are: “21st Century USA, tanks rolling through the streets of Washington DC as our utopian dreams give way to a dystopian now. Nearly a generation since the towers fell and the shit came down. William Gibson’s dark visions have come to pass, everyone is connected and more disconnected than ever. Our children have lock-down drills.” The track titles for this album are: Rosemary with a Bible and a Gun, Armageddon’s Back in Town, Slow Ride Argument, Thoughts and Prayers, 21st Century USA, Heroin Again, Babies in Cages, Grievance Merchants, Awaiting Resurrection. I don’t think that collection of words could possibly be anything but an explicitly political album about Donald Trump’s America.

Okay, I won’t go through every song this time. Most of the are about what you’d expect. Babies in Cages, for example, is about farm subsidies. Just kidding. It’s about babies in cages, and the view of the artist, controversially, is that he’s not in favour of it. Genuinely though, it has some of the most viscerally angry lyrics I’ve ever heard: “I’m sorry to my children, I’m sorry what they see/I’m sorry for the world that they/ll inherit from me/Babies in cages/And are we so divided that we can’t at least agree/This ain’t the country that our granddads fought for us to be/Babies in cages/Surf’s up in the cities where the next wars will be fought/I’m sorry we've forgotten every word that we’ve been taught/Babies in cages/I bang my head against it, smash guitars, and scream and shout/Standing on the beach, watching the tide go out/Babies in cages.” So anti, then. He is definitely anti-babies in cages.

21st Century USA is about people working shitty jobs for not enough money in a society that doesn’t care about them, and justifying their misery with the idea that it will all be rewarded by God someday: “They say we have to hang on just a little bit longer, and a savior will come our way/We’ll know him by the neon sign, and the opulence he maintains/If Amazon can deliver salvation, I’ll order it up on my phone/With Big Brother a-watching me always, why must I always feel so alone?/Men working hard for not enough at best/Women working just as hard for less/They get together late at night at bars/And bang each other like crashing cars.”

Grievance Merchants is one of the only two songs written by Mike Cooley on this album, with the others written by Patterson Hood. And you can see that change reflected in its style, slower and slightly more musically experimental and thematically ambitious. It’s about the way white supremacy and misogyny are sold to young white men by powerful groups that make huge amounts of money off that game. It would be so easy to go wrong when writing a song that’s basically sympathetic to incels and neo-Nazis, but I think Mike Cooley can do it right if anyone can. I think he did.

“When money and respect seemed to elude him, being white alone don't make the ladies swoon/There’s no shortage when it comes to hearing voices, telling him it’s him that’s done unto/Say his trouble with the ladies can’t be his fault, after all he’s what it’s natural they should want/There’s just outside voices turning them against him, a conspiracy to water down his blood.”

There is an essential sympathy for the individual boys who get caught by this, referring to them as “marks” by grifters. But Mike Cooley balances out that sympathy by placing the blame squarely on those grifters and expressing amazement that they can sleep at night: “Giving boys targets for their grievance, and then mocking those who bear the pain they cause/It takes a certain special kind of someone to cash the check it brings and sleep at all/The demonizing of the troubled mind, with all the usual suspects on the scene/Merchants selling young men reclamation, merchants selling old men back their dreams.” The end gets echo-y in a sort of experimental way, fantasizing about retribution for the grievance merchants: “May the price of freedom finally be their own/May our thoughts and prayers keep them company/As they wallow in their helplessness alone.” I think the song needed to end that way, making it clear that despite the sympathy, this is where it should be going. I really love this song.

Thoughts and Prayers is also what it sounds like. It tells the story of a school shooting in horrifying detail, mentioning the smell of the gun powder, children lined up on a playground with their hands in the air. I love some of the lyrics in this one, fantasizing about a day when all the people who let this happen will finally be held to account: “The Flat Earthist realized, as he flew through the skies, the curve of the horizon as he fell/He saw the world was round just before he hit the ground, and gravity called out to close the deal/When my children’s eyes look at me and they ask me to explain, it hurts me that I have to look away/The powers that be are in for shame and comeuppance, when Generation Lockdown has their day/They’ll throw the bums all out, and drain the swamp for real/Perp walk them down the Capitol steps and show them how it feels/Tramp the dirt down, Jesus, you can pray the rod they’ll spare/Stick it up your ass with your useless thoughts and prayers.” This album was released in January 2020, when Generation Lockdown meant kids who grew up doing lockdown drills in preparation for school shooters, and not anything else.

Awaiting Resurrection closes the album so perfectly that it threads it into being a concept album, combining themes of the earlier songs, about the USA being full of people ignoring all the horrors around them because they’re convinced that their God will come back and reward them for it. “Guns and ammunition, babies in the cage/They say nothing can be done, but they tell us how they prayed/In the end we’re just standing, watching greatness fade/Into darkness, awaiting resurrection.”

I think my favourite song on the album is Armageddon’s Back in Town, which is more personal than most songs on this album, even though it has underlying political meanings too. It’s just about figuring things out and getting through life even when it’s hard, and taking responsibility when you have to. It’s just a really good song, I love all of it. Every bit’s a good bit.

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Jason Isbell – The Nashville Sound (2017)

Jason Isbell used to be a singer in Drive-By Truckers, but he left them years ago and has had an excellent solo career ever since. Like Drive-By Truckers, he didn’t do a lot of political music before 2016 (a fair bit of Drive-By Truckers’ pre-2016 apolitical music was done with Jason Isbell). But like his former band members, he looked at America in 2016, and decided he needed to at least mention it. I mean, you can’t just not mention it. If you enjoy an artist who makes mainly apolitical art, and you’d like to know what their political views are, check out whatever they made in 2016/2017/2018. Everyone made something at least a bit political at that time, no one could just ignore it.

This whole album isn’t political, as most of Jason Isbell’s music isn’t, but a few songs definitely are. There’s one called White Man’s World, which is what it sounds like (not about farm subsidies). It’s about the blood of racial minorities on which America was built, and how he had to confront his own white privilege in the context of that. Ends on a surprisingly hopeful note, though: “There’s no such thing as someone else’s war/Your creature comforts aren’t the only things worth fighting for/You’re still breathing, it’s not too late/We're all carrying one big burden, sharing one fate/I’m a white man living in a white man’s nation/I think the man upstairs must’a took a vacation/I still have faith, but I don't know why/Maybe it’s the fire in my little girl’s eyes.”

My favourite song off the album is Hope the High Road, and it’s one of my favourite songs in general. It was written in support of the anti-Trump protesters, about how horrifically demoralizing it must be for them to feel like they’re in the minority when they see all the hatred around them, so people need to tell them that we’re on their side and we think their battle is worth fighting.

“Last year was a son of a bitch, for nearly everyone we know/But I ain’t fighting with you down in a ditch, I’ll meet you up here on the road/I know you’re tired, and you ain’t sleeping well/Uninspired, and likely mad as hell/But wherever you are, I hope the high road leads you home again/To a world you want to live in/We’ll ride the ship down, dumping buckets overboard/There can’t be more of them than us, there can't be more.”

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Well, there you go. That’s five albums. But because two of them were by the same band and one was by a former singer in that band, I want to add at least one more. Special mention goes to Jesus Was a Capricorn (1972) by Kris Kristofferson, greatest country music singer/songwriter of all time, best of The Highwaymen because he was the one who wrote many of the songs that got famous when sung by other Highwaymen (Sunday Morning Coming Down, Me and Bobby McGee), and hero to many American conservative Christians, who wrote the words: “Jesus was a Capricorn, he ate organic foods/He believed in love and peace, and never wore no shoes/Long hair, beard, and sandals, and a funky bunch of friends/I reckon if he came back now they’d nail him up again/’Cause everybody’s got to have somebody to look down on/Who they can feel better than at any time they please/Someone doing something dirty decent folks can frown on/If you can’t find nobody else, then help yourself to me.” If any country music fans are protesting drag events in the name of Christianity this weekend, just know that Kris Kristofferson hates you.

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Now. I have spent a lot of time writing this, because I am really, really desperate for a distraction this weekend. But now that I have written it, I would very much like to never hear another word about how country music is just a bunch of uneducated rednecks singing about their tailgate parties and having sex in corn fields while praising the Lord. First of all, most of the people who sing that sort of thing aren’t rednecks, they’re multi-millionaires in plastic cowboy hats. Secondly, I’m sorry that that’s all over the radio, but most music genres are not best represented by the shit that’s on the radio. Some of the lyrics I’ve transcribed here are genuine poetry. I’m also sorry about that one song I liked that turned out to be basically an ode to the neo-Confederacy movement, sometimes you do stumble over those in the country genre, I will check for them more thoroughly in the future.

By the way, Corb Lund has a good song called Cows Around, about the difficulty of running a dairy farm in a failing economy, and the importance of the government offering farm subsidies to offset that.

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sapphos-catpanions · 2 years

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the classic hero’s journey of confederacy of dunces is undertaken not by ignatius j reilly, but by his mother. irene reilly is the hero of the story. here is why.

1. ordinary world (in which we meet our hero): irene is a widow who lives in a broken down house in a shabby new orleans suburb, with her grown unemployable son, a hostile neighbor, and no friends.

2. call to adventure (in which an adventure starts): irene, drunk and distracted by her son’s behavior in the back seat, crashes her ancient plymouth into a building, causing $2000 in damage. her meager widow’s pension is not nearly enough to cover it.

3. refusal of the call (in which the hero digs in their feet): irene encourages her son to look for work to help pay the damages. she reminds him of how competent he is (or should be, after almost 8 years of college and post grad studies).

4. meeting the mentor (in which the hero acquires a personal trainer): irene meets santa battaglia, the raucous, bawdy, plainspoken italian great aunt of patrolman angelo mancuso. santa can see the miserable circumstances of irene’s life, and she begins to invite irene out to bowling with angelo and herself. “we gotta get you out that house, girl.”

5. crossing the first threshold (in which the hero enters the other world in earnest): irene puts a can of soup on the stove for her son before readying herself for a night out with santa and angelo. she tells her son she will probably end up getting a chili dog for dinner at the bowling alley, enraging him.

6. tests, allies, enemies (in which the hero faces new challenges and gets a squad): ignatius is fired from his first position at a clothing company, for attempting to incite a workers’ riot. he takes a new job pushing a weenie wagon downtown, to his mother’s embarrassment. irene deepens her friendship with santa and angelo, over ignatius’s constant protests. through santa, she meets claude robichaux, a kind and rather dimwitted old man with a railroad pension who would really like to get to know her better.

7. approach to the inmost cave (in which the hero gets closer to his goal): irene’s continuous clashes with her son create mounting chaos in their household, and her neighbor miss annie warns them time and again that she will have them evicted for disturbing the peace. she drinks too much in front of claude and breaks down in tears over the ruin her life has become.

8. ordeal (in which the hero faces her biggest test thus far): ignatius gets accidentally caught in a madcap scene at a seedy bar, in which the owner is arrested by the undercover patrolman mancuso for distributing pornographic pictures of herself to high school boys. the atmosphere overwhelms ignatius and, still in his weenie wagon uniform, he faints in the street. a photo of his obese, unconscious body in his white apron is on the front page of the newspaper, sending his mother into paroxysms of shame.

9. reward/seizing the sword (in which the hero sees the light at the end of the tunnel): irene is in the hospital with her son, who is being treated for shock. she tells him that his cruelty, manipulation, and attempts to isolate her will no longer be tolerated. she sees deep into the heart of his inner character as only a mother can, and she tells her son exactly what she sees. she is going to say yes when claude proposes to her, because at least he can be kind to a person, and she deserves some comfort, security, and to be treated decently in her old age.

10. the road back (in which the light at the end of the tunnel might be a little further than the hero thought): irene and ignatius are back at home. one of his old bosses is on the front lawn, asking to speak to ignatius about a fraud case. he is talking about a a $500,000 lawsuit and saying it may be all ignatius’s fault (he is correct). what is irene going to do?

11. resurrection (the last test is met): santa intervenes. “hasn’t everything i’ve ever told you worked out for the best? listen to santa now.” santa is going to call one of her contacts in the psychiatric asylum, and they’re going to come take ignatius away. irene braces herself to do the unthinkable: she says goodbye to her son, kisses his cheek, and disappears into the night, making her way to santa’s house.

12. return with the elixir (in which our hero has a triumphant homecoming): john kennedy toole denies us this, actually. ignatius absconds in his ex-girlfriend’s car, evading the psych ward goons, and that’s the end. we probably don’t need it, though. we know what the future holds for irene, and we are just so proud of her.

#a confederacy of dunces

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catsnuggler · 10 months

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I carry some distrust of the word "progress" these days. Perhaps I should have had distrust of it all my life. There's nothing inherently radical about the word. It just indicates that some project has moved forward to some degree, but it says nothing of the character of the project, or if a previous state of affairs was preferable. I feel similarly about the word "advanced".

Pre-contact, women in the Americas generally had things pretty good, in terms of social treatment. Let's take the Haudenosaunee Confederacy as a reference. The Great Law of Peace has been instituted, to this day, for about 1,000 years; by 1492, keeping in mind Europeans arrived in North America some time after that, it still would have been centuries old. As far as I understand, only men could serve as delegates at the council fires, but they were strictly for intra-confederacy and international affairs. Clan mothers, however, held sway over domestic politics, and at a practical level, the men had to listen to the women. It's not equality the way we would think of it, but for certain, it wasn't so oppressive. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy still exists, but it has diminished under colonialism. Speaking of - well, do I really have to explain how, by contrast, European women were treated? We all know European societies are and were awful to women (at least after Roman conquest of about half of Europe, followed by conquests of the Western Roman territories by Germanic peoples that, through military service to, and militant opposition against, Rome, adopted more Roman attitudes toward women).

See, what I'm getting at is, going along with the women's rights example, we tend to think of it as progress, but for some societies, it's tradition. It's good, for certain, for women to be free, I make no argument to the contrary. But if we think less of whether anyone is actually freed from political servitude or economic destitution, and more about whether something has simply moved from a previous state of being, then what else might we praise as "progress", for the sake of progress, alone? Although the "white-only" population in the US is steadily going down, it went higher and higher and higher for a long time - was the expansion of the "white race" in the US "progress"? It was described as such by those in favor of colonialism, of land theft, imperialism, and slavery. I suppose they were right about it being "progress" - at the expense of millions of innocent people, who were forcibly "regressed" by colonial violence. It was "progress", but it wasn't good; it wasn't liberatory. These whites took land; committed pogroms against racially marginalized and colonized people; inhibited land stewardship practices: laid down infrastructure and agriculture in inappropriate places, which led to events like The Dust Bowl; became cops, soldiers, Klansmen, Pinkertons; and have ruined the place.

Isn't it "progress" when a poor neighborhood is gentrified and evicted so some profitable boho bougie shops can take root? Those "nasty" poors removed, so a new, profitable venture can prosper where they once lived. But that so-called "progress" ruined lives, didn't it? Were those boho bougie shops worth it? No. Not even if you call it "progress".

All this said, I'm just a confused white guy whose ancestors probably owned slaves, wracking my head trying to figure out what the way is. Some things can never go back, and some things shouldn't. The Salish peoples didn't have capitalism, although there were still rich and poor; but they had potlaches, frequent redistributions of wealth. The potlaches good, at least. There was also slavery, though, and slave raids. Then the Americans came and said "no" to that - and rightfully so, because slavery is the prime example of political domination and economic deprivation. That said, it's been about 170 years, I don't think any of them want to enslave anybody anymore. The past isn't inherently evil - and whose past? The future isn't inherently good - and whose future?

I've been influenced by the words of Sakej Ward and Lula June Johnston. Great, radical people. Landback, anti-capitalist, feminism, whole nine yards. But what struck me is their conviction that part of the problem is Europeans went through the precursors of what their own peoples later went through; that we once had women healers, we once valued the land as relation, we once fought and died rather than live under empires; that, after we were conquered by other Europeans, we fundamentally changed, and this state of affairs lasted so long we couldn't even imagine other ways.

For Lyla June, this is a personal struggle, as she is not just Diné and Cheyenne, but also European. I'm not multiracial, and I'm sure I can't even imagine the pain she's felt, both from how people treat her and her people today, and from reconciling the trauma of being a descendant of the colonizer and the colonized. Yet... she once dreaded and hated the other side of her family history, until she said, they spoke to her one day, telling her their love, their traditions, their songs - and where it all went wrong. She brought up the witch trials, in particular. Women, countless women, burned at the stake. Mothers, daughters, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, cousins - human beings. Men were forced to watch, helpless, as the women they loved were burned to death in front of them. The surviving women were terrified into submission to the men, and the men were broken into submission to the church and the state. It was like our very souls were taken away.

Per Stolen Anarchy, by Twin Rabbit, socialism, communism, and anarchism are largely derived from European fascination with societies like the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, and the desire to emulate them - *coughcough* in, *ahem*, proper, civilized, European fashion, of course. *wipes monocle*. Yeah, definitely a sense of cultural elitism there, with the whole "you have a good idea, but we can do it better because we're white" spiel, like you see with so many so-called "Authentic Korean BBQ" restaurants ran by white Karen's and Jeff's in the suburbs. It seems to me that we feeel this impulse to imitate in such a fashion because we know, deep down, we're missing the socioeconomic sense of real community, with each other and with nature; nature being everything, including ourselves; that was destroyed so long ago. We don't know how to get that back, so we see someone else doing that, and immediately try to copy them. Understandable. Wrong, definitely wrong, but understandable. We need to find that animist ethic again, and renew it, and we need the kind of community we have so long been without... But that doesn't mean we can Play Indian. We can't. That's not a solution, that's theft. We won't ever be free to discover our solution, though, until they're free, and in the end, I think socialism, communism, anarchism, are all completely and utterly meaningless if we don't give the land back. We won't be free to heal ourselves until they are free to be themselves.

Anyway, power vs freedom >>>>>>> "tradition vs progress"; landback; learn European history with an eye for the common people, but don't fall for Nazi Aryan Race bullshit; slavery is bad, cultural elitism is bad, burning women is bad. Sound about right?

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rebelsofshield · 1 year

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Star Wars: The Bad Batch: “Spoils of War” and “Ruins of War”- Review

The long delayed second season of Star Wars: The Bad Batch arrives in a fun if mostly unremarkable premiere.

Months have passed since the destruction of Tipoca City and the experimental clones of Task Force 99 are believed dead by the Empire. In reality, Hunter, Omega, Wrecker, Echo, and Tech have continued to eek out a living as mercenaries and guns for hire. However, one job forces the team back into the galactic spotlight and may make them reconsider their place in an ever changing galaxy.

It’s been well over a year since we last saw an episode of Star Wars: The Bad Batch. In the the marathon of Star Wars content that premiered in 2022, it was easy to forget about this plucky little animated show about super soldiers living in the shadow of the Empire. It also didn’t really help matters that The Bad Batch never really found its footing in its first season. While it was gorgeously animated and often featured action packed plots, The Bad Batch themselves never really felt like they grew as characters beyond their basic personality traits. After a finale that returned the series to its already stale status quo, it was hard to put the return of the Batch at the top of one’s most anticipated lists.

The series’ two-part sophomore season premiere at least looks to address some of these concerns while keeping up with the show’s signature fast paced storytelling. While the premiere begins routinely enough with the Batch taking another job from their surly Trandoshan employer, Cid, writer and showrunner Jennifer Corbett makes some early moves to shake up the formula. The most obvious and appreciated of these swerves is pairing Omega off with the two brothers that she has had the least amount of interaction with, Echo and Tech.

Echo and Tech have been a weak point in the Batch’s ensemble for quite sometime. The series quickly established Wrecker and Hunter’s connections with their little sister Omega that played off their exaggerated personalities and character designs. In contrast, Tech and Echo with their comparatively similar power sets often felt like the forgotten members of the squad. Always present, but never really contributing to the narrative in a substantive or emotional way.

Having “Spoils of War” and “Ruins of War” purposefully partner Omega with these two less developed brothers already helps set this outing apart from last season despite its comparatively simple episodic story. This not only allows us to explore different character dynamics but ends up revealing more about Tech and Echo in the process.

Echo, the only member of the Batch who served among the regular troopers of the Grand Army of the Republic, is the most duty bound of his brothers. While Hunter and the rest are content surviving day to day and looking out for one another, Echo sees the growing power of the Empire and wants to fight back. Corbett and “Ruins” episodic writer Gina Lucita Monreal showcase how this focus on duty ends up making Echo the most emotionally inaccessible to Omega even if she shares his morals. While Echo is likely never going to win a big brother of the year award, allowing him and Omega to share a scene and hash out their own sibling relationship is one of the most appreciated moves of the premiere.

It’s similarly effective to have Tech be forced out of his comfort zone. “Ruins of War” in particular establishes that while Tech may be a genius with science and, well, tech, he’s lacking in his understanding of history or politics. The immediate fallout of The Clone Wars has been one of the best ongoing themes of The Bad Batch and it’s refreshing to not only see the rise of the Empire but also what remains of the Confederacy of Independent Systems. And while Tech was never particularly fervent in his dislike of the CIS, placing him in the room with a man who was a citizen of one of their member planets is an effective way to unsettle his footing.

Outside of giving Echo and Tech some much needed narrative breathing room, there just isn’t a whole lot about “Spoils of War” and “Ruins of War” to make note of. The animation is gorgeous as usual and a cliffside set piece is staged in a manner that feels dynamic and well designed, but much of the episodic plot concerning a heist of Count Dooku’s former mansion feels like the show going through the motions. There lacks a genuine feeling of tension in the Batch’s fire fights as they so often outmatch their opponents by a wide margin. Without emotional investment or impressive direction, the blaster fire and explosions start to feel weightless. Across both episodes, Hunter and Wrecker plow through all manner of Imperial forces and without the character moments grounding Echo and Tech’s stories, these set pieces become little more than background noise. When gunships being blasted out of the sky with handheld rocket launchers feels like a business as usual, you know you are in a rut.

There is promise in The Bad Batch’s return though. Hints at further tension between remnants of the clone army and their new Imperial masters continue to be one of the series’ more intriguing plotlines and it’s nice to at least acknowledge that some of the Batch need to grow more as characters. But, we will need to see a bit more from this band of mercenary siblings if they are to break out of the long shadow of their animated predecessors.

Score: B

#Star Wars #The Bad Batch #Star Wars: The Bad Batch #review #reviews

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bfitz2027 · 2 years

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Abraham Lincoln, Friend or Foe? From the Mind of Lucas...

The Civil War in the United States was A battle between the Union (north united states) and Confedracy (south united states) over if slavery should stay or not, “originaly” Abraham lincoln made it about preserving the union BUT changed the reason to slavery when europe was starting to shift towards the Confedracy. The Civil war started in 1861 and ended 5 five years later in 1865 in which the Union had won the war. The Confedracy was in favor of slavery while the Union was not in favor of slavery.

The Emancipation Proclamation was when Enslaved people were finally set free but were received into the army to support the union. They didn't have a choice. The Emancipation Proclamation was only made as a military effort, it freed all the enslaved people in the south(Confederacy) which gave the Union the upper hand and the Confederacy a major loss which made them lose a majority of their army and support.

President Lincoln should not and should be viewed as a hero for emancipating enslaved people because yes he may have freed the slaves,Won the civil war freeing the rest of the slaves and defeat the Confederacy but his main goals weren’t to end slavery. In fact at the beginning of the war he made about perservering the union and only made it about slavery when europe was about to go agasint the union and fight a long the confederacy, and only made the emancipation proclamation to free the slaves in the south and in the north to bring them into the army to fight for the union and give them the upper hand against the confederacy. BUT he did do some good things as well, he gave free black americans the same rights that white people had and gave them free land along with farming space, though he didn't agree with equal pay he still paid the black americans for fighting in the war.

According to source 5, “Lincoln proclaimed that it was his duty to preserve the union.He also declared that he had no intention of ending slavery where it existed,or of ending the fugitive slave law,Europe were considering recognizing the Confederacy and intervening against the Union. If Lincoln declared this a war to free the slaves, European public opinion would overwhelmingly back the North.Some people were critical of the Emancipation Proclamation for only freeing some of the slaves. Others, including the formerly enslaved Frederick Douglass, were jubilant [happy]. Douglass felt that it was the beginning of the end of slavery.”

This explains how Lincoln should and should not be considered a hero because it shows the real reason he did certain things during his time as president and some of the good things he has done during his time as the President of the United states.

At this time in history many black Americans were feeling Scared and angry because Before they were freed by the emancipation proclamation, they were forced to fight for the south which was trying to keep slavery so they were fighting for a cause they didnt believe or what to help with.

This is important because it shows how bad the south treated people of color and how awful it was to live in the south as a person of color. The impact of the Emancipation Proclamation was a decent way to counter the Confederacy using enslaved people in their army. Because it ruined the Confederacy's economy and also decreased their soldier count as a whole.

This is important because it was a good step in giving the union and upper hand over the confederacy.

The Emancipation Proclamation was made with good and bad intentions at the same time because while it freed enslaved people in the south and north hurting the south, it ended up forcing them into the union army without a choice. This was to give the union an upper hand in terms of their military but not all freed black Americans wanted to go into the union's army.

This is important because it showed the true colors of Lincoln but also how it hurt the Confederacy in every way possible.

In Conclusion, Abraham Lincoln can be considered as a Hero and a villain because he has done both good and bad things during his time as president. Including freeing enslaved people in the south, giving black americans rights and the right to own land and farming plots, and most importanly winning the civil war and ending slavery everywhere (including making it igeall). Though this doesn’t mean every single one of the bad things he has done doesn’t matter anymore it should at least not be ignored because without Abraham Lincoln and the support from free black americans in the south slavery might have gone on for much longer than it should have.

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the-unseen-servant · 2 years

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The Imperial States (1 of 2)

A map depicting the continent around the Imperial States.

"42 years ago, the great Leonid Empire, last nation on Ittoril, collapsed, and since then, the many provinces which once made it up have never had good relations. They fought each other in what is considered the latter half of the Turf Wars. The fighting was bitter and ruinous, lasting 33 years, however, in 227 LE, they agreed to a treaty, and for the past 9 years we have been living in relative peace. This treaty, the Treaty of Leona, also solidified those fractured provinces into sovereign nations; they are the Imperial States, and there are seven of them; seven last strongholds of civilization in the otherwise ruined world.

———

The Junta. The rocky wasteland in which the Junta resides is incredibly hostile. Not only is it so sucked of moisture and sunburnt that one can barely stand, but it is also home to the Rolling Storm. Twice yearly, a seasonal sandstorm passes across the desert, and brings with it not just huge vortexes of dust and sand, but also swarms of strange creatures — "ramilqeeda" they are called — scavengers that prey on the unlucky souls whom the storm didn't quite finish off.

As a nation, the Junta is ruled by a military dictatorship, which seized power as the Junta rebelled against the empire — but the Junta was highly militaristic even when it was part of the empire, and it was often the centre of its military development. Its invention of the steam engine allowed it to power all kinds of war machinery, from the powerful Steamcannons to the terrifying Ironsides — but what Junta engineers deem their masterpieces are the Warforged; steam-powered soldiers made of metal and wheels, who still wander the desert to this day.

———

The Reseggian Confederacy. During the battles of the Turf Wars, several of the kingdoms in the south formed an alliance which, at the end of the Turf Wars, was solidified into the Reseggian Confederacy (although it is more commonly known as "Reseggia" or "the Five Kingdoms").

In the centre-west is Milfordshire, a poor kingdom ruled by the venerable Queen Elizabeth Gilbridge. She is rather disliked by her people; Milfordshire is rather poor, not due to a lack of resources, but to the exorbitant consumption and vanity of the royal family. Elizabeth claims she has a "divine right" to her rulership and luxuries; she is one of the few rulers in Reseggia who still believes in Consulate Orthodoxy.

In the north-east is Lernaea, a grimy kingdom ruled by House Lernaean. The Lernaean Family are incredibly secretive, so much so that nobody in Lernaea, besides the palace staff, know the faces of any of them besides King Leon; Leon and Queen Arianna are the only ones ever seen in public, and Arianna is always wearing an opaque, black veil. The family rules in a similarly secretive fashion; people of Lernaea aren't told anything — they never know what the Lernaeans are doing behind their backs.

In the north-west is Hornland, a jungled kingdom ruled by Commander Dahlia of House Hearn. Dahlia is a highly militant leader, and is one of the best military tacticians in Ittoril. She is also disliked by her people, in part because she lacks skill in every part of rulership other than war, and in part because she is a tiefling.

In the south-east is Weyland. Unlike the other kingdoms, Weyland has a majority dwarven population; it is home to the beach dwarves on the south coast and to the hill dwarves further north in the Weyland Hills. It is ruled by Omarkis Jeilsen, a beach dwarf who would rather be clawed by crabs than do anything involving the governing of his own kingdom (so long as the crabs clawed him on a sunny day). He insists on being called "Mark".

Finally, there is Rellica in the south-west, which could be said to be the best place to live in Reseggia (though that is not a high bar to clear). Its ruler is Veronica Reed, who is often given the title "the Songsmith". She is seen as a more down-to-earth ruler than others, for she is a master orator — able to inspire her people to great things. More cynical people would prefer to call her a master propagandist.

The kingdoms of Reseggia still act largely autonomously, each ruled by their own noble houses, but the heads of those five houses (along with other, influential "trade houses") do form the Council of Reseggia, which presides over matters which span the whole confederacy.

———

The Golden Hills. Upon the hills of the north shores of the Meridán ride fields of bountiful grain which are known as "the Golden Hills". Its people are a modest and peaceful race of farmers, whose society is most defined by the monastic order which runs through it. The Monks of Gilding believe in the concept of "Ichor" — lifeblood. They believe that through all people (and even through all objects) circulates a golden blood which gives them life, and through which connects them to the world. When they die, they believe their Ichor is returned to Ittoril to fertilise its land and be circulated again into future generations of life.

The people of the Golden Hills, through spiritual practices, seek to find a connection to their Ichor — a connection to the world — a process known as "gilding". The leader of the Monks of Gilding (and thus, of the Golden Hills) is said to have achieved this connection to the world — to have become fully one with it. They are known only as "the Gilded One". The Gilded One is a kind individual, described as amiable, humorous, and largely carefree. When the imperial troops of the Leonid Empire arrived on the doorstep of the Great Monastery, it's said that the Gilded One greeted them with a joke, and then signed away the Golden Hills on the spot, saying "to fight back; it is no use!".

Since then, the Golden Hills had remained a part of the empire, allowed to keep their way of life on the condition that they provided the empire access to their plentiful grain. When the empire fractured, the Golden Hills still didn't resist the further occupations of the Turf Wars, at least, not until those occupations sought to attack their way of life, in which cases the Golden Hills wouldn’t hesitate to defend themselves with their full power."

This is part 1 of 2. You can find part 2 here.

#fantasy #worldbuilding #ittoril #i originally wrote this as one post and it was far too long #the map doesn't properly convey the sheer scale of the area. the leonid empire was practically the size of a continent #who the fuck calls their kid Dahlia

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k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9 · 8 months

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𝔈𝔶𝔢𝔥𝔞𝔱𝔢𝔤𝔬𝔡 - գգ 𝔐𝔦𝔩𝔢𝔰 𝔒𝔣 𝔅𝔞𝔡 ℜ𝔬𝔞𝔡

#Eyehategod #Confederacy Of Ruined Lives #99 Miles Of Bad Road #Release date:#October 23rd #2000 #Full-length #Genre:#Sludge/Doom Metal #Themes:#Misanthropy #Suffering #Drug abuse #Crime #Poverty #USA

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cathedral-of-misery · 2 years

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#eyehategod #confederacy of ruined lives

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1962dude420-blog · 3 years

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EyeHateGod - Confederacy of Ruined Lives Released: September 19, 2000 Label: Century Media

#September 19 #2000 #EyeHateGod #Confederacy of Ruined Lives

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itttsarkanyokvannak · 4 years

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Eyehategod - Confederacy of Ruined Lives

19 September 2000

#Eyehategod #Confederacy of Ruined Lives #Doom Metal #Sludge Metal #2000

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axxonn84 · 5 years

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EYEHATEGOD: Confederacy of Ruin Lives (2000).

#eyehategod #confederacy of ruined lives #2000 #20's music #music #sludge #sludge metal #music cd #cd collection #cd #compact disc #compact disc collection #personal #vintage

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onlyhurtforaminute · 5 years

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EYEHATEGOD-BLOOD MONEY

#EYEHATEGOD #HEAVY METAL #METAL #SLUDGE #SLUDGE METAL #2000 ALBUMS #CONFEDERACY OF RUINED LIVES

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shatouto · 3 years

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another sequel to @obiwanobi's ex-sith anakin au (here and here), and at this rate… yea. yea we’re gonna have to archive this on ao3 (soon)

anyway here’s 2.8k words of tonal inconsistency

et si les étoiles sont cachées

Obi-Wan barely sleeps a wink through the night. His mind turns and whirls as he battles between second-guessing his decisions regarding the former Sith sleeping in his bed and planning on what to do going forward. Anakin knows how to cloak his own signature well enough, that much Obi-Wan can observe, but he will not stand a chance if Masters such as Yoda or Windu search his presence. And then there is the matter of the elusive Darth Sidious’ death, as well - Obi-Wan can only assume that it would be classified information on the Confederacy side, but even then, the Force only knows what kind of hell would break loose once his body is discovered. It doesn’t help that he could barely pull his hand out of Anakin’s without him frowning in his sleep and stirring. He simply has to stay put, with Anakin’s very likely feverish body pressed up against his side in a bed that is only snugly enough for two.

In meditating all of those scenarios, he forgets to account for the hell that breaks loose in his own quarters upon the return of his apprentice.

“Master, what were you thinking?” Ahsoka hisses, eyes darting from him to the closed door of his bedroom, from where the sound of Anakin’s pacing is obvious. Her hand is still clutching one of her lightsabers, alert.

“He was an injured man who crawled to my doorstep for aid, young one.” Obi-Wan sighs. “Surely you cannot expect me to simply turn my back to him, can you? That wouldn’t be the Jedi way.”

“Yes, but…” Ahsoka pinches her own forehead, shoulders dropping in a harsh exhale. “He’s a Sith lord, Master. We’ve all seen what he has done and can do!”

“He was a Sith, Ahsoka. Leading him back to the Light means one less darksider for the galaxy, and no more lives lost. I have always been trying to accomplish this.” Obi-Wan realizes, all of a sudden, that he is trying to convince himself rather than his apprentice. “He came in a moment of need, with nowhere else to go. He no longer wants to remain with the Dark.”

Ahsoka blinks. “And you just trust him? Just like that?”

Well, Obi-Wan wants to say, you didn’t see him on his knees in the hallway with blood covering half his body and bruises the other half; and you didn’t see him hang his head as you took his lightsaber and then his ruined arm off before setting him to bed. Then again, nobody would ever see that: the exact devastation and distress the once-Darth Vader was in last night, at his door. “That is the case, Ahsoka. I would like to trust him, for the time being.”

Ahsoka grumbles something about tried to kill me earlier, didn’t you see that? which of course inspires a twinge of guilt in Obi-Wan - because indeed, this borders on being a foolhardy venture, that his Padawan is dragged into solely by virtue of her sharing quarters with him. She shakes her head and speaks clearly again for him to hear. “...Fine, I get it. Where do you even plan to house him, Master?”

Obi-Wan pauses. He has had plenty of time in the night to consider this, and still he cannot find any better solution than the one he is about to suggest. “I suppose there is no place safer than here.”

“Here? You mean as in, your own quarters, in the Jedi Temple?” Ahsoka stresses on the last few words, incredulous.

Something crashes inside his room, followed by Anakin’s muffled curse. Obi-Wan looks his apprentice dead in the eye as he lets out a sigh, and says, “Yes.”

—

Anakin is strangely good at cooking.

Obi-Wan supposes he shouldn’t have presumed; after all, being a Sith apprentice should probably not interfere with the more mundane aspects of life. But not only is Anakin’s cooking distinctly above average (how did he learn enough skills to make a three-course meal out of the few basic ingredients in Obi-Wan’s pantry, and at what cost?), he also seems to undertake the task with zeal. It’s rather endearing to watch him shuffle around the kitchenette in warm beige pants that barely reach his ankles, and a left sleeve that doesn't need to be rolled up because it's already too short for his long arm.

It’s been less than a week since Anakin first comes to his door. He clearly doesn't like Ahsoka, but with one arm and no lightsaber and Obi-Wan firmly telling him to behave, he eventually, and clearly grudgingly, tolerates her presence, from time to time. The gleam in his eyes is still worrying, from time to time, but the most Anakin does nowadays when Ahsoka passes by is turn his back to her. He seems to be trying his best, which is why Obi-Wan feels immensely guilty for having to preface their meal with a rather somber question.

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan says, as Anakin sets down before him a plate of steak that smells nearly the same as that one luxurious dish he once had while in disguise as a socialite at a prestigious fine dining party. It isn’t the materiality that is distracting, but the efforts that must have gone into it. “I would like to ask you a question.”

Anakin sits down opposite of him, balancing himself. Even with the Force, he’s unused to not having a weight elbow-down on his right hand. “What? Leftover is in the kitchen for your apprentice. If she wants it.” His voice still sharpens at your apprentice, defensive. “I didn’t mean to let her starve.”

Obi-Wan is torn between a smile and a grimace. “No, that isn’t my question, Anakin. I’ve been wondering if you knew of your allies’ plans.”

“What kind of plans?” Anakin’s eyes narrow, warily. “It depends. Dooku knew most. I just did battlefield strategy.”

“You don’t happen to know if there has been recent plans to assassinate the Supreme Chancellor, do you?” It has been on Obi-Wan’s mind ever since he was summoned to an urgent Council meeting days ago. Investigative teams reported that the Supreme Chancellor has gone missing; then midway through the meeting, another report came, and so they ended up discussing how to keep peace while the Senate would break the staggering news of the Supreme Chancellor’s death to the entire galaxy and organize an emergency election. The timing fit too well with Anakin’s arrival, and he doesn’t know what to make of it.

“Oh, there’s never any.” Anakin shrugs, tension melting out of his shoulder. He begins to cut into his steak without a care.

Obi-Wan frowns. There has been plenty of attempted assassinations before, as well as kidnapping - he himself has been sent to protect the Chancellor on many occasions. He’s loath to contradict Anakin, though, so he asks, carefully: “And you are sure?”

“I’m sure,” Anakin says, swallowing a mouthful. “My mas—Darth Sidious, is Palpatine.”

It takes Obi-Wan a stunned moment, while Anakin just continues to eat.

Well, the Council had their suspicions, but it was never so direct. Some have speculated, very privately, that the Chancellor might be linked to a darksider in some way. Perhaps somebody who is in opposition to Count Dooku, another Master has raised. But for the Chancellor *himself* to be this elusive, mysterious Darth Sidious, seems downright unfathomable.

“You…” Obi-Wan pauses, rewording the sentence in his mind for the seventh time. “I would like you to be serious, Anakin. That was not a joke, was it?”

Anakin, unsmiling, turns his eyes up to him with a look of confusion as if saying What’s a joke? “Darth Sidious is Palpatine,” he repeats. “I’m not allowed—I was not allowed to call him that, though.”

Obi-Wan takes a deep breath. The timing does line up far too well. “Anakin, that means you have... disposed of the Supreme Chancellor.”

Anakin scoffs, scrunches up his nose, and shrugs again. “If you put it that way,” he mutters, slouching down even lower as he pointedly eats his food.

Obi-Wan opens his mouth, then closes it again. He sighs at the ceiling, and picks up his fork and knife. Might as well enjoy a good meal before the migraine sets in.

—

To his own amazement, Obi-Wan is getting used to the way Anakin follows him around like a hatchling, whenever he is home.

During the first few days, it took Obi-Wan a considerable amount of patient explanation to convince Anakin not to sit on the floor at the foot of the door frame until he came back. His reasons ranged from “It’s rather undignified for you” (to which Anakin said, “I’ve done worse,” at which point Obi-Wan had to switch subjects immediately, putting a pin in it for future unpacking), to “You might catch a cold, sitting here for so long” (to which Anakin answered, “It’ll go away on its own,” which prompted Obi-Wan to check his temperature immediately, only to realize that Anakin had been cloaking his fever for at least a day, and - well, that was another pin on the board). In the end, it was only the allowance for him to use the kitchenette that kept the former Sith from waiting at the door like a hound, rather busying himself at the stove instead. It was a great decision through and through, considering how much Anakin improved the quality of their meals.

But otherwise, Anakin still makes no secret of his immediate attachment to him. Perhaps there should be no surprise in that, considering the sort of upbringing he must have suffered through; not that Obi-Wan knows much of it anyway, considering how quiet Anakin remains and how reluctant he himself is to ask personal questions. Nevertheless, from the way Anakin acted - finding his way into the Jedi Temple and declaring his trust to a sworn enemy rather than relying on his own Sith allies - it isn’t hard to infer that this man has had precious little reason to put his trust into anybody in his surroundings. It also aligns with the Sith ways, Obi-Wan speculates - and could only dare speculate, because truth be told he does not know all that much of the Sith outside of his research on ancient texts. Contemporary Sith are few. The Master might just make his own rules, and Darth Sidious - the Supreme Chancellor, Force have mercy - seemed like the type to play cruel games. So he has every reason to understand and empathize. And he truly does extend his most heartfelt compassion to this wayward Force-wielder.

That doesn’t make it any easier to deal with Anakin’s irritability whenever Obi-Wan comes back from a mission.

He’s clearly unhappy about Obi-Wan being away, especially if he discovers that the mission has been with Ahsoka. He only grows more upset and quick-tempered as time goes by; it begins with him upturning the decorative datapad shelves in the living room, escalating to a series of broken glasses and plates in the kitchenette; finally one day Obi-Wan comes back home to knives lodged in the wall, Anakin in the midst of pulling them out.

Anakin has the decency to look sheepish, even just slightly, as he silently puts away all the knives and hides himself in the kitchen completely. He cleans up, at least. In fact, he was almost always in the middle of cleaning up when Obi-Wan caught him in the act, which prompts the question: How many other times has he done this while left alone?

Obi-Wan only sighs. It does border on cruelty to keep somebody alone in these cramped quarters for weeks on end. He also knows that whatever measures he has set up to keep Anakin safe here - from the world, and from Anakin himself, - it would be a fatal oversight to underestimate the ability of a former Sith. He has no doubts that Anakin, even while one-handed and saber-less, could escape if he truly wanted to. The fact that Anakin willingly keeps himself stowed away in a Jedi’s quarters while desperately and entertaining himself through destructive means only to then be embarrassed about it… is a testament to some budding virtue, Obi-Wan supposes. And it only intensifies his guilt: it’s as if he’s taking advantage of Anakin’s trust to confine him to solitude, while he himself pushes back and back the kind of work a true mentor would need to engage in to help Anakin. The fact that he is fighting a war, or whatever is left of it, is no excuse.

It is with resolution that he stands up and heads into the kitchen. Their eyes meet as soon as he steps in; clearly enough, Anakin has been watching him. Anakin’s fingers grip the counter, knuckles blanched. Obi-Wan holds up his hands, moving as slowly and unpredictably as possible, and cuts to the chase.

“I was wondering if you’d like to go outside, Anakin.”

Anakin’s brows shoot up, but he still doesn’t unclench his jaws.

“I believe it’s rather unfair to keep you locked inside,” Obi-Wan explains. “After all, cooking can only do so much to spend all of one’s pent up energy.” He gives a small, gentle smile, inwardly anxious because of the way Anakin still looks at him with his guards up, shoulders squared, halfway between fight and flight. “I am not suggesting anything much, Anakin. Only a walk in the park, if it suits you. The decision is up to you.”

A moment or two passes in thick, awkward silence. Then Anakin, hesitantly: “Will you be there?”

It’s the first pleasant surprise Obi-Wan has had in what felt like an age. His smile grows, unbidden. “Yes, I insist.”

—

Autumn winds reel through his hair before rushing off to rustle in the foliage. The nightly air is crisp on his cheeks, and Obi-Wan doesn’t even think to tighten his robes around him; he enjoys a nice, chilly evening. Silence is alleviated by the song of insects in the grass, as they make their way down the serpentine path, round fountains and beds of flowers. Their robes flutter, and their hands are firmly linked.

It’s nothing that cannot be explained by strict necessity, or so Obi-Wan reasons: He must be able to make sure Anakin never strays from his sight, for safety reasons; and he dislikes the thought of putting any kind of binding or chains or even just a simple tied thread on Anakin. As usual, when all else fails, undertaking by hand is the solution - hence Anakin’s hand in his own, their palms warmly interfacing, their calluses fitting together.

The contact is also enjoyable, but that’s beside the point.

“I like the sky at night,” Anakin says, sudden but quiet. Obi-Wan glances at him to find Anakin not looking back at him for once. Anakin’s hood has long since slipped off because of the way he tips his head back to turn his eyes to the stars. Most of them are shrouded by gathering clouds, but some of them still shine through the dark.

“I see,” Obi-Wan muses. “May I ask why?”

For once, Anakin doesn’t hesitate to answer. “I like to look at the stars. They’re just suns, but far away. Can’t burn you, only blink at you.” Anakin’s hand tightens just a little. A patch of wildflowers gently glows when the two of them pass by. “When you blink back at them, you’re not alone.”

“And what if the stars are hidden?” Obi-Wan gestures, voice light, even as his heart sinks. He knows a lonely child, or one who used to be a lonely child, when he sees one. “What do you do then?”

The sigh that follows is lost in a gust of wind. There’s only the slightest of tremors in Anakin’s fingertips. They fall back into silence, deeper silence this time, as even the insects seem to quiet. The air feels earthy and damp with a coming rain. The sky blackens as clouds roil and thicken, and suddenly it’s dark as pitch and the comfortable coolness splinters into shivers under his skin. When the first drop falls, Obi-Wan reaches over to draw up Anakin’s hood for him. Anakin turns to him, eyes downcast.

“Then I’m alone,” he answers, belated and small.

—

“Maybe you’re right, Master.” Ahsoka picks up her steaming mug of tea, sinking comfortably into her amply cushioned seat on the couch. A strip of morning sunlight draws lazily across the room. “Whatever you’re doing, it’s working. He’s getting... nicer, lately. You should keep walking him.”

Obi-Wan chuckles at the turn of phrase. Walking him… “I don’t think it’s my doing,” he says, pouring a little more tea for himself. Anakin shuffles from one corner of the kitchenette to another, apron strings fluttering behind him. Obi-Wan shakes his head and takes a sip of tea, smiling. “I don’t think it’s my doing at all.”

#obikin #anakin skywalker #obi-wan kenobi #obi wan kenobi #ahsoka tano #star wars prequels #the clone wars #raised as sith anakin #i really did hijack clem’s au #sorry for pinging you again!#why is this so reminiscent of le petit prince all of a sudden #will that story ever stop haunting me? (no)#all aboard the woobify train yay

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antoine-roquentin · 4 years

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obliquely, this is in reference to how formerly working class bastions in the midwest that used to elect socialists now elect republicans. if we all gave up the theory that LGBT people are normal, we might once again go back to the days where we elected socialists across the country. thomas frank, what’s the matter with kansas:

But its periodic bouts of leftism were what really branded Kansas with the mark of the freak. Every part of the country in the nineteenth century had labor upheavals and protosocialist reform movements, of course. In Kansas, though, the radicals kept coming out on top. It was as though the blank landscape prompted dreams of a blank-slate society, a place where institutions might be remade as the human mind saw fit. Maps of the state from the 1880s show a hamlet (since vanished) called Radical City; in nearby Crawford County the town of Girard was home to the Appeal to Reason, a socialist newspaper whose circulation was in the hundreds of thousands. In that same town, in 1908, Eugene Debs gave a fiery speech accepting the Socialist Party’s nomination for president; in 1912 Debs actually carried Crawford County, one of four he won nationwide. (All were in the Midwest.) In 1910 Theodore Roosevelt signaled his own lurch to the left by traveling to Kansas and giving an inflammatory address in Osawatomie, the onetime home of John Brown.

The most famous freak-out of them all was Populism, the first of the great American leftist movements.* Populism tore through other states as well—wailing all across Texas, the South, and the West in the 1890s—but Kansas was the place that really distinguished itself by its enthusiasm. Driven to the brink of ruin by years of bad prices, debt, and deflation, the state’s farmers came together in huge meetings where homegrown troublemakers like Mary Elizabeth Lease exhorted them to “raise less corn and more hell.” The radicalized farmers marched through the small towns in day-long parades, raging against what they called the “money power.” And despite all the clamor, they still managed to take the state’s traditional Republican masters utterly by surprise in 1890, sweeping the small-town slickers out of office and ending the careers of many a career politician. In the decade that followed they elected Populist governors, Populist senators, Populist congressmen, Populist supreme court justices, Populistcity councils, and probably Populist dogcatchers, too; men of strong ideas, curious nicknames, and a colorful patois....

For a generation, Kansas has been the testing-ground for every experiment in morals, politics, and social life. Doubt of all existing institutions has been respectable. Nothing has been venerable or revered merely because it exists or has endured. Prohibition, female suffrage, fiat money, free silver, every incoherent and fantastic dream of social improvement and reform, every economic delusion that has bewildered the foggy brains of fanatics, every political fallacy nurtured by misfortune, poverty and failure, rejected elsewhere, has here found tolerance and advocacy.

Today the two myths are one. Kansas may be the land of averageness, but it is a freaky, militant, outraged averageness. Kansas today is a burned-over district of conservatism where the backlash propaganda has woven itself into the fabric of everyday life. People in suburban Kansas City vituperate against the sinful cosmopolitan elite of New York and Washington, D.C.; people in rural Kansas vituperate against the sinful cosmopolitan elite of Topeka and suburban Kansas City. Survivalist supply shops sprout in neighborhood strip-malls. People send Christmas cards urging their friends to look on the bright side of Islamic terrorism, since the Rapture is now clearly at hand.

Under the state’s simple blue flag are gathered today some of the most flamboyant cranks, conspiracists, and calamity howlers the Republic has ever seen. The Kansas school board draws the guffaws of the world for purging state science standards of references to evolution. Cities large and small across the state still hold out against water fluoridation, while one tiny hamlet takes the additional step of requiring firearms in every home. A prominent female politician expresses public doubts about the wisdom of women’s suffrage, while another pol proposes that the state sell off the Kansas Turnpike in order to solve its budget crisis. Impoverished inhabitants of the state’s most scenic area fight with fanatical determination to prevent a national park from opening up in their neighborhood, while the rails-to-trails program, regarded everywhere else in the union as a harmless scheme for family fun, is reviled in Kansas as an infernal design on the rights of property owners. Operation Rescue selects Wichita as the stage for its great offensive against abortion, calling down thirty thousand testifying fundamentalists on the city, witnessing and blocking traffic and chaining themselves to fences. A preacher from Topeka travels the nation advising Americans to love God’s holy hate, showing up wherever a gay person has been in the news to announce that “God Hates Fags.” Survivalists and secessionists dream of backyard confederacies out on the lone prairie; schismatic Catholics declare the pope himself to be insufficiently Catholic; Posses Comitatus hold imaginary legal proceedings, sternly prosecuting state officials for participating in actual legal proceedings; and homegrown terrorists swap conspiracy theories at a house in Dickinson County before screaming off to strike a blow against big government in Oklahoma City.

the problem with this simple story is that social liberalism actually grew in lockstep with an economic policy tailored to the poor. in the 70s, the most common place to get gender reassignment surgery was at a catholic hospital in small town colorado. in 2010, in response to deep opposition in the town, the practice was forced to move to california. the second most common place was at a baptist hospital in oklahoma city, where such surgery was viewed as routine until a number of religious leaders decided to oppose it in the 70s. at the same time, many other religious leaders spoke out in favour of the surgery, saying that it comported well with religious tenets.

likewise, colorado legalized abortion in 1967, as did states like kansas, missouri, georgia, and north and south carolina prior to roe v wade. today, these states are considered anti-abortion and anti-lgbt hotspots, yet prior to the late 70s, compassion for such people was viewed as paramount in the life of america’s christians. so what happened? it clearly wasn’t an emphasis on the social aspects of poor american lives that shifted the political arena in favour of religious conservatism. rather, as thomas frank points out in the same book:

Nobody mows their own lawn in Mission Hills anymore, and only a foot soldier in its armies of gardeners would park a Pontiac there. The doctors who lived near us in the seventies have pretty much been gentrified out, their places taken by the bankers and brokers and CEOs who have lapped them repeatedly on the racetrack of status and income. Every time I paid Mission Hills a visit during the nineties, it seemed another of the more modest houses in our neighborhood had been torn down and replaced by a much larger edifice, a three-story stone chateau, say, bristling with turrets and porches and dormers and gazebos and a three-car garage. The dark old palaces from the twenties sprouted spiffy new slate roofs, immaculately tailored gardens, remote-controlled driveway gates, and sometimes entire new wings. One grand old pile down the street from us was fitted with shiny new gutters made entirely of copper. A new house a few doors down from Esrey’s spread is so large it has two multicar garages, one at either end.

These changes are of course not unique to Mission Hills. What has gone on there is normal in its freakishness. You can observe the same changes in Shaker Heights or La Jolla or Winnetka or Ann Coulter’s hometown of New Canaan, Connecticut. They reflect the simplest and hardest of economic realities: The fortunes of Mission Hills rise and fall in inverse relation to the fortunes of ordinary working people. When workers are powerful, taxes are high, and labor is expensive (as was the case from World War II until the late seventies), the houses built here are smaller, the cars domestic, the servants rare, and the overgrown look fashionable in gardening circles. People read novels about eccentric English aristocrats trapped in a democratic age, sighing sadly for their lost world.

When workers are weak, taxes are down, and labor is cheap (as in the twenties and again today), Mission Hills coats itself in shimmering raiments of gold and green. Now the stock returns are plush, the bonus packages fat, the servants affordable, and the suburb finds that the princely life isn’t dead after all. It builds new additions and new fountains and new Italianate porches overlooking Olympic-sized flower gardens maintained by shifts of laborers. People read books about the glory of empire. The kids get Porsches or SUVs when they turn sixteen; the houses with asphalt roofs discreetly disappear; the wings that were closed off are triumphantly reopened, and all is restored to its former grandeur. Times may be hard where you live, but here events have yielded a heaven on earth, a pleasure colony out of the paintings of Maxfield Parrish.

america's workers and small farmers were saved by the reforms of the 1930s, as frank explains, then crushed as the wealthy found out how to squirrel away their taxes (in part thanks to the collapse of the british empire), accumulate wealth away from prying eyes, lobby the government for preferential treatment, and between 1976 and 2000, triumph completely in the political domain. mission hill donates more money to politicians than the rest of kansas combined. unions are swamped in state politics, and see declining fortunes. as a result, neoliberal social atomization takes effect, which sees even workers demanding beggar-thy-neighbour policies. and when thy neighbour is socially distinct from you, it becomes easier to justify voting for such politics based on a survival instinct. the majority of the working class tuned out and do not vote any more. among the rest, low skilled working class jobs in highly stratified and inequitable cities vote democrat, hoping for some patronage from the white collar creative class voters they serve, while blue collar skilled workers tend to vote republican, devoid of any examples of class politics in their lives with the death of unions and hoping to keep their share of wages against their only opposition, the tax man.

ultimately, any socially liberal politics sustained by donations from rich big city donors is unsustainable. on the other hand, the notion that “woke” politics is holding back leftism is, save for a few clearly absurd situations (robin diangelo, for instance) also wrong. economic leftism leads to social leftism, because respect to the working class leads to respect for its identities. neoliberal atomization is a much deeper force than can be surmounted at the ballot box, even in a primary, but it is always an economic force first and foremost.

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